1) An “ethical” system in which a bunch of people are losing money and are surprised by this, unaware of it, or intend to stop it, haven’t yet, but absolutely would if it were as easy as thinking “stop that”. But they said yes somewhere along the line, so it’s all “ethical”.
2) A just-as-ethical system that… simply doesn’t do that bad stuff in 1, or at least does way less of it.
It’s weird to me that people defend situations akin to 1 when 2 is totally achievable, on the grounds that “well 1 isn’t technically unethical (as I define it)”. Ok? So what? 2 is better and isn’t less ethical. What is going through someone’s head when they defend 1 and dismiss or put down the notion of 2? If you could flip a switch to toggle between the two, would you really leave it on 1? I do not get it. Why not pick the version with better outcomes?
[edit] and, separately, I think it’s plainly unethical—to put it mildly—to add terms to a contract or steps to a process that you know with great certainty your counterparty will later regret or dislike, relying on their overlooking it or not having better options, purely for your own benefit at their expense. I don’t think their saying “yes” makes that ethically an ok thing to do—it’s straight-up predatory. But even if it does make it Ok, why prefer that over… not-that?
1) An “ethical” system in which a bunch of people are losing money and are surprised by this, unaware of it, or intend to stop it, haven’t yet, but absolutely would if it were as easy as thinking “stop that”. But they said yes somewhere along the line, so it’s all “ethical”.
2) A just-as-ethical system that… simply doesn’t do that bad stuff in 1, or at least does way less of it.
It’s weird to me that people defend situations akin to 1 when 2 is totally achievable, on the grounds that “well 1 isn’t technically unethical (as I define it)”. Ok? So what? 2 is better and isn’t less ethical. What is going through someone’s head when they defend 1 and dismiss or put down the notion of 2? If you could flip a switch to toggle between the two, would you really leave it on 1? I do not get it. Why not pick the version with better outcomes?
[edit] and, separately, I think it’s plainly unethical—to put it mildly—to add terms to a contract or steps to a process that you know with great certainty your counterparty will later regret or dislike, relying on their overlooking it or not having better options, purely for your own benefit at their expense. I don’t think their saying “yes” makes that ethically an ok thing to do—it’s straight-up predatory. But even if it does make it Ok, why prefer that over… not-that?