Say there's a comic book where fossil fuel co's worked to permanently ruin the groundwater and increase earthquakes in a region - bribing lawmakers and fucking over the people who lived there, gagging scientists, etc - all just for a resource that is literally burning the planet... So they can upgrade their megayacht/private jet... I'd find it hard to believe that others could allow it to happen.
"Following the incentives of our economic system", so your actions are indistinguishable or worse than those of a comic book villain, *is* comically evil. Literally. The fact that so much of our economic system defends this behavior says a lot.
"Comically evil" usually refers to a character that is evil for the sake of being evil, without external motivation. Like the stereotypical first D&D character some people make.
Such people are somewhere between rare and nonexitent. You could say the fossil fuel company executives are pretty high on the evil scale, but they are not evil for the sake of being evil. And I was careful calling them evil because HN is a politically diverse bunch and sometimes saying things diplomatically is the right choice over being technically or morally correct but getting downvoted into oblivion for invoking a certain kind of language.
If you need an example: I basically never say I'm trans or an anarchist in any top level comment to explain the origin of my perspective or my claim to knowing more context than others because these two words got me outright dismissed too much in the past.
Not-fracking gives an enormous leverage to the Saudis, who are textbook comic evil as well. A medieval theocracy slowly transforming itself into a modern authoritarian country, dissolving dissidents in acid on the way.
Or to another major producer, Putin's Russia stuck in the Stalinist imperial mindset.
Say there's a comic book where fossil fuel co's worked to permanently ruin the groundwater and increase earthquakes in a region - bribing lawmakers and fucking over the people who lived there, gagging scientists, etc - all just for a resource that is literally burning the planet... So they can upgrade their megayacht/private jet... I'd find it hard to believe that others could allow it to happen.
"Following the incentives of our economic system", so your actions are indistinguishable or worse than those of a comic book villain, *is* comically evil. Literally. The fact that so much of our economic system defends this behavior says a lot.