The thing is, I’m not sure any one of us is “kind” either way (rich or poor) to begin with. We all are kind to some and an asshole to others, based on their demographics, or their background, or our closeness to them.
We all also want to (selfishly) live a good life, for many of us that requires us to be rich. On the small scale, this amounts to beating your competitors in climbing the corporate ladder, on the larger scale, this amounts to beating your competitors in the world stage. I don’t believe a truly kind person can get anywhere far if becoming financially “successful” is the ultimate goal. If it’s not your goal, then good for you, but even then I’m sure you’re not kind or honest all the time. Nobody is.
I agree that it is complicated, due to darwinian competition, due to blissfully paying other people to do evil for you, due to local mores and laws.
I’m not saying it’s simple to see what’s right or exactly what’s most wrong Rather I think your friend is oversimplifying, by declaring business to be a morality free zone.
The thing about morality is it’s invisible or whatever, so it’s easy to just say “hey I screwed my neighbor last night because morals don’t apply on Tuesdays.”
Well I’m a fellow so what I currently think is irrelevant. Yes consequences do matter. Any good actuary would weigh the cost/benefit of doing anything. But more importantly, there is a cost, and there is a benefit.
I think you need a pretty extreme view of success to posit that one needs to be unkind to achieve it then. If an actuary reaches FCAS and merely does his best within his role and gets ahead I don’t see any reason to conclude he has been any less than neutral to those around him and yet he has achieved success. Separately, that said, I also don’t think it’s unkind to offer the market wage for a job and to hire someone who accepts it, even if others would argue that wage is too low. In fact it’s probably more unkind to not offer the job at all.
There is of course a cost-benefit line for everyone, but I’d like to think being unkind has a pretty steep personal cost in the whole personal pride factor.
We all like to live outside the gray area. But life is mostly gray area.
I don’t think any drug lord grew up wanting to kill people. They mostly became that because they were poor and wanted a better life for their family. An extreme example, yes, but most just live mini versions of that.
Are we talking about cheating still or literal unkindness?
I would say cheating on an exam or lying in an interview is more akin to theft. You are taking something (a job) that should go to someone else.
In this case the immorality of the action scales with how far you get ahead. So a small cheat to get far ahead is the same as a big cheat to get far ahead.
If you are doing an actual unkindness to get-ahead, then you need to add the immorality of the unkindness to the immorality of the theft.
It is a really good question. Besides being way too honest in interviews, I’ve completely screwed myself out of a few big job opportunities for moral reasons that might have paid huge dividends in retrospect.
I’ve had conversation with my colleagues about this in the past. We hadn’t really gotten that much better at our jobs (it’s actuarial after all), but the we just got better at making shit up the higher we climbed.
Uhh, mostly mean things like promising I wouldn’t pursue other opportunities while working as a temp (skipping a major career opportunity) but yeah there was a saucy case study that I won’t repeat here… (Sorry newAO)
I disagree with the premise that because perfection is impossible, it should not be the goal. Yes, we are all assholes sometimes. That doesn’t mean it’s fine to lean into being one.
How does living a good life require wealth? And how do you define being rich?
I think we disagree on pretty much everything. I have no desire to “beat” anyone at work. And honestly, the people who are always looking for the next step, always competing with me and others, forming disingenuous relationships with people for the sake of self-promotion, are people I feel the most sorry for. Do not want them on my team, would not hire them, would despise working with or for them. You will never find me speaking corporate jargon or networking for the sake of bettering only myself.
Financial success is worthless if I have no happiness. I would be fine with my career taking a natural course based on honest hard work, even if that means I never get another promotion. I make more than enough, I am happy, my family is happy; what more is there?
We don’t have to be the same person. We just have to agree there exists people like the type I describe, and a lot of them, in the world. If you don’t want to compete, fine, but you invariably become their victim as a result.
At some point, additional financial success is worthless. Sure. But I sure am happier in my gigantic house than when I lived in a 100 sqft room in NYC a decade ago. I guarantee you that even for you, your happiness has correlated with your wealth, and will likely continue to do so for some time.
I’ve lived in a gigantic house. I’m happier with my pay cut and smaller house, and more money since then has not improved my happiness at all.
My happiness is correlated with my financial health and security, not my wealth. At low income levels, those two lines are pretty much the same, but eventually they diverge. Another $50k a year would not change my financial health, or my happiness.
