[dbrunton]

You can do it! Have a mission.

Imagine a kid dribbling a basketball along the baseline, while staring intently out-of-bounds. "What are you doing, kid?" "Making sure I don't go over the line!" Coach tells the kid to focus instead on moving toward the goal.

It's definitely possible to do well while doing good, but in order for that to happen, you really need to focus on what the good is, not on not-evil. It may require a suspension of your belief that the two are in tension; Kierkegaard might call this a "teleological suspension of the ethical."

I think a great example of this is news organizations (there is also a warning there, I suppose). The focus isn't "maximize shareholder value while hopefully not forgetting about news" (well, again, a warning). The focus is "truth at all costs" and the profit is a thing that inevitably happens by running it as a business.

[Vivtek]

See, now this is the kind of thing I want. No discussion is really a true discussion until you get to Kierkegaard.

What concerns me is that profit is not assured by the "truth at all costs" DNA. You need a plan to make sure your family gets to eat and go to college. Some middle ground is necessary.

[dbrunton]

Yeah! Kierkegaard!

I agree with your point, even though I wouldn't call it a middle ground. I think, "make as much money as you can without being evil" is, maybe a middle ground. I think, "make money while doing a particular, real good in the world" is not- it's a thing that actually happens in the world we live in.

Maybe the news example is a little of a red herring (both an example and a counter-example in one).