[equestria]

That last part makes me a bit nervous. It's dangerously close to the EA belief that it's actually OK to be a ruthless exec for a tobacco company, because you can do good things with your money that you wouldn't be able to do if you quit the job.

I don't think that's the point you're making, but it's good to be careful with that. You can do good after hours, but it doesn't absolve you from what you're doing 9-to-5.

As to your first point: yes, but it's all relative. Most tech workers are "trying to get by" in their minds. Just look at the SFBA rents and the PG&E bills! And wait until you hear about their college loans... most people in the top 1% don't think about themselves as the top 1%.

In the end, making good decisions often requires sacrifice, pretty much no matter how much you make. And we often find ways to rationalize why it's not the right time for that.

[ajkjk]

What confuses me is how many people are evidently in the job of "ruthless exec" and then they do it amorally. I can't think of any time in my life that I've seen an exec say: no, we could do that, but we shouldn't because it's wrong. No doubt because anyone who acts that way gets naturally-selected out of the job.

But also there seems to be a pervasive belief, which if anything feels way strong than it was when I was younger (maybe because the moral-majority christian-nation vibes have fully disappeared, in the US at least? sure, it was always fairly hollow, but at least it was a thing at all), that a business leader is not supposed to do moral things, because it's not their job description; their job truly is "increase shareholder value on a 6-12 month timescale", and if they try to do something different they are judged negatively!

So maybe there is in theory good to be done by being an exec and being more moral than average (maybe not a tobacco exec, but, say, in tech?). But the system is basically designed to prevent you from doing it? It almost seems as though modern model of shareholder capitalism is almost designed to keep things this way: to eliminate the idea at any point that a person should feel bad if they just do the "efficient", shareholder-value-maximizing thing. Nobody has any agency in the big machine, which means no one is accountable for what it does. Perfect, just how we like it? Whereas at least a private enterprise which is beholden to the principles of its leader could in principle do something besides the most cynical possible play at every turn.

[Earw0rm]

Financial companies figured out how to do this in the run-up to the GFC, and everyone else learned it from them in the immediate aftermath.

"They did all that, and literally none of them went to jail? We got to get us some..."

Post-2008 tech companies were built that way from the get-go.

[ajkjk]

I think it's useless to believe that the explanation behind everything is "greed". It's so easy to blame greed; it's amorphous and meaningless; it gives you nothing you can do; it's the logic of a people who are sure nothing can change, that the way things are is inherent: the rich are greedy, the bad things in the world are powerful people taking advantage of us for benefit, sad for us.

It seems pretty clear that the forces at work are designed to incentivize, reward, and rationalize "greed", and so if one just does their job, so to speak, they will end up doing the greedy thing at every turn. And really we are fine with it! -- what we value more than anything is value creation (on paper). No matter if the actual world is getting worse as long as it appears to be getting better: the economy/investment accounts/stock grants are going up.

[Earw0rm]

There is immorality, there is amorality, and then there is architecting systems intentionally so that none of the actors within the system are constrained by their personal mortality.

"We were only obeying orders" all the way up. And even when you get to the top, they're only obeying the orders of the market.

At least, that's what they'll tell you, and that's what they tell themselves.

[staunton]

The two paragraphs seem contradictory to me...

The fist paragraph seems to say: "greed is not a good explanation", while the second seems to claim: "greed explains everything and we are all OK with it".

[ajkjk]

No, I'm saying: greed is not a good explanation; what looks like greed is essentially required by the world we've built; blaming it on greed alone is an attitude of hopelessness. The problem is our ambient value system, which demands corporations act greedy.

[navane]

There seems to be a new system in place which takes these amoral CEOs and does make them accountable.

[hackable_sand]

It's the truth, and we've had these systems since the dawn of civilization. Idk why people are acting surprised now when we've been doing this for thousands of years.

If people in power don't provide and protect a democratic process to removing poor leadership then they do not get to complain when people make those decisions on their own.

[Earw0rm]

Exec., meet exec.?

[int_19h]

I think the cause and effect here are reversed. Thing is, in a society like ours, you pretty much have to be a shitty human being to become a CEO of anything even remotely big. It inevitably requires walking on heads and abusing people to the extent that no moral person would be comfortable with.

So we have a system that puts selection pressure on economic elites to be sociopathic. And then those same people write the books on "how to be a good CEO" etc, so of course they are going to say that you're not supposed to do things that they themselves don't do.

[jefftk]

> It's dangerously close to the EA belief that it's actually OK to be a ruthless exec for a tobacco company, because you can do good things with your money that you wouldn't be able to do if you quit the job.

That's not an EA belief. While EAs have made arguments somewhat in this direction, being a tobacco exec is just incredibly harmful and no one should do it: https://80000hours.org/2016/01/just-how-bad-is-being-a-ceo-i...

(80000 Hours is the primary EA career advising organization)

[wat10000]

The obvious answer is to be a tobacco exec, sabotage the organization from within, and donate to charity.

[light_hue_1]

Yeah, it's definitely an EA belief! If you look at the end of the article they show you a link to a response on the EA forum.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4N5BsDkcWjr5MRSQy/...

EA is one of the most evil ideologies out there.

[jefftk]

The post you're linking to is not arguing that you should become a tobacco exec, it's arguing that 80k has not sufficiently made the case that a tobacco exec who donated all their income thoughtfully would still be causing net harm.

