I long ago gave up on “right livelihood,” concluding that it’s literally an oxymoron. This is of a piece with my conclusion that there is no possibility of monetization without value subtraction. Consquently, I’ve concluded that the least pro-social jobs are probably those dues-paying jobs for people starting out in some hypercompetitive white collar field such as financial trading or biglaw, which basically amount to hazing by sleep deprivation, and even more importantly (I think), systematic elimination of leisure time from waking hours. I think it should probably be considered a form of brainwashing. The effective altruism community mantra about it taking 10,000 hours to level up to an 80,000-hour career, I’m guessing, can only make matters worse.
But I’m a generation X slacker, so what do I know?
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