I listen to the Last Podcast on the Left and I’m learning now about the DuPonts. I’m astounded how it may seem like so little people know of them aside from the listeners. These are actual demons in living people to do the things they do. For example, they’re responsible for Teflon which is produced using C8 chemical. This is a forever chemical.
To give you an idea as to how royally fucked the world has been, Teflon is in numerous things that we use everyday. It is in the non-stick cookware we use. It’s in waterproof fabrics. Food packaging. Just a lot of shit. And we use these things - every. day. This chemical, once it is in you, it’s in you until even through death hence it being a forever chemical and there’s no way you can be rid of it. It can spawn cancerous cells in your body.
And I’m just listening to all of this thinking “Forget half of the shit we’re gearing our anger towards, it’s THESE people we need to draw and quarter!” because of the insurmountable damage and influence they’ve been in so many things that has everyone’s lives in a stranglehold.
I’ve been trying to make sense of why multiple systems end up like this and how to design better. At an individual and small community level there’s decent good people. But once group size or resource pooling goes beyond a certain size more than human attention span, etc then rough edges are blown up.
It’s like small groups can operate on trust and direct feedback but once you get too big then rules and proxies start to dominate. And after that people optimize for those local rules instead of total system health.
Also in small groups you have individuals you tie to systems, but once too big you drop that association in addition to empathy when interacting with the system.
Maybe we need a more modular society focused on local good.