The Jungle
Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth century and brought into sharp moral focus the appalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, the book was championed by more progressive thinkers, including then President Theodore Roosevelt, and was a major catalyst to the passing of the Pure Food and Meat Inspection act, which has tremendous impact to this day.
Stats for nerds
32recommend
152mentions
136people
2008–2026years
22% recommend73% neutral5% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The phrase "regulations written in blood" comes to mind.
> A lot of healthcare issues are just not high-stakes. Requiring a doctor in these cases doesn't help the average patient
Normally, I am not inclined to get involved whenever I see bad takes on the internet but this is one of those "so harmful you really need to nip it in the bud" type of things.
Do not listen to this person's armchair speculation.
If you want to remind yourself why the united states invented an FDA (and why every major medical establishment enjoys the benefits of institutions like ICD and CPT standardization), go reread your Progressive Era history (~1900-1925). Go read about how we already learned all of these lessons the hard way, and save yourself the trouble of reinventing the wheel. Go read about the social impact of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, "snake oil salesmen", disasters like the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the creation of organizations like OSHA.
This commenter may not know any better, but humanity does.
- There ARE regulations for sure. But they exist to protect the population at large. For example, food safety laws were not created out of government hostility but rather because food was unsafe. Read (or read about) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair if you want to get creeped out about the food industry in the 1930s before regulations
- Basically, don't invest through investment companies. They'll chase the big profits because that's what they're paid to do. Even "green" or "sustainable" funds might invest in pharmaceutical companies that produce treatments instead of cures, or psuedo-science companies chasing net-energy loss concepts like clean coal or hydrogen, for example.
Instead, invest in specific technologies and goals:
Avoid:- Low-cost solar panels and windmills - Alternative chip designs like RISC-V and high-multicore (64+ cores) - Peer to peer communications systems, alternatives to cellular/5G - Robotic/hydroponic automated organic food production - Incubated/cloned meat and meat alternatives without side effects like FODMAP - mRNA vaccines, CRISPR, treatments for genetic disorders - Low-cost EVs, LiFePO4 batteries, high-kW inverters, axial flux motors - Heat pumps, thermal energy storage, concentrated trough solar - Labor-saving inventions and assistive devices for freight, construction, etc - Companies that openly support public education, single-payer healthcare, etc - Incubators like Y Combinator but that provide smaller $10,000-$100,000 VC - Open source projects/collaborations that distribute risk like Humble Bundle - Mass transit like electric busses/high-speed rail (boring but global demand) - Strike Debt and other loan forgiveness efforts that buy up loans in default - PACs, unions, environmental groups working to unseat incumbants - Foreign aid programs aimed at education, especially women and girls - Independent investigative journalists and media - Local bond efforts for better public schools, libraries, parks, etc - Stocks/groups working to legalize cannibis and end the war on drugs - Builders of tiny homes and alternative housing like yurts and earthships
People to emulate (these are merely breadcrumbs towards ways of thinking):- Crypto (untraceable exploitation, black markets, human trafficking, etc) - Mutual funds and index funds (same reason as investment companies) - FAANG/GAMMA (high profit, low innovation over market cap) - MLMs (often tied to fundamentalist religious organizations and lobbyists) - Foreign currencies (profits from exploitation and environmental degradation)
See also:- MacKenzie Scott - Bill McKibben - Michael Pollan - Derrick Jensen - Thom Hartmann - Howard Zinn (deceased) - Ed Abbey (deceased) - John Muir (deceased) - Frank Church (deceased) - Terence McKenna (deceased)
If I ever win the internet lottery, I'll work towards getting matching funds to tackle the biggest problems facing humanity:- Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty - The Jungle and other books by Upton Sinclair (deceased) - Nickel and Dimed and other books by Barbara Ehrenreich (deceased)1) That starts with liberating all peoples from forced labor, exploitation and subjugation so that they can self-actualize. Which looks like freeing capital from "black holes" of concentrated wealth, specifically moneyed interests and wealthy individuals who hoard resources and choose to do none of what I've stated above, at great expense to the rest of humanity. That's done not through competition or direct confrontation, but by getting everyone "off the grid" to disrupt the supply and demand curve which always results in the wealth inequality and late-stage capitalism we see today when there isn't regulation.
2) Then also improving quality of life universally, so working towards providing free treatments for all conditions/illnesses/injuries across borders.
3) Then also promoting kindess, mindfulness, and other cultural movements which move us away from othering and back towards reconnection to foster the common good. This looks like a rejection of reason for its own sake, and replacing that with the pursuit of meaning. So deciding collectively that using electronic devices in public is impolite, ending surveillance capitalism, tearing down the economic walls which separate us from our neighbors, etc. So that we can once again gather in small communities that provide mutual aid, childcare and tool/resource sharing so that we aren't forced to take on so much individually for our basic survival.
I think it may be possible to recruit AI to do all of this holistically and rapidly shift into the reality that we may have envisioned for the 21st century, a bit like the rapid technological growth we saw during COVID-19, when the first vacation that billions of people ever had resulted in 10-20 years of innovation in just 1-2 years. That's the key, that getting real work done requires escaping the menial labor that extracts profit from the working class.
So that's what I would do: use AI to examine thousands of stocks to find which ones trend similarly and which one correlate inversely, and come up with a plan to start moving profit the opposite direction from where it's moved traditionally. Then invest that cashflow into countless underemployed people whose talents, dignity and divinity haven't been recruited yet effectively because they've only been put to use in the service of capital.
- I always thought Sinclair's "The Jungle" was a brilliant novel. Now we get to experience it in real life!
Sarcastic joking aside, the concern is that the retreat of the FDA will lead to a very high degree of variability in food safety on a state-by-state basis.
Since our food system really is nationwide, it will be "interesting" to see how differing standards get resolved if the Feds wash their hands of the whole affair.
- The FDA was founded in 1906. They are the reason we don’t have formaldehyde in our meat nor chalk in our milk. Read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair to understand why people defend the FDA.
- AOC needs to read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. There is nothing new under the sun.
