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Do you struggle to find ethical work?

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Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#31
post #25

Why defence is unethical? I wish you arent forced to reevaluate your opinion by war like the one on Ukraine right now. If I were your enemy, then I'd really try hard to push such narrative.

Because you are building stuff to kill people. Even the doublespeak of naming it defence is atrocious. It might be justifiable in some cases like the current weapon shipments to Ukraine, but not if they are used in something like the Iraqi war. And you definitely wont be the one who decides where the weapon you helped to make is used.

Yes, you are building stuff to kill people who are killing you (and democratic Western world in general). Quite ethical, if you ask me. And most weapons in the world are not used to kill people — they are used to deter people from killing people.

And, if you choose to not work for autocratic countries, you have a choice in saying who will use the weapons.

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't comment on Ukraine specifically, however, the military industrial complexes of Western countries aggressively lobby for forever wars so that they can profit endlessly.

So, fix this particular problem? Like, deploying army isnt a decision of some random ceo that wants stock to go up 10%

No, they have to go through congress first.

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#33
You will always have problems with others not sharing your ethical values.

Best you can do is strive to do better and not actively deal with those that deal in harm (according to your value set).

The main problem is that EVERYONE including yourself has positive qualities along with some ethical lapses to say the least.

You mentioned C#, you are aware that there are people in this world who consider Microsoft more evil than say JP Morgan? So pick your poison type of deal.

If you have not done much philosophy then a good place to start would be:

  How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question
by Michael Schur, Kristen Bell, et al.

Schur runs into this problem constantly that you can't avoid dealing with unethical entities.

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#34
post #25

Why defence is unethical? I wish you arent forced to reevaluate your opinion by war like the one on Ukraine right now. If I were your enemy, then I'd really try hard to push such narrative.

Because you are building stuff to kill people. Even the doublespeak of naming it defence is atrocious. It might be justifiable in some cases like the current weapon shipments to Ukraine, but not if they are used in something like the Iraqi war. And you definitely wont be the one who decides where the weapon you helped to make is used.

The problem is that if you fall behind in arms race, then it may mean that you are going to suffer a lot.

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#35

You may wish to consider government work. At least in the UK it can pay quite competitively[1] with our private sector, especially when you factor in the hours they ask of you and benefits like pensions, the full package of terms I think looks surprisingly competitive. But more importantly I think the work is meaningful. Whatever your view of government in general, or any executive of the day, often tech folk in gov…

This is great answer, thanks. I'm also in the UK and I'll take a look. I agree that the services that can be built for the government can be apolitical.

I know that during the pandemic there was a lot of interesting work going on in the NHS. I think they created teams that were outside of the normal archaic structure of the service and allowed them a lot more freedom.

Edit: Looks like the government is pretty focused on the Java stack :'(

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#36
I did ask the same question quite often, and still do. Since you asked about product / industry, I'll skip the question of wether or not e.g. Meta is a morally acceptable employer.

Now, what I realized, is that the answer to that question is highly individual. And not straight forward or clear cut. I drew my line long ago at small arms for example, but I don't mind working on defence projects. Others see no problem working in ammunitions, while refusing jobs in high pollution industries like chemicals.

One thing I did learn so, as long as you are not a doctor, nurse or emergency / disaster relief worker, the litterally life saving jobs are far and few between. In the end, idealism, and highly appreciate people that have and maintain it, doesn't put food on the table. And as soon as you meed to be paid, there trade offs. Just what those trade offs are is up to you.

Not very specific advice so far, but there is some good news: whatever your skill set, someone somewhere has a need for it. And someone will have need for it to do good (TM) stuff. One option, unless you want to go to the front lines of social work and development aide work (in which case, if you can upend your life to do so, by all means try it), try looking for NGOs, large and small, doing that kind of work. Or rather the kind of work that aligns best with your morals, be that environmentalists or work in poor, developing countries. Pay will be most likely low, but it can be more fulfilling. Or consider some UN orgs, e.g. the UNHCR. They do direly needed work that directly benefits people on the ground.

As long as you stay in whatever industry, be aware that profits, money and power have a tendency to trump almost everything (even if not every mega corps is either Weyland-Yutani or the Umbrella Corp.). And as soon as physical supply chains get involved, well, tough luck. Because either zhe raw material and sourcing end, or the recycling end, there will a poor, litteral kid somewhere doing hazardous work for little to no pay in order not to starve. But, and that is the bad news, there is nothing an individual can about that indirect harm our way of life causes.

You can look at the very list players doing as little direct harm as possible (by your definition), or actively try to mitigate some of the harm done.

But please, try to keep your idealism alive and stay optimistic, there are already enough old cynic farts like myself out there. We, and the world, can use some more idealists to actually change things for the better.

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#37
post #7

Reminder: This is my personal opinion, not an attempt to convince you of anything else. While my opinion might be unpopular, I don't believe it to be without any contributing value to the discussion, so please keep that in mind if you decide to read it (and before downvoting me for providing my opinion). I don't really, if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway. My belief is in bettering…

> if I'm not doing it, someone else will do it, so it will be done anyway.

I downvoted you for this. I considered not doing it but figured someone else would downvote you anyway.

Re: Do you struggle to find ethical work?

#40

Why defence is unethical? I wish you arent forced to reevaluate your opinion by war like the one on Ukraine right now. If I were your enemy, then I'd really try hard to push such narrative.

In this context "defence" likely means "defence industry" and not "defending your country" per say.

Lots of people regard working on weapons used to kill other people as unethical. For example, you could be a pacifist [0]. Or from the military standpoint you be concerned about Just War [1] and whether the weapons you build will be used for something you see as Just or not (say in your example selling arms to the wrong side). Theres a bunch of others like this.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory

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