this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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I can see how it happens though.
No one was doing any oversight on their practices. If you were running a referral affiliate link system, it must have seemed like honey was doing a really good job bringing customers to you.
I'm just kind of disappointed that nobody inside the company ever spoke up or blew any whistles and said "Hey, this is at best unethical if not entirely illegal and either way exposes us to the risk of a massive lawsuit, maybe we should just actually do our jobs instead of stealing the work of other people."
I'm not. What do you get as a reward for blowing the whistle? Genuinely?
There's no bounty, even if there was you wouldn't get it for at least a year after you blow the whistle.
Once it's discovered it's you, you're fired. There goes your paycheck, your health insurance. Now your home is in jeopardy and you have no decent income verification to get a new one.
Good luck working in any job even remotely related to what you know. You now have a stigma in any background check and while a privately owned mom & pop might look at you favorably, there ain't a single corporation who will take pride in hiring you. You're risky.
The most ethical person, is one with no debt, who owns their home, and has 8 months expenses saved up. That's not most Americans right now.
What do ethics have to do with saving money and owning property? Do poor people not have ethics?
... How much are you willing to overlook to keep yourself from going homeless?
There just ain't enough protection for whistleblowers right now.
I’m still stuck on why you think someone with money has more ethics. Do you think someone financially stable is more prone to being altruistic? Being a whistleblower is about doing something beyond yourself. What if the person with a fully paid off house and savings has family? Are they still going to make the same decisions? How did that person obtain wealth?
I don’t disagree with your list but I very much disagree with your conclusion. Honor and altruism do not correlate with owning property and having money.
You don't share food if you're starving. You don't share time if you work 12 hour days, every day.
If you spend all your energy on survival, you got no energy to spare on anyone else. I bet our hypothetical starving person would be moral and share, if they had the chance and materials.
If they don't... then it's not a matter of won't it's can't. People are more likely to share food they have excess of, time they have excess of. If they can't spare it, they won't.
That is a misreading/misinterpretation of the original statement.
I believe what dukeofdummies is saying, is that people with a financial cushion have fewer obstacles to acting on ethical principle, whereas your average person living pay check to pay check will be more cautious about whistleblowing because the consequences (loss of employment, vexatious lawsuits, blacklisting) will be felt more severely. Moreso if they have a family to support.
I consider myself to be ethical, but i live in a wage economy. If i see behaviour which needs to be reported, but i believe that the organisation/society will punish me for speaking out, i will wait until I've secured an alternative livelihood or am relatively safer before blowing the whistle.