Is it immoral to work for the state?

[MacD]

A bit about myself: I am a college student. Recently I changed my major from history education to social work. Over the past couple years, my political and philosophical identity has gone through major changes. When I entered college, I was a democratic socialist. By the time I ended community college I was an anarcho-syndicalist. After discovering Stefan and Freedomain Radio, I resisted at first but today I consider myself an anarcho-capitalist, mainly due to greater understanding of the non-aggression principle.

 

This summer I got a job working at a youth home for at-risk teenagers. It is tough work, but I love it. It has made me interested in pursuing this type of work as a career. The organization I work for is privately owned, but gets a large amount of funding from the state of Indiana. Stefan has talked about state workers and their dependency on the problems they are supposed to be solving. However, everyone I work with has genuine interest in helping the kids that come through with personal responsibility, keeping them in school, and getting them the counseling they need.

 

I feel like I am doing good by these kids; a lot of them have very few positive adult figures in their lives. One thing that does bother me is that, if I do pursue a career in social work, I will probably either work for the state or a state-sponsored organization. Since taxation is the initiation of force, and the agencies I would/currently work for are funded with taxes, is it immoral or unethical to work for these agencies?

[Kevin Beal]

No, it's not immoral.

 

Immoral actions are actions we are justified in the use of violence in order to prevent: murder, theft, fraud, rape, etc.

 

You aren't stealing from the taxpayers. You are, however, profiting from stolen money. This is where it starts to get a little grey, because while it's not immoral, that doesn't make it neutral either.

 

No moral theory can work which condemns a person for what they can't avoid. We all use the roads, go to public school and use resources that are funded using tax dollars. It's conceivable that we could avoid that by living in the woods or something, but that would be a ridiculous standard to hold a person to. We all profit from stolen money in some way, despite our desire not to. We'd almost certainly choose voluntary alternatives to public school, the roads etc, if they were readily accessible.

 

But at the same time it's not exactly immoral to making the weapons that get used to kill people overseas (for example), but it would certainly be something worth condemning. So, how do we measure this to some degree from using the roads all the way to supplying arms to the military?

 

Universally Preferable Behavior (UPB) makes some important distinctions to help answer questions like these. In it there are 7 moral categories which we can place actions in, where the logical consequences of each can make something worthy of condemnation or not. They are as follows:

 

 

 

It is good (universally preferable and enforceable through violence, such as “don’t murder”).

It is aesthetically positive (universally preferable but not enforceable through violence, such as “politeness” and “being on time”).

It is personally positive (neither universally preferable nor enforceable, such a predilection for eating ice cream).

It is neutral, or has no ethical or aesthetic content, such as running for a bus.

It is personally negative (predilection for not eating ice cream).

It is aesthetically negative (“rudeness” and “being late”).

It is evil (universally proscribed) (“rape”).

 

Aesthetically positive is like another name for virtue, and aesthetically negative is like another name for vice. Some standard virtues are: honesty, integrity, courage, justice, etc. Vice includes actions which work against virtue.

 

If you find yourself getting into situations, by virtue of your job, that incentivize actions which are dishonest, lacking in integrity, cowardly or unjust, then we can have some basis to say that you should not be working there in a somewhat objective way (i.e. say that it is lacking virtue).

 

My personal concern would be that it could end up being personally negative. If so, I'd have no basis on which to condemn you, but if you end up in a position where you can't (for example) condemn the unjust behavior of the state of Indiana, then that is not great.

 

I would suggest listening to FDR982 The Government turns Everyone into a Tool... to better understand how receiving gov't can fuck up the incentives you operate from.

 

I would also suggest reading up on UPB (free book!) written by the host with the most: Stef. I would pay special attention to these sections:

 

• UPB: Optional and Objective
• Initiation
• The Third Test: Theft
• Capacity
• Aesthetically Negative
• The Gray Areas
• Government

It's a big topic, but hopefully this helps point you in a useful direction!

 

Good for you for helping these kids. Some people never meet a truly empathetic person invested in their success. It's admirable

Also, welcome to the boards!

[MacD]

Thanks for the warm welcome! At this point, I am learning a lot about the good, bad, and ugly about the social work business. We have a really good judge in Evansville who tries to get kids put our facility when they'd benefit more from us than a punitive environment. One pressing downside is that the state will audit us annually and tries to cut our funding wherever they can. The "ugly" is that a lot of people have a negative impression about the kids in the program; some are abuse victims, some are one mistake away from going to jail, but most are a mix of the two.

 

I would like to think these kids would get the shelter and treatment they need in a free society, but the stigma they carry makes me nervous for them.

 

As for UPB, I've watched a few of Stef's videos on it, but it's still on my to-read list. I love his other books, though.