Can the City be Ethical?

www.highimpactcareers.org

CAN THE CITY BE ETHICAL?

Will Crouch

Faculty of Philosophy

University of Oxford

[email protected]

www.highimpactcareers.org 2

INTRODUCTION

City careers have a bad reputation. Often, graduates are presented with a

dilemma:

High paying, exciting career?

Or an ‘ethical’ career?

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INTRODUCTION

City careers have a bad reputation.

Often, graduates are presented with a dilemma: High paying, exciting career? Or an ‘ethical’ career, in the charity sector?

I’ll show that this dilemma is ill-conceived.

I’ll show that one can do far more good through a city career than by working in the charity sector.

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Part I: How to Think about Careers Normally, we think that charity careers are the

most ethical. I’ll suggest that’s wrong, based on mistakes

regarding: indirect benefit; fungibility; marginal benefit; and harm.

Part II: How much good can you do? I’ll look at how many lives you could save. I’ll conclude that we can do a tremendous

amount to help others if we put our minds to it.

OVERVIEW OF THIS TALK

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WHAT’S THE POINT OF THINKING ABOUT THIS?

You’ll spend 70 000 hours of your life working. Career choice is one of the most important

decisions you’ll ever make.

If you’re thinking ethically, the decision is even more important.

It’s not just a critically important decision for you. It’s also a life-or-death decision for hundreds or

thousands of other people.

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PART I

HOW TO THINK ABOUT CAREERS

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THE STANDARD VIEW

According to the Standard View, the paradigm examples of ethical careers are the ‘direct benefiters’.

But consider the following story…

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Suppose that Jo becomes a doctor working in the developing world. She performs 10 life-saving surgeries every week:

THE STORY OF THE DOCTOR AND THE ALTRUISTIC BANKER

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Suppose that Lorna becomes an professional philanthropist, earns £400k/yr, and donates enough money that she pays for 10 developing-world doctors:


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That means 100 lives per week would be saved:


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DOCTORS, BANKERS, AND INDIRECT BENEFITS: THE MORAL

The banker was able to save ten times as many lives as the doctor, even though she wasn’t directly saving any lives in her career.

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DOCTORS, BANKERS, AND OPPORTUNITY COST: THE MORAL

The Moral: Ways of indirectly benefiting others, such as earning big and donating, can do much more good than directly benefiting.

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FUNGIBILITY

The previous story underestimated the discrepancy between the banker and the doctor.

The discrepancy in cost-effectiveness among different causes is huge.

And the doctor is limited in her choice about where to work. Let’s suppose she’s an HIV/AIDS specialist… 14


CHARITY COST-EFFECTIVENESS

- 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0

Cost-effectiveness (QALYs / £1,000)

Treatment of Kaposi’s Sarcoma

Antiretroviral therapy



- 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0




£20,000 / QALY barrier



- 2 4 6 8 10






- 2 4 6 8 10




Prevention of transmission during pregnancy



- 10 20







- 10 20




Distribution of condoms




- 20 40








- 20 40






Education for high-risk groups


FUNGIBILITY

By choosing to work on the right areas, the doctor can multiply her impact by a factor of hundred.

But she’s still limited to HIV/AIDS reduction.

In contrast, money is completely fungible. It can be used to further any cause, including those far more cost-effective than HIV/AIDS reduction: 23



- 20 40









- 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500







Treatment for parasitic infections


FUNGIBILITY

So the altruistic banker can target her donations only to the very best causes; whereas the doctor is much more limited.

Moreover, if she changes her views about which causes do the most good, the banker can easily change where her donations go; in contrast, the doctor is tied down to one specific cause.

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FUNGIBILITY: THE MORAL

The Moral: Do something which is flexible with respect to causes.

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MARGINAL BENEFIT

The story underestimated the discrepancy between the banker and the doctor for a second reason.

This is because: had Jo not become that doctor, someone else would have.

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MARGINAL BENEFIT

In contrast, if Lorna had not earned and donated the money, the result would have been fewer doctors.

If she hadn’t become an altruistic banker, all 100 people would have died.

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MARGINAL BENEFIT: THE MORAL

The Moral: Do something that wouldn’t have happened anyway.

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The most obvious objection to my suggestion is: what if the career you pursue causes harm? Or supports an evil system?

Surely that’s the reason why it’s not ethical to go into the city.

CAUSING HARM?

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Even granting the premise that a typical city career causes harm, that doesn’t mean that it’s unethical for you as a professional philanthropist to pursue a city career.

You need to consider what would happen if you don’t take the job.

If someone else would be doing the same evil work anyway, then you don’t help anyone by refusing the job.

CAUSING HARM?

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To illustrate this, let’s consider an extreme example.

Suppose that the typical manager in a munitions factory causes 10 deaths, by enabling more soldiers to fight in unjust wars:

CAUSING HARM?

