Re: aid workers; I agree that they don't seem very selfish, but we might simply be hitting the bottom of the power continuum - because they know that they could

Re: aid workers; I agree that they don't seem very selfish, but we might simply be hitting the bottom of the power continuum - because they know that they couldn't succeed/gain influence in any other endeavour, they opt at least for good feelings (that one gets when one is altruistic/ethical); or as you said, they benefit in other ways. I'm not saying that's a bad thing - there are definitely worse ways to satisfy one's emotional needs; just that it doesn't mean they wouldn't fuck people over if given a chance. Re: clergy - what is this, I can't even... I guess this simply wasn't the best example, but I can't even begin to consider members/representatives of one of the most corrupt, deceitful, greediest institutions in the past 2000 years - the longest-running scam - to be anywhere near selfless. Re: economists - I'm afraid my opinion of them weights heavily towards them being completely delusional; economics is such a vague "science" and everything is completely unprovable, so having a theory (which isn't correct - no theory is) is infinitely more valuable than being intellectually honest and admitting that you basically know nothing. This is apparent both in theorists (academia encourages this), as with practitioners (LTCM: win Nobel => crash the market; or the past few presidents of US FED - each "fixing" the market only to make it crash even harder). Sure, they might be well-meaning, but so were middle-age "doctors" who made leeches suck their patients blood...