The more your job helps people, the less you're paid (and vice-versa)

Why is that fair? Can you pay for your groceries with your week’s-worth of satisfaction? Or conversely, why is it fair that if you choose to take a job where you are going to harm people instead of help them, “to be fair” you have to be paid more?

Is there a total amount of decency+money that one can earn by working, so by definition more of one requires there to be less of the other?

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I’m a web developer for an early childhood non-profit, and I make a quite modest salary compared to others with the same skillset and responsibilities in less “helpful” fields.

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I don’t really like people, so I’ll take the money, thanks.

For a pay rise, I’d be happy to be less helpful.

Yes there are many people who help doctors to do their work, but as someone who has been to doctors and has relatives who are doctors, they do actually do stuff to people for those people’s benefits. Procedures and skills that take years to learn.

These days doctors are pushed to spend less time with patients because they get paid per visit or procedure not for the actual time they spend. And medical insurance in the United States is a huge monstrous market externality that completely warps the cost of care and the compensation of those who work in health care.

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So the more harm I cause to other people the more I deserve to be paid? That must be how people on Wall Street rationalize those bonuses.

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