[Hunter]

Originally Posted by james0246

I think you are overstating the sacrifice. You can still be a "bad person" but sacrifice yourself for family and friends (and country). Nagato is a bad person, but he still sacrificed himself in the end for what he believed to be a higher cause. Itachi is a bad person, but he still sacrificed himself for his brother. If you commit extreme acts of cruelty (edit: or just extreme acts in general) you are generally a bad person, and Tobirama committed such acts (even if he felt it was due to the fact that the Uchiha are biologically driven to insanity whenever they get any power).

Tobirama sacrificed himself for the simple reason that it was more practical for his team to survive and lead Konoha than it was for him to survive but the future generation die. He didn't sacrifice himself out of the kindness of his heart, nor do I think he was being altruistic in any respect. He sacrificed himself because logically he was the only one there that could do what needed to be done while also helping his village. (Shikimaru did something similar during the Sound/Sand invasion.)

First they're not robots, to sacrifice your life for the sake of others is not a matter of practicality and logic it's a matter of ideal. Now I'm not saying the mere fact to believe in something greater than yourself and lay down your life for it is in itself what make someone good or bad but it is a measure of selflessness and it's nonsense to simply dismiss it as a practical issue. A better counter would be that there is a difference between altruism and duty or loyalty which I'd be hard pressed to challenge since the 2nd Hokage seems to embody that but it's still a far cry from the cost–benefit assessment you're trying to portray.
You've mentioned Itachi and I think it's a great example to show you that you're wrong (granted that we both agree that we're discussing this purely from this story point of view). I'd argue that the author went to almost unsurpassed length to explain that Itachi wasn't a bad person, that he was in fact quite the opposite, too good for this world even. The editorial view of Kishimoto is that Itachi cannot possibly be blamed for what happened, he's a virtually perfect man put in an awful situation and whose sole flaw was to be too self-reliant. He isn't a bad person, he was wrong. You said that since it's established that Naruto represent Good then it stands to reason that all who don't behave as he does are bad but it is incorrect. It only makes them wrong.

Two other things to consider are also that their world is firmly based on the principle that people are good before the society they live in twist them into worse aspects of themselves and that death is revelatory of their true nature. For example someone like Jiraiya who squandered most of his life is still a true hero because of his selflessness at the end. Another example of a less seemingly good natured person would be Kisame whose death reveled that despite his life and deeds his true nature was one of pure loyalty.

Long story short very few of the characters are truly bad people, most are simply misguided and even the worst among them usually (if not all the time) used to be good people whose flaws were twisted beyond recognition by the ninja system which transformed them into monsters.

As for the Uchiha being a lost cause.
[...] If Tobirama is correct in his assessment, then they were always going to be a ticking time bomb, he simply, and stupidly, helped speed up their destruction.

Honestly, I do not know if Hashirama appealed to their humanity or he simply made them complacent, whatever the case it is hard to see how simply treating the Uchiha with kindness helped to stave off the monster that presumably lives inside of them. Hopefully Hashirama will be able to discuss this problem next chapter and give us some further insight into why he felt the Uchiha could be saved (whereas Tobirama felt they were doomed since birth).

That's probably Naruto's job and not Hashirama.
Basically the one true vilain of the story is the ninja system. Hashirama lessened this evil with the creation of ninja village but it fell short of a true solution (or at least he died before he could do better).
As far as Tobirama is concerned the village is the final answer, anything that could threaten it must thus be dealt with whereas in Madara's point of view there is no solution because this is just the way reality is, thus his answer is to gain enough power to physically deny reality.
Both will be proved wrong by Naruto because of some cheesy speech I don't care to fathom yet.