It seems pretty clear that the forces at work are designed to incentivize, reward, and rationalize "greed", and so if one just does their job, so to speak, they will end up doing the greedy thing at every turn. And really we are fine with it! -- what we value more than anything is value creation (on paper). No matter if the actual world is getting worse as long as it appears to be getting better: the economy/investment accounts/stock grants are going up.
The fist paragraph seems to say: "greed is not a good explanation", while the second seems to claim: "greed explains everything and we are all OK with it".
"We were only obeying orders" all the way up. And even when you get to the top, they're only obeying the orders of the market.
At least, that's what they'll tell you, and that's what they tell themselves.
"They did all that, and literally none of them went to jail? We got to get us some..."
Post-2008 tech companies were built that way from the get-go.