Feeling guilt for our professions?

[TopHatFox]

Being part of a particularly progressive school culture (which I love), I am often reminded of the systematic oppression of minorities, the proletariat, and generally the 99% of humans on the planet that have no stake in owning enough of the capitalist economy to matter. Many of my friends are opting for not-for-profit employment, and sometimes I feel a bit guilty going to whatever finance company I am happy at rather than providing agency for an underprivileged community.

Have you ever felt guilty for choosing a for-profit enterprise over seemingly more "ethical" work? Personally, I remind myself that I value freedom above all else; a bit Machiavellian it seems.

[BRUTE]

at one point brute realized he was making money helping to hawk consumer shit he didn't like to people who didn't need it. brute ended up leaving that job, but mostly for other reasons. maybe it was part of the decision.

zalo can do anything he wants once he's FIREd. so the quickest/least uncomfortable way to get to FIRE seems like a good choice. if zalo's not literally stomping old ladies to the curb to make money, it's probably fine to do for a few years. then FIRE and forget about it

[jennypenny]

My day jobs were with several different non-profits. Exploitation is rampant there as well. In some ways, the culture bothered me more because it's all under the pretense of doing something for the greater good. At least in a business setting, no one pretends that money isn't important while simultaneously scrambling for every dollar they can get their hands on. The 'greater good' excuse was used to justify lower salaries, cutting corners, and cheating on grant proposals and reporting. If I had a nickel for every time I was told "tell them what they want to hear" wrt donors.

I'm not trying to talk you out of pursuing work in a non-profit, only sharing the reality of it. There are ethical and unethical non-profits just like there are ethical and unethical businesses. You didn't ask for advice, but mine would be to work someplace where you can be successful and then give your extra time and money to the non-profits that you want to support.

[henrik]

I did regret accepting a (technical) job related to the gamblig industry. It would have paid well, but I quit quite soon. The regret and the decision to quit had more to do with the pointlessness of the whole thing rather than ethics.

I don't think the business-nonprofit dichotomy is fair. As jp said, either can be ethical or not. I've done very meaningful (this is obviously subjective) work being on a big corporation payroll. It gets even more foggy when you get to know the insides of the/a government:)

[Chad]

This Tim Ferriss podcast with Will MacAskill is worth listening too with your question. He has the only non-profit at Y Combinator.

http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/11/22/will-macaskill/

He is very pro non-profit, but actually says it's a mistake to work for them right out of college. The big reason being that it limits your future options, as it's hard to go non-profit to profit. Easier to go the other way.

I would also suggest that you have to take care of yourself first before you can help others. If you sacrifice to help others for years and then need help yourself, that doesn't help anyone.

And, no, I don't feel any guilt at all.

[Sclass]

I had a big problem with the environmental impact of making high precision metrology tools. Basically anything that can resolve ppm of anything requires refinement. Refinement means special materials, other high precision instruments, long and chemically intensive manufacturing processes, boatloads of energy and cleanliness that results in dirtiness someplace else. Think of the big old mess you make when you make something as fine as a Smart phone. Most people never see this.

My first boss out of school showed me how to clean freshly processed elecronic sensors with nasty solvents. I dribbled it on sparingly trying to wash away impurities. He said "no SClass no! You love the environment too much! That's your problem." This guy was a real character. With a guffaw he blasted the sample and created a pool of solvent in my containment tray. He yelled "f..k the whales! They should already be extinct." He Laughed at his joke and tossed the pan of chemical into our parking lot because the city had detectors in the drain pipe. It had a big impact on me. I reluctantly went along and properly cleaned the widgets.

I went on to make a lot more high tech stuff and pollute the world with the by products and finally the product itself as it hit obsolescence. I'm very torn about it. Few of my colleagues saw it this way. Everything in the world seems nicer when you're getting paid.

[GandK]

Have you ever felt guilty for choosing a for-profit enterprise over seemingly more "ethical" work?

Profit isn't unethical. Exploitation is.

