Helping professions
December 12, 2006 12:39 pmRobin Hanson at Overcoming Bias looks into how much “helping professions,” actually help:
You may really want a helping job so that you can feel and look morally superior to those in non-helping professions. If so, you gain value at the expense of others who look worse; shame on you again.
That’s his #6. I’ve often said that the reason politicians and non-profits can get away with paying employees so little (see here), especially at the entry level, is because they compensate them with self-righteousness. In the end, it ends up attracting a certain type of individual, and requiring costly signaling mechanisms (think Masters Degree) later on to sort out the riff-raff. Doctors go through the signaling early, and don’t seem to take the same financial hit.
I came to the conclusion a few years ago that nearly everyone participating in the economy is helping somebody else in some way. The engineer who designs screws for farm equipment is contributing to helping people get food, and the purchasing representative at the farm equipment company is helping them get it cheaper. And don’t forget all the times people help others outside their job without getting paid for it.
Categories: Business and Economics, Careers, Community, Education, Graduate School, Philanthropy, Politics
2 Responses to “Helping professions”
I’d argue that doctors (medical) do take a financial hit, but that it also occurs early.
I like your point about everyone helping somebody in some way. It’s absolutely true, and those who get off on being self-righteous often forget it. That said, you could make an equally compelling argument that everyone participating in the economy hurts somebody in some way. A purely rational player might want to tally up the expected help and expected hurt, and do some cost-benefit. e.g. Along the way, how much damage is the engineer doing to the environment through energy use or through waste materials?
Doctors take a short term financial hit early on in exchange for very significant long term financial rewards. To a lesser extent, lawyers do the same thing, though their actual rewards are usually lower.
For most parts of the economy (with a lot of assumptions that almost never hold), price works as a fairly good metric for the amount of help. With harm, I think things are more difficult, if only because it’s much harder to determine what actually qualifies as harm. In your case, you seem to be referring to externalities - costs that result from one’s actions that other people incur. In this case, you need either contracting under the Coase Theorem, or some sort of policy solution to the market failure.
Care to comment?