← Back to context

Comment by 999900000999

6 hours ago

Way to do millions of dollars in PR damage over 200k.

As this story spreads people will just assume the whole chain is bad.

The bigger story is an elderly man needing to sell his toys to pay for cancer treatment.

We could give all people free cancer treatment, but defense contractors need money.

11 comments

999900000999

Reply
Schmerika  4 hours ago

> people will just assume the whole chain is bad.

The whole chain is bad.

We're far past the point where the company bigwigs should have fixed this. It's not like they don't know.

> The bigger story is an elderly man needing to sell his toys to pay for cancer treatment.

Idk. Straight up corporate theft of $200k, backed up by the cops, is a more visceral story than 'yet another person merked by our predatory healthcare system'.

> We could give all people free cancer treatment, but defense contractors need money.

Yes, and that's important - but there are unique aspects to this story which shouldn't be overshadowed by the higher priority problem for the nation. The immediate problem for this elderly cancer patient isn't going to be solved by Americans suddenly realising that they have people power - but getting his Legos back might save his life.

  • rithdmc  4 hours ago

    I think it's more visceral, but a smaller story. 'yet another person merked by our predatory healthcare system' is a headline that will be relevant again, with new participants, tomorrow, or next week.

    This headline about star wars lego? Less so.

    • Schmerika  4 hours ago

      > a smaller story

      Sure. Any one person's story will be smaller than the whole picture - is that your whole point? What are you proposing - that we ignore stories like this until we fix healthcare?

      Because if that's not what you're saying, why bring it up as if one cancer patient's life and property rights aren't important (even beyond tomorrow and next week)?

      > 'yet another person merked by our predatory healthcare system' is a headline that will be relevant again, with new participants, tomorrow, or next week.

      And so will corporate theft, and bureaucratic Kafkaesque nightmares, and police corruption, etc. There's no lack of overlapping evil to look at here.

      Individual stories are still important and relevant, and ignoring them to look at the bigger picture is like ignoring water to look at the ocean.

      2 replies →

ChrisRR  5 hours ago

I totally don't get it. If I were the head of corporate I would've just given them the sets back to avoid all of the backlash.

  • mcv  5 hours ago

    But you're not. The head of corporate is someone who thought he could get away with this. And almost did, until Reckless Ben showed up.