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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

Companies exist to make money. So "evil" is probably the default when you get down to it. Anything that heads that off is temporary at best. CEOs with strong personalities, specific niches that allow for enough money without "evil" tactics, etc. Basically, the structure isn't geared toward anything better. Eventually things will come down to money vs whatever.

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I see a lot of pseudo-communists point this out constantly, how evil it is to make money.

I would call them psuedo-communists because they continually engage in the same self-centered practices that corporations do, but it’s “okay” for individuals or hipster small businesses but not for larger companies.

Money is seen as some kind of evil but all it is is an exchange method. It’s a way to convert one type or good or labor into another.

The evil practices tied into money are human evils. Money is impartial and neutral, therefore trying to gain money is not inherently evil or good.

This is simplistic. The problem is not money per se, the problem is the hoarding of it. Would you hoard oranges? No, because they would go bad. What happens when you hoard toilet paper for example? Other people can’t have it. What happens when you hoard money? Other people can’t buy oranges, apples, etc. they have a lower quality of life. The problem is then that the current systems puts very little control on this hoarding and 99% of humanity is worse off.

I'm far from the "hipster" view on this. There are plenty of situations where making money isn't evil. But if it's always the #1 driver, it eventually collides with something "evil". I'm saying there isn't anything inherent about a company that heads that off.

So it's more interesting to contemplate what does head that off. Laws, incentives, competition, unions, etc.

This is a straw man. The core of the argument isn't about money being evil but rather that in large enough quantities it overrides ethics, especially if it's combined with lack of responsibility.

It's not that it's evil to make money. It's that the most effective ways to make lots of money tend to be unethical, so a company whose sole mandate is to make as much money as possible will tend towards evil acts.

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