As someone who is currently still in education for their degree looking at the current (and likely future) economic and societal outlook, it seems like employment in fields that cause/perpetuate negative issues in the world (Big Tech/Military-Industrial Complex, industries contributing to climate change, predatory sales/financial firms) continue to maintain strong employment availability and salaries as time goes on.
However, fields that have a neutral or beneficial impact on society and the world (Medical care, Food service, public infrastructure, humanitarian aid work, environmental research), either don’t have enough available positions that people are able to transition into, have worsening working conditions due to poor management or limited resources, or just don’t pay a living wage to most who work there.
I’ve read about the broken window fallacy, and I understand how focusing on personal gain without considering the impacts on the wider picture doesn’t make for a better world. But can someone feel justified contributing to the “broken windows” of the world knowing that they weren’t presented functional alternative pathways, and try to contribute towards the solution in other ways?
Great question the answer is pretty much no.
Either you live with the guilt or you change your moral framework to make it not bad.
Is “I couldn’t find another job because nobody wants to employ a 64-year old and I have bills to pay” changing your moral framework?
Or how about “it’s the only job offer I got out of 458 applications and I have 3 kids and a mortgage”?
Being able to make an actual choice is a huge privilege.
Then you live with the guilt, which is still better than lying to yourself, but still pretty hard. That is were most of us are.
Nobody forced you to have kids or a mortgage
That’s what I’ve come to realize when transitioning from high school to college. I fear that accepting the guilt may lead to rationalizing the behavior - having apathy towards those your work is harming tends to prevent motivation towards changing the status quo.
I think there’s a famous phrase as well about “being paid very well to not consider the issue rationally”.
At least in my understanding: accepting the guilt doesn’t make it go away. changing your view of morality is where it rationalizes and erases it.
(which ofcourse is a fine line)
Thr unsavory businesses are paying a premium for being unsavory. There are SOME people who will not work there, which reduces the size of the labor pool and drives prices up. There are others who can be bought, for a price, and that also drives prices up.
Industries with neutral or beneficial impacts on society do have this pressure, so the wages are lower. Simple supply and demand.
This is where I believe Karl Marx’s concept of alienation becomes more of a blessing than anything else. Marx argued, broadly speaking, that under capitalism, workers are doomed to feel disconnected (alienated) from the work they do. I think this disconnection works wonders in the kinds of jobs where what you do has negative consequences. Employees can pull a Nuremberg: “I’m just following orders,” and that way, even though they’re technically helping to create more harm in the world, from their point of view, they were just doing their job. Surviving, like all of us.
It is a clear conscience achieved through self-emptying.
(There’s also the case of people who honestly enjoy causing harm in the world, but that’s a separate issue.)
Indeed…
You should read up on how the nazi’s operated the most succesful industrial size operation for genocide while most of the people tried hard not to notice.
I left my industry because it made me question my morals daily. It’s not worth the money
No.
I find it noble to go against your own best interest for the greater good, but I don’t expect it and don’t blame anyone for not doing it when it would seriously impact their ability to live life if they did.
I still expect morality though. There’s balance and proportion for everything.
I have a friend who worked relatively high in big tobacco. He rationalized that his job is going to exist no matter what, and that if he takes it, he will be able to benefit and do something about it. I don’t know what he meant by doing something, but it didn’t seem to eat at him. But either way he only worked there for about 2 years before getting recruited somewhere else
People will literally do anything for money.
Ain’t that the truth.
I can’t. One of my job requirements is that I need to work someplace I think is at least neutral, or is good. So far it’s only been neutral and I am ok with that.
I do think some people can be a force for good in a bad place but I am not strong enough to do that.
Edit to add an example - I heard a story about a guy working in corrections - a prison warden - who was working to change the system from punitive to remedial, and had reduced recidivism by a huge amount, like it’s 5%, compared to 50% in most of the nation. I think he is a good person in an evil industry (the American prison industry). Randy Liberty. Not kidding, that is his real name.
Can they? Probably. Should they? Definitely not.
You can’t solve systems by focusing on individuals.
None of us a free moral agents. We’re surrounded by systems of family, culture, and law that compel and coerce us. And all of that is built in to the signifiers “employment” and “labor”. It’s incoherent to slice off a traunch of all these interconnected systems, strip it of all context, and pretend it’s a free moral choice.
Changing systems requires collective action. Individuals are weak and the Western obsession with individualism is no coincidence.
Here’s how I see it: the more you contribute to the economy, the more harm you are doing. Therefore the most ethical thing is to organize your life in a way that minimizes your participation, and spend more of your time and energy doing things unrelated to earning or spending money.
You’re supposed to feel at the very least uncomfortable with it if your involvement/impact is minimal. And you should carry that guilt for as long as you’re there since the least you can do is feel bad about it. And ofc, once you don’t, you’ve lost your moral north and you become one more of them… Maybe try to steal a little or even sabotage things discreetly?
yes, with the right conscience a person can feel good about anything they do. Maybe not with your conscience or my conscience, but this falls under the “everybody’s different” category.
