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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

There's a weird push and pull on Hacker News where if a company does something unethical it's: "Well what did you expect, they have an obligation to maximize shareholder value", but at the same time founder and CEOs are often venerated as hard-working, almost selfless individuals who dedicated their lives to make the world a better place in spite of their own self-interest. It's pretty jarring.

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Try not thinking of Hackernews, or any forum on the internet, as a single entity, but as many individuals. Some of them have conflicting views with the others.

Averaging the thoughts of a diverse group will just end up as white noise.

> many individuals. Some of them have conflicting views

This goes double for major political parties, and a key reason why all them end up known by their enemies as hypocrites.

That’s because we all see ourselves as the good guys in the story. It’s remarkable though how often decisions in tough situations always somehow end up benefiting yourself within whatever constraints are placed on your actions when there’s any kind of real conflict.

So if you’re the outsider, you see the harm. If you’re the insider you made the best decision possible with the information you had and the resources available to you. I think both viewpoints are correct in many ways (ignoring those that are blatantly dishonest).

It's indicative of the tradeoffs in any human endeavor and the shades of gray that come into play when evaluating those endeavors in moral terms. It can be both. Also, it's way easier to retire young if you have made a good amount of money and to live with a higher quality of life than a lot of CEOs who just have more property than they can do anything with. Being a quiet multimillionaire is great. Being a hardworking American Stakhanovite-CEO is, indeed, a lot of sacrifice for not a whole lot of real individual or familial gain. 23andme has done a lot of good and has accomplished a laudable mission, but there are also concerns that many people share about its activities or the potentially abusive things that could be done with the customer data.

There are 100 kinds of people in the world.

1) People who want to get rich first but also would be happy to make the world better

10) People who care about making the world better first but also would be happy to be rich

11) People who are enlightened and don't care about such things

100) People who just love to troll the other 11 groups

This is the best answer

Every successful founder or CEO sees themselves and their vision as fundamentally good for society, and at worst they may see some evil around their company which they'll chalk up to "price or progress". As the money starts rolling in and the price never ends up being paid by themselves (or the company) it's hard to see it as anything but a fruitful vision. One that's "good for all intents and purposes". The more money, the more of the bad intents and purposes they hand waive or brush aside.

The line runs through about the 7th zero in the founder's net worth, I think.

What unethical thing has 23andme done?

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