Stay away from evil, particularly regarding money
30 August 2024
I have written before about evil (part 1, part 2) but today, I want to briefly highlight the dangers of investing in or even working for evil. If you want to do it, go ahead, but rationally, you should expect bad things to happen financially.
Here are some examples:
Investing in Trump Media Stock. This is dropping dramatically. It may drop further on 25 September 2024, when Trump can “cash out” by selling his shares. This would “crash the stock”, but I don’t think it would bother him at all. Perhaps you don’t care - you love him and want to support him. Perhaps you believe he will win the election and the stock will skyrocket. I cannot predict the future but don’t be surprised if the stock continues to drop.
Working for Trump, Elon Musk or another CEO / company that seems to thrive on greed. As an employee, you are an expense, and greedy CEOs or managers need to maximize their profit. If you suffer, so what? Although you might have legal rights or theoretically be able to shame them into doing the right thing, that doesn’t seem to work with Trump, Musk and many others. Lawsuits are difficult against Trump, who will litigate indefinitely and other CEOs know that they can pay huge legal fees much longer than you can. Of course, employment involves a lot of factors, but this is one should you consider.
Working for someone violating the law in a major way. The danger is that you become the scapegoat. This was illustrated in the book, Prey by Michael Crichton, in which a computer programmer notices financial misdeeds in his company. His lawyer tells him to resign for “personal reasons”. Instead, he reports the misdeeds to management and is fired for financial improprieties even though he didn’t do anything wrong (i.e. he is made the scapegoat). I am sure this happens frequently in real life.
Evil is seductive. It is hard for many people to stay away. But when you see marked dishonesty, bigotry, disregard for the rule of law or otherwise inappropriate behavior, you should consider moving on.
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