Evil Organizational Structures:

The structure of an organization can greatly contribute to the prevalance of or prevention of evil. Some structures strongly discourage evil, whereas others do nothing to discourage it, and perhaps even encourage it.

Deliberate vs. Accidental Evil:

In some cases, evil acts can become institutionalized, such as made into laws or official policies of organizations. For example, in the early history of the United States, slavery became an institution, protected by law, and later, racism was institutionalized in the Jim Crow laws and other laws in the American South. In cases like these, I think it makes sense to say that the structures themselves are evil.

In other cases, however, structures can facilitate evil even if they were not designed with evil intentions. For example, many aspects of the tax code in the U.S. were designed with the intention of fairness towards certain groups of people. But collectively, the complexity of the tax code facilitates tax evasion (both legally through loopholes and illegally) on behalf of wealthy taxpayers--thus making it easier for these people to act greedily.

Examples:

An economy's structure results from the currency system, taxes, laws, and a variety of other factors. An economic system can encourage evil if it encourages short-term thinking and punishes long-term thinking, because this will fuel greed; however, one encouraging longer-term decisions will help discourage evil. Also, economic systems which increase traceability and transparency of transactions will discourage evil because it will be harder to cover up wrongdoings.

Paying someone a commission can encourage or discourage evil, depending on how the commission is calculated and what it is paid on. For example, paying a commission on the amount of points and interest paid for a mortgage (as many mortgage lenders do) will encourage predatory lending, whereas paying a commission tied to a person's long-term financial health (for example, as many investment firms do) will encourage someone to help empower someone economically. Commission structures can create either predatory (one person wins, the other loses) or symbiotic (we both win) relationships. Generally, commission structures that are longer-term (such as ones that have a client retention component) will tend to foster connections and thus tend more to good instead of evil.

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