4 ms·

Tell me your industry and I can probably tell you ethical problems with it.

dukeyukey 5y ago
I'll have a go Legaltech - namely, automating the legal process behind startup funding rounds. We have lawyers on staff to help if needed, but we automate 95% of the work.
- Clubber 5y ago
  Sure, you are automating away the jobs of lawyers and paralegals and secretaries, janitors, marketing people, sales people, etc. Most automation jobs have ethical problems in that, if successful, they permanently remove jobs from the job market. I should know, automation is what I do, but a different industry. Also, I'm sure if the lawyers on staff make good money, as good as private industry, they certainly won't in about 5-10 years after automation has taken over. So basically you're helping to put thousands of lawyers who spent $200k in degrees to specialize in startup legal work out of work, plus all their support staff they would ordinarily hire and give benefits (healthcare/retirement) to and the families those employees support.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
agucova 5y ago
The fact that almost all industries have some level of ethical problems does not mean that there aren't worse industries than the rest, or that you should somehow take no moral responsibility in choosing a job.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Clubber 5y ago
  >does not mean that there aren't worse industries than the rest, or that you should somehow take no moral responsibility in choosing a job. Only person suggestion that was you. In fact if you say, "well my job isn't as bad as Facebook," well then you're ignoring or passing the ethical dilemmas in your own industry, aren't you? Facebook isn't a free pass to ignore everything else. That's like saying, "well Stalin was pretty bad and we aren't as bad as Stalin, so we're probably ok." Not ok. It's really easy to justify working in immoral industries. I would wager that in the US, you have to do it just to put food on the table.
exdsq 5y ago
How about effective altruism, trying to evaluate the usefulness of charities ethics to do the most good in the world?
- Clubber 5y ago
  I'm not even sure that's an industry, but in the US, a surprisingly large number of charities take up to a 90% administration fee. If that's your industry, you probably aren't doing a very good job if those sort of things exist. I wish you luck though, it's a friggin travesty that a 90% administration fee is even legal.
TheCapn 5y ago
This sounds like fun! Controls Engineering - Specifically Agricultural: Grain handling, cleaning, processing.
- uuddlrlr 5y ago
  Almost half of US farm labourers are illegal immigrants; https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/63465/LegalStatus2016.png?v=6203.8 https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/63465/LegalStatus201... Pretty crazy how they're treated considering that. Cool job tho, thanks for feeding people!
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    Arguably someone working on automating farming systems would be reducing demand for labor in that work. So really, "isn't this putting impoverished people out of the only job they can get?"
- papandada 5y ago
  Do you ask for consent before all this handling and cleaning? You know, consent from the grain. Ok but seriously, the best I can imagine might be a generic environmental impact concern that could be levelled far and wide. Honestly seems pretty legit. Are there any ethical issues we should know about in the field of agricultural grain handling?
  - TheCapn 5y ago
    I can't really think of anything directly immoral about the business I participate in. Anything that could be pointed as an ethical grey area is more like a side-effect of the capitalist society we exist within. So maybe more specifically, I'm not working with the farmers directly. I'm working with the businesses buying and selling the grain. The "capitalism grey areas" fall into effect when a farmer signs a contract saying they're going to deliver "Wheat" at a "Grade 2" spec and show up to the elevator with a truck full of wheat. It goes through the grading specs and even though that farmer brought them a "Grade 1" they're only getting paid at a Grade 2 rate. So the grain elevator itself grabs that top quality stuff, shoves it in a silo with the other top quality stuff and sends the farmer away. They sell that grain at a Grade 1 and make immense profit that is never realized by the farmer who did the work. It gets fishier the further into it you go. Because a "Grade 1" spec implies certain qualities in the grain: protein, moisture, dockage, etc. etc etc. So if the elevator needs to sell a Grade 2 product, the grading is taken as a sample and likely averaged over the entire load. They can take 10% of that Grade 1 stuff, shove it into a bunch of Grade 3 stuff and sell it as a Grade 2... the blending is where they make their money. Then it gets even worse, because a grain terminal filling a vessel for export would sign off on a load that contains up to 1% dockage, but after the product in the silos is cleaned its likely to have <0.1% dockage or whatever anyway. So what is the terminal going to do? Surely they don't give the customer free "good" product right? Nope, they fill that vessel 99.5% full of product, then shove worthless garbage in to hit the 0.5% remainder and ship it out. So a vessel with 20,000MT of Soybean likely contains a bunch of garbage wheat or chaff or whatever else they have on hand that can't be sold. It gets absurd to think they take in those Soybeans, then run them through the clean systems to remove the garbage, but then when it comes time to fill the vessel, they just put all the garbage back in so the customer has to clean it again.
itoocode 5y ago
Facebook cannot be compared to any other industry. Facebook's ethical problems is not about the services they provide, it is about the quantity of data collected with consent(ignorance). I hope everyone working inside is ethical as believed by the upper management.
- Clubber 5y ago
  >Facebook cannot be compared to any other industry. As far as ethics? As deplorable as Facebook is, there are way worse industries. The defense industry just made trillions murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years for starters, and that's trillions from middle and lower class Americans and the sons and daughters too. I think someone calculated that Afghanistan alone cost $300 million a year for 20 years. That's alot of money taken away from the betterment of the country: schools, safety nets, infrastructure, a lot of things that were neglected. The incarceration industry also comes to mind. I'm sure I can think of others if you asked.

