A skilled professional I know had to turn down an important freelance assignment because of a recurring commitment to chauffeur her son to a resumé-building “social action” assignment required by his high school. This involved driving the boy for 45 minutes to a community center, cooling her heels while he sorted used clothing for charity, and driving him back—forgoing income which, judiciously donated, could have fed, clothed, and inoculated an African village. The dubious “lessons” of this forced labor as an overqualified ragpicker are that children are entitled to treat their mothers’ time as worth nothing, that you can make the world a better place by destroying economic value, and that the moral worth of an action should be measured by the conspicuousness of the sacrifice rather than the gain to the beneficiary.
The dubious “lessons” of this forced labor as an overqualified ragpicker are that children are entitled to treat their mothers’ time as worth nothing, that you can make the world a better place by destroying economic value, and that the moral worth of an action should be measured by the conspicuousness of the sacrifice rather than the gain to the beneficiary.
What about: “using the education system to collect forced labor as a ‘lesson’ in altruism teaches selfishness and fails at altruism”?
I have to ask, do people ever really believe that these sorts of thing are actually about helping people? I seem to recall my own ragpicking was pitched mainly in terms of how it would help my CV to have done some volunteering. That said, I can’t tell if I’m just falling to hindsight bias and reinterpreting past events in favour of my current understanding of altruism, which is why I’m asking.
Makes me wonder how things would look if schools had a lesson on effective altruism a few times a year. Surely not everyone would agree, but the waterline might raise a little.
Steven Pinker
What about: “using the education system to collect forced labor as a ‘lesson’ in altruism teaches selfishness and fails at altruism”?
I have to ask, do people ever really believe that these sorts of thing are actually about helping people? I seem to recall my own ragpicking was pitched mainly in terms of how it would help my CV to have done some volunteering. That said, I can’t tell if I’m just falling to hindsight bias and reinterpreting past events in favour of my current understanding of altruism, which is why I’m asking.
Makes me wonder how things would look if schools had a lesson on effective altruism a few times a year. Surely not everyone would agree, but the waterline might raise a little.