Loosening ethics for faster ERE--does the end justify the means?

[TopHatFox]

E.g. working for Exxon Mobil as a geologist directly out of college--extracting natural gas & oil for 100k a year--for a few years, to then retire soon after.

I think it could be as fun as it is morally ambiguous: I'd see how the bad guys work while trying not to become one of them. Though of course, I would be one of them for a few years, and acknowledge that.

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What do ya'll think? I'm mostly curious more than anything else. The alternative would likely be going to grad school for 2 years to get a 60k a year job, or get a 30-40k geology job out of college.

[J_]

Asking the question is.. the answer.
I have no advise Zalo.
What to think of one big burglary and then... .

[Gilberto de Piento]

I'd rather be able to sleep at night and get up in the morning to go to work than be financially independent.

[Tyler9000]

IMHO, a core goal of ERE is to maximize your opportunities to remain true to yourself. Selling out your personal values completely defeats the purpose. When you pick the right path, a shortcut won't be necessary.

That said, there will definitely be times (no matter what career path you choose) when you will have to make choices that your younger idealist self would have preferred to avoid completely. How you deal with that head-on defines your character. Don't sacrifice your ethics, but don't run from tough decisions, either.

[Dragline]

I would at least go talk/interview with them before you cross them off your list. Don't be closing doors on opportunities before you understand what they are or aren't.

I've often found that what some people call "ethical", others consider to be "close-minded". But usually the latter label is just applied to people who don't share the same view of "ethical". So in practice "ethical" often just means "one of us" and "unethical" or "close-minded" just means "one of them".

[Scott 2]

Someone will do the job. If you can do it, give a couple nudges in the moral direction when possible, and get paid well on top of it, why not?

A multi-billion dollar company is thousands of people doing millions of things. They are not all good or bad.

[Tyler9000]

A multi-billion dollar company is thousands of people doing millions of things. They are not all good or bad.

+1

I also agree with Dragline's ethical vs. tribal observation. When I first moved to the Bay Area, several people gave me crap for having a defense contractor on my resume. I got questions like "how did it feel to make things that kill people?" When I explained that I worked in a group that made infrared cameras for firefighters so that they could see through smoke and save lives, their tune changed quite a bit. Still, they generally preferred to change the subject than change their narrative.

[disparatum]

If I may ask, what exactly do you perceive as the ethical dilemma?

[TopHatFox]

If I may ask, what exactly do you perceive as the ethical dilemma?

Drilling for oil or gas --> global warming + pollution + deforestation + dead local people (usually minorities with cancer) + lots of $

[fiby41]

This is similar to Arjuna's dilemma. He had two options:
Either enter the battlefield to fight the epic Mahabhaarat against his cousins and teachers or forfeit his duty as a soldier.

IIRC this is when Krishna introduces the Karma Yoga Sidhanta (=concept of karma (=action)) in the Bhagvadgita.

Loosely translated: "Work is your only right, not to its fruits thereof. Neither let the fruits of your action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction."

Ethical issues cannot be divided neatly in two (right, wrong or good, bad) categories.

I agree with Dragline that if you are offered such a job, there is no need to dismiss it straight out. If not you, someone else will be doing the job anyway. So if you are capable of it, and if it helps you ERE, then why not?

[IlliniDave]

If I may ask, what exactly do you perceive as the ethical dilemma?

Drilling for oil or gas --> global warming + pollution + deforestation + dead local people (usually minorities with cancer) + lots of $

To me the dilemma is: there really is no viable worldwide alternative today. Pollution is absolutely a concern, but if we were to discontinue extracting oil and gas today, a large portion of the world would be cast back to, at best, a pre-industrial agrarian world. Ironically, from a practical perspective, we probably need the carbon energy to fuel any transition into whatever our energy sources will be in the future. An abrubt plunge in energy from oil/gas would likely increase short-term deforestation and dead local people, with the clarification that "local" likely becomes your neighborhood as well.

If you feel strongly, don't do it, of course. There may be alternatives for employment with companies focused on competing energy technologies. Seems like wind power would be the best bet--pull some of the excess energy out of the atmosphere. Wind turbines are ugly-looking things, and I don't know the economics of the energy required to build one from extracting raw material through disposal versus the energy one can produce for its service life, but climate change isn't going away and we might as well pull energy out of the ecosystem from places we don't want it

[henrik]

If you perceive the oil industry to be unethical, wouldn't you say they'd benefit from having more ethical people among them?

