Difference between revisions of "Mike Huben/tobacco"

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[[Category:Capitalist Harms]]
 
[[Category:Capitalist Harms]]
 
[[Category:Capitalists are not your friends.]]
 
[[Category:Capitalists are not your friends.]]
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[[Category:Free To Choose]]
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[[Category:Milton Friedman]]
 
{{Quote
 
{{Quote
 
| text = People smoke in large part because they have been persuaded to.  Persuaded by a tobacco culture carefully nurtured by the tobacco industry. Persuaded by an industry that suppressed hazards of smoking for decades after they were known.  Persuaded by an industry that knew its product was addictive, and knew it had to addict juveniles to maintain the smoking population.  This history is well known from internal tobacco company documents.  You can pretend that the word "choose" absolves those corporations from all responsibility: but even libertarians shouldn't accept that.  Otherwise, there would be no prohibition against fraud.  People must make choices to be defrauded.  The folks who invested with Bernard Madoff chose their investments, but that does not absolve Madoff.  Nor are tobacco companies absolved because people chose to smoke.  Those people were persuaded by an industry that spent enormous amounts on advertising, promotion, and disinformation.  The amount they spent shows how critical they felt that persuasion was: that shows their responsibility.
 
| text = People smoke in large part because they have been persuaded to.  Persuaded by a tobacco culture carefully nurtured by the tobacco industry. Persuaded by an industry that suppressed hazards of smoking for decades after they were known.  Persuaded by an industry that knew its product was addictive, and knew it had to addict juveniles to maintain the smoking population.  This history is well known from internal tobacco company documents.  You can pretend that the word "choose" absolves those corporations from all responsibility: but even libertarians shouldn't accept that.  Otherwise, there would be no prohibition against fraud.  People must make choices to be defrauded.  The folks who invested with Bernard Madoff chose their investments, but that does not absolve Madoff.  Nor are tobacco companies absolved because people chose to smoke.  Those people were persuaded by an industry that spent enormous amounts on advertising, promotion, and disinformation.  The amount they spent shows how critical they felt that persuasion was: that shows their responsibility.
 
| cite = [[Mike Huben]], email July 26, 2009
 
| cite = [[Mike Huben]], email July 26, 2009
 
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Latest revision as of 14:30, 29 September 2018