I'll have a go Legaltech - namely, automating the legal process behind startup funding rounds. We have lawyers on staff to help if needed, but we automate 95% of the work.

Clubber 5y ago
Sure, you are automating away the jobs of lawyers and paralegals and secretaries, janitors, marketing people, sales people, etc. Most automation jobs have ethical problems in that, if successful, they permanently remove jobs from the job market. I should know, automation is what I do, but a different industry. Also, I'm sure if the lawyers on staff make good money, as good as private industry, they certainly won't in about 5-10 years after automation has taken over. So basically you're helping to put thousands of lawyers who spent $200k in degrees to specialize in startup legal work out of work, plus all their support staff they would ordinarily hire and give benefits (healthcare/retirement) to and the families those employees support.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

agucova 5y ago

The fact that almost all industries have some level of ethical problems does not mean that there aren't worse industries than the rest, or that you should somehow take no moral responsibility in choosing a job.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Clubber 5y ago
>does not mean that there aren't worse industries than the rest, or that you should somehow take no moral responsibility in choosing a job. Only person suggestion that was you. In fact if you say, "well my job isn't as bad as Facebook," well then you're ignoring or passing the ethical dilemmas in your own industry, aren't you? Facebook isn't a free pass to ignore everything else. That's like saying, "well Stalin was pretty bad and we aren't as bad as Stalin, so we're probably ok." Not ok. It's really easy to justify working in immoral industries. I would wager that in the US, you have to do it just to put food on the table.

exdsq 5y ago

How about effective altruism, trying to evaluate the usefulness of charities ethics to do the most good in the world?

Clubber 5y ago
I'm not even sure that's an industry, but in the US, a surprisingly large number of charities take up to a 90% administration fee. If that's your industry, you probably aren't doing a very good job if those sort of things exist. I wish you luck though, it's a friggin travesty that a 90% administration fee is even legal.

TheCapn 5y ago

This sounds like fun! Controls Engineering - Specifically Agricultural: Grain handling, cleaning, processing.

uuddlrlr 5y ago
Almost half of US farm labourers are illegal immigrants; https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/63465/LegalStatus2016.png?v=6203.8 https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/63465/LegalStatus201... Pretty crazy how they're treated considering that. Cool job tho, thanks for feeding people!
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Arguably someone working on automating farming systems would be reducing demand for labor in that work. So really, "isn't this putting impoverished people out of the only job they can get?"
papandada 5y ago
Do you ask for consent before all this handling and cleaning? You know, consent from the grain. Ok but seriously, the best I can imagine might be a generic environmental impact concern that could be levelled far and wide. Honestly seems pretty legit. Are there any ethical issues we should know about in the field of agricultural grain handling?
- TheCapn 5y ago
  I can't really think of anything directly immoral about the business I participate in. Anything that could be pointed as an ethical grey area is more like a side-effect of the capitalist society we exist within. So maybe more specifically, I'm not working with the farmers directly. I'm working with the businesses buying and selling the grain. The "capitalism grey areas" fall into effect when a farmer signs a contract saying they're going to deliver "Wheat" at a "Grade 2" spec and show up to the elevator with a truck full of wheat. It goes through the grading specs and even though that farmer brought them a "Grade 1" they're only getting paid at a Grade 2 rate. So the grain elevator itself grabs that top quality stuff, shoves it in a silo with the other top quality stuff and sends the farmer away. They sell that grain at a Grade 1 and make immense profit that is never realized by the farmer who did the work. It gets fishier the further into it you go. Because a "Grade 1" spec implies certain qualities in the grain: protein, moisture, dockage, etc. etc etc. So if the elevator needs to sell a Grade 2 product, the grading is taken as a sample and likely averaged over the entire load. They can take 10% of that Grade 1 stuff, shove it into a bunch of Grade 3 stuff and sell it as a Grade 2... the blending is where they make their money. Then it gets even worse, because a grain terminal filling a vessel for export would sign off on a load that contains up to 1% dockage, but after the product in the silos is cleaned its likely to have <0.1% dockage or whatever anyway. So what is the terminal going to do? Surely they don't give the customer free "good" product right? Nope, they fill that vessel 99.5% full of product, then shove worthless garbage in to hit the 0.5% remainder and ship it out. So a vessel with 20,000MT of Soybean likely contains a bunch of garbage wheat or chaff or whatever else they have on hand that can't be sold. It gets absurd to think they take in those Soybeans, then run them through the clean systems to remove the garbage, but then when it comes time to fill the vessel, they just put all the garbage back in so the customer has to clean it again.

itoocode 5y ago

Facebook cannot be compared to any other industry. Facebook's ethical problems is not about the services they provide, it is about the quantity of data collected with consent(ignorance). I hope everyone working inside is ethical as believed by the upper management.

Clubber 5y ago
>Facebook cannot be compared to any other industry. As far as ethics? As deplorable as Facebook is, there are way worse industries. The defense industry just made trillions murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years for starters, and that's trillions from middle and lower class Americans and the sons and daughters too. I think someone calculated that Afghanistan alone cost $300 million a year for 20 years. That's alot of money taken away from the betterment of the country: schools, safety nets, infrastructure, a lot of things that were neglected. The incarceration industry also comes to mind. I'm sure I can think of others if you asked.