I read a quote that I found on stumbleupon. 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.
It seems 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!)
Like I said before, people are all game when it comes to money, and safely back up when it comes to justice and truth. The world we live in is a screwed up one.
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