I think we as an industry need to stop stretching for excuses for why greedy behavior might unintentionally do something good. It's not a worthwhile cause and it doesn't justify the behavior if the "good" is a theoretical and unintended side effect. The "good" being theorycrafted on the nature of this product is indeed both highly speculative, oversimplifying of the human cost of changes to this economic model, and is obviously not the purpose of the product. That "good" is contingent on and integrated with a number of factors too complicated to boil down to a single sentence: it's something that looks good when oversimplified and makes ourselves feel better if we try not to think too hard about it.
When we ask ourselves whether a product we work on is ethical or not, we have to account for the intent of the product, and not merely stretch to find theoretical ways to justify it to ourselves. We do need to think about unintended side effects - particularly when they could harm others - but we shouldn't be using our theoretical and simplified best-case scenario of unintended side effects as a way to justify the intention and practical use cases of the products we make.
We should ask ourselves: if the "good" of an unintended side effect could be cut out of a product and we'd still make it, is it actually the good of a product? Or is it an excuse we're making to ourselves to make us feel better?
I think we as an industry need to stop stretching for excuses for why greedy behavior might unintentionally do something good. It's not a worthwhile cause and it doesn't justify the behavior if the "good" is a theoretical and unintended side effect. The "good" being theorycrafted on the nature of this product is indeed both highly speculative, oversimplifying of the human cost of changes to this economic model, and is obviously not the purpose of the product. That "good" is contingent on and integrated with a number of factors too complicated to boil down to a single sentence: it's something that looks good when oversimplified and makes ourselves feel better if we try not to think too hard about it.
When we ask ourselves whether a product we work on is ethical or not, we have to account for the intent of the product, and not merely stretch to find theoretical ways to justify it to ourselves. We do need to think about unintended side effects - particularly when they could harm others - but we shouldn't be using our theoretical and simplified best-case scenario of unintended side effects as a way to justify the intention and practical use cases of the products we make.
We should ask ourselves: if the "good" of an unintended side effect could be cut out of a product and we'd still make it, is it actually the good of a product? Or is it an excuse we're making to ourselves to make us feel better?