[dron57]

Why are they evil if they're just following the incentive structure? They want to make enough money for themselves and their families and to send their kids to college. Is that so different from non-execs?

Besides, most of us here on Hacker News can easily avoid big companies and go work at small start-ups or even our own businesses. If you hate the Machiavellian corporate world then vote with your feet.

[ironmagma]

There’s not going to be anything I can do to derive this from first principles, but merely extracting value from a system without directly producing anything is evil. I don’t care if you’re (supposedly) making other people more productive. Actually producing product is what’s good in this world. There are also basically no ways to measure how well a manager is doing (remember that stock reflects the whole company which is mostly non-managers), so lack of accountability is probably a good indicator that someone isn’t doing the greatest work. Also, evil is relative so I’m not comparing anyone to Stalin here.

[speakfreely]

> merely extracting value from a system without directly producing anything is evil

I think using the word evil to describe anything in economics is a bit of a stretch. But then again, I don't think what you're describing is even possible, so whether it's "evil" or not is a moot point. Even fatcat investors thousands of miles away from factories are contributing to the production with their capital and the organization and financing of the systems of production, so the concept of a "pure extractor" that you believe to be evil never exists in the first place.

If you want to find wiggle room with the word "directly" in "directly producing", then you're inviting a purely subjective argument that will eventually leave you on the evil end of the morality spectrum from someone else's point of view.

[ironmagma]

I don’t think you have to be a pure extractor for it to be evil, just extracting at all is evil (so even the producers are generally somewhat evil at least in America). If you view everything from a scientific/mathematical lens you will never find morality, because that is orthogonal. But when you see people doing bad in the world — forcing negative emotions on others for the sake of getting rich — you can draw straightforward conclusions.

[speakfreely]

> forcing negative emotions on others for the sake of getting rich

I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I'm fine with agreeing that is not morally defensible. The Tucker Carlsons of the world are behaving as close to indisputably evil as possible, but I wouldn't lump them in with every business owner that is extracting more value than they're directly producing with their own hands on a daily basis.