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Comment by mtnGoat | Hacker News Reader

Having an "elite" job that is very financially rewarding and the lifestyle that comes with, is what a lot of big-tech is offering in exchange for loose morals. Thats how these people justify turning a blind eye for so long.

I'd venture to bet a lot of these folks wouldn't be willing to look the other way for $50k a year.

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If it was simply that though - overt cash for compliance - I wouldn't feel so angry. It's the exuded sense of superiority - "The cash is because we're such great people" rather than an acknowledged payoff for socially negative duties.

When people talk about this sort of thing, it's always with the tone that people ought to be paid more for doing good.

But if people had to be paid more for doing good, on average, that would mean most people preferred doing bad things! Which would be bad and mean most people would be evil.

Doing the right thing being costly isn't a thing that just happens to be true of our imperfect society, it's an unavoidable logical consequence of distinguishing between "right" and "profitable".

Convince me I'm wrong.

Sure they would. A few days living in the real world and they would be right back to their instictual, institutionalized reinforced behavior of all that matters to them is them. Never going to change without culture "leaders" being killed, never has before. Put those fools on the streets for a few hours and they would do anything for 50k.

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