I've listened to interviews with phone scammers before and basically their worldview is that they're ripping off some first-world asshole who would be just as happy to destroy the scammers own country if it could make the cost of consumer goods slightly lower.
I suspect working for a ransomware company would at least mean you don't have to pretend the awful things you are doing are for the greater good, and I suspect also contains a bit of the phone scammer view that the people you are attacking are ultimately your enemy as well.
It's far more surreal when I've had to check into work, plan all day how to rip-off or exploit users without losing them, and then be cheerful about what a great customer focused team we are.
That hits home.
I remember an interview with a ransomware-as-a-service business owner. He was pretty upfront with having grown up in severe poverty and being empathically impaired. Somehow when a greedy person is honest about it it makes it better for me. I feel like I know what to expect of him. It's the self-labeled good people who think that means justify the ends that make my alarm bells ring.
My friend a few grand on pretty useless talk meetings, but got his referral.
Gets his coveted time slot with the doctor. The doctor tells him today's fee is $450.00. Then $200 per month if I write a script.
The guy knew he was short on funds. My friend paid, and walked away. I didn't give him advice other than thing will get better.
(I look back on the biggest scammers, and most wore ties, and made their money legally.
Old phrase: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I suspect this hits home for a ton of people and applies to many people who don't (or are unwilling?) to realize.
I used to work for a company where their whole deal to make money was convince old people to enter their credit card and make them forget they ever entered it. Of course, I did not know this when I joined. I stayed for about 6 months I think.
Exactly the kind of excusing I would expect from the Harkonnens.
― C. S. Lewis
For example, to the extent that the various Communist regimes fall under this descriptor, C.S. Lewis may have a point.
Are you dismissing this out of some logical-positivist impulse, because you reject the idea that well-intentioned groups can behave tyrannically, or because you don't think anybody acts with good intentions?
Take the oil and gas industry for example. They have known for 40+ years that they cause global climate change while disavowing it publicly and funding fake scientists and interest groups to spread FUD about it. I think the effects of global climate change will be at least an order of magnitude worse than well intentioned busy bodies. Climate change doesn't sleep.
(You could easily say the same about the tobacco industry, advertising monopolies, social networking websites, etc.)
"they have known about climate change" and those who know about it also have said we'll be dead in 1980... 1990... the seas will rise a dozen feet in 2000 and the snowcaps will be gone in 2010. If the "tyrannical" companies are wrong...
https://nypost.com/2020/01/09/glacier-national-park-removes-...
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-poca...
If you want to go that route that Oil Companies are Robber Barons... that would make the GCC doomsayers the "good" guys who are as bad on the other end - and have no problem being as bad with their lies and happy about it because it matches their conscience.
what does that say about the doomsayers? Exxon knew? When did the doomsayers know that their predictions were bunk? They are the "omnipotent moral busybodies" who have no care that all of their predictions are wrong and the damage - past, present and future - of their lies? Who cares because they are "Saving the Planet"...
The point is that "actual" tyrannical robbers are bad - and there's no denying that... but so are those who are worse in the name of "good".
And how exactly is the "sjw religion" worse in the name of good? I get it. You don't like people calling you out if you do shitty things. But that doesn't make it worse than robber barons. Or even in the same ballpark.
Or do you agree that peoples lives should be destroyed if they do something you disagree with? Mobs of people calling the friends, family, work places, etc of someone who dares do something you disagree with?
I personally know someone who works in a rescue... someone got a bug in their butt that she did something "wrong". She's been hounded for weeks by The Righteous who have the Holy Word that she did "wrong" - no matter the nuances about what happened.
You can ignore the violence, the mobs, the hounding and the overall shitty attitudes of the SJW Religous... but they are literally the modern day Crusaders who have The Holy Decree to destroy the Heathens.
You want to know how SJWs are worse in the name of good? Open your eyes and look at all the "worse" done on a daily basis. I could list dozens or hundreds of publicly available examples but if you can't ALREADY see them without me pointing them out?
I happened to watch "The Battle of Algiers" last night and the scammers' sentiments reflect what the FLN commander Ben M'Hidi (insurgent/freedom-fighter depending on who you ask) had to say in response to questions about the civilian death toll:
Journalist: M. Ben M'Hidi, don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?
Ben M'Hidi: And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.
I must mention here that I am not taking any ideological sides, and firmly believe that killing of innocent civilians, by any party whatsoever is plain wrong.
I suppose in any battle, ideological or otherwise, the actors involved come to justify their tactics as being in service of a greater, grander goal which also, at least in their minds, allows them to subvert responsibility and accountability.
villain - antagonist; evildoer
villein - peasant ranking above a serf
Works either way, though. :-)
Even Hitler and Stalin thought they were the good guys.
