It really is just a matter of scale. I’ve known some evil little fuckers, but they lack the resources to commit full scale atrocities. They’re not employing children in hazardous conditions or selling tainted blood, but that’s only because they don’t have access to a steady supply of either.
The ethics is actually very simple. Taking those two examples:
Kids love to work if you just give them the chance. What kid wouldn’t want to go and show how they can do grownup things and at the same time make money to help their family survive? It happens all the time with family businesses. Just because I’m a wage slave means my kids can’t contribute? What kind of elitist bullshit is that?
The rest is just regulations meant to strangle the small businessman. You’ve got some pencil neck in an office somewhere who wants to stop LIFE SAVING MEDICATION from getting to people who need it. Bitter little fuck cares more about swinging his dick around and writing “laws” than actually helping people. Most of that blood is perfectly fine but the paperwork got fucked up and sure - maybe some isn’t fine - but if you ask the guy bleeding out from a stab wound if he wants some, he’ll say “YES!” In any case, malaria will probably get the poor fucker before the AIDS does. And he probably already has the HIV anyway.
/s for those last two paragraphs because it’s not an argument that I’d make, but it very much is a parallel to arguments that I’ve seen being made in real life by seemingly normal people.
And then of course people tend to operate on a spectrum of
*literally does not care
*only cares if it’s happening to me
*only cares if someone else finds out (because then I’ll have to pretend I never noticed)
*cares, but not enough to lose my livelihood over it
*cares, but is really good about not thinking too hard and/or focusing on all the nice things instead of the things that probably aren’t even all that bad
*will think about quitting, but realizes that they other guys are just as bad (or worse)
*will quit and go live in a cave
I have a brother who is younger than me by 6 years. Our upbringing was a bit weird. Our parents basically forbid anything that might cause them inconvenience, irritation, or expense - which was most things that might interest a kid. (No, they’re not religious, which is the first question that everyone asks. They’re just raging assholes who are also a bit stupid. I can’t really explain it much beyond that.)
In addition to the manipulation and emotional abuse, they rewarded us if we informed on each other. I seldom did. Not through any great virtue or integrity of my own, but because I routinely got punished for the stupid shit he did. For instance, I didn’t tell them when our adult neighbor shot little bro with an air rifle because I knew he would catch absolute hell for being in the position of getting shot with an air rifle. Even if I didn’t catch hell about it, it was miserable to watch him get screamed at. For context on this story - we had been told to stay away from Steve’s yard because Steve was a known psycho with a hatred for neighbor kids. On that glorious summer day, Steve had dropped a $5 bill on his driveway just inside the property line… and was waiting for a kid to come by and be dumb enough to try to pick it up.
I might actually tell that one at their funeral.
By contrast, bro was younger and never got any blowback if I was doing something wrong. He actually recorded me talking on the phone with a friend when I was in middle school. He picked up the other line and held one of those shitty '70s tape recorders to the earpiece. Talking on the phone was forbidden and he was collecting proof to use against me. My friend and I weren’t plotting shit, I wasn’t grounded (the concept was foreign because we were never really allowed to go out or do things like talk on the phone anyway), it was just forbidden to talk on the phone.
I could excuse it when he was eight, but he passed along “dirt” on me well into his late teens and my twenties. He was under pressure from them as well, but he basically shredded any idea of trust between us for far too many times to count. I forgot what the final straw was, but I remember thinking, “I can never confide in this person and feel trust.” In every meaningful way, I’ve ignored him for the last 20 years.
He’s probably the least shitty thing about family gatherings, but that’s not saying much.