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JobsAsComplicity 6 - 04 Feb 2010 - Main.AmandaBell
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| | One reason Eben gave for not working at a firm was that firms do morally undesirable work, and that in working for a firm, one's work would actively be contributing to that overall morally undesirable work product. For example, if one was a big-firm lawyer over the past five years or so, one most likely actively contributed to the financial crisis by providing the legal work for allowing grossly unchecked mortgage-backed securities to be created and flipped for fast profit.
My question: Is it true in every job, you are always morally complicit in the work of the company? Note than an answer of yes would mean that when you work for an organization that actively does good, you are also actively doing good. Is there ever any way to dissociate oneself morally from the work of the company in which one participates? | | | It sounds to me that you are assuming there are three mutually exclusive regions which are labeled morally good, morally neutral, and morally wrong. If that’s true, then how do you draw the lines to distinguish such regions and who should be the judge? I feel like morality is a sliding scale; one end is really good, one end is really bad, and most of the activities that people do in the society concentrate somewhere in the middle. Before we question the morality of the law firm associates who contributed to the current financial crisis, I think it is important to note that we are judging them based on the outcome which has occurred. While a person is performing an act, such as an associate working in a law firm, his priority is to further his client’s best interest without violating the law. Is it immoral for the banks and law firms to be resourceful and to pursue their best interests for financial wealth? We call it immoral now because millions of people were scammed and lost them home, but five years ago, these “scams” were perfectly legal and it probably never even crossed the minds of most associates at those law firms that they are contributing to the financial crisis today. I feel that even after we start working at law firms, it is difficult to see whether our actions are immoral or not without a high probability of knowing the consequence of our actions. So, my question is that before asking whether we are morally complicit with our work, how are we even supposed to know whether our works are immoral or not?
-- RyanSong - 04 Feb 2010 | |
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"...five years ago, these “scams” were perfectly legal and it probably never even crossed the minds of most associates at those law firms that they are contributing to the financial crisis today....how are we even supposed to know whether our works are immoral or not?"
I think it would be fairly clear, if not immediately, then certainly after you worked in your industry for a few months. I've had several jobs over nine years, and it's definitely easy to learn the skeletons in the closets of the places you work. I remember a friend who works at Morgan Stanley telling me in early 2004 that these mortgage-backed securities were going to be a disaster for the economy and that a lot of people had been flat-out tricked into buying houses with mortgages they could never repay.
-- AmandaBell - 04 Feb 2010 | | | |
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