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Comment by philipallstar | Hacker News Reader

It's governments that tend to declare war and kill people.

Millions of people die every year from tobacco, and tobacco companies fought for decades to deny their product causes cancer. In the 20th century alone it's estimated something like 100 million people died world wide thanks to smoking.

That's just one example off the top of my head. There are countless others involving corporations killing people either directly or indirectly in the pursuit of profits. And that's before you start looking at human rights violations, ecological damage, overthrowing of sovereign governments around the world...

We have governments to stop the obvious ones like tobacco too.

What point do you think you're making?

Almost every life lost is either directly or indirectly the fault of government. Why would corporate overlords be the more likely people to assume will be directing your dystopian future fiction when governments exist today?

... Because this thread is about a project that's a security nightmare, bought by a massive corporation currently ignoring the hugely problematic ethical issues surrounding their products. Corporations which btw, have more money and more power then most of the governments on the planet. Governments do terrible shit too, but it's less relevant to this conversation.

But I'm more interested in this framing. Are you saying that tobacco companies are somehow less responsible for their actions because the government didn't stop them from killing their customers? If the government just didn't exist, and tobacco companies could do whatever they wanted, do you think there would be less deaths from cigarettes?

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