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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

For every case of something that is caught, there are many many cases that go undiscovered.

We should be thinking about how to stop such injustices.

A database of people who have access to databases, cross-referenced with a database of people who have abused database access, only accessible by the most rigorous of procedures, etc, etc. should solve this.

Sure, $10 billion seems like a lot to stand up two postgres containers, but can you really put a price tag on something like this?

> A database of people who have access to databases

Uh, so at what point do you become a person who has access to a database? When you install postgres? When you have payments set up?

So far, the evidence is that there is no way, because all those ways would rely on fallible human systems. The best one can do is live a good, ethical life, protect one's family, and try to find peace as best as one can.

Is it ethical to protect your family at the expense of others?

I would never judge someone for valuing themselves or someone they care about over someone they don't, ethically that's fine in my books. In many cases though it's not beneficial for society for people to act this way and this is why we have some laws whose purpose is basically to break prisoner's dilemmas.

To put it another way, if you don't have reason to believe someone would collaborate in a prisoner's dilemma I would not say you are morally obligated to collaborate. You should and you are a better person for doing so, but it is not unethical to make the selfish choice in my opinion.

It's not unethical to be selfish huh and in your book it's ethical. Your sole justification for this is that you can't be sure the other person would collaborate.

Doesn't that mean you would only help people if you got something in return?

Asking what I would do and what is ethical will give you different answers in many cases. I'm not saying you should be selfish, simply that it is not immoral. If the only choice you are allowed to make to be a moral person is to take the most altruistic path then nearly every person on earth is immoral since they aren't using everything spare at hand to save people who are starving or dying of cold, etc.

Moral questions go beyond selfish or not, to the point that I'm not sure it's even a useful categorization.

Killing anyone who slightly inconveniences me is selfish, and so is keeping my last dollar instead of giving it to the poor, but those two have vastly different moral implications under and system of morality that's any good.

More police, government, and regulations?

What did you have in mind?

Participation or non participation is the choice we all have.

We actually have more choices. Choices such as using the legal system to bring the offending parties to justice.

Relying on consumer boycotts to address anti-social behavior from companies that literally rely on addiction behaviors to get people to return to their product is clearly not the answer.

This is the exact purpose of the state, to punish bad actors that can't be effectively effectively punished or disincentivised with collective action.

You may have much more faith in US regulatory agencies and government than me.

Does knowingly participating in a corrupt platform or business make one complicit? This is why I opted out. If more people would make decisions with conscience, it would starve the beast.

They only said that was the job. They didn't say anything about how well the job gets done.

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