[smt88]

> things have a way of working out

The definition of survivorship bias because you literally are alive to say this.

Tens of millions have been killed by CEOs of tobacco companies, and that's just one industry. Energy companies will likely cause the death of billions.

We got rid of many dangerous American oligarchs in the Gilded Age by using govt to break them up. Things don't "just work out," people sacrifice huge amounts of time and energy to fix them.

[ghufran_syed]

didn‘t the “tens of millions” of humans who died have any agency? And by definition, aren’t “energy companies” helping fix the problem of “energy poverty” which increases human welfare?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_poverty

[smt88]

In both cases, the agency of individuals was undermined by regulatory capture and the publishing of false studies (despite having real studies that the companies buried).

For decades, people didn't even know it was dangerous to smoke or have lead in gasoline or burn fossil fuels because the information was systematically suppressed by the producers of those products.