They look like you and me. They may in fact, under different circumstances, be you and me.
It's IMO dangerous to think about this sort of thing as being only possible by a certain "type" of person. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and human beings are very, very good at rationalizing their own behavior, particularly when the descent is gradual.
"If I don't pay them [unfair wage] they'd be out of work anyways. I'm the least of the evils."
"They're earning they would be at home with this bonus, this is good for them."
etc etc. The number of rationalizations is practically infinite.
All of us are susceptible to it. I've seen people better than me fall to frog-boiling rationalizations and I'm not insane enough to think I'm immune. There's a lot to be said for reality checking yourself frequently.
And hey, just for fun: next time you're in some work situation and you get wind of behavior like this, or even something far less egregious (such as blackhat web scraping or other blatant IP abuse -- very common out in start-up land, btw), try confronting those responsible on it. It usually doesn't end well.
Comments
They look like you and me. They may in fact, under different circumstances, be you and me.
It's IMO dangerous to think about this sort of thing as being only possible by a certain "type" of person. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and human beings are very, very good at rationalizing their own behavior, particularly when the descent is gradual.
"If I don't pay them [unfair wage] they'd be out of work anyways. I'm the least of the evils."
"They're earning they would be at home with this bonus, this is good for them."
etc etc. The number of rationalizations is practically infinite.
All of us are susceptible to it. I've seen people better than me fall to frog-boiling rationalizations and I'm not insane enough to think I'm immune. There's a lot to be said for reality checking yourself frequently.
And hey, just for fun: next time you're in some work situation and you get wind of behavior like this, or even something far less egregious (such as blackhat web scraping or other blatant IP abuse -- very common out in start-up land, btw), try confronting those responsible on it. It usually doesn't end well.