[jennypenny]

@Zalo -- Weren't you the guy who recently suggested bringing your own coffee to a coffee house to avoid buying it?

Ethics can be a tricky business.

[Chad]

I was thinking along the lines of Dragline, Scott2, and Tyler.

Also, being a realist, it's basically impossible to avoid supporting the oil and gas industry. Even if you don't own a car you are still directly (buses, electricity, etc.) and indirectly (items shipped to you/store, food shipped to grocery store, anything plastic, etc.) benefiting from the industry. This doesn't mean we should just waste it, but it doesn't mean we should all go back to plowing our fields with oxen either. Because of how integrated this industry is with our entire lives I don't see a moral issue in working for them. I would see a moral issue in working for them and then allowing safety rules, equipment, etc. to go unreported or unfixed, as happened on BP's Deepwater Horizon just so some manager could improve his year end review with lower costs.

[Tommy]

I think the oil industry has really help build up the modern world and I think excessive consumerism is the real culprit here.

In any case, if you want to change the world, you first have to understand it. If you have first hand experience of the industry, maybe you'll figure out a way to change it? Alternatively, dedicate part of your time after retirement to campaigning for environmental causes. You can probably do a whole lot more good as 1) someone who is financially independent and 2) knows how the 'evil' industry works.

But ultimately, I would choose a job based on whether it's fun, interesting, will lead to my personal development, and help me meet new people; I've never made money the primary issue, although I wouldn't accept a job that didn't pay me enough for me to save money. Besides the money, you haven't mentioned what you want out of your work personally, and that's a lot more important to consider.

[reepicheep]

I work for (depending on who you talk to) one of the least ethical organizations on the planet. (Note: NOT NECESSARILY MY PERSONAL VIEWPOINT AND MY VIEWS AND OPINIONS DO NOT REPRESENT THE US GOVERNMENT, THE DOD, OR THE AIR FORCE)

But I have a great deal of autonomy, challenge, and the opportunity to positively impact the lives of the people who work for/around me, and so I'm happy and enjoy my work for the most part. Those three things are what matter to me most...oh yeah and they pay me a shit ton for my level of experience/degree. And free health care. And the opportunity to live in Europe.

And I also work for a tiny subset of a slightly larger organization in an even larger sub-organization that's still just a fraction of the military as a whole. So what I do or don't do doesn't have that much impact, ethically, one way or the other.

YMMV, Zalo, but I would say I feel very similarly to you about the environment/global warming, and I happily work for and support an organization that flies thousands of planes every day. Do you have any idea how much fuel it takes to get a plane off the ground? A shit ton.

[arrrrgon]

If I may ask, what exactly do you perceive as the ethical dilemma?

Drilling for oil or gas --> global warming

You do realize that all of the evidence points to natural climate shifts that occur over time no matter what we do right? There is zero evidence that human beings are even capable of causing "global warming". Only man is arrogant enough to believe that he can change the weather.

This article discusses a study done at Duke University showing real evidence as opposed to Al Gore running around saying he feels warmer and he invented the internet.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2 ... te-change/

[DSKla]

The issue is less-so whether or not fossil fuels cause global warming, but that they are finite resources that we are withdrawing the same way you might take on a bunch of debt to get a lot of cool stuff (7-8 billion people and their toys), then face foreclosure and repossesion when you no longer have credit available to leverage. And even if you don't believe man is causing global warming by increasing co2, it's easy to see that the processes of obtaining and refining fossil fuels do destroy habitats and release pollutants, especially the less-efficient ones we are having to resort to now that easy oil is harder to find. I haven't even touched on business practices. So I'd say you can still find ethical problems even if you don't believe in global warming.

That said, everyone else has already made some very good points, such as the oil industry isn't necessarily evil, just exuberantly greedy, and someone else would do the job if you didn't. It's a tough ethical decision.

For me personally, the only thing I would have to figure out is whether the industry was in fact "unethical" by my standards, as opposed to just misguided and shortsighted. Because if I truly feel something is unethical, I'm not going to do it regardless of the fact that someone else would gladly fill my shoes, and regardless of monetary reward. That's easy for me. The hard part is the first part: is it really unethical? That's OP's personal decision.

[arrrrgon]

I agree on the pollution aspect for sure. Right now we need that fuel, but an alternative would be great.

I agree on the unethical part as well. I won't do something that I find unethical.

[jacob]

Human ethics is the emergent property/total behaviour of a system of people.