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Now suppose that you pursue this career path, for the high pay.

You, being altruistically minded, will almost certainly cause fewer deaths than the typical manager of this factory:

CAUSING HARM?

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Far from harming people, the world is benefited in virtue of you working for a munitions factory. This is a benefit independent of the good that your donations do.

CAUSING HARM?

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This example isn’t just hypothetical…

The previous story described Oskar Schindler, a war hero who ran Nazi munitions factories and used his earnings to pay for 1200 Jewish lives.

CAUSING HARM?

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The Moral: High-impact careers needn’t also involve making people worse off.

CAUSING HARM?

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Moreover, if you oppose the current capitalist system, the best thing you can do is take a city job.

Then you can fund many anti-capitalist campaigners.

Finally, any bad aspects of your career need to be weighed against the good that you do.

So let’s turn to that.

SUPPORTING AN EVIL SYSTEM?

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PART II

HOW MUCH GOOD CAN YOU DO?

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HOW MUCH GOOD CAN YOU DO?

Bearing in mind the morals of part 1…

And bearing in mind that you can save a life for £300…

How much good can you do?

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Let’s suppose you pursue a lucrative career and donate 50% of your earnings, over your lifetime.

By pursuing certain careers, you can make a lot of money….

MONEY-MAKING

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Found a Business

Own a Hedge Fund

Estimates of average lifetime salary, salaries from prospects.ac.uk or contacts, my estimates of career progression

£21,500 £48,000 £70,000

£230,000

£1,500,000

£740,000

£1,250,000

£700,000

£120,000

£720,000

£210,000£90,000

£50,000£45,000

Med

ian S

alary

Privat

e Sch

ool T

each

er

Tutor

ial F

ellow

1st Y

ear i

n Ban

king

High-p

aid a

cade

mic GP

Low p

aid

barri

ster

Assoc

iate

Consu

ltant

Inve

stmen

t Ana

lyst

Mag

ic Circ

le Soli

citor

High-p

aid B

arris

ter

Prop

Trade

r

Bankin

g Dep

t Hea

d

Compa

ny C

EO

MONEY-MAKING

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Some career paths offer a small chance of hugeearnings. e.g. founding a business

– billions? 25mn lives?

HOW MUCH COULD YOU MAKE?

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Other career paths offer a good salary with high confidence. e.g. GPs can earn ~£3.6m, 2.25x the charity

worker.

Others offer good salaries with high certainty and small chances of very high income. e.g. the starting salary in finance/consulting

(£40-50k) is roughly equal the lifetime average of an academic or teacher. And there’s a tail…


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$0

$500,000

$1,000,000

$1,500,000

$2,000,000

$2,500,000

$3,000,000

$3,500,000

$4,000,000

Source: http://www.careers-in-finance.com/ibsal.htm

BANKING: OVER A 30 YEAR CAREER

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If you level-out low in the ranks of: management consultants; investment

analysts; investment bankers; traders; barristers

Your lifetime earnings would be ~£6m. 10,000 lives saved and 4x the income to live

on.

At the top end, lifetime earnings can reach well beyond £20m (~10x the charity worker). By donating 50%, you could save 30 000

lives. And you’d still be a multi-millionaire.


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INFLUENCING OTHERS

Moreover, your donations might not be your biggest impact.

Consider, for example, the canny persuader.

As well as being a professional philanthropist herself, over a few years she also persuades 10 of her colleagues to become professional philanthropists.

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INFLUENCING

Over the course of their careers: A altruistic banker can easily save ten thousand

lives. A canny persuader could persuade convince one

hundred people to become altruistic bankers. So one canny persuader could save over one

million lives.

Which would look like this:

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Turning Ideas into Action

High Impact Careers is launching in January.

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We already have members who work, or are about to start working, in:

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Banking

Investment Entrepreneurship

Law



We’re researching which careers enable one to do the most good.

We’re publicising our findings and advocating that people put our ideas into practice.

We’re building a community of people who share our aims. We’ll help one another to be successful in our chosen high impact careers.

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CONCLUSIONS: THE MORALS• Earning big and donating

can do more than directly benefiting.

Benefit Indirectly

• Some causes do hundreds of times more good per pound than others.

Give Wisely

• Do something that wouldn’t have happened anyway.

Don’t be Replaceable

• High-impact careers needn’t also harm the world.

Understand Harm

• You can have a both a high-flying lifestyle and a massive impact.

No Need to Sacrifice 60


FINAL CONCLUSION

You can do huge amounts of good if you really aim for it. But the means to that end are not intuitive.

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If you are convinced to any extent by the arguments given above, please send an email to [email protected]

www.highimpactcareers.org

Can the City be Ethical?

Education

Transcript of Can the City be Ethical?