Yeah, I'm not sure what the fruit of this is going to be. It's a nice reminder that most business/industry is outside of morals. It's not that all of it is immoral, but rather that it exists without any moral requirement and most of the times not having morals is an advantage.

Also, if people really thought SV had any care at all for ethics and morals even before this they must've missed pretty much all of the news about SV for years and years. Not caring about what's right is expected, as long as you don't get caught. It's just a risk/reward thing.

This should be the top comment.

I move among different circles of friends. Some studied philosophy and political science, others arts in general, and others computer science.

It's scary that tech people have this very "blase" attitude (oversimplification perhaps?) that one's motive when it comes to how to handle distribution of money comes down to simple "meritocracy" and/or "greed."

As if the very fact that blaming the innate human debility of giving in to avarice or greed does not presuppose much more problems, such as ulterior motives, cultural bias, nepotism, etc.

There is, of course, the notion that the bigger a corporation gets (e.g., a conglomerate), the more dehumanizing it is. With such large sums of money being moved around (to whatever end or outcome) comes more "bottom line" interests and "corporate interests," and as such, it is less about the individual. The repercussions of this, which are pretty evident to me, is that it creates an institution or entity or agent ("corporation," if you want) that does not have a moral framework or acts not humanely but immorally, while its shareholders and investors can sleep comfortably at night because they distance the self from the company, so it is not the person acting immorally, but some "unknown force" (the Company), which, using reason, cannot actually be "immoral," because surely only humans can act in such a way.

What a world.

amoral, not immoral

but even then I disagree, just look at the life expectancy of the billions of people under capitalism.

Milton Friedman - Is Capitalism Humane?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHPI1emZFVg

Objects are amoral. When humans create structures in which they align themselves with immoral incentives, they're being immoral. The failure to be good is being evil in my books; there is no neutrality and there is no mediocrity, there is doing your part or guilt.

And no, nobody is 100% innocent and nobody is 100% guilty. Nobody made themselves out of nothing. Everybody started out as a helpless baby and the range of experiences one can get exposed to before even being able to attempt defend oneself is vast. But so what if every abuser got abused in some way or another, or was withheld some crucial things needed for development? Then don't hate them, but absolutely stop them.

"The least of several evils" is not the same thing as "good".

But what if it's the least evil of all the available options? That doesn't itself make it "good" but that does make it the best option available.

Contrary to popular belief, economy is not a binary system. There is a huge range of decisions that can be pursued and each decision has a particular interest. Modern societies have decided to take the "market-friendly" decisions each step of the way instead of the human- and environment-friendly decisions with the excuse that this is the least of "two" evils.

Of course. PeachPlum was asserting that it does make it good, though.

What I was trying to get at is that if something is literally the best option available then there's not much point complaining about it.

This is an economic system created and maintained by humans. The morality or immorality is a property of those who maintain it, no matter how much these people try to dissuade others of this simple fact.