[mden]

"most fraudsters are not evil people, they just follow the incentives and almost non-existent disincentives"

Maybe I'm too idealistic but why does following incentives with no regard for secondary consequences not evil?

[ta_1138]

I have the displeasure of having acquaintances that have done some pretty bad things, of the fraud and bribery persuasion. They did so because they had no regard of the secondary cosequences. However, this didn't mean 'I understand this horrible secondary consequence is going to happen, but I don't care'. That would be evil. Instead, it's more common to not dedicate an iota of time at thinking of possible negative effects at all.

You'll see this all over risky startups. What starts as hopeful optimism only becomes fraud over time, when the consequences of not committing fraud also seem horrible. It's easy to follow the road until all your choices are horrible in different ways, and they pick the one better for the people around them, yet worse for everyone else.

[pclmulqdq]

Our judgment of societal ills and the concept of "evil" rests too much on the question of "is this a bad person?" today. Most people who do heinous things are not bad people, but the fact that they did bad things really ought to be enough to mete out punishment.

Lack of foresight isn't a virtue, it's as much of a vice as knowing the consequences and ignoring them. If you lack foresight and that causes you to commit fraud, you committed fraud, plain and simple. That is evil.

[layer8]

IMO “evil” is a misconception. People have different beliefs and psychological needs, and placed in certain incentive structures that has the outcomes that we see. You can call certain behaviors “evil”, but that doesn’t explain anything about why the behaviors occur.

[ARandomerDude]

If someone raped your wife and set your children on fire, you would probably rethink your stance on evil.

[dyauspitr]

Physical pain is objective. Someone inflecting physical pain is evil unless it’s in self defense or common sense situations like a doctor performing surgery.

[kmeisthax]

Because we're cowards, and declaring vast swatches of our economy and society to be evil is not good for our future prospects. In other words, you can't tell people not to put radium up their asshole!