There's a huge middle ground between being completely irrelevant that you're missing. Plenty of small and medium businesses abide by ethics and make ethical decisions every day. You just don't hear about them because it's not newsworthy that their management tries to do right by the employees or that they pay their bills on time.

They're not noteworthy because they're the norm, not the exception.

Exactly. And those small and medium sized businesses are in the dust bin of history.

These are the same businesses that everyone at HN laughs at as they only pay $40k/year for senior software engineers.

Funny. Every one of those companies I've worked at paid market rate or better.

Everything is dust in the end..

No, the downvotes are for giving them a pass because they're trying to make money.

I may not like that if I go out in a rain I will get wet, but not acknowledging that as the fact won't keep me dry should I go out in a rain.

They sold the company. By selling the company they have become employees, not founders with control. If they did not like it, they should not have sold. If they are remorseful, they can donate 100% of all the money that they made from a sale of the company as well as all the interest that they have accumulated to some me-so-sorry non-profit. Not 10%. Not 50%. 100%. Otherwise those are just empty words, just like protests of HN crowd working for Google, Facebook, Equifax, etc.: empty words that make them feel better.