"and the specific belief that paid commercial work is the only ethical kind." ? People in general don't believe that. Everyone recognizes that there's tons of

"and the specific belief that paid commercial work is the only ethical kind." ? People in general don't believe that. Everyone recognizes that there's tons of great work being done that's not commercial, or even commercially-related. This is not a 'deep insight' of a modern ideal either - people have been very active in their communities since the dawn of time and very well aware of the difference between paid and unpaid work - though admittedly, not always 'fully appreciated'. "It is less self-evident that I should pick only one computer program to work on based on the needs of my boss, and then do it for 40 hours a week between the hours of 9am to 5:30pm with an hour for lunch. " ??? Again, it should be 'fairly evident' because that you are getting paid, is a measure of the value you are creating for a lot of people. It's not 'the needs of your boss', it's the 'needs of the client that your boss is communicating to you'. It's your bosses job to intelligently make sense of those needs and to divide up the work responsibly. Your 'interest work' is probably more like 'art' - it may have some function, but that doesn't mean it's useful to anyone at all. There's nothing wrong with doing something useless, and always some 'good' in doing something speculative that may prove to be worthwhile ... but 'payment' is usually a decent measure that the work being done is valuable for someone else. When you serve a coffee or clean a toilet in the cafe you're definitely creating some value. When you work for a company that helps the coffee shop do their accounting ... again, value creation.