In the Christopher Buckley novel Thank You for Smoking and its film adaptation, the main character Nick Naylor justifies his career to a reporter by telling her that “Everybody has a mortgage to pay,” and referring to his response as the “Yuppie Nuremberg Defense.”
There’s some odd stuff in the culture to the effect that doing a bad thing for fun is drastically worse than doing it as part of one’s job.
If you refuse a job getting paid to do 478 units of bad things for $3,000 you will not prevent 478 bad things from being done. At best removing yourself from the labour market may mean that the sinister employer may only be able to afford someone who can do 475 bad things for the $3,000.
There are also cases where taking the job yourself may reduce the amount of ‘bad’ that gets done. If you actually care about what is happening you may be able to minimise the damage. You will not take shortcuts, maybe you will put in some extra effort to give the employer what they want while doing slightly less damage.
Conscientious objection and blaming the individual employee (calling them ‘bad’, etc) is a naive approach to achieving change.
There are a couple of problems with this. First, it proves too much: it allows one to engage in all sorts of wrongdoing so long as someone is willing to pay for it. Second, there’s some acausal effects whereby if you refuse to do bad things, people using the same algorithm as you will similarly refuse to do bad things.
Also, by doing bad things, you give your implicit approval of others doing them.
Finally, by accepting pay to do wrong, you encourage employers to pay people to do wrong.
There’s some odd stuff in the culture to the effect that doing a bad thing for fun is drastically worse than doing it as part of one’s job.
This is hardly odd- it’s not hard to see someone choosing to be a janitor because someone has to do it, but it’s weird to see someone choosing to be a janitor because they enjoy working with shit. That still works the same if you move from janitor to executioner or animal rapist.
What’s odd about it is that if something is bad and people do it for pleasure, there’s probably going to be less of it than if it’s part of what’s considered valuable for large institutions.
I think.
Actually, there are examples pointing in both directions. Your example of animals being raped backs my theory—I don’t think there are nearly as many animals being sexually abused by people who like that sort of thing (nor would there be if bestiality were socially accepted) as there are animals being forced into breeding in the food industry.
On the other hand, there are plausibly more dogs forced into fighting because there’s money to be made at it than there would be it it were only a private pastime.
There’s some odd stuff in the culture to the effect that doing a bad thing for fun is drastically worse than doing it as part of one’s job.
As there should be. Doing it as part of one’s job makes barely any impact at the margin. Doing it for fun usually makes the full bad effect.
You’re saying that people are apt to be more thorough about doing what they enjoy?
However, the badness done as part of jobs can happen on a grand scale and scarcely be noticed.
No, just referring to a basic principle of economics as it relates to personal responsibility.
I still don’t know what you mean. Margin of what? Impact of what?
Possibly relevant:
If you refuse a job getting paid to do 478 units of bad things for $3,000 you will not prevent 478 bad things from being done. At best removing yourself from the labour market may mean that the sinister employer may only be able to afford someone who can do 475 bad things for the $3,000.
There are also cases where taking the job yourself may reduce the amount of ‘bad’ that gets done. If you actually care about what is happening you may be able to minimise the damage. You will not take shortcuts, maybe you will put in some extra effort to give the employer what they want while doing slightly less damage.
Conscientious objection and blaming the individual employee (calling them ‘bad’, etc) is a naive approach to achieving change.
There are a couple of problems with this. First, it proves too much: it allows one to engage in all sorts of wrongdoing so long as someone is willing to pay for it. Second, there’s some acausal effects whereby if you refuse to do bad things, people using the same algorithm as you will similarly refuse to do bad things.
Also, by doing bad things, you give your implicit approval of others doing them.
Finally, by accepting pay to do wrong, you encourage employers to pay people to do wrong.
This is hardly odd- it’s not hard to see someone choosing to be a janitor because someone has to do it, but it’s weird to see someone choosing to be a janitor because they enjoy working with shit. That still works the same if you move from janitor to executioner or animal rapist.
What’s odd about it is that if something is bad and people do it for pleasure, there’s probably going to be less of it than if it’s part of what’s considered valuable for large institutions.
I think.
Actually, there are examples pointing in both directions. Your example of animals being raped backs my theory—I don’t think there are nearly as many animals being sexually abused by people who like that sort of thing (nor would there be if bestiality were socially accepted) as there are animals being forced into breeding in the food industry.
On the other hand, there are plausibly more dogs forced into fighting because there’s money to be made at it than there would be it it were only a private pastime.