by A train of thought I've been toying with recently:
Industry salaries are related to, among other things, how popular the industry is. Trendy businesses can pay less to their employees because there’ll be so many people who want to work for them anyway. I think this is basic economics, but worth stating. Conversely, jobs which seem offputting can pay quite a bit more than equivalent jobs elsewhere, because they have fewer potential recruits to attract. Sometimes this will be because the work is genuinely unpleasant somehow (in a remote area, hazardous, or whatever), but there’s one area that pays more at very little cost to the employee – unethical jobs.
The more harmful an industry is seen to be, the more, by and large, it’ll pay for an equivalent role to elsewhere.
Digression:
Alan has argued that working for a benevolent industry gains little net improvement:
I think this argument is mildly mistaken, and I’ll explain why, since it’s quite relevant and I’ve been meaning to bring it up for a while. It’s true if there are 10 people competing for the only position in the industry, but otherwise there are various factors that affect how much difference Alice would make. Start with number of available jobs that she’s competent for. Suppose the 10 people are each differently capable at the role (name them 1 to 10, according to their relative competence), and there are two jobs available – and that the HR departments are perfectly rational and perfectly timed. Before Alice enters the picture, the jobs would be taken by 9 and 10, who would contribute 19 net ability (aptilons?) to the industry.
Alan’s claim seems to be that if Alice joined – with 11 aptilons – the industry would benefit by 1 aptilon as she pushed out 10 from his role. But clearly, if Alice displaced 10 from his job, he would be employed in the second role, displacing 9. So the industry would actually gain 2 aptilons – the total of the people who’d be in each role if Alice joined minus the total of those who’d be in it if she didn’t. If there were three roles available, she’d add 3 aptilons.
Relatedly (actually another way of looking at the same thing), the more skilled Alice is relative to the group, the more she adds. Perhaps there are three jobs, but 12 is also planning to join the industry – this means she’ll still only displace 10, so it’s equivalent to her having joined an industry with two jobs.
A last factor (though there might be others I haven’t thought of) is the difference in skill between the weaker candidates. If only 1 and 10 actually end up applying for the two available jobs, then the industry can expect a difference of 10 aptilons between Alice joining and going elsewhere. In practice, the more people there are going for the jobs, the more this effect is likely to be diminished.
As Alan points out further in his essay (and basically as I described at the start), the number of candidates also effects the salaries of the job, so joining an industry slightly depresses the wages it needs to pay and thus increases its profits/efficiency. Alan ignored this effect and I will too, since it’s probably a lesser factor and definitely more complicated, especially given other stimuli in a regulated state.
I do want to highlight that joining a sector has a trickle-down effect though, and that that effect is stronger the more similar jobs it has which you’re competent for and more difference there is between people (in practice, the fewer people there are) who’re interested in and competent for a similar set of roles.
/Digression
All that said, lets go back to unethical jobs. These are the obvious ones I can think of off the top of my head, in vaguely decreasing order of harm by industry (with plenty of room for quibble):
Organised crime
Weapons research
Weapons manufacture
Advocacy of harmful political positions
Macroeconomist
Tobacco
Defence barrister
Working for oppressive government departments (obviously higher in unpleasant states, but in 1st world countries there aren't many *seriously* nasty groups)
Alcohol and other legal recreational (and harmful) drugs
Gambling
Banking
Big pharmaceutical companies
I’m sure I’ve missed some obvious areas, but there’s a few. As you get lower on the list, it becomes less clear whether these industries have net deleterious effects on society at all. Anything from tobacco down clearly provides a lot of passing pleasure to some people, and maybe bankers in much their current unregulated state ultimately make the economy run better (and pharmaceutical companies might very well be the best model we actually have for improving medicine). In any case, what’s important to their salary is what potential applicants (or people who might consider training in the skills they need) think is most ‘unethical’) – not necessarily how harmful they actually are.
So is it worthwhile for professional donors of the sort Alan’s encouraging to consider jobs in such industries? Given the phenomenally high power of first-world money sent to the right causes, I suspect the answer is generally ‘yes’. This might be moderated by the number of aptilons you’d expect to bring to the industry, and also by the thought that the people you’ll socialise with are unlikely to be very socially conscious, thus running considerable risk of dragging down your own social conscience. This latter risk must be counterbalanced slightly by the thought of the reverse – that you’ll be able to make otherwise unethical people slightly more benign. Signing a giving pledge before joining it would also decrease the risk of you renouncing your views altogether – even if you consider pledging fairly immaterial, the condemnation of promise-breaking is held much more widely than anything resembling utilitarianism, so people in unethical industries would be less likely to try and cajole you out of a pledge than out of your general utilitarian motivation to give.
Which industry you join (ceteris paribus – obviously circumstances and ability might direct you to some over others) will be influenced by various factors: the difference between public perception of its unethicalness and the actual net harm it causes; the amount of aptilons you expect to add to it on above considerations (obviously fewer being preferable); personal inclination – the feeling of being professionally unethical might be very unpleasant even when you know it’s irrational, thus and cause burnout; further existential risk considerations that might lead you to an outright veto of some (ie the top three); the PR relevance of utilitarians encouraging people to join the mafia etc.
Having said that, it’s also conceivable, again given the power of first-world money, that some or all of these considerations are irrelevant. Perhaps money is so effective that we do best to seek it by (almost) any means possible.
Industry salaries are related to, among other things, how popular the industry is. Trendy businesses can pay less to their employees because there’ll be so many people who want to work for them anyway. I think this is basic economics, but worth stating. Conversely, jobs which seem offputting can pay quite a bit more than equivalent jobs elsewhere, because they have fewer potential recruits to attract. Sometimes this will be because the work is genuinely unpleasant somehow (in a remote area, hazardous, or whatever), but there’s one area that pays more at very little cost to the employee – unethical jobs.
