>The other idea is it could just be a few rotten apples giving everyone a bad name.
There's no such thing as this.
Honestly, is everyone these days completely ignorant of what happens when you leave a few rotten apples in a big bunch of apples? In case you don't know, the correct answer is that very soon, ALL the apples become rotten. That's why we have the old saying about "bad apples": "one bad apple ruins the whole bunch". Somehow, these days, everyone seems to have forgotten the "ruins the whole bunch" part of the phrase which is so important to its meaning.
It applies outside of apples too: it applies to police, corporations, any human organization really. There's no such thing as "only a few bad apples". An organization that tolerates rotten people very quickly becomes thoroughly rotten.
Thanks for taking time to lay that out. I've felt like I was living in some alternate reality the last few years every time someone trots out that saying as an excuse to duck responsibility.
That may be a good analogy to make but it is not that simple. I am going to try find it, but there was at least one paper showing how it really depends on the placement of the kind of actors in a system. Enough (but an easy minority) of good actors in a system could "clean up" the system by ensuring everyone acts well. If you want a more relatable simple analogy is a benevolent dictator cleaning up the mess.
You've flipped the situation. Arizhel isn't making an analogy, they're correcting your misuse of one ("a few rotten apples") to defend a conclusion that is the exact opposite of the one it implies.
There's no such thing as this.
Honestly, is everyone these days completely ignorant of what happens when you leave a few rotten apples in a big bunch of apples? In case you don't know, the correct answer is that very soon, ALL the apples become rotten. That's why we have the old saying about "bad apples": "one bad apple ruins the whole bunch". Somehow, these days, everyone seems to have forgotten the "ruins the whole bunch" part of the phrase which is so important to its meaning.
It applies outside of apples too: it applies to police, corporations, any human organization really. There's no such thing as "only a few bad apples". An organization that tolerates rotten people very quickly becomes thoroughly rotten.