The best ways of earning money require one to have no integrity, no values, no principles, no conscience. If there's a new way to cheat and steal, there will always be the same people looking to take advantage.
That is true. Amazon and other such big companies thrive partly through extremely shady and terrible behavior. Didn't Jeff Bezos recently claim that he is looking to replace all his warehouse workers—not just in America, but worldwide—with robots? I mean, it makes perfect sense for him, but little sense for the rest of humanity.
My biggest fear with the current AI stuff is the wealth gap getting even worse than it already is. I really hope that my hunch turns out to be false for the sake of all of us.
But it is very much true that to do serious and highly profitable business, you have to turn at least a little unethical. For the really big players and those who want to go for the big grabs, you have to do some really nasty stuff to achieve success. If we go back to the AI stuff, for those models to actually exist, mass piracy theft had to be committed by these companies. That's not just unethical, it's straight up illegal, but I of course don't see Sam Altman getting arrested or anything.
There was a recent cookie manufacturing explosion here in Greece from a company named Violanta (Βιολαντα). There was a propane leak that didn't just go unnoticed—the owners were informed of it multiple times—and ignored it until it finally caught spark from the furnaces and caused a big explosion. Five women lost the lives. And for what? For the greed and egoism of higher ups (those who actually get the big profits) who didn't want to spend the cash for a proper investigation
and the security measures that would have prevented this in the first place.
I'm not saying that all businessmen are neglectful pieces of trash like them, but doing good in business does seem to require casting aside your humanity at least a little.
Winner : February Poetry
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Winner: June Flash Fiction