Reading both articles, I think it depends a lot what strategy the exec employs. If they optimize for getting people to become addicted to smoking or increase how much they smoke (growing the market) then I think it's really unlikely they could donate enough to make up for that enormous harm. On the other hand, if they optimize for increasing profitability by increasing prices and advocating for regulation that acts as barriers to new entrants, and especially if the person who would otherwise have the role would be optimizing for growing the market, then it's likely their work is positive on it's own, regardless of donating.

[int_19h]

So, you're saying that from a EA perspective, it can in fact be okay to be a tobacco executive. QED.

[jefftk]

What matters is the difference between how the world would be with your actions and how it would be otherwise.

Would you also say "so you're saying it's ok to be a member of the Nazi party who runs a munitions factory [1], QED"?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler

[Avicebron]

> But if you're one or two levels up Maslow's Pyramid, it's right to weigh your personal needs against the impact of your work. You'll also be better off for it, knowing that <b>the world would be worse off if you decided to switch gears</b> and become a carpenter/baker/bartender/choose your adventure.

To highlight this part of the original in support of this comment. This comes of as somewhat arrogant and is a pretty big red flag...

[dvdkon]

If you've changed your career to support some goal, here the public good, isn't it natural to be strongly convinced that your work is advancing that goal?

[gruez]

>It's dangerously close to the EA belief that it's actually OK to be a ruthless exec for a tobacco company, because you can do good things with your money that you wouldn't be able to do if you quit the job.

You're saying this as if it's a given, but why wouldn't this work?

[Hasu]

For the same reason people don't think it's OK to rob a bank and donate the money to charity.

[gruez]

That analogy fails because robbing a bank is straightforwardly illegal and norm-breaking (by the majority of the population), whereas being a tobacco executive isn't.

[layer8]

Unethical behavior not being treated as norm-breaking unless its illegal is part of what’s being criticized here, I think.

[ClumsyPilot]

Not if you ask the younger generation

[worik]

> For the same reason people don't think it's OK to rob a bank and donate the money to charity.

I have a problem with violence...

[CobrastanJorji]

Because enabling evil on a large scale to pay for doing good on a small scale doesn't achieve net good.

[jefftk]

It wouldn't work because being a tobacco exec is just really harmful: https://80000hours.org/2016/01/just-how-bad-is-being-a-ceo-i...

Anyone who could do that job has many far better ways they could apply their career.

[Avicebron]

Because it's sociopathic at its core, I don't have time to pull up the HN back and forth where it was debated during the FTX stuff

but basically it comes across as, "I am willing to sacrifice others (but not myself) to achieve my goals because I know better."

[gruez]

>but basically it comes across as, "I am willing to sacrifice others (but not myself) to achieve my goals because I know better."

Since money is fungible but finite, basically any sort of donation decision involves sacrificing someone. Donating to fund malaria nets when you'd otherwise have funded your local little league team means you're in effect, sacrificing the local little league team. Moreover, by donating their own money, they're by definition "sacrificing myself".

[int_19h]

This line of thinking (and EA in general) taken to its logical conclusion results in stuff like LW's famous "moral dilemma" about torturing someone for 50 years being justifiable if it prevents sufficiently many people from the discomfort of having a speck in their eye.

[adamtaylor_13]

But if you won’t be the big tabacco exec, someone else will.

So I actually agree with the notion that being the big tabacco exec and doing good things with your money, plus helping steer things from the inside is a better proposition than becoming a baker and letting someone who has NO moral qualms with tabacco run the ship.

It’s rarely as effective to push change from the outside as it is the inside.

[moolcool]

> But if you won’t be the big tabacco exec, someone else will.

In the public discourse, you'll often see CEOs and founders lauded as incredibly brilliant and rare. As soon as you start to talk about ethics though, they're suddenly fungible. "Someone else would run the orphan crushing factory if not for me"

[WD-42]

I think the idea is that if all good people refuse to become a tobacco exec the pool of people willing to take the job will be small and full of bad people, eventually they will run the business into the ground and the problem solves itself. How well this works in practice is debatable.

[Ar-Curunir]

“If I don’t work with the Nazis, someone else will, so I should be a good Nazi”

[lotsofpulp]

Unless you are suggesting selling tobacco is as unethical as torturing and murdering people of different tribes for the sake of them being in different tribes, I do not see what your point could be.

Should people simply never be able to sell or consume tobacco? Even if one’s consumption of tobacco does not negatively affect anyone else?

[davidgay]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris

[marky1991]

What would be the alternative in this hypothetical be? I'm not clear what the argument here really is.

[kelseyfrog]

Are there any social norms that allows immoral CEOs to exist? What incubates an immoral CEO?

[labster]

Honestly a better question would be if there are any social norms that allow for a moral CEO to exist? Pretty much all of our norms are tilted towards producing immoral executives.

[adamtaylor_13]

“If I don’t work for the Nazi’s they will kill my family, so I will work for the Nazi’s”

There, I fixed your uninspired and incorrect anecdote.

Big tobacco execs are quite literally killing absolutely no one. Last I checked they aren’t sticking cigarettes in anyone’s mouth. Personal responsibility for your own actions is unfortunately lacking in many discussions surrounding things like this.

[saagarjha]

That's because we have a society have generally decided that personal responsibility is not actually the appropriate lens with which to judge the sale of addictive products.

[rNULLED]

Nazis were political leaders. So yes, you should try to be a good political leader to prevent the growth in power of bad ones.