Yes, if you define evil as “inhumane”. A lion killing a gazelle is not evil. One human being killing another is inhumane. We all know that on some level.

What can be more inhumane than enslave people to money? The workers know that the CEO has unlimited power over them, but the CEO in reality has no power whatsoever - he reports to the board of directors. And the board of directors has no power either - they are responsible to the shareholders, and their only job, according to the charter, is to ensure the bottom line. Shareholders are many, often time big institutions whose job is the bottom line also.

At each step of the ladder, the humans involved in the system may be wonderful, caring individuals, but the end result is that they are all slaves to profit, to something that doesn’t even exist other than an idea about a potential “bigger, brighter future”. Being enslaved to a tree makes more gaddamn sense.

So, is it any wonder that the system which is fundamentally inhumane in its core produces a very large number of grossly inhumane results? Everyone knows examples. These are not the exception, this is a predictable outcome.

Note that capitalism is, strictly speaking, private ownership of means of production, it has nothing to do whatsoever with free markets. It’s not how we organize exchange, it’s how we organize production. So could there be a better, more humane way to organize people to gather together and produce stuff? You bet. It would look a lot more like democracy, with shared ownership of the organization amongst its members, where people would decide what and how to produce, not profit. They could decide together to do something less profitable, just because they like doing things a certain way or think it would be right. For as long as an organization is in the black, there would be no pressure. Family business is run this way, and it’s not known for outlandishly immoral behavior. It’s just a matter of scaling the organization as a functioning democracy.

We are the richest generation of people who have ever lived on this planet. We can feed every man, woman and child and make sure everyone has something to do which benefits everybody. The only reason we don’t do it is because we can’t agree who gets what and instead decide to outsource it to a completely inhumane, mechanical system called “capitalism”. And then we use government to regulate its excesses, and wonder why even though most people are pro-regulation, the amount of regulation has been decreasing over time. It’s simple. It hurts the bottom line.

It’s people vs money. Real people vs an imaginary entity, a concept. Isn’t that crazy?