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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

You should stop getting your news from Hollywood movies. Goldman Sachs is the very face of American capitalism. They are no more guilty than any other large financial institution of their age in shady practices. The problem you have is with the exploitative nature of the global capitalist system itself, not the specific actor. Just take a look at the history of Deutsche Bank, HSBC, or Credit Suisse if you think Goldman is by any means special in that regard.

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That other people also do bad things does not at all excuse the bad things Goldman Sachs has done.

of course, but what other options are there? i think the point being made is that all banks large enough to provide an “apple-scale” service are pretty damn awful.

who knows? this could be an apple “toe in the water” play to see if it works, and they eventually replace GS/mastercard. you’d have trouble doing an MVP credit card without these big players to start with.

Sounds a bit like Nuremberg defense, don't you think? "The System ordered us to rob people."

You’re missing the point. To think that any business would ever act against it’s own self interest within the bounds of this system is naive at best. We’d all love if that weren’t the case, but discussing fantasy worlds does nobody any good.

Rather than a reactionary emotional response to “bad men are bad”, what alternative do you propose to firms like Goldman? I’m not defending them, it’s simply a law of nature that this behavior exists because we allow it to exist. Capitalism is inherently evil, manipulative, and exploitative, yet no one has figured out anything better so far.

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jIw22XXSso

So... you're saying this is why we need to regulate bad actors like GS into the ground? Because it's inconceivable they'd ever police themselves because there are no market incentives that actually reward good actors?

Precisely. But we don’t regulate them into the ground because we like money. And Goldman is really really good at making money. Until the good of humanity is held in higher esteem than private profit, this will always be the case. I’m not holding my breath on that one.

I agree, sadly I don't see the US going in this direction until after the voting system and election funding is fixed to the point where no longer is money > public will.

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