The more harmful an industry is seen to be, the more, by and large, it’ll pay for an equivalent role to elsewhere.
Digression:
Alan has argued that working for a benevolent industry gains little net improvement:
Example: Suppose Alice and ten other people are applying for the position of campaign coordinator for an advocacy group. Alice is hired and feels good about all of the work that she's doing. She forgets, however, that because she was hired, someone else wasn't. In her place, that person would have done all sorts of great work, too.
One way to think of the situation is as follows. Consider all of the nonprofits that do good work. Those nonprofits have essentially fixed budgets that allow them to hire an essentially fixed number of employees. Since nearly all of these positions will be filled by someone, much of the work that Alice does with one of those organizations would have been done by someone else in her place. Hence, the difference that Alice makes on the world is only the amount by which she's more productive than whoever would have been hired instead.[1]
I think this argument is mildly mistaken, and I’ll explain why, since it’s quite relevant and I’ve been meaning to bring it up for a while. It’s true if there are 10 people competing for the only position in the industry, but otherwise there are various factors that affect how much difference Alice would make. Start with number of available jobs that she’s competent for. Suppose the 10 people are each differently capable at the role (name them 1 to 10, according to their relative competence), and there are two jobs available – and that the HR departments are perfectly rational and perfectly timed. Before Alice enters the picture, the jobs would be taken by 9 and 10, who would contribute 19 net ability (aptilons?) to the industry.
Alan’s claim seems to be that if Alice joined – with 11 aptilons – the industry would benefit by 1 aptilon as she pushed out 10 from his role. But clearly, if Alice displaced 10 from his job, he would be employed in the second role, displacing 9. So the industry would actually gain 2 aptilons – the total of the people who’d be in each role if Alice joined minus the total of those who’d be in it if she didn’t. If there were three roles available, she’d add 3 aptilons.
Relatedly (actually another way of looking at the same thing), the more skilled Alice is relative to the group, the more she adds. Perhaps there are three jobs, but 12 is also planning to join the industry – this means she’ll still only displace 10, so it’s equivalent to her having joined an industry with two jobs.
A last factor (though there might be others I haven’t thought of) is the difference in skill between the weaker candidates. If only 1 and 10 actually end up applying for the two available jobs, then the industry can expect a difference of 10 aptilons between Alice joining and going elsewhere. In practice, the more people there are going for the jobs, the more this effect is likely to be diminished.
As Alan points out further in his essay (and basically as I described at the start), the number of candidates also effects the salaries of the job, so joining an industry slightly depresses the wages it needs to pay and thus increases its profits/efficiency. Alan ignored this effect and I will too, since it’s probably a lesser factor and definitely more complicated, especially given other stimuli in a regulated state.
I do want to highlight that joining a sector has a trickle-down effect though, and that that effect is stronger the more similar jobs it has which you’re competent for and more difference there is between people (in practice, the fewer people there are) who’re interested in and competent for a similar set of roles.
/Digression
All that said, lets go back to unethical jobs. These are the obvious ones I can think of off the top of my head, in vaguely decreasing order of harm by industry (with plenty of room for quibble):
Organised crime
Weapons research
Weapons manufacture
Advocacy of harmful political positions
Macroeconomist
Tobacco
Defence barrister
Working for oppressive government departments (obviously higher in unpleasant states, but in 1st world countries there aren't many *seriously* nasty groups)
Alcohol and other legal recreational (and harmful) drugs
Gambling
Banking
Big pharmaceutical companies
I’m sure I’ve missed some obvious areas, but there’s a few. As you get lower on the list, it becomes less clear whether these industries have net deleterious effects on society at all. Anything from tobacco down clearly provides a lot of passing pleasure to some people, and maybe bankers in much their current unregulated state ultimately make the economy run better (and pharmaceutical companies might very well be the best model we actually have for improving medicine). In any case, what’s important to their salary is what potential applicants (or people who might consider training in the skills they need) think is most ‘unethical’) – not necessarily how harmful they actually are.
So is it worthwhile for professional donors of the sort Alan’s encouraging to consider jobs in such industries? Given the phenomenally high power of first-world money sent to the right causes, I suspect the answer is generally ‘yes’. This might be moderated by the number of aptilons you’d expect to bring to the industry, and also by the thought that the people you’ll socialise with are unlikely to be very socially conscious, thus running considerable risk of dragging down your own social conscience. This latter risk must be counterbalanced slightly by the thought of the reverse – that you’ll be able to make otherwise unethical people slightly more benign. Signing a giving pledge before joining it would also decrease the risk of you renouncing your views altogether – even if you consider pledging fairly immaterial, the condemnation of promise-breaking is held much more widely than anything resembling utilitarianism, so people in unethical industries would be less likely to try and cajole you out of a pledge than out of your general utilitarian motivation to give.
Which industry you join (ceteris paribus – obviously circumstances and ability might direct you to some over others) will be influenced by various factors: the difference between public perception of its unethicalness and the actual net harm it causes; the amount of aptilons you expect to add to it on above considerations (obviously fewer being preferable); personal inclination – the feeling of being professionally unethical might be very unpleasant even when you know it’s irrational, thus and cause burnout; further existential risk considerations that might lead you to an outright veto of some (ie the top three); the PR relevance of utilitarians encouraging people to join the mafia etc.
Having said that, it’s also conceivable, again given the power of first-world money, that some or all of these considerations are irrelevant. Perhaps money is so effective that we do best to seek it by (almost) any means possible.
