It’s not compelling and it’s not true. In fact most people are inherently good, and enjoy being generous and helpful. Let’s consider this within the context of tech workers specifically. The existence of an enormous open source software community and huge crowd-built resources like Stackoverflow are two examples that demonstrate the willingness of tech workers to contribute, free of charge, to each other and to the world at large.
Or consider your own personal experience with people you have worked with. You may have had colleagues who were incompetent, unintelligent or annoying, but how many of them would you describe as evil? Over twenty years of working in the industry I have only ever encountered one person who I would genuinely describe, not as “evil” per se, but as lacking in certain moral qualities that we tend to take for granted among the people we know (and we take them for granted because most people are good). And he wasn’t a developer!
I believe it is much more likely that people work for Amazon because they either genuinely believe it is a good company (after all, it is lauded by many) and/or because they are ignorant of the nature of what people in socioeconomic classes far below their own are experiencing in Amazon facilities. Just how aware are each of us of the reality on the ground at companies we support? Do you know what it is like to be a worker at every company whose stock you own? What about the companies who make the clothing you wear or the device you’re using to read this?
If not, does that you make evil? Or are you a participant in a system that hides this reality from you?
I’m not saying that owning stock or wearing apparel is the same thing as joining a company, by the way. People should be very discerning about who they work for. But I think there are more plausible and positive reasons for human behaviour than Machiavelli proposed.
Let’s not view each other as evil and thus write off each other and in doing so, our future. Let’s work to change the system instead.
One of the truly unfortunate things about modern capitalism is that making money and doing good for the world are more or less mutually exclusive. There's little money to be made helping people, and even when you find an exception, it often gets quickly overwhelmed by grift.
Sounds like your definition of good is set far too restrictive to be "also a sacrifice madr without any benefit to themselves" as opposed to just "improving the situation" if you think they are mutually exclusive.
Does the sin of making money wash away the virtue of creating a COVID-19 vaccine?
Or consider your own personal experience with people you have worked with. You may have had colleagues who were incompetent, unintelligent or annoying, but how many of them would you describe as evil? Over twenty years of working in the industry I have only ever encountered one person who I would genuinely describe, not as “evil” per se, but as lacking in certain moral qualities that we tend to take for granted among the people we know (and we take them for granted because most people are good). And he wasn’t a developer!
I believe it is much more likely that people work for Amazon because they either genuinely believe it is a good company (after all, it is lauded by many) and/or because they are ignorant of the nature of what people in socioeconomic classes far below their own are experiencing in Amazon facilities. Just how aware are each of us of the reality on the ground at companies we support? Do you know what it is like to be a worker at every company whose stock you own? What about the companies who make the clothing you wear or the device you’re using to read this?
If not, does that you make evil? Or are you a participant in a system that hides this reality from you?
I’m not saying that owning stock or wearing apparel is the same thing as joining a company, by the way. People should be very discerning about who they work for. But I think there are more plausible and positive reasons for human behaviour than Machiavelli proposed.
Let’s not view each other as evil and thus write off each other and in doing so, our future. Let’s work to change the system instead.