@bravojohnson

The code is portable because the incentives are identical. Tobacco wrote the original script: the science is uncertain, regulation is premature, we’re being unfairly targeted, consumers choose this, and anyway the product is safer than it used to be. Oil adopted it almost verbatim for climate—uncertain models, transition fuel, market distortion, consumer demand, carbon capture just around the corner. Now tech runs the same play on algorithmic harm and AI safety: early research, innovation at risk, users have agency, improved models prove progress. The through-line is constant: don’t regulate the business model, trust us to optimize the implementation. What changes is the polish. Tobacco was crude and got caught lying. Oil got smoother—acknowledge the problem in theory while blocking action in practice. Tech is slickest of all, wrapping extraction in libertarian philosophy, effective altruism, and progress studies, until latent violence learns how to sound like virtue

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