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Comment by andrewfelix | Hacker News Reader

>Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society

I respectfully disagree. Here are a few examples why:

- In my country 1 in 4 people are employed by the government. Their income does not come from 'customers', it comes from tax payers. Many large gov. contracts are won through corruption.

- The weapons industry makes money. It benefits from war.

- Paper/oil/meat/mining industries are huge, they're largely fed by non renewable and increasingly precious resources.

- The food industry is making money while systematically destroying peoples health and negatively shaping societies relationship with food.

- etc etc.

>"You don't get to be a millionaire by making people miserable."

How quickly we forget. The housing market crash was created by a whole swathe of people getting rich while making people miserable. Financiers rarely consider the consequences of their decisions, they think about the bottom line.

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I guess it's a difference in perspectives, because in your lists I definitely see things that help society:

- Government provides services. Around here, it's healthcare, schools, universities, infrastructure, defense, a justice system, social services, plain governing, etc.

- The weapons industry might be an ethical negative, but they provide benefit to society in terms of basic research and R&D (not saying other things couldn't replace this -- I'm saying right now they provide this value)

- Paper/oil/meat/mining provides tangible goods that while depleting a finite resource pool still provides value today to scoitey.

- etc etc.

"The weapons industry might be an ethical negative, but they provide benefit to society in terms of basic research and R&D (not saying other things couldn't replace this -- I'm saying right now they provide this value)"

Actually this is another example of a rich person talking about how it's not about the money. You think weapons are intrinsically unethical, go and talk to the hundreds of millions of unarmed "ethnically cleansed" peoples in the 20th century.

Are they dangerous? Sure, no question. Ethically negative? A lot tougher call. All of those beloved government institutions are fundamentally built on there being a strong government, and when it is all boiled down, that fundamentally depends on having a government that can defend you against foreign incursion. If that is easy to forget, it is only because you are abundantly supplied with defense.

> You think weapons are intrinsically unethical, go and talk to the hundreds of millions of unarmed "ethnically cleansed" peoples in the 20th century.

I find it hard to say any object is "intrinsically" ethical or unethical, but the arms industry certainly has a strongly culpable role in the outcome you're talking about. The genocidaires of the 20th century were massively more efficient than those of any previous century because they did killing on an industrial scale, with a lot of R&D behind it. And a lot of industrialists made a lot of money enabling it, sometimes working in close collaboration with the people doing the ethnic cleansing.

Rich is of course relative here, but for your argument I assume you mean a middle class person in a stable, western socitety with a couchy job? :)

Note that I say that they might be an ethical negative, not that they are intrinsically unethical. But I believe for example that when Sweden exports weapons via middle men to Libya or Iran, that's a net negative. Also, boiling down the existence and services of "all of those beloved government institutions" to national defense seems very simplistic. Right now, there are a ton of factors beyond missiles standing between me and foreign incursion.

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