Submitted by evilclownattack t3_yysu8j in todayilearned
Reply to comment by Mynewadventures in TIL in response to infamously high suicide rates at Mapo Bridge in Seoul, South Korea, the bridge was adorned with suicide prevention messages and uplifting photos. These measures weren't enacted by the government, however, instead the entire project was financed by Samsung's life insurance division by evilclownattack
I remember once when I was a really little kid in the car with my dad and he stopped at a stop sign and I asked "Dad, how does the police officer know if you stopped because you actually wanted to stop and not just because you didn't wanna get in trouble?" And he laughed and said "the police don't care why I stopped. They only care that I stopped."
Comments like this sometimes feel like they're coming from me as that little kid. I don't know why you care about whether Samsung really loves you deep down in their hearts. If their incentives are aligned such that they end up doing something good, that's a success of the system.
A system that accomplishes good things because of greed is better than one that seeks to do so in spite of it. Greed always wins. Better to use it than fight it.
The phrasing that economists use for that is "aligning incentive structures"
They ended up doing less than the bare minimum, though. This didn't work and it didn't address the underlying conditions that made people suicidal. I don't care whether Samsung loves people deep down in their hearts. I care whether people will live good lives, and right now, far too many of them won't, and there's no incentive for Samsung or any other megacorp to change that and a lot of incentive for them to make it worse. If this is the response the system produces to mass suicides, the system is failing.
Lol so your big issue here is that they didn't actually solve the entire problem of suicide? Is that an expectation you would've had for Samsung before you heard this story? Or can a corporation only do a good thing if that thing completely solves some huge societal problem forever?
Let's connect some dots. Samsung's life insurance division put these photos on the bridge. This means Samsung's life insurance division was paying out to a lot of these suicides. This means that a lot of the suicides were Samsung employees. I don't know whether the suicides were disproportionately Samsung employees or whether they happened an average amount and Samsung is just a big company, but I do know that people's suicide risk is not disconnected from their socioeconomic status. If your job is shitty and soul-crushing or your pay is just barely making you scrape by with no improvement in sight, your mental health is going to end up in the gutter.
And Samsung has the responsibility, both because every single corporation has that responsibility and because Samsung is by far the largest corporation in South Korea and has massive influence over its society in general, to provide its employees with good working conditions and a wage sufficient to live a decent life on. I don't expect Samsung to solve the entire problem of suicide. I do expect (though this is hardly unexpected) them to do more to address the role they do undoubtably have in that problem than plaster a bridge with some feel-good photos.
A corporation choosing to do a cheap publicity stunt rather than anything that affects the material conditions on those dependent on income from it to survive is not all that much better than nothing and demonstrates that they are working their workers to suicide knowingly and by choice.
Just curious - where are you getting the idea that these are Samsung employees committing suicide en masse? The article just says it was a common suicide spot.
>Samsung's life insurance division put these photos on the bridge. This means Samsung's life insurance division was paying out to a lot of these suicides. This means that a lot of the suicides were Samsung employees.
I think you're misunderstanding what this article meant. It's the division of Samsung that sells life insurance, not the division that handles life insurance for its employees.
> It's the division of Samsung that sells life insurance, not the division that handles life insurance for its employees.
Ah, okay, I did misunderstand that, yes.
I was getting the idea that a significant number of the suicides were Samsung employees based on the fact that Samsung Life Insurance, which I thought was life insurance for Samsung employees, was paying to put up these signs, presumably with the aim of paying out less life insurance to Samsung employees who committed suicide.
It's still statistically speaking probably true that a significant number of these suicides are Samsung employees, though, given that the bridge is located in South Korea and Samsung is by far the largest company in South Korea.
>It's still statistically speaking probably true that a significant number of these suicides are Samsung employees, though, given that the bridge is located in South Korea and Samsung is by far the largest company in South Korea.
Okay well I guess to me it just sounds unreasonable to think that this means that they're so responsible for all Koreans' well being that any good thing they do can be criticized as "not even the bare minimum" unless they pretty much solve the problem.
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