If you provide a quality product or service based on a real need, and both you and your customer walk away from the transaction happy (that is key), your profit - however big it happens to be - is not unethical at all.

Things begin to get unethical when harm is introduced (@Sclass's story is particularly sad to me), when your company's profits are built on lies (false research or advertising), or if the need in question was manufactured through advertising.

[vexed87]

Profit isn't unethical. Exploitation is.

+1, couldn't say it better myself!

[IlliniDave]

Nope, never felt guilty about it. That's not to say that I don't have an amount of desire to one day possibly work for a non profit and/or on a volunteer basis. There is nothing inherently wrong with businesses or individuals profiting. I am effectively earning a profit every day when I go to work (my pay > my cost of living + commuting and the difference is my profit), even if I was a paid employee of a non-profit. In terms of corporations/businesses, many of us here plan on corporate profits funding at least part of our retirements, either directly as shareholders or through pensions (which own ~20% of the entire US stock market). We communicate here using devices built by for-profit enterprises, probably using software developed by for-profit enterprises, through infrastructure created and maintained by for-profit enterprises, etc., etc. Profits cause many great things to happen.

[Tyler9000]

@Zalo -- does your progressive college that makes its students feel guilty for earning money by providing something of value simultaneously charge students $50k a year + interest in money they haven't even earned yet? That, my friend, is the modern origin of debt slavery. The corporations aren't your problem.

Don't worry. Once you escape the bubble you'll get a more diverse perspective. Some of it will be uncomfortable, but other parts will open your mind. It's not all evil on the outside, nor all noble on the inside. Read the details of your school endowment the next time you feel guilty about going into finance.

The majority of my career has been in new product development. Like others have said, the angst it has occasionally created has more to do with the pointlessness of it than some sort of guilt for what I've created. Sure, making a consumer product that is landfill material a year later kinda sucks, but it's not so much the thought of the product in the landfill that bothers me but the thought of that month of my personal life and maybe even that little bit of my marriage I sacrificed alone in China getting that "critical" product to market (that is now obsolete) that bothers me. Plastic and metal can be recycled, but my life cannot.

But guess what -- that problem is not solved simply by working at a non-profit. They can be just as abusive and pointless. And by providing something profitable for many years, I can now afford to shift gears to other interests that are not. Ironically, the people who want most to do good in the world will never truly have the freedom to do so because their own short-term choices sabotaged their long-term goals.

Basically, I admire that you are thoughtful about what type of impact you want to have, but I caution that the path you are currently being taught is not the only way or even the best one. IMHO, you should strive to find a company that does something you believe in and that values you just as much. If other people have the same opinion of your product that you and your company do, you will be rewarded handsomely and can spend the excess in any way you please. Even if you don't find that company right away (or never do), don't feel dejected or guilty but approach your work with pride and save, save, save. By playing the long game, you will very likely be the one unconditionally contributing to the world in 10 years while your current idealistic classmates, for all their best intentions, will be stuck in desk jobs for life wondering where everything went wrong.

[IlliniDave]

Ironically, the people who want most to do good in the world will never truly have the freedom to do so because their own short-term choices sabotaged their long-term goals.

This is a great point. It takes money to run a non-profit and typically all the money that does so is some one else's profits. Guys like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Mark Zuckerberg come to mind. It's possible you can do more for your "cause" by creating wealth (via profit) to fund it.

[enigmaT120]

We make food. Specifically, canned or frozen fruit and vegetables. So no guilt here.

[Dragline]

You may be confused about what a non-profit organization actually is. Non-profit is a technical/legal definition about the taxation rules that apply to an organization. It has nothing to do with ethics.

For example, two of the most successful non-profits in the country are the National Rifle Association and Planned Parenthood. While their supporters would contend that they are highly ethical, many people say the opposite and would choose one over the other, even though they are both non-profits and would be ethical by your current thought processes.

