Again, I'm not buying it. Corporations do what they've always done. They are and were in the money making business. We simply don't remember the hardships the labour force had to endure back then and our current problems obviously always seem the worst. Your current problems are always the worst problems. Factories were outright lethal places just 100 years ago. That's much better now. Something like building bridges or ships used to cost a certain number of deaths per meter or yard and this was completely acceptable. What also helps is that people are on average more educated now. Even though people still try their best and have moderate amounts of success, it's simply harder to take advantage of more educated people. The fact that educated nations tend to be safe and happy reflects this.
I never said production is cleaner nowadays, I don't know where you got that from and I'm not very interested in the argument either, though I will note there are much more substantial checks and balances in force. Products are demonstrably cheaper, more available and more reliable than they used to be too. No rant is going to change that reality. There's junk being made, but there was horrid junk being made back then. As I said before, stuff that modern people take one look at and know it's a bad idea. There's a lot less of that going on today.
If there are any tangible numbers to discuss I'd be more than happy to do so, but stories about how those are all manipulated by our lizard overlords are going to be taken with an appropriately sized saltmine. It seems you've seen the game played for a number of years and got jaded. It happens to the best of us, but the issue is with the observer and not the observed. Doomsday prophets have existed in all eras.
Jaded? HELL NO. I'm fighting tooth and claw against it; I'm politically active in my own neighborhood, I vote and I donate every penny I can spare to groups and candidates I believe have a chance of making even a small difference. I'm just not willing to lie to myself about the history I see repeating itself all around us.
Manufacturing jobs are as lethal as they ever were; they've just all been shipped overseas to Asia, where human life is cheap. WE subsidize that, and in so doing, we reinforce the idea at every stage of business, with every transaction, that money is more important than people, that there is such a thing as "acceptable casualties" in the manufacturing process, and "now we're just haggling over the price".
The difference now is that the only jobs left here for those who aren't capable of carving out their own niche (this has nothing to do with being willing to work hard; there are a lot of people who just aren't good at bootstrapping their own careers) are either as office-drone corporate shills or "Would you like Fries widdat?"
Yes, big business has always been evil; the difference is we once fought them at every step because we had seen what happens when they run unchecked. Now we have a whole segment of the general population, the very same folks who are being raped the worst, who've bought into the mindset that because they have lots of money they must be right, no matter how overtly evil they behave.
This is the triumph of broadcast advertising (no matter what the medium) over common sense; if you can bludgeon the average person enough times with the same message, no matter how blatantly self-destructive and even offensive it may be, you'll get a certain percentage of them to agree with it. Now you just need to amplify that group's bought opinion to the point it drowns out all competitors and you've won.
Corporate Politics 101, boys and girls.
mnem
"...There is no truth, there are no facts; only data to be manipulated. I can get you any result you like; what's it worth tooya?" ~ Don Henley - In the Garden of Allah
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