Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by testacpwoek 804 days ago
> The other job seeker loses, your boss loses, you win

Yes, that is how our economic system works. What, are you under the illusion we still have some kind of social contract or moral responsibility toward society? If my CEO doesn't, why the hell should I? For the record I don't think it's good, but I didn't invent the game, we're all just trying to play it as best we can.

2 comments

It’s about the moral contract with yourself, but that’s your business and no one else’s. If you compare your values to those of your CEO, or anyone, then you’ve likely lost sight of that. You become fearful of being who you want to be and fixated on attachment and loss prevention.
I've never worked two jobs like that, but if an opportunity presented itself, I'd probably take it. I'll save my morals for people who actually care about me.

You can be perfectly moral in your personal life while being amoral in your professional life when it comes to matters like these. Trying to be moral in an inherently amoral environment is just opening yourself up for exploitation.

This isn't how I think of morality. Im mostly just being pedantic here but it stuck out to me in a weird way so here's an internet comment with my thought.

You can do whatever you think is right for you and I have no judgement for you either way, I just don't personally use morality to describe this kind of situation.

I think I agree with some of your underlying sentiment about the normal work and human experience being ruthless and cruel, and I understand the foolishness and danger in treating bad people like they are good by deciding to do that is your moral decision it isn't someone outside or morality in some way.

Morality is only really tested when it isn't the easy or most profitable way.

imo it's not useful to act as if the social contract is completely gone or that it will ever be completely gone and I say that as someone who surprises himself every year with how much further I have to lower my expectations on humanity. But... there will always be some kind of social contract because life without trust isn't possible, you'd have to be a machine under total surveillance with iron clad checks on every twitch of your finger otherwise.This is all just the ebb and flow of capitalist desires: One side tries to extract every bit of profit out of you and the other side tries to do the same. In that struggle hopefully both sides end up in an equilibrium that is humane and fair and no single side wins.