Some questions about how we behave:
Should we ban smoking? And should we allow the use of opium for personal recreation?
Are we too trusting of the promises of technology? Are we aware of the creepy ways video games are trying to get us addicted?
Is diet or exercise better for us - and especially for children?
This is the 'addiction economy' - as featured in the New World/European:
Everyone is addicted to everything
Big tech is using the ‘nanny state’ arguments pioneered by the tobacco and alcohol industries to convince us that their freedom to sell equates to our freedom to choose. The opposite is true
Joe Woof - 8 October 2025
Where does your brain go when you see an obese person eating a pastry in public? Or a drunk friend making a fool of themselves and passing out, yet again, at a party? What about the smokers on their drips outside the hospital, still lighting up? Or the person who gambled away their savings, lost family, job, self-esteem, and yet carries on in the hope of winning it back? Or the depressed, anxious young person who spends hours on their phone looking at who knows what and doesn’t seem to see the connection?
Everyone is addicted to everything - The New World
…
Hilary Sutcliffe and Joe Woof are the co-leads of The Addiction Economy initiative.
This initiative is not about heroin addicts in doorways or ‘the war on drugs’. It’s about how and why mainstream addictive products have been allowed to flourish for the benefit of companies at the expense of the rest of us. And how to stop them. The Addiction Economy describes those industries who knowingly and unashamedly erode our ability to control our usage of their products beyond the point at which it harms us.
Our White Paper exploring the 5 Drivers of the Addiction Economy draws cross-sectoral lessons and we explore how they play out in 9 industries: 4 physical - unhealthy and ultra-processed foods, cigarettes, alcohol and vapes and 5 digital, social media, gambling, pornography, computer games and chatbots .
We also explore how the widespread focus on the lack of will power of individuals derails policy action and hampers effective unaddiction strategies.
It's very much about how children are targetted:
And others have been looking at this phenomenon too:
Addiction Economy | No Mercy / No Malice
Here's a video to finish:
The Addiction Economy - YouTube
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment