Your disagreement with the author -- if it can really be called a disagreement -- completely vanishes if you categorize designs along separate good-evil and effective-ineffective axes.
Not using those exact terms, but the article discusses this explicitly as well.
Re:Moral Design
by eevilspock on Sunday July 08, 2012 @05:49PM
(#4215848)
Nonsense. Good design is effective; its quality is independent from its aims
Nonsense. How do you define "effective" without aims?
I believe the author's point of view is that an aim must first be moral to be good a aim, and this leads to his statement that you quote.
Nonsense. Good design is effective; its quality is independent from its aims. There's been no shortage of good design used for vile aims, and there's tons of good causes with poor design.