I very much don’t mean to single you out, and I also have deep reservations about user data collection/management, dubious labor practices in e-commerce fulfill

I very much don’t mean to single you out, and I also have deep reservations about user data collection/management, dubious labor practices in e-commerce fulfillment, gamification of options trading, etc. But to the extent that there seems to be any orthodoxy on HN around what is more and less ethical, there’s a lot of emphasis around the “unbelievably profitable” part. In my personal experience there is a world of difference between “all your data belong to us” and “pay for content by seeing this ad” which are far from joined at the hip, and to the extent that cryptocurrency has any demonstrated utility it’s pulling in yet a third direction and yet all three are often lumped together into the “trivially unethical” bucket, whereas having deep structural advantages before you’ve written much code via the YC old-boys network is not just “how the game is played”, but maybe even “living the dream”. I know I’ve personally been guilty of letting my righteous ethical indignation at X or Y get a little blurry with “it’s not right that so many programmers make xMM/year”. I don’t mean to say that you’re guilty of this (and I know you didn’t mention cryptocurrency or being a YC founder), but it is something I’m still trying to figure out a way to diplomatically add to the discussion and your comment felt like a not-insane place to do so.