Ethics of Scale

Economies of scale are held in high regards in the software industry. To scale a solution to millions of users is to demonstrate your business genius and justify the massive margins Saas companies achieve. On the other hand, economies of scale in the food industry are seen as evil. How dare you grow mushrooms at scale, you probably put all sorts of preservatives and used unsustainable farming practices and these are probably pumped full of horomones and genetic modifications - why are they so big!? Farming and food should be done locally, organically, small batch. HOwever, just like software, theres no money to be made if you do it like this!

So why are the perceptions of these two industries so different? Is it because we care so much about food and not about software? The food is actually going in our bodies and software isn’t. On the other hand, would small batch software actually work much better? It might, if it was tailored to us personally. Also, food production at scale involves a lot more “evil” inherently - deforestation, enviromental destruction, virus-strain creation, antibiotic-resistant super bacteria, murder, etc. Software production at scale vs small batch is just a bunch of people in a big building somewhere typing on their computers for a while vs a bunch of people in differnt buildings typing on their computers for a while. Why are these so different?