This is a point too rarely made.
Most work that produces something people are willing to pay for does make the world a better place!
Not enormously so for the vast majority of us, but what one person out of 8 billion can do.
Most work that produces something people are willing to pay for does make the world a better place!
Not enormously so for the vast majority of us, but what one person out of 8 billion can do.
For most of us, our tech work will be long forgotten and obsolete 20 years from now. At best it will have provided some small intangible advance - hopefully for the better.
But the people that built my house died before I was born, yet their work has a tangible ongoing impact to this day.
The people who built some European cathedrals lived over 800 years ago, yet that padstone laid by some nameless apprentice still holds an entire functional building in place.
Capitalist transactions are a reflection of value systems and our own shortcomings/biases. To the extent that humans are flawed, many of those transactions are going to be ethically flawed as well.
So as long as it doesn't hurt any third party, it does make the world better!
It's really that's simple!
Your model of "things are very complicated and you can never really know" is very common, but note that it doesn't even attempt to explain anything. This leaves adherents free to assume their gut feel as fact.