That doesn't mean one can't make moral judgments about which side is more or less evil, just that it's hard to be impartial., and in the end of the day, like in politics, it depends on what your values are.
one would think it would be easy - just compare counts of innocents killed by each side. Unfortunately that would frequently make a "good"(winning) side look like a bad side and so they force other and more complicated criteria like this:
> it depends on what your values are.
It would also be a very flawed measurement unless you count the innocents the "evildoers" wanted to kill. The difference between what Hitler achieved (and that's already horrible) and what he wanted to achieve is rather big.
I mean, on one hand, I fully understand that many startups begin by offering a free or very low cost service and then have to figure out how to monetize, but I don't really see that as "screwing over the user", I see that as ensuring the business is a going concern. Even as a user, when I see that a business is transitioning from "everything is free and great" stage to "now we need to make money stage", I either leave or decide it's worth it, but I'm not really mad about that.
Furthermore, there are lots of startup services that I use, love and pay for, and I don't feel like I'm getting screwed over.
Just an example, in 2017 I bought a fairly expensive, brand-new GM truck. It was manufactured in Mexico. I've bought GM stuff before but they were made in Texas. I'm sure it was a cost saving measure. I recently sold it after 4 years and 14k miles. Dead battery needed to be replaced, the transmission was hosed, and I took a bath on it. It's known as the "Chevy shake." There's a big class action suit that I believe was dismissed. We bailed them out in 2008 and they started making absolute dog shit. I'll never buy a GM truck again.
Most home appliances are also garbage and will only last you 5 years or so, if that. My elderly mother is paying for 2 ovens. The first one stopped working before it was even paid off. Her current one won't heat consistently and she constantly complains about it.
The LG OLED TV I bought a few years ago has YouTube burned into the screen. I won't reward them with another purchase. My "commercial grade" grill's wheel rusted off after a couple of years because it wasn't treated and had cheap metal. I have the broken, detached wheel on the ground under it, sideways so the thing won't constantly rock back and forth.
Planned obsolescence that almost killed many US industries 40 years ago is back in full force and will have predictable results.
Examples please.
Basically "thanks for the report, should be fixed now". Such a normal workflow
An average person with a mundane office job that happens to be for e.g. a certain government agency (to stay with the example), indirectly causing all kinds of mayhem elsewhere that is largely beyond their comprehension, simply because it's all neatly abstracted away from them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil#The_Banality_...
"A million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it."
(please don't try to read that wretched book on the strength of this single quote)
I think if person ends up in amoral/illegal group, eventually he will end up doing amoral/illegal/unethical things, there is no guard except to avoid such groups proactively.
Writing these articles she made €5000 per month. It was a life changing amount of money.
Now she owns a 4-plex downtown and another 2 airbnb units. She has lifted her family into the middle-class thanks to this. Her employer profited millions; and they did no worse than the usa does to many other countries on a daily basis.
That tens of millions were had more to do with the fact that we'd been doing it to ourselves for decades than with your friend's additions to it. Oh, certainly she made everything a tiny bit worse, but I don't have any anger to spare on top of the deep enmity I feel for the people who teed up the situation in which she worked.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if your friend (and her coworkers) did something less despicable for a living it would not have made much difference. People right here carefully cultivated that environment of hatred and gullibility that your friend helped exploit. They're the real problems -- and they're still doing it.
From afar I loved the Donald! Wrecking the wreckers!!
For the rest of the world he was a much better choice than HC. She would have been dropping bombs, and using murderous robots just as Obama did. Much rather the USA is rulled by a selfish clown than some one who cares to use the horrendous weapons the USA has so many of.
Well done your friend!!
For a moment, I thought you were talking about the police informants themselves.
Not that I'm fond of cybercriminals but it's somewhat ironic to see one sort of infiltration of an enterprise (say, informants at a drug dealing operation) threatened by another sort of infiltration of an enterprise (criminals spear fishing the police). Not all police informant program are problematic but plenty are imo and moreover, the need for police informants more or less comes from things like the drug war, which allow permanent criminal enterprises which need to be put permanently under siege.
It was only halfway through the episode you realise that Hank Scorpio is the stereotypical james bond villian and everyone working for him (including homer) was helping him in his diabolical schemes! But you wouldn't know it if Homer didn't re-sign from his job while Hank was battling Bond. :)
Organized crime gets to levels where it is essentially a competing government with an equally competitive consent of the governed.
That's why they have to be paranoid about gangs: they're embryonic states