Would I hurt other people in some strange hypothetical to literally save my family’s life from certain death? Maybe, and I’d be guilt ridden about it for the rest of my life.
Would I hurt people to make more money? Of course not, and that’s not a defensible reason to hurt others… at all, and it makes you deeply broken at your core, especially as habit.
Really the only thing I can think of as a more horrifying reason to be cruel to others than “for money herp derp” would be “because its fun!”
Hurting others for profit in the name of business shouldn’t be a defense, it should be considered an admission of guilt and come with consequences.
How is this even remotely unpopular?
Yes. It’s the modern equivalent of “I was just following orders”.
I was just following orders
…from the shareholders who would advocate bathing a thousand peasant children in leaded gasoline if they could get away with it and it netted them an extra nickel in private profit.
Seems very popular when given at face value like this.
Yeah, hard to see the controversy with this opinion
You yourself are doing the exact thing every day though.
I don’t think you’re interpreting the phrase correctly. It’s not about harming someone in order to make money vs not harming them at all, but rather about harming someone in order to make money (or attain some other reasonable goal) vs harming them simply because you wanted to. Consider the analogous situation with animals: shooting a deer because you want to eat it vs shooting it because you like killing things. The deer probably won’t like you any better in the first case, but most onlookers will.
I was just pondering this on my way to work. Balzac’s “Behind every great fortune is a great crime.” (I’m doubtlessly misquoting it)
Whether it’s directly adjacent the monetary gain or displaced by distance and time, it always holds true.
