Thank you for saying that. I get low-level irritated at the constant background murmur that success means that you had to screw someone over at some point.
If your are willing to look at capitalism and free markets objectively[1], as just algorithms rather than moral systems (i.e. private property is part of an algorithm, not an "inalienable human right"), and you realize that it isn't moral that one's share of the pie be determined by the free market, that it isn't moral that the value of a person be determined by the free market, that it isn't moral to leverage your advantage or even hard work to grab a much bigger share of the pie even as others who because of birth circumstance get the thinnest slice or no slice at all, that it isn't moral to enjoy the fruits of cheap labor do to the desperation of the aforementioned, that it isn't moral to take advantage of your other advantages birth circumstances (e.g. being born within the borders of a wealthy country that keeps out those born in poor ones) to grab more, then you will find that material success (success as defined by capitalism) that is complicit in all the aforementioned does screw someone over.
Such a person will have a different definition of success: A life of contribution to the community done out of love and morality, not a coerced transaction leveraging one's advantages against those with less.
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[1]: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" ~ Upton Sinclair
This is a classic midwit criticism of capitalism that assumes zero sum.
You can sell services and goods that boost productivity and the alternative is just the status quo that produces waste. Someone that creates a successful business doing something productive is not inherently evil because of capitalism.
Can you run a 1M, 10M dollar business ethically without screwing over anyone - employees, customers, suppliers, environment etc? Sure. What about 100M, 1B, 10B, 100B businesses?
How many Billion dollar businesses can we name that are run ethically? Not that many, correct me if I am wrong. I suppose at some level, profit and monopoly becomes the one and only motivation. Plus if you didn’t do shady stuff, your competitors surely would, putting you at a disadvantage.
Why else would Google drop “don’t do evil” from their principles?
