Being a Sunday sports spud, watching the relentless flood of pro-gambling ads, wondering if we’re heading for an echo of the Oxycontin disaster; a tsunami of lives wrecked by addiction.
A different flavor of catastrophe; what’s the same is that the perpetrators get to walk away with billions.
Destroying whole generations is good business.
@timbray great point, but i wish you'd left off the last line. Nobody has destroyed whole generations except via literal genocide.
Destroying the social fabric of communities? Check, great for business. Causing misery to millions? Check, great for business.
Yeah, it's going to be a spectacular problem in the UK, for the same logic as everyday people getting into NFTs.
They know the chances of making money and getting out without losing their shirts aren't great.
But they have _no other hope_ of escape.
Walk around an IKEA and see what sort of things are being sold as "aspirational".
Go into a mall and check out what's being sold to young workers.
These are the people we'd have said had prospects in the 90s.
@timbray @cammerman Just today noticed a graph suggesting how much the Sacklers profited from addiction. And yet they remain out of jail and, I suppose, are still considered respectable by their peers.
And yet the popular movements are about things like trans kids. Deflection. I’m not sure that the dominant approach to the real issues – ironically mocking the predators – is going to be effective.
Tim Bray
BoredomFestival
elle mundy
PaulDavisTheFirst
PJ "Vote Green" Coffey
Ben
Chris Leboe
Brian Marick