I think I would reframe this. Companies will do what they believe will make them profits aka the guy in management is going to get a raise or the CEO is going to get a pay increase / stick options because their profits increased due to their choices. Now if a community of people can put a large enough financial incentive (positive or negative) on a company they will ultimately change their behavior. If for instance today everyone started boycotting companies with practices they disliked then most definitely they would change and likely whoever was in charge before would be fired or punished somehow. They’re not going to change just to make people feel better or happy, no one cares about that so long as the money is flowing in a for-profit.

It’s always both.

Exactly. For me in my early 20’s it was a handful of moments of having extreme stress about a possibly bad outcome, Sometimes for weeks only for said scenario (while possible) to never come to pass.

You’re welcome. I was curious. Pretty fucked. I redid the calculation for the median income of the area and the house is still 30x the annual yearly income. From 3x to 30x in 65 years is not good.

Not really an argument, it’s more so a statement of fact. Businesses exist for one reason alone, to within the confines of the law generate more capital than they spend. If you want an organization whose goal is something else then you need a non-profit organization. A for-profit is by definition for profit. They don’t call it capitalism by accident.

I never said anything about morality. Honestly within the confines of what is legal business isn’t too concerned about morality because the goal isn’t morality or ethics. The goal is increasing profits.

That’s not what paraphrasing means but whatever you prefer.

People are free to spend their money on non-profits and open source, they mostly choose not to.

Never said that. All atrocities are bad and for sure western powers have committed the most harm by number to themselves and others, by percentage I’m actually not sure. It’s partly a function of recent growth of the global human population. These things were happening since forever but there were many fewer people. I’m not saying that’s the only factor. Technology to sail and use guns as well as mainly zoonotic diseases played a massive role as well. Once again, all atrocities are bad and shouldn’t have happened. People should work together for their mutual benefit.

I am paraphrasing, no one wrote it like that letter for letter but read around. There are more than a few moments of people arguing it’s a western specific thing. That nothing like this happened before western countries started colonialism or western expansion.

Not really, someone was saying these were uniquely western behaviors. Unfortunately they aren’t. It’s more so a recognition of reality as it is than a denial or diminishing of anything. To argue it is a western only thing would be diminishing the atrocities not committed by western powers.

A for profit will ultimately err on the side of profits. Any messaging or behavior suggesting they actually care about the consumer is only in service of profits not in service of the consumer aka it’s fake.

Me? I wait like 20+ years to play games so typically I just emulate roms. I donate to ROM hosting sites or buy old games and consoles from yard sales and stuff. I’m consuming content but I’m definitely not a typical gamer I think.

It’s kinda been my one and only point this entire time that I keep just repeating, maybe with more verbosity which has spawned a lot of discussion not about the point I’m making.

So far, yes. Although other regions and people have had their own atrocities not to be ignored by history or awareness. My point still stands that these behaviors are not and have never been uniquely western or even uniquely homo sapien. Nature is fucked and so far, the more intelligent an organism becomes the more fucked it gets.

Now we’re getting to my point this entire time. These behaviors aren’t a western or even a homo sapien thing. Of course humanity has the ability for peace but over all known history that really hasn’t been the case. People want what they want and they unfortunately are willing to use force to get it. In the case of genocide it can be two groups who mutually believe they are not safe so long as the other exists so the fight never ends until one is wiped out fully. As they say, until your enemy becomes your friend the war is never over. Although honestly at the end of the day it’s about power and genetic propagation. Arguably everything is about genetic propagation for organisms.

I picked 2 million arbitrarily as an example. The general point was that its hard to kill a lot of people when there isn’t any. That is humans and likely our ancestors have been doing these things for a long time but at a smaller scale because there were just fewer people. Humans and early hominids are violent AF. Just check out our closest living relatives, chimps. War, murder, rape, torture, completely eradicating another tribe is nothing new. What is new very recently in the hominid story is the absolutely massive increase in population.

The main point is that genocide, rape, torture, war, murder, slavery and so on isn’t unique to western people or even homo sapiens. These are things humans and likely our ancestors have been doing before we ever left Africa.

Yeah,. It’s a for-profit company with publicly traded stock. Their one and only concern is their bottom line, decrease costs, increase profits. If you want a nonprofit videogame co-op that’s gamer first then you’re more than free to go start one.

That isn’t really what I was arguing but if you want to change the discussion then I’m open to it.