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It's low on words but dense with meaning. If you want to interpret it as calling out greed, so be it, but I think that good money is hard to turn down for many reasons besides greed. Is it greedy to want to pay off your student loans or provide for your family?

There are many people with stories of being unable to find work because they can't hack the modern coding interview process. One way to escape that trap is to take a job working for a defense contractor. I did it. I was over a barrel, facing an insane spousal support payment and I needed a job fast. I took a job with a defense contractor. I'm not proud of it, but I needed to live. Was I motivated by greed?



I see the point but it is a narrow and modernist characterization of other minds on the matter. A lot of perfectly decent people do defense work and don't really need the paychecks (the famous Youtuber SmarterEveryDay comes to mind). Here are a few reasons why:

1) Many work on oft maligned technologies because they simply see no moral conundrum. It's common to see tools as amoral, and believe moral responsibility in the use of tools for good or evil lies solely with its wielder - not any inventor or refiner.

2) Or, they may see their work as their moral duty as a competent professional in a society fending off morally worse alternatives. This is the patriotic or "necessary evil" view.

3) A few utilitarian engineers see the refinement of technology in and of itself as always a subtle moral good, as they believe the elimination of inefficiency is the primary reason why humanity no longer suffers as much as it used to. There's also the assumption that the development of any kind of tech leads to unanticipated benefits to other areas of life (this is a common demonstrated pattern in defense R&D).

4) There's also the classical Greek justification of Eudaimonia. Simply doing what one does best is seen as the most moral thing one can do, as it eliminates any outward and internal dishonesty about ones self.

PS: Here is a great video by SmarterEveryDay explaining what he does and why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE


> Is it greedy to want to pay off your student loans or provide for your family?

Perhaps not greedy, but definitely selfish.

It's YOUR student loans and YOUR family (thus, YOUR genetic code) that you're helping without regard for anyone else.

Don't pretend like only helping yourself and your spouse/children is anything other than self-serving.

Self-serving is fine in moderation, but a lot of people foolishly seem to hold it as an axiomatic good.


> Is it greedy to want to pay off your student loans or provide for your family?

> Perhaps not greedy, but definitely selfish.

This place is beyond parody sometimes.




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