The Price of Becoming a Big Industry / Depravity, Money, and Manipulation

I read a quote somewhere; I stumbled it. It said that Zuckerburg sold people's private/personal information, became a hero, and made billions, while Assange exposed dirty dealings (after changing specific things so they aren't as bad for the security of the nation) and became a pariah. It doesn't seem fair. I hate the idea that some guy made money by betraying the trust usually present in social networking. It makes me sick. 

As soon as I heard about the facebook privacy issues, I deleted mine. Now facebook is ubiquitous, on most sites. I set adblock to block it, and since then, I haven't been to facebook, but my adblock has blocked components of it 600+ times in a few months. It seems it is nothing so much as a plague. 

I guess the two choices for companies are get big, then become "evil", saying people should have nothing to hide, or get big BY becoming "evil", and giving out people's information to the highest bidder. Or just anyone who will give money.

About money: I find it to be a pretty terrible thing. (to a large extent) How much suffering could be avoided if people were not always looking to gain value? Value is a fairly arbitrary thing to begin with, but humanity has made it into something so much worse! Value is placed on objects, and suddenly there is conflict to obtain these things, and everyone wants them.

[Although, for the sake of convenience, the existence of currency is a necessary "evil", representing the exchange of goods and services for other goods and services. What is worse than currency, though, is the placement of value on things that are not inherently useful enough to be worth what they are, e.g. diamonds]

If we had the technology to stop using fossil fuels at all, I do not believe that we would, until they are just about gone. Why? Because oil is very profitable. Money (and "valuable" things) in its current form is one thing that is holding back our advancement as a species. The people who work hard to get a large business are often the ones who want to keep making more money at the cost of... anyone else. But money itself is not so evil; what people do to make money, on the other hand...

A friend of mine brought up an interesting point: fossil fuels took millions of years to form beneath the earth. Yet, once humanity found out how useful they were, we used them up in hundreds. If the earth was sentient, one could imagine that it would see humanity as a scourge upon itself. We do not hesitate to tear into it, and destroy wildlife, to suit our own ends. For if one person would hesitate to do so, surely their ruthless competitor would do it. The environment and our descendants are paying the price for "our" living in luxury. At least until they have the technology to fix it all or go to another planet. (and hopefully not do it again for money!)

(if you'd like to read about the current levels of fuel usage and estimates for when they'll be gone, wikipedia [...lol] has a section about it in their fossil fuel article)

I have put off reading anything about interacting with people, because: A) I would rather learn through my own experience; B) I think learning enough about something makes it uninteresting, because eventually you're [basically] running every action through a formula because you find the best way to do it; C) I do not like the idea of manipulating people, and much dislike the people who do. However, when dealing with people who have read such things, (especially if they are selfish and/or you are naive) one is vulnerable to their machinations if one is not suspicious of the person's intent.

I much dislike near everything about this, especially the fact that one has to be on guard around most other humans, and the amount of effort spend to perfect the "art" of dishonesty and manipulation. I also dislike every manipulation that involves benefit at the expense of the manipulated, and in general the kind of jerks that go around manipulating people to their own selfish ends. 

I don't think I have suffered more than the average person because of things like this, luckily.

If only everyone could afford to trust everyone else. I would like that very much. But I may as well wish for an end to currency; it's about as feasible.