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Comment by RareSoft | Hacker News Reader

Is this not just the world we live in? Personally I agree with you but then I also consider how there are a handful of billionaires with more wealth than a huge portion of the global population and big pharma/ insurance companies charge so much that people are dying because they can't afford medication like Insulin.

If that's the way the world is then why should anyone be expected to behave any differently? It's not right to vilify these people while we give a free pass to everyone else doing equally unethical things.

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> It's not right to vilify these people while we give a free pass to everyone else doing equally unethical things.

Who is this "we" you speak of?

Let me see if I understand your argument: because there is someone out there who will "give a free pass" to big pharma, the rest of us should politely shut up about disaster profiteers? We should all just say "oh well, pharma co's do it, so no biggie". Is that about right?

No, the argument was pretty clear: we're at this point because the majority has been tolerating -- and even defending -- similar behavior for a long time; therefore, we should stop tolerating this kind of behavior in general, not just for this special case under these special circumstances.

And the argument is correct. You cannot keep teaching people unlimited greed and profiteering is okay because "it's free market" and then expect them to behave ethically. You have to change what is acceptable and tolerated. The current situation is an excellent starting point, but we shouldn't stop here.

Ok, but that's not what OP said. Allow me repeat the quote:

> It's not right to vilify these people while we give a free pass to everyone else doing equally unethical things.

Seems to say, we should stop criticizing these scumbag disaster profiteers, simply because there exist equally loathsome corporate profiteers.

Taken at face value, this is quintessential whataboutist bullshit. Now maybe I misinterpreted, which is why I asked, but your new goal posts have not answered my question.

It's not about moving goal posts, it's about interpretation. Allow me to repeat the same quote, with my own emphasis:

> It's not right to vilify these people while we give a free pass to everyone else doing equally unethical things.

If "A and not B" is not right, you can conclude that we should stop A, or that we should start B. You interpreted it as the former, I interpreted it as the latter. I guess we have different biases.

Regardless of whether the goal posts have moved or have always been in the same place, I'm not sure which of your questions remains unanswered. If it's "who is this 'we' you speak of", the answer is "look around you". If the majority were truly intolerant of the behavior OP describes, then we would have a lot more social unrest than we do.

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