It might be alright to work on things that don't solve humanity's problems, if they still give someone some joy or make something better or easier for someone.
But a lot of people spend a lot of time working on things that make things worse for a lot of people in order to enrich a few people, and I think maybe that's not okay.
A big chunk (most?) of the evil in the world is done by people convinced that they know what's best for everyone else, and so are justified in forcing it on them.
> A big chunk (most?) of the evil in the world is done by people convinced that they know what's best for everyone else
Not only do I think that's a small part of the harm done in the world, and that the vast majority of the harm done in the world is done through simple selfishness (with possibly overwrought moralistic rationalizations), but also that it's important to make the distinction that this is the source of none of the evil.
Evil can't include people trying to be kind badly, or else it's just become a general euphemism to give every petty grievance one has a grand, millennialist, Manichean cast. Or to be realistic, it's usually just warmed over early-mid 20c anti-New Dealer, anticommunist bullshit.
I'm currently considering the Pentecostal church which sent missionaries to Congo to build hospitals and teach/train doctors, for instance dr. Denis Mukwege[1], who was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize for his work helping and saving thousands of women who have been raped. The reason these women were raped is not religion, it's technology (the war is about valuable land with rare earth minerals).
The intense poverty and destitution and hopelessness in the inner cities suggests Americanism (America's brand of capitalism) isn't without it's own flaws though, so there's something to be learned from the communists
On the scale of banal evil, corporate tax accountants are a lot lower than the people directing them to do what they're doing. The benefits of Fancy Tax Practices are not accruing the people enacting them.
And where do you work? Who's used your stuff to be an antisocial jerk? How's the beam in your eye?
Like, I generally pride myself on never having worked for any company I wouldn't admit to working for later, but even some of those are kinda bad. (I contracted at a daily fantasy sports company for a while, and I'm not proud of that.) The recognition that labor is frequently if not generally in a compromised position is kind of the point when people are talking about "unrestrained late capitalism".
In any case, I work at a small (< 100) company, with very selective clientele. I am unwilling to disclose exactly who. I have explicitly resisted recruiters from FAANG (well, neither Netflix nor Apple) because of the immoral work I would expect I would be doing, at a significant salary penalty.
Both accountants and programmers have immense freedom to make a decent living, while using their expertise, even while choosing to avoid ethically questionable roles and activities. At some point, yes, economic coercion is unavoidable. That's understandable for someone whose realistic prospects are $50k or nothing. $200k or $150k is a very different matter.
> > "they're willing to do great evil for even less personal benefit."
> " And where do you work?"
This is not an appropriate response.
> The recognition that labor is frequently if not generally in a compromised position is kind of the point when people are talking about "unrestrained late capitalism".
Some jobs are much, much worse than others. Finding corporate tax loopholes is hugely evil, if hugely banal. That those people do it for a *relatively* meager salary does absolutely nothing to change the fact that it's evil.
It is wildly destructive to society to spend all day working to funnel money from social services to the yachting class. While it's very weird that they aren't seen as the hugely banal, hugely evil jobs that they are, once it's pointed out you might start thinking about it more.
> It is wildly destructive to society to spend all day working to funnel money from social services to the yachting class.
I don't see how this is relevant, given that it's not what corporate tax accountants do? All they're doing is figuring out how to use the tax system designed by the government to minimize the amount of money going to the government.
The government does not, as a matter of fact, spend all of its money on social services - vast amounts go to administration, national defense, social security (which is supposed to be self-sustaining), and other things, so this entire line of argument is invalid.
Moreover, the very fact that there are exceptions intentionally added to the tax code means that they're explicitly meant to be used, and therefore that using them is not evil.
Meanwhile, the fact that there are enough exceptions in the tax code and therefore less wealthy individuals and smaller businesses without the resources to make use of them are disproportionately disadvantaged is bad, and solely the fault of those who wrote the code in the first place.
You have a problem with the corporate tax rate and want it to be higher? Sure, that's valid. But randomly, axiomatically claiming that some people using the system the way it was designed are evil because they make too much money? Invalid.
By your logic, if a law makes torturing people legal, then the people who make it possible to do so - the psychologists advising, the guards, etc - are "valid" and not evil whatsoever. Only the law writer is at fault in your view.
