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Tobacco industry is made up of wholly legal and aboveboard business enterprises with many happy users. They have a long history of malicious behavior, but it i
by hapless 9y ago
Tobacco industry is made up of wholly legal and aboveboard business enterprises with many happy users.
They have a long history of malicious behavior, but it is not, on the face of it, wrong to take such a job.
But I still might avoid it, myself. Once bitten, twice shy. You spend fifty years conspiring to conceal damages to your own customers and maybe I prefer not to work for you even after you stop doing it
- ademup 9y agoJust because an endeavor is legal, does not make it ethical. I agree with parent: working for a casino is about as unethical as working for a tobacco company. Your work will unquestionably lead to harm in the lives of others.
- conanbatt 9y agoThis kind of thinking paradoxically makes investing in those ventures profitable. The "vice" has extra returns because there is less investor competition.
- Clubber 9y agoYes, but that applies to just about every programming job too. Is programming unethical? I mean your are automating jobs away. It certainly harms lives.
- jonnycomputer 9y agoBy that measure taking a job is unethical because it takes away a job that another might perform... Yes, working for an industry that does harm to people is unethical. However, the censure that is deserved is proportional to the the "status" of the position they occupy in the industry, e.g. CEOs > Professionals > Blue Collar > Part Timers. Its not just the influence the different people have on the industries or companies they work in, its also a function of their autonomy. A lot of people have little choice but to take whatever job they can get, because they have other obligations as well: to their selves, to their families, and to their communities.
- Clubber 9y agoProgrammers have to have jobs just as much as blue collar people. I mean everything except (possibly) the CEO has to work for income.
- jonnycomputer 9y agoAlso, at some point you are going to be asked to do something you know is effed up.
- wu-ikkyu 9y agoTobacco kills around 10x more people than heroin (at least in the US).
- thehardsphere 9y agoDo you have a source for that? I find that figure incredibly dubious considering that tobacco requires years of chronic use before it kills you, and it typically doesn't kill you in a way that is entirely attributable to that single cause.
- youngbullind 9y agoIt wouldn't surprise me in the least, given the prevalence of the use of each in society.