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Comment by bluesign | Hacker News Reader

Ethics are complicated. System has to be ethical first, then individual actors. You cannot have an unethical system then expect actors to be ethical.

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No "system" is somehow a separate thing from its "actors". A void wouldn't exist with nothing to put in it. People like this author are the unethical individual actors making the entire system unethical.

When I said system I used as a meaning of ruleset. There are 2 set of actors in this case, one is making unethical rules, another is abusing this unethical rules basically.

I think the argument here is essentially that of the prisoner's dilemma. A system or game can put two rational (or we can say ethical for the purposes of this argument) actors in a position where the most rational/ethical decision isn't the most ideal for all parties.

You can argue that the individual acting in a self-interested way is the problem, or you can argue that the system itself is the problem.

I'd have to agree with the parent comment - it's complicated.

I think by definition acting in a self-interested way is going to benefit you the most, otherwise it wouldn't be called self-interested. The problem is that often, acting in a self-interested way harms others, either directly or indirectly, hence being unethical. That's not the fault of the system, no system can prevent dogged self-interest being the most beneficial for yourself.

Yup, and capitalism isn't particularly ethical. It's amoral at best.

Agreed. There are much worse things happening right now.

Mostly as a result of capitalism, yes.

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