When you try to mix ethics with economics, its like looking for love in all the wrong places. You get something that is usually highly undesirable and historically dangerous to many if fully implemented -- regardless of the system of economics that is being championed or opposed. Economic systems are no more ethical or unethical than a piece of wood or metal (I note in passing that Conan the Barbarian worshiped steel). But all of the ones invented thus far can be gamed -- and therein lies the rub and the folly of it all.

By the way, have you ever noticed that the plots of the pro-socialist novel "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair and pro-capitalist novel "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand are essentially the same story, just reversing protagonists and antagonists? The plot is "virtuous people get damaged and or/corrupted by evil society, but then find salvation in a special crowd with a group of highly ethical like-minded individuals." And what's worse, they ripped the whole thing off from Christian conversion stories, beginning with that of St. Paul.

Other than that, I go with the +1 and the antecedents above.

[vexed87]

If an organisation needs to make profit in order to remain relevant, and therefore viable, it is forced to remain competitive. In order to remain competitive over the long term, it must automate, or outsource, innovate (improve productivity) or cut corners. This eventually puts people out of work. If money is debt, and debt is money, debt is slavery and therefore it impossible to totally eradicate debt/slavery under the current monetary systems, we can see the moral quandary we all have and how organisations are eventually corrupted, it seems as though the system is predisposed to be inhumane.

The only option is therefore to opt out, or to position yourself in such a manner that you benefit from it. The question remains, how do you sleep at night knowing you benefit from a system that exploits others?

Self preservation drives us all. (or so they say)

[Dragline]

If an organisation needs to make profit in order to remain relevant, and therefore viable, it is forced to remain competitive. In order to remain competitive over the long term, it must automate, or outsource, innovate (improve productivity) or cut corners. This eventually puts people out of work. If money is debt, and debt is money, debt is slavery and therefore it impossible to totally eradicate debt/slavery under the current monetary systems, we can see the moral quandary we all have and how organisations are eventually corrupted, it seems as though the system is predisposed to be inhumane.

Not sure if you are being facetious here, but this is a series of half-truths and non-sequiturs.

First, organizations do not need to make a profit to be relevant or survive. The longest surviving institutions are things like churches, governments and learning institutions. For-profit institutions are essentially ephemeral in comparison. (Actually, I wish some of them were not so long-lived). They die and other ones take their place. Bankruptcy courts divvy up the assets and wipe out the debts.

While those things you mention may help an organization survive longer, in the real world they survive more by branding and legal monopoly ("moats" as Warren Buffet likes to say), such as trade secrets or patents.

The third sentence does not follow. While the failure of one for-profit entity will put some people out of work, the successor or competitive entities will employ more people. There would be no growth in an economy if this were not true. For all the complaints I hear in Western society about losing jobs, very few make the connection that the past 20 years have been some of the best for many of the poorer people on earth: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press- ... ty-by-2030

While the fourth sentence is poetic, it appears to be semantic nonsense that does not mean anything. Is debt slavery because it is how money is created in a fiat money system? I'm not sure how the human condition follows from the monetary mechanism. I would agree that debt is slavery for the individual that has to pay the debt. But that is not a consequence of debt creating money -- these concepts are not related. Debt would still be slavery even if we operating under a fixed money system or a gold standard -- in fact, it would be worse for the debtor as the economy grew and the money supply didn't -- this was the principal complaint of the Free Silver movement and William Jennings Bryan's famous "Cross of Gold" speech. Increases in the supply of money work in favor of the debtor, not the creditor.

I don't see any moral quandaries in any of this -- its just very mixed up thinking. For corruption to occur, all you need is a system that can be gamed, but that has nothing to do with profit-making per se. Most people complain more about corruption in the non-profit organizations I mentioned at the top of this post.

I agree that all economic systems are inhumane, because they are fundamentally about the allocation of material resources and not about human happiness. Its a limitation of the subject matter. I view them all with a lot of skepticism.