While the US government may agree with you on that - other than the part where the law writer is at fault whatsoever - it's still very, very fucking evil to torture people. As is playing an essential part in the theft (morally and in reality, if not legally) of hundreds of billions of taxes.
Once again - legality is not morality. People seem confused on that point often, and it's very weird.
I'm reading my comment and I can't see where I said that legality implies morality. Where did I state that?
If you're talking about "Moreover, the very fact that there are exceptions intentionally added to the tax code means that they're explicitly meant to be used, and therefore that using them is not evil." - that's because the government is the writer, enforcer, and beneficiary of tax code - they have completely control over it, unlike someone who being tortured, who is none of those things. Completely different scenarios.
> As is playing an essential part in the theft (morally and in reality, if not legally) of hundreds of billions of taxes.
This is literally factually incorrect. There's no "theft" here - the government wrote the law to explicitly include these exception that corporate tax lawyers are using. "Theft" is taking something that doesn't belong to you. Taxes are the government asserting that some of the money that you earn belongs to them. When the government writes an exception into the tax code, that's them asserting that they do not own the money covered by that exception, and therefore it is not theft by definition.
You haven't even provided a single justification for your baseless assertion that this is "evil" - just a lot of misdirection and emotionally manipulative statements like "People seem confused on that point often, and it's very weird."
> What if I told you the villains are the ones writing the insanely complex tax codes with endless exclusions, not the ones using them?
How do you figure? Every dollar a corporate tax accountant saves Walmart gets redirected from food stamps and building public transport to the yacht class.
> Why is it ok for me to write off some tax breaks the government gave me, but the corporate tax lawyer is evil?
> How do you figure? Every dollar a corporate tax accountant saves Walmart gets redirected from food stamps and building public transport to the yacht class.
This is a non-argument. You can use the exact same emotional pleading to claim that its not ethical for corporations to do anything except donate all of their profit to the government (by overpaying their taxes) because every dollar is going to "food stamps and public transport" instead of "the yacht class".
> Scale and intent.
Whether something is evil or not is scale-invariant, so that doesn't matter, and there's no difference in intent between an individual trying to reduce their taxes and a corporation - the intent for both is "give the government less money".
Unless you have actually logical arguments against it, I think that the GP was pretty clearly correct in claiming that the root cause is overly complicated tax codes. US tax rates are set by the government ostensibly acting on behalf of its citizens and setting a fair tax rate. Companies and individuals are not only allowed but expected to take advantage of clauses that work in their favor (assuming that they're not behaving dishonestly to do so) - otherwise there would be literally no reason for those clauses to exist in the first place (it's obviously insane to add a tax clause to give tax breaks to college students and then condemn/prosecute them when they try to use it), so it's pretty clearly not wrong to do so.
Given that it's not wrong to (honestly) minimize your taxes, and the fact that complicated tax codes give a unique advantage to those able to spend lots of time and money on them (the wealthy and large corporations), you'd have to be crazy to think that it's not the fault of the authors.
(not to mention that complicated tax codes reduce government transparency, which is, uh, a bad thing)
Btw, I actually do not believe that the majority of governments are evil in intent on tax law. I keep seeing instances where their intentions are clearly "good" but nobody seems to appreciate the true cost of complexity.
The metaphor for me is that you have a code base with 1000 contributors, minimal pr reviews, no integration testing at all, and lots of global state. It is spaghetti and nobody is incentivised to simplify it
Yeah, I don't really think that most of them are "evil" either - perhaps "careless in a way that harms people" - I'm just arguing that the root of the harm stems from the tax code itself and not people trying to work it.
> "Every pound that a tax accountant saves a client is a pound which otherwise would have gone to HM Revenue. For a salary of between £75,000 and £200,000, tax accountants destroy £47 in value, for every pound they generate."
You can call the study 'socialist' if you like, but the disparity between what corporations ought to be paying and what they are paying is staggeringly vast.
Yet their loophole finding tax accountants are generally respected. WHY? This, while we STILL treat nurses like dirt.
While what corporate tax accountants do is 'legal', it's one of the most destructive roles possible.
You can blame this aspect of society on the politicians, the lobbyists, the voters - but at the heart of it, some twat is using his education and training to funnel money from social services to luxury yachts.
But a lot of people spend a lot of time working on things that make things worse for a lot of people in order to enrich a few people, and I think maybe that's not okay.