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"Do you have a real example of a rich person who provides no value to society?"

Paris Hilton. And she's just one of a very large number of that sort who are less well known.

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Large parts of one society think MIC is a good, but larger parts of other societies think the MIC of the first society is a bad. For the sum of military endeavors, it's a sheer waste.

Part of the problem seems to be an equivocation on "society." Does it mean human society or one particular society? Since the discussion was about "helping people" I think the first is the correct context.

Many people would disagree that MIC is a waste. Chances are, they'd calculate from that standpoint of their own society, which is cheating.

Does the same possibility exist for making money when it does no good for one particular country? There's where an unnecessary level of complexity is introduced. Do wealthy civil lawyers, for example, make a contribution to society where they're involved in a sheer tug of war? The question is controversial because you have to take into account the externalities provided by a development of the law. But the MIC example seems to me a precise example of where people get enriched without doing good. The fact that they can get many to believe they are doing good shouldn't confuse.

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Large parts of society believe the MIC is good and are happy to write them a blank check. I do not personally believe this, but it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to the analysis.

I thought you were trying to give an uncontroversial example of someone who gets paid a lot but does no good. Something that is a "gross exception" to "how helpful society views an occupation". Like the kind of hitman you implied, and not the metaphorical hitman you're backpedaling to.

My issue is that I don't think that you can systematically get rich in society without doing (or being perceived as doing) something really beneficial.

Maybe if you did something for bureaucrats that *they* needed, but was bad for society as a whole, and the whole arrangement was hidden from public view. Hmm...

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The easiest way to generate example is to pick occupations involved purely in the interested allocation of resources.

A large-scale hitman type example would be military arms manufacturers, munitions makers. The benefit they provide one set of humans is offset by the costs they impose on rivals. As Robin would say, it's a pure of war. Insofar are there still is a "military-industrial complex," there presumably are rich and powerful munitions manufacturers.

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There might be a couple of multi-millionaire hitmen who kill babies. But surely this is not characteristic of how the economy is structured.

Do you have a real example of a rich person who provides no value to society?

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Old post, but the argument is egregious--at two levels.

By participating in a society we all help each other. The amount you are paid is a (low) estimate of the value others place on your services. This estimate may have biases, but beware of too quickly assuming you know what that bias is.

A hapless student told Robin he wanted to become a doctor to "help people." Robin is insulted (for himself and the rest of us); what are we doing, hurting people? Robin delivers the ultimate Randite argument: your services are worth approximately what you're paid!

Two small problems:

1. If judged by their pay, doctors' services are helpful indeed.

2. How helpful society views an occupation is (like pay) an "estimate" of how much the services are worth. Sure there are gross exceptions, but so too with pay. (Consider a rich hit man.)

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I think that "I want to help people." has more top do with how a job feels from the inside than anything else. When I was a nurse, all of the patients who I worked with relief on me, and if I dropped the ball then they would be screwed. As a programmer, if I.drop the ball, we loose a day off work.

So in that context "I want to help people." Sounds like the polite form of: "I want other people's lives top depend on my actions." So helpful people are attracted to jobs like doctors and police officers and the military and politics. Those kinds of jobs put you in power over other people so you can signal that you aren't going to take advantage of them.

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I'm a nurse and chose to be one when I was too young to even know what my salary would be or what people thought about nurses. And before I became a licensed nurse, one of my duties at work was to change old peoples diapers- and I did that for years while making terrible money! You should have seen the looks of disgust on people's faces when I told them what I did for work. But I enjoyed the job very much and I had at least one good laugh EVERY DAY I went to work. Now tell me health care workers are just in it for the money, status, etc.! Almost every coworker I've ever had has a HUGE heart. Some people may quite possibly never understand that you can give and not expect anything in return, and you do it because it makes everyone involved feel good- including yourself once in awhile! It's not wrong to gain some satisfaction from what you chose as your profession! As for the taking someone's place in school or at the workplace, "If not me, who? And if not now, When?" -Gorbachev

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Do people who sit around all day, don't work, and eat bon bons help others?

