I don't think its ironic at all. Some American industries actually do attempt to pro-actively fix issues to insure long term profitability. Consider groups like UL or ESRB, no government intervention there.
I like the example of pesticides. The are some really nasty pesticides that aren't banned by law, but there are industry groups that work to reduce and effectively ban the ones that cause birth defects and obvious toxic effects. If you look at a list of pesticides India has banned and compare it to a list that the USA banned the difference and a few more are effectively banned by this group. Nothing is stopping someone from making these pesticides at home and using them on their garden but its like UL for pesticides, no one buys in large quantity without these guys approval.
I think they do this seemingly altruistic thing largely because trust makes for better customers.
Admittedly ESRB was formed after the government (senator Joe Lieberman, famously) threatened to regulate the video game industry if they didn't form such a voluntary group.
That is certainly one view of it, but there is a clear difference between groups like UL and The Tobacco industry.
I am not trying to that everything will work out in some kind of pure capitalist ideal utopia, because I think it clearly won't. Rather I think some industries have enough decent people in them that they can find good ways to increase profit and increase long term good will.
People here make is sound like the ESRB was the only thing stopping video games being legislated out of existence. When the game industry chose to do it, they did it to attempt to make it easy to wholesale games correctly so walmart could confidentally buy games and not mix in porn and sex stores could readily get get all the AO games they wanted, this certainly prevented a few embarrassing situations with porn being mixed in with kid toys.
The video game industry could have done something else; a purely selfish and stupidly self motivated industry might have sued the government, hired lobbyists, or made illegal back room deals some other way like it seems apparent. Big Pharma, Big Sugar, the "Military Industrial Complex", Big Oil and countless other Big whatever get accused of this all the time and often with decent evidence.
>I think they do this seemingly altruistic thing largely because trust makes for better customers.
I think this more than anything, plus no company wants to be associated with negativity (I mean, birth defects, obviously ... but also less serious stuff like street litter)
I like the example of pesticides. The are some really nasty pesticides that aren't banned by law, but there are industry groups that work to reduce and effectively ban the ones that cause birth defects and obvious toxic effects. If you look at a list of pesticides India has banned and compare it to a list that the USA banned the difference and a few more are effectively banned by this group. Nothing is stopping someone from making these pesticides at home and using them on their garden but its like UL for pesticides, no one buys in large quantity without these guys approval.
I think they do this seemingly altruistic thing largely because trust makes for better customers.