This almost feels like a Marxist critique of human centered design: while we all talk about the virtues of this design process, the real power lies only in the

This almost feels like a Marxist critique of human centered design: while we all talk about the virtues of this design process, the real power lies only in the underlying economics. Virtue itself is a distraction that keeps us from engaging with the dispassionate mechanisms of profit that truly drive what does and does not exist. That's a little over the top, and maybe the entire article is a little over the top, but it's also a useful perspective. Like many virtue-centered value systems, people try to bring these into business and then are frustrated when everyone says they care and yet nothing happens. On a personal level people DO care (even top executives!), but institutions have structures to insulate themselves from individual interests. Things like KPIs are there to keep individuals from accidentally projecting their own desires and sense of virtue onto the company. If, despite all of this, you still wish to project your own desires onto the company, then it may be best to do so with a degree of cynicism. The article demonstrates such cynicism. It might additionally be useful to frame your own desires as subversive, to acknowledge that they are not prime motivators. Maybe they can be subordinate to the prime motivators of the company... but maybe not even that. Making the argument might itself be a form of subversive behavior.