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I’m not sure you can get away with the syllogism that just because some business practice is used by drug dealers it is automatically unethical if a legitimate business does the same thing.

It’s like when someone offers to sell you a product weighed in grams, you can’t just say ‘ah yes, the drug dealer measurement system’ and dismiss their business out of hand.

Because I don’t think the moral issue people have with drug dealers is that they take a deliberately easy going attitude to theft of their merchandise and allow others to profit from selling it to a territory, only to later on increase their prices.



Also drug dealers don't even do that. No drug dealer is just gonna give you drugs for free because you're a first time customer and they want you to get addicted.


You are right. But proverbially drug dealers give you the first hit free all the time.

See also how 'picking the low hanging fruit first' would get you fired from any picking gig: the fruit higher up the plant tends to ripen first. So that's what you pick first.

There's lots of other funny (business) metaphors going wrong.

See also how a 'quantum leap' is the smallest possible change possible, not something big and amazing.


This is an especially weird thing for you to point out because they made no judgement of the ethics of the sales model, only remarked on the likeness.


To be fair, the consumer computer industry is the only industry other than drug dealers who call their clients "users".


Here un Chile, pacients at hospitals are called users by nurses and others alike. It's really weird


Well, 'patient' comes from the Latin word for 'sufferer'. So I'd rather nurses and doctors call me a 'customer' or even a 'user.




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