> hunger

There's a huge agro-food industry that profits from hunger. Its profits depend on subsistence farming being impossible or illegal so that's what they do: outlaw peasant seeds (like in France), buy all land from the owners until the population can't feed itself and needs the supermarket to survive, arrange for economic structures that allow for massive foreign subsidies (eg. EU CAP) to compete with the few local farmers left...

> poverty, economic instability, and unemployment

Temp work is another major industry that can only flourish when better employment conditions are not available to the workers. For those who don't find work and/or caught in the judicial system for some reason, the prison industrial complex will make profit on their incarceration. Once incarcerated, some companies will employ prisoners without working rights and protections in quasi-slavery conditions, making a ton more money than if they needed proper salaries and safety conditions. To give an example, here in France prison labor is usually < 1€/hour compared to ~10€/hour minimum wage.

> drug addiction

European settlers in America used alcohol as a weapon against natives. Later, during the cold war, the CIA organized for crack cocaine to destroy black neighborhoods social tissue, while financing the "contras" fascist militias.

We could go on. I'm not saying reforming incentives is wrong, it's certainly part of the solution. But it would be very naive to think that alone is enough to change society because nobody would want to harm others. Fascists very much exist and very much want to harm others, not necessarily out of a profit motive but also sometimes out of pure hatred.

And even if we suppose bad actors are 100% responsible for the world's problems, the systems-level analysis (if I understand it correctly) would still suggest that the solution is "structural" (cut off all the leverage points that allow bad actors to manipulate institutions)

Say, in the case of the opioid crisis (which most of us agree was caused in large part from a bad actor), do we abolish pharmaceutical companies, or do we abolish the structural pathways (marketing, lobbying) that let them do bad things?

I lean towards the latter, but don't know if it's any more feasible than the former

Private prisons profit directly from incarceration rates (crime)

Sugar factories profit from selling unhealthy food.

now, to what extend do you think the majority of the world's problems are caused by (a) bad actors, versus (b) structural issues or resource constraints. 100%? 70%? 30%?

What we devote our attention to depends very much on that question (as well as what changes are easy to implement)

Sugar factories are only able to sell because people are willing to buy. So the question becomes: How to make people less willing to consume unhealthy food?

Examine where this intuition comes from. Firstly, the problem is not "too many people are committing crimes", it's "prisons are profiting from people committing crimes", which creates a perverse incentive. Secondly, as a result of this perverse incentive, judges and lawmakers are incentivized to write and enforce laws such that the business model of incarceration is maintained. So the question of "How to make people commit less crimes?" is misaimed; the problem isn't with the people committing the crimes, it's with the people defining what is and is not a crime.

But it still isn't clear that the other major problems mentioned (world hunger, economic instability, environmental damage, chronic disease, war) can be eliminated purely by eliminating bad actors

Regarding incarceration, when there is initiative to give prison time, instead of providing help (in case of light drug use) you get more people in prison.

Of course you can always say that it's up to people to make a final decision, but we arguing here that there are powerful interests groups that trying to influence the outcome of everyday decisions that lead us to before mentioned outcomes.

They make empirically false claims for what the local economic impact is going to be by being obtuse.

I know this because I was involved with meetings with one trying to move into my home town.

I got them to admit the first in public meeting but they punted on the second.

And if you think there's a direct connection between crimes and prison terms, you are just under informed.

There are lots of people in prison who have long paid for their crimes but are still there because they are victims of their time (Cash)

Keeping people in prison is incentivized for private prisons.

But do you see the value that comes from thinking about this as a structural problem? Until we completely cut off the pathway that gives private interest groups access to the levers of criminal law, bad actors will keep emerging