[oliv__]

Someone in that toddler's family did provide the value, the money didn't appear from nowhere.

And the public school teacher is not paid a market value by definition.

Also, you don't personally get to decide what has more value than something else, the market does (which is what you are doing with the implied statement that the public school teacher provides more value than the toddler's family)

[6chars]

Ok fine, let me choose a different example. Has someone who became a millionaire daytrading crypto contributed more to society than almost* every nurse?

* there are probably a handful of millionaire nurses out there

Edit: to be clear, I'm not arguing that the market doesn't reward people for providing economic value to the world. I just disagree that that's the type of value that's relevant when discussing whether someone is virtuous. If two people make the same amount of money selling vacuum cleaners, but one kicks an orphan every time they make a sale, I don't think many would say they're equally virtuous.

[passivate]

>If two people make the same amount of money selling vacuum cleaners, but one kicks an orphan every time they make a sale, I don't think many would say they're equally virtuous.

You can judge each action a person takes, and the intent behind it (I do think intent matters) and and apply the virtuous label to those on a case by case basis. If you do that, it may well be that in aggregate one person could be more virtuous than the other - but in either case there could be some mistakes that a person makes. I think black-and-whiting the issue makes it needlessly polarized.

So that being said, 'contributing to society' is a very complicated topic. Everything is so inter-linked that you can make anything look good/bad depending on the framing.

I don't necessarily agree that by simply accepting a job as a nurse you are contributing more than a millionaire trading crypto. After all most people have their 401k invested in stocks and such. So it may very well be that someone who is day-trading may be growing the nurses 401k - (for example). Again, its just a thought - and like I said the framing can make anyone look good/bad. Wouldn't you agree?