There is no definition of “predatory business model” that isn’t simply a reflection of the majority’s values, so there absolutely is a conflict between the two.
Are churches a predatory business? If the answer is no, then why are sugar manufacturers? If the answer is tradition etc., then that basically proves my point.
the institution that invented Tithes? The institution that if you go and put money in every sunday will help you organize weddings and funerals which are very important dates for people? Which will take old women aside and talk about getting into heaven and helping missions in poor countries full of poor little children?
That institution might have a predatory business model?
The threat of hell is certainly very uncoercive yeah
While I don't disagree with the assertion that churches are somewhat "predatory" with the threat of hell etc., this statement isn't really supporting that thesis:
> if you go and put money in every sunday will help you organize weddings and funerals which are very important dates for people
So basically you're paying for a service? Your argument would be much better if they didn't actually help people with important stuff.
Creating a hierarchy in lets say a small town, were people who pay in can have a funeral early/better date/better priest while people who dont pay get a wednesday mid work and no one can attend so the family has to say goodbye to their loved one without people creates the kind of environment where participating is not optional.
That is the kind of situation the funeral thing was highlighting, not the provision of a service, but the creation of a coercive incentive for social hierarchy and emotional support around a very difficult moment.
Its the same reason predatory loans are predatory, not because loans are bad but because you find people at their lowest and provide a service where they are incentivised to make reckless financial choices
Sure, but all successful capitalist economies revolve around supporting commercial interests which prop up the tax revenue which then hold up the welfare state and public infrastructure, QoL and freedoms we enjoy.
THe big challenge is separating the good from the bad commercial interests. It's not a challenge because differentiating the good from the harmful is difficult, but because bad actor industries also make A LOT of money that buys a lot of political power and also employ a lot of people, so removing them from economy would have negative economic and political consequences.
Basically it's like a dead man's switch in a mutually assured destruction weapon.
> We have banned heroin so we should be able to ban anything else that's toxic
Except banning heroin clearly didn't work so well! There's still a lot of people using it. And the profits from selling it go to criminal gangs. And the people using it often die due to inconsistent dosing.
How do you define "manipulative potential"? If you ban sugar in drinks, do you ban fruit juice too? Where do we draw the line for "acceptable harm"? Personally I don't want to live in a society which bans huge numbers of things.
Yeah, in my country oat milk is now taxed as a juice, of course milk isn't. So the plant based alternative is now 2x the price of cow milk. Thanx Milk industry.
What's the difference between a big company and a criminal gang if not for the law? If it wasn't for the big companies, more dangerous things would be illegal, just like Heroin and other hard drugs.
I mean, it's not often you hear about tobacco dealers shooting each other in a crowded mall, or alcohol bosses getting their house blown up (or sometimes their neighbors house). So there might be a few small differences between companies and criminal gangs.
It didn't seem to go too well last time it was attempted with one other drug. Namely ethanol. It might be time to try again as there doesn't seem to be any safe consumption level.
Our bodies interact with extremely large amounts of elements in the environment and behavior that act beyond our conscious comprehension.
Sometimes in our favour and some others against us.
Banning everything that at some point worked against us is just establishing human life full of total deprivation. Worse than living in jail. Good luck maintaining a society in those conditions.
The individual and the society should instead focus on educating and teaching how to navigate an environment full of those elements.
That would be fine, if countries like the USA weren't actively turning their backs on logic and facts, and returning to a period that history refers to as the "dark ages"
Notice something curious. The correlation with discussions around regulating businesses, freedom, and social media attention.
There is a strong correlation between someone making money and someone arguing that people being able to make money is about freedom.
And here we are a few centuries into capitalism and people say that they are conflicted because personal freedom = making money off people. Effectively.
Yet there are many freedoms that are not profitable. We just have to sit down in a chair and think it through for ten minutes. Preferably without the corrupting influence of a scren.
I've mentioned this before but over 40 years ago the periodical R & D was originally known as Industrial Research, and the R & D 100 was the IR100, showcasing the most promising companies they picked out every year in their opinion.
It wasn't too much like an academic publication, there were plenty of those, but lots of times a breakthrough would be reported anyway, and everything was more commercially oriented by far.
You know how trade publications can be kind of uninteresting for non-insiders, IR could be so boring that college professors wouldn't even read it.
But you could tell when an author had recently left academia and joined industry though because their papers appeared more academic than very seasoned ones.
It's still a challenging transition to make, but I'll never forget how it was addressed one time in the back pages. Where you get the occasional cartoon comic like you would in consumer media.
There's two scientists in lab coats working at their benches, the boss comes on the intercom and they look at each other as he blasts from the overhead speaker:
"Hey you guys in Research, get off your butts and invent something that's habit forming".
What's your point? We regulated cigarettes and now they have a tiny fraction of their former customer base, saving millions of lives. These are solvable problems.
Regulated but did not ban and the trick is to keep the availability far enough above the profitability of the criminal enterprise versus demand and your law enforcement potential.
Which technically isn't hard because criminal enterprise is pretty damn inefficient!
Cigarretes are an interesting example. Its way more about general society attitude, without doing a full baning. And that's likely what we need for other stuff.
We litearlly can't ban everything that is bad in the large. That would simply be to many things.
More like banning was applied to advertising and indoor smoking in lots of places.
>without doing a full baning.
This is why it worked, as good as it did.
That was enough regulation of the prominent, growing hazard & risk, for the vast majority to experience how much better it was than before, and usage snowballed downward as much as it could.