Here are a couple more thoughtful discussions about capitalism in particular that discard some of the fuzziness inherent in words like "good", "bad", "ethical" and "non-ethical": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOaJe68C-bU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh_hRS15n_8

If people would stop attaching morality to economic systems and consider them to just be machines, like Ray Dalio suggests, we might be able to actually have better conversations about what to do with them.

[black_son_of_gray]

First, organizations do not need to make a profit to be relevant or survive.

Is it wrong that my first thought upon reading that was Amazon.com?

[Tyler9000]

If an organisation needs to make profit in order to remain relevant, and therefore viable, it is forced to remain competitive. In order to remain competitive over the long term, it must automate, or outsource, innovate (improve productivity) or cut corners.

And when that fails, perhaps they'll get around to making a new/better product again.

Good designers generate demand and create new industries. Economic politics largely amounts to fighting over yesterday's leftovers.

[BRUTE]

all (economic) systems are inhumane

marry brute

[7Wannabe5]

@Dragline: I think it depends on your definition of economics. If you believe that it is the science of human decision making then it is absolutely concerned with human happiness. To paraphrase Wendell Berry, there is the financial economy, there is the energy economy, and then there is God's economy. I think this is very true even though my concept of God might be limited to something like "The keeper of the unknown unknowns." I agree that it is ridiculous to think that utility can be directly measured by following the money or that any simplistic system can result in auto-pilot better decisions.

@OP: Guilt is an unproductive emotion often associated with physiological depression. It is as stupid to err on the side of selfless as it is too err on the side of selfish. Therefore, if you believe (and only you can judge for yourself) that you would be making a selfish decision by choosing to work in finance for a few years rather than engaging in other work then I think it would evoke the same sort of feeling as choosing to indulge in the short-term gratification of purchasing and eating a bag of Doritos rather than starting a bed of arugula. OTOH, it is not the case that financial independence = freedom. It is a very, very worthwhile goal, but there are innumerable other possible bounds upon the human spirit. Self-aware self-care, inclusive of putting on your own oxygen mask first, is smart because most efficient use of resources, but behaving as though you are fearful that you will never have enough to secure more than your own well-being is freedom-limiting too.

Anyways, whether you construct the dilemma as good vs. evil or smart vs. stupid, it is never an easy problem to solve. For instance, given that I need to make some money for my own support and I want to contribute to the well-being of the community in which I live, would I be better off teaching for pay or working at something else that pays more per hour and then volunteering as a tutor?

[Dragline]

@Dragline: I think it depends on your definition of economics. If you believe that it is the science of human decision making then it is absolutely concerned with human happiness.

The traditional economic theories that most people talk about all descend from Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations", which include both Marxism/Socialist theories and Capitalist theories, and are fundamentally about material resource allocation. The implicit assumption is that if you can get resource allocation "right" with the "correct" economic system, then human happiness, utopia and nirvana will magically follow either in a worker's paradise or an entrepreneur's paradise, depending on the perspective. I think the implicit assumption is just wrong. It becomes dangerous when you hear people profess to have "faith" in the "market", the "proletariat" or some other ideological economic god they have created. Or the converse where people demonize such things, claim that certain economic systems NEVER work for good, and baldly label them "unethical". This is just black/white thinking about a very complex subject.

Human decision making is more of the province of psychology and/or some of the other social sciences. A lot of it descends from Adam Smith's better but lesser-known work "A Theory of Moral Sentiments", which is finally beginning to get a little more play. It is only in our lifetimes that some serious work has been done to import actual human decision making back into economic systems, giving rise to the subject of Behavioral Economics and the granting of the Nobel Prize in Economics to psychologists like Daniel Kahneman. Another parallel trend in the positive direction of better understanding has been the application of complexity theory.

But most popular discussions of economics on the internet and elsewhere are still rooted in pre-World War 2 misconceptions and ideologies. In the future, a lot of what passed for erudition on this subject between 1770 and 1970 is likely to be tossed aside as garbage-in-garbage-out thinking, which much of it is. (At least that would be my hope.)