Why is 'saving the world' even on the table here or in similar cases? Guys making $20mil a year don't look to me like they need saving from above. If you have that kind of money I trust you know what you're doing and can pay for help when help is needed. Otherwise, you don't deserve that cash. Other people might spend it better.

I, for one, have never been saved out of good heart or pitty. Every doctor visit somehow results in money being transfered from my bank account to theirs.

Those people didn't have to be doctors, or nurses or med techs. They all need to make a living, but not necessarily by probing you. A good many of them entered medicine because it seemed like something they could do to help people. Even if that has since all burned away, you still benefited.

I spent a career not becoming a millionaire at Microsoft (definitely on the table, at the time) because Microsoft was and remains too evil. Likewise Oracle. Or making weapons. I do not answer Google recruiters' e-mail, and not just because Google interview process is far too annoying for anybody with any self-respect to tolerate. (Who does work there? Many worked for companies Google bought.)

Doing work that benefits humanity, or natural ecosystems or whatever, is the reason to do things. The money it pays is how you afford to be able to spend your life doing that.

I feel sorry for people who work knowing the work they do makes the world worse. But not very sorry, because most have a choice. Some find ways to add value from within, e.g. two I know at Oracle do Free Software full time. I mostly cannot tell which do or don't, so I do not condemn all Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Oracle, BAE employees. But I choose not to be there.