[actionfromafar]

Sure but there are different kinds of evil. Some larger categories are:

  - Screw everyone if I get more money and power
  - Self-aggrandazing evil
  - Hurt people for fun evil
  - Comic-book style take over the world evil

I think these are sorted in order of commonality. The top one is also the kind boardrooms attract at the upper echelons, just because of how the game is played.

[DrScientist]

I think you've missed perhaps the most common one.

- get them before they get you/ we have to do it because our competitors will.

ie fear is the driver, 'survival' is the goal.

[cgio]

That reads like a bad rationalisation of evil. Survival at the expense of someone else is not survival, it's the law of the jungle. The law of the jungle in the jungle is not evil, but we can do better than that, and we broadly expect better than that from others. So we should do better, even if sometimes to the intentional detriment of our profits and bonuses.

[DrScientist]

Depends on whether you define evil by actions or motives.

I'd argue that the use of motives to define evil is often used as a - when they do it it's bad/ but when I do it it's fine - excuse.

For that reason I'm not really interested in the 'evil' part of this conversation - rather more what drives perceived bad outcomes.

So all I'm saying is fear is a big driver of many of those bad outcomes. That's not to justify it - but rather understand it as a first step to fixing it.

Note I'm also not saying whether the fear is rational or not.

[tsunamifury]

Yes it’s primarily variations of your first one. At the owner level it has some flavor of the final one you list though.

I’d encourage you to have a conversation with Theil or Larry at some point and really hear in person how detached to the point of ‘evil’ they can get — and wrapped up in reshaping society for their own egotistical reasons.