Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[a500lbgorilla]

Obviously in a free society it would become apparent that cigarettes cause health harm.

Absolutely beyond 110% not the case. The average joe is no better than chance at telling between an expert and an expert fake. If you can flood the conversation with more expert fakes than there are experts, you can robustly direct the conversation away from the truth. Profitable cig companies would have an interest in controlling the conversation, truth-jockeys without a profit motive would have no chance to compete.

edit: Maybe wealthy sensible people and nonprofits could become a loud voice in the conversation, but without a central violent authority to straight up silence the wrong the side, they'll always have an appreciable level of rhetorical pull.

[a500lbgorilla]

It seems to me that fraud is pretty close to unavoidable. It's an arm of both telling lies and desiring more, which sound like normal aspects of people.

[wufwugy]

Absolutely beyond 110% not the case. The average joe is no better than chance at telling between an expert and an expert fake. If you can flood the conversation with more expert fakes than there are experts, you can robustly direct the conversation away from the truth. Profitable cig companies would have an interest in controlling the conversation, truth-jockeys without a profit motive would have no chance to compete.

There would be tons of profit in competing against them. It's like how we have a vast health food industry for reasons unrelated to government involvement. Plus non-profit would have a lot of legroom to work as well. Most information that travels through communities are not based on profit.

The last thing "Big Whatever" wants is the government to let the market handle it.