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I think there are people who believe their existence on the planet is more valuable or more important than other peoples based on a range of group and individual differences, whether it is the type of job they do or their wealth, or their good looks or their membership of a social/cultural grouping of kind. Of course their are helping professionals driven by ego and needing to compensate their issues about how much they matter. There are always people in all occupations and in all broad social groups who towards deep insecurities and narcissism as there are "helping professionals" or members of any broad grouping of people who tend towards other personality types. Such a sweeping generalization before the argument even begins seems to reduce tue meaningfulness of the debate.

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Regarding doctors, in my experience, the "helping" motivation is strongest at the pre-med level, present but less strong in med school, and usually absent by the end of residency. There seems to be an inverse relationship between "desire to help" and "number of patients seen". Another consideration is that during this time, the individual in question changes from a teen-ager to a person frequently in the mid-thirties, reminiscent of the quote often inaccurately attributed to Churchill regarding age, liberals, and conservatives. Yes, there are many practicing doctors who volunteer their time to clinics, but it is a small percentage, and it is difficult to say whether the motivation is "helping" or "status" or "guilt assuagement" or "marketing" or "control" in each case.

Most of my colleagues chose a guild offering exclusive (but limited) benefits and guaranteed economic survival, the same as all successful guilds. The remuneration in that guild seldom is set by the doctor, and only so in practices dealing with purely elective and/or cosmetic concerns. When I was at the top of my surgical game, my per-procedure fee scale was one fourth what it was when I began practice for Medicare patients (65 and over, or disabled), and one half for privately insured patients. Free market concepts apparently do not apply, as even the wealthiest patients would not pay more for better service.

It is an obvious source of jealousy that the average doctor has a higher income and a better public image than the average economist, regardless of the actual value of the services. Hanson may be consoled that in medicine, like economics, it is not necessarily the "best and brightest" who are compensated the most.

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"If so, you are helping some by hurting others. Shame on you."

Why is the latter sentence in a Robin Hanson overcoming bias piece? It seems to me you're riding widespread bias here, not making it transparent. Shame on you Robin Hanson, for hurting my persistence odds by helping yourself to the enjoyment of a little snark. :_^(

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Clearly, you are unflappable and nothing anyone says (whether it's more logical or not) will change your opinion or your argument.

As someone working toward a CASAC degree in the "helping profession" I'd like to comment.

I agree that the helping profession is a more direct, face to face interaction. We get to see the change we make in the world in person, as we work with people day to day.

I don't think asserting the desire to help people is a bad thing. Perhaps it is egotistical to proclaim it from the rooftops, but the sentiment behind it is more altruistic in the end. I think it's fair to say that a lot of people get into the helping profession to help people, to make a difference in the world one person at a time (particularly those at the more shallow end of the helping pool: social services workers, substance abuse counselors, etc.). We don't get paid much, but the job is rewarding.

Other professions may provide necessary services, and may in fact change lives and help people, but it's far less measurable. You can say a movie changed your life, or a particularly nice waiter made your day. These may help a person once in awhile, but helping professionals do it every day; it's the driving intention of the profession to help.

Living in a society bent on the value of a dollar takes the focus off the importance of personal relationships; the helping profession puts the focus back on to them.

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Tirta, even if we do analysis with our best available tools, we expect our descendants will have better tools. I don't yet see how my analysis is invalidated by the fact that people have emotions, but I will leave uncertainty in my conclusions to account for all possible ways future analysis might show current analysis to be naive.

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i'm not making that claim, robin, for 'help' to me is perhaps as problematic as it is for you. i only claimed that people seem to perceive medical help as more helpful than other kinds of help, because people are less rational when being sick (or perhaps because they do value health above all else, i'm not sure). yet i have to admit that i'm not aware of any direct psychological study showing this phenomenon empirically -- although i strongly suspect that one would find such effect. i'll let you know when i encounter one, or a similar one.

i agree that the question is 'how'. but the fact that there is still a lack of ways in which to factor those cognitive-affective variables -- which existence you seem to agree on -- should not be taken as a green light for a cold, rational analysis to go through unchecked.

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Tirta, the question is *how*, if at all, to factor in considerations of emotional bias and being sick. You seem to claim that helping people with sickness is "more" help than helping them with other issues. What is the basis for this claim?

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