Yeah yeah I know the theory but then how is it possible that my local bakery pays fair wages, does not exploit customers, does not stifle competition etc? I keep bringing this up and you keep responding with abstract generalisms. Look around you, there's plenty non-evil companies. Something in your theory doesn't hold up in practice.
My local bakery pays workers that actually do everything to run the bakery as little as possible while the owner has a mansion, sports car and a boat.
It's more likely our definitions of "fair" are very different. Besides, I already wrote why small companies may not yet be evil, which you seem to completely ignore, so whatever, there's no point in arguing anymore if it's not in good faith.
You moved the goalpost from "all companies are evil" to "well, some companies are not yet evil". I indeed jumped over that but only because it's a ridiculous accusation! You can call anyone "not yet evil" and they'll have no way to prove you wrong. It's a completely meaningless thing to say.
Frankly I'm baffled that you think I'm not arguing in good faith for skipping over an argument as weak as that, and instead choosing to address your general point (which I think is a lot less more sensible, even though I disagree with it).
Companies are inherently evil because they capture the surplus profit from the workers that actually do the work.
I agreed with you that small companies are many times not yet taking this to the extreme and might not be as evil as a mega corporation, but they are still evil by default.
We've definitely normalized this, but being normal doesn't make it good.
I didn't mean to skip over that but since it's the entire base of capitalism so I thought it would be implied.
I admit that I should've guessed, but I'd have appreciated it if you had led with "I'm a Marxist so I think any form of entrepreneurship is evil". Our definitions of "evil" are so far apart that we'll never come to an agreement, and you well know that yours is (totally fine but) not the mainstream definition on this site. You're not going to convince anyone by using words completely differently than the rest.
If you had said things like "inherently exploitative" or something like that, then we might've gotten a lot closer. I think I might actually concur with that (but then argue that it's possible for businesses to also do good, eg provide a service that people need and a compelling job and bread on the table etc, that may offset the badness of the "inherently exploitative" part, so that below the line it's a net positive for society). We'd then have an IMO much more interesting argument about how bad it is for companies to, by definition, be at least slightly exploitative, and whether it's possible to offset that or not. By just calling me "evil" instead (for running a business), you removed all nuance.
