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Yes, but even these particular values embody subjective urbanist bias. For example, some towns run very effective volunteer fire departments, where the "payment

Yes, but even these particular values embody subjective urbanist bias. For example, some towns run very effective volunteer fire departments, where the "payment" seems to be mutual aid and masculine pride. In some towns garbage disposal is mostly burn barrels and composting, which is bad for the environment but is not a service which can fail. And personally, having the privilege of education in biology, I feel like manufacturers of drugs and diagnostic equipment manufacturers are infinitely more valuable than doctors who are merely technicians trained in the use of these tools. Perhaps the concept of "social value" is only useful in the context of societies small enough so that all participants can agree on values?

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Huh, you're right about my "subjective urbanist bias", I didn't even notice it in my thinking. Thanks! WRT. doctors vs. drug/diagnostic equipment manufacturers, a good point, but here I specifically picked my example - public health and safety vs. entertainment - to maximize the contrast. > Perhaps the concept of "social value" is only useful in the context of societies small enough so that all participants can agree on values? I think there might be a correlation between community size and the ease of agreeing on what is social value, but I wouldn't discount it for larger societies or even humanity as a whole. Humans do have a lot in common, and I feel you can get far in ranking jobs by social value by going along the gradient of reduction of suffering. And I say "jobs", not "professions", because IMO, professions are almost orthogonal to social value. For example, in terms of the social value, I'd rank a programmer working on diagnostic equipment > programmer working on a videogame > programmer working on advertising tech. The skillset and productivity may be similar or even the same, but these jobs occupy three very different point on the "making the world a better place" scale.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Huh, you're right about my "subjective urbanist bias", I didn't even notice it in my thinking. Thanks! WRT. doctors vs. drug/diagnostic equipment manufacturers, a good point, but here I specifically picked my example - public health and safety vs. entertainment - to maximize the contrast. > Perhaps the concept of "social value" is only useful in the context of societies small enough so that all participants can agree on values? I think there might be a correlation between community size and the ease of agreeing on what is social value, but I wouldn't discount it for larger societies or even humanity as a whole. Humans do have a lot in common, and I feel you can get far in ranking jobs by social value by going along the gradient of reduction of suffering. And I say "jobs", not "professions", because IMO, professions are almost orthogonal to social value. For example, in terms of the social value, I'd rank a programmer working on diagnostic equipment > programmer working on a videogame > programmer working on advertising tech. The skillset and productivity may be similar or even the same, but these jobs occupy three very different point on the "making the world a better place" scale.