alt Hacker NewsThis falls under the umbrella of "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism". Everything you do supports somebody who's doing something bad. There's really no way to avoid it. Heck, it was even a plot point on The Good Place.
The issue is that our economic system is coercive. You need a job. Now this doesn't excuse you from doing any job but you also need to live.
Take the big tech companies. They're essentially military contractors now. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc are functionally no different to RTX, Boeing or Lockheed Martin.
But should you treat someone who works on Android the same as someone who works out on AI systems for military targeting? Probably not. Also, Palantir is fundamentally more evil than any of these tech companies. So it's tricky.
I do agree that online gambling as a whole is deeply unethical. There is no positive byproduct of this. Your salary is paid by people losing money, probably through addiction. And yes, you can say people have free will but you're still preying on and growing addiction.
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Your moral compass seems to be very close to some very powerful magnets
> This falls under the umbrella of "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism".
No it doesn't. There is a time and place for the "no ethical consumption under capitalism" mantra, but increasingly (as is the case with your comment) it is being deployed as piece of whataboutism to distract from clearly unethical behavior by implying it is no worse than anything else. There's actually a massive difference between businesses which have complicated tradeoffs in the means of delivering what is basically a social good, and facilitating sports gambling, a negative-sum activity which ruins people's lives for basically no upside whatsoever.
(It's deeply ironic that a slogan originally coined by socialists has found its most use by capitalists trying to get off the hook for their actions, but I guess most rebellious anti-establishment sentiments are ultimately co-opted for profitable ends.)
>The issue is that our economic system is coercive. You need a job.
That's hardly the problem of the economic system, and more of a underlying problem with the the universe (ie. entropy and all).