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Comment by optimalsolver | Hacker News Reader

Do people like the woman in that article ever have an "Are we the baddies?" moment?

I don't know if they should in this case.

I still have fond childhood memories from getting new ringtones on my Nokia 3310 and buying "oplogos", where you could replace the operator logo with custom pixel art, like dragons and stuff. It was cool and fun and my parents only let me buy a limited amount of these, not like every day a new one.

How do you think about toys for example? Are they the baddies? I mean, I can see how digital goods don't have real production cost, but someone turned a song into a midi or a Nokia compatible ringtone. I actually made a few myself in the ringtone editor based on music sheets I found online, but they weren't as good. And it's not like these were expensive things.

I mean, this is capitalism and its relentless. If she wasn't doing this, with so many others, then she might not be able to pay her bills. Its hard to argue ethical life when capitalism is so demanding of us. I imagine if we looked at your financial life, and mine too, we'd see us doing or at least being part of some things that seem unethical to others. No need to pick just on her. We're all guilty of this unfortunately.

> If she wasn't doing this, with so many others, then she might not be able to pay her bills.

Walmart or something similar is probably hiring? If so, then it's about greed, not survival.

Of all of the morally superior alternatives you could have chosen, you picked working at Wal-Mart?

That's the problem and a sort of inadvertent way he actually justified my argument. There really aren't much "ethical" for-profit endeavors in capitalism. I can criticize near anything with valid criticism. The fact that he casually chose a mass-polluter, anti-union, low wage, government subsidized mega business as "normal" says a lot of the normalization of oppression, or at least extreme apathy for workers, under capitalism. Not to mention its not good for customers either as the level of quality you get from the cheaply sourced Walmart-like inventories isn't good and if it is good, its also good at a certain level of planned obsolesce.

I think from an ethical perspective being a marketer who helps keep a business afloat by convincing people to sign onto low-cost monthly subscriptions for a service and keeps white collar professions with good jobs employed is vastly more ethical than a low-wage, anti-worker, no benefits, etc retail monster like Walmart.

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