Indeed, then they would not be able to focus on their business.

The business of miring companies down in a series of tactical declaratory judgments and reexaminations.

Really, it's a shame, being distracted from your primary revenue stream in an economy like this.

It's hard to see something so objectively unethical defended by unethical people, and know that they are economically successful.

I don't see why it's hard? I mean, did you really expect them to say something else. It's not like they were going to say "yeah we're assholes, but don't hate tha playa, hate the game"

Not the person you're replying to, but I actually think if they said something like you suggest, it would be better. At least there would be agreement in principle. They would still be assholes, but they would be admitting it. The way things currently are, they think they're righteous crusaders, and that's much worse.

Oh, i don't disagree that would be better, i just don't see why it's hard to watch them play crusader. It's what you should expect.

people have two very different mechanisms for making decisions. one is fast and heuristic, the other slow and logical. they are described in great detail in the book "thinking fast and slow" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

the reason for the discrepancy between emotion and logic reported by the person you're talking to (and more or less anyone who's not incredibly autistic) is because emotional responses tend to be connected to the first (fast, unreliable) mechanism which picks up on things like apparent injustice (but ignores, for example, calculations based on supply and demand).

so it's quite normal to feel something that is at odds with what you would logically expect.

I think pi18n used "hard" in the sense of harsh, painful as in "hard times", "hard luck", not the sense of difficult.

Yes that was it. I didn't know it was a contentious word at the time.

Personally I was waiting to hear something cathartic like Larry Page's 'capitalism' rhetoric.