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Comment by ngngngng | Hacker News Reader

This might not add much to this discussion in particular, but I find it interesting how much I want the big billion dollar company to be evil. This guys post and the other Stripe hate really draw me in and then of course lots of the arguments fall apart on further inspection. Is that a natural thing? Maybe a sort of robin hood feeling, like we're sticking it to the big bad rich guys?

I do still have some negative feelings towards wealth in general from growing up so poor, even as I pull in a comfy "HN reader" level salary, so that probably doesn't help.

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1. Most of the top valued tech companies have some degree of unethical behavior, almost all of them are successful by leveraging market monopolies in industries that are too new to have faced regulation.

2. If you become large enough, you will end up doing some shady shit. The question then becomes, is most of the company shady? Is it the CEO who is shady and the culture permeates from that? And so on.

So its not surprising to have a neutral/negative attitude w.r.t to these companies.

None of this is hyperbole, btw. A lot has been uncovered about what actually happened within the companies v/s what they like to promote themselves as; mostly from lawsuits but also by some excellent, professional journalists examining these companies more closely than they would let on.

This is because it's far easier to blame your lack of success on your positive moral qualities rather than your competence or luck. One way to do this is to ascribe the other party's success to their lack of ethics rather than their competence.

It's crucial to retrain your brain not to have negative feelings toward those who have a lot of money. Otherwise you will subconsciously undermine yourself to ensure you never get a lot of money.

You may or will someday be wealthy. Do you see yourself automatically defaulting to lower moral standards?

If the answer is no, you are not alone. Many wealthy people - even those who are not self made - are not “big bad rich guys” as you put it.

And as such, it is not the default for poor people either.

The strange thing is how quickly peoples' perception of a company can flip flop. 5 years ago Stripe was the underdog startup, now they're the big evil corporation?

We're naturally attuned to the David/Goliath story.

It's hard to stick up for billionaires. At least Musk went and did some interesting companies after Paypal. That's a net positive for society.

The YC agenda seems slightly toxic now. I do think it's all legal but reeks of VC, PR spin and Billionaires playing with society. How American.

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