Comment by helboi4
2 days ago
I really do not care but that is because the economy has incentivised me to get into work I don't care about. It is completely unprofitable to do things I do care about. So I don't do them. So everything I do do, I don't care about. Of course, I would hope if I was a doctor or sth where I really affected people's lives, I would care just for their sake if nothing else. But I'm a developer. It's really not that deep. Let me be an artist without me and my sick mother going homeless and I would actually care.
If everybody followed their hearts deepest passions, we’d all be starving.
I do see your point. But that is why what the article describes is an inevitable problem.
Edit: I also do think that if I didn't do my job, nobody would be starving, and I am greatly overcompensated for it. Doctors, nurses, teachers, farmers... all of those jobs that are wildly more important for society to function are way less paid than my job fixing bugs in a corporate website, which is a fundamental flaw in the system if the aim is to incentivise people to keep society running well. For example, I know someone who is a doctor who is trying to leave to work at a hedge fund because the work is so under-compensated. This is a massive problem.
But your work may contribute to a product that helps a doctor, nurse or teacher do their job.
Even if it does not directly do that, maybe your fellow workers use the income they get from the company existence to raise their kid who becomes a doctor, nurse, etc.
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I don't know about that. We might not have all the choices for eating we have now, but there are a lot of people (even in my own family) that like growing/ hunting for, and serving food for some reason. At this point we have all the resources and knowledge to produce the food needed to survive, but it's in human (animal) nature to always want more than nature provides.
Yeah I think a lot of people care about that stuff.
Yeah but most people aren't farmers. How much economic value gets tied up in investment schemes? How many people worked for years on crypto or the metaverse or what-have-you—projects that only existed to boost stock price, rather than because anyone needed them?
Our society doesn't optimize the lifestyles of its citizens. It optimizes stock price, which leads to an economy where everyone works a lot, even on things nobody needs, in pursuit of returns for investors. Does the Silicon Valley VC unicorn portfolio model actually help anyone other than VCs and founders?
Exactly. A lot of people would be bring more value to society doing literally ANYTHING else than working on the metaverse or something but they won't get compensated the same for the actually useful stuff.
Unless you can find a person who's deepest passion is feeding others.
Doctors usually only care about money, and use regulatory capture to get it. That's why the US spends 27% of GDP on doctors and hospitals even though we only see a doctor mostly an hour per year.
27% of gdp on doctors and hospitals, are you sure youre not missing a middleman or two in there?
Look it up.
Sorry, I'm British so I have a totally different perspective. Healthcare is mainly public here and the salaries suck. Nobody becomes a doctor to be rich. They become one because its a decent job and they want to help people. Of course you can be a private doctor but this is seen as publicly shameful. So I think that proves that there are other reasons people become doctors. Anyway, the issue in the UK is, the salaries used to be good but just not excellent, and would become excellent with a decent specialty. They also were guaranteed an excellent pension for their service to the country. Now doctors I know make just above minimum wage and I make basically double them as a junior dev (not at FAANG and devs aren't paid 6 figures over here, I make less than £50k). This has come from years of defunding public services from people who believe in the power of capitalism to.... create more finance bros and 1x engineers?