Social value of work: factors to consider

Your capacity to help people through your work depends heavily on the job that you take. Some professions help people a great deal, others help people to a slight degree, others don't help people at all on balance, and others harm people on balance. Some things to consider when thinking about how much social value you can contribute in a given job are:

• The effect of your product on customer's lives — How much does your product help the people who buy what you produce, relative to how much they pay for it? Does it dramatically improve their lives? Is it a convenience that they could do without? Does buying it make their lives worse?
• Positive externalities — Does your product indirectly benefit people other than those who buy it?
• Negative externalities — Does your product indirectly harm people other than those who buy it?
• Replaceability — Is your work something that nobody else would do as well as you can?

I've elaborated on these considerations below, and you can read about how they apply to various careers under [Case studies of social value of work]

The effect of your product on customer's lives

Some jobs benefit customers enormously. For example, doctors who screen patients for breast cancer can recognize breast cancer at an early stage when it's most treatable, saving patient's lives.

Some jobs benefit customers slightly. For example, a professional gardener might improve customer's lives by making their environment more pleasant, but not on the level of saving their lives.

Some jobs harm customers on balance. This is arguably true of casino workers, who enable compulsive gambling addiction, which can ruin people's lives.