The crisis of ethics in the United States
I'm increasingly bothered in the last few years in the crisis of ethics in the United States government. It isn't very important to the leaders, and it isn't very important to the voters. I don't think it is a "conservative vs liberal" issue. It isn't about religion. It is about basic morality and doing what is best for a functioning society.
I think about ethics more about once a year when my job has everyone take a small course on ethics. There is a lot of basic and obvious stuff in the course, but a big part of it is that even the appearance of conflicts of interest should be avoided. And I'm sure if this is important for the general workforce, it should be even more important for public figures.
I'm well aware that the government has done unethical things in the past, and some of them were horrific. But I don't remember a time when unethical behavior has been flaunted so openly. The president is fundamentally unethical. He constantly lies and takes open bribes and enriches himself at the expense of the proper functioning of the government. The supreme court is fundamentally unethical and barely tries to conceal taking bribes. The president's political party openly ignores their duty to hold the president accountable for crimes, and participates in them, including sedition. The top leaders of businesses and the press have been obviously captured by money and corruption.
For years we were concerned about "dark money" and who was funding the propaganda and disinformation. Well now we have the richest person in the world openly buying an election and taking over fundamental functions of the government.
This crisis of political ethics is a direct result of a crisis of ethics in all parts of society. I think it flows back and forth like a disease. The voters do not hold the leaders accountable because the voters themselves are not ethical. I don't think supporters of Trump are completely the victims of propaganda. I think they made an unethical choice for selfish reasons. Part of ethics is taking responsibility for making sure you have the correct information when you make a choice. I'm not sure that most are capable of learning that the price of eggs is worth the collapse of being able to trust each other and make progress as a society.
By the way, I think a lot of us are hoping that this open feeding frenzy of greed and dishonesty is part of a pendulum that swings back and forth. But I'm reminded that in 1977 Jimmy Carter was elected to help restore ethics to the presidency. He only served one term as president and was replaced by a highly unethical person who was supported by highly unethical people who created a right-wing propaganda network of talk radio and Fox News.
The Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it" has a great deal of explanatory power when applied to ethics. People don't necessarily want to do evil, they just don't want to be impoverished through doing the right things consistently.
What's the worst is when people choose evil when they have so many other options available to them. Like all of the skilled engineers working for the Military Industrial Complex, or on parasitic software platforms. These people would not end up on the street if fired. They'd have a couple months off, a mild shake up to their life, and soon be back in industry elsewhere.
Sadly getting less true by the day in this current economy. It's hitting Software Engineers now, but it may come for the more physical realms in time with AI.
For software engineers I think it's a combo of:
I think it'll get better soon. For people that graduated in this market slump things could be more bleak as employers may wrongly judge them for their difficulty finding a job.
If AI eliminates engineering jobs pretty much any job that can be done 100% from a computer is gone. I think it'll start with lower skilled jobs. But once it's impossible to be hired as an account manager or for phone support engineers will be only a few months down the line.
I sure hope so. I've been telling myself that for 18 months now. I have contract work, so no major gaps but 2024 definitely tested my spending and savings. IDK if I can do the same for 2025.
More reason I'm trying to do a long term jump to working for myself in the long term (probably 5-7 years at this rate). Or at least specialize in such a niche that AI degradation is put off for maybe an extra decade. All those humblebrags about making 200k out of college at Google definitely won't be a thing anymore into the 2030's.
I’m surprised it’s still tough out there. From people I know in SF it sounds like big companies are still hiring just fine. One guy went from boot camp 2 years ago and just joined Meta last month. A girl I’m dating also went to Meta after a year or so at a startup. Neither seemed to have a tremendously difficult time job searching - and they’re junior.
I’m intentionally unemployed, but multiple people in my network are hiring and interested in me once I’m back in the job market. So my first and second-hand information shows that at least Silicon Valley is getting over the hiring slump.
However a friend that graduated from a good school with good grades and internships is still having difficulty. But he’s also only looking for jobs in his red state’s non-techy city.
Well, maybe SF bounced back quicker, given its tech hub.
LA is definitely still in shambles between all the entertainment layoffs and strikes. I legitimately can count the number of interviews for local positions on one hand. The jobs just aren't back yet. I got plenty of interviews for fully remote positions but for one reason or another they fell though. Ghosted, picked another candidate, some announced hiring freezes/layoffs mid-interview process, some I just bombed some technical interview. The whole 9 yards. There's just been much less callbacks compared to 2022, and a lot less respect.
For what it's worth, I work in games. Games has always been less stable than most other tech so maybe it will simply bounce back slower as well. I haven't gotten many non-games tech companies to look at me, sadly (despite older wisdom that non-games tech really respects game devs' "work ethic").
Hiringcafe.com scrapes a lot of smaller companies job postings daily and can for now allow an applicant to be among the earliest to respond to an opening.
Good luck. Someone dear to me started in game programming but has transitioned and now works for one of the biggest tech companies. His transitional job that was part of his pivot out of games was for an educational software company.
Im someone that chose evil so I can speak to this a little.
From the perspective of a young person leaving college with a fresh engineering degree, I wasnt nearly as confident as you are that things would work out and everything would be fine. I didnt want to have to move back in with my parents and the job offers werent exactly pouring in. So when a major defense contractor offered me a job where I could get experience on cutting edge tech and work in a discipline I found interesting and would pay me enough to live on my own, I jumped at the opportunity.
I stayed there for years and recently quit about a month back. I dont have a new job lined up yet. I havent made it past the screening rounds of any of the places Ive applied to yet. Im fortunate enough to not have a family relying on me so I guess you could describe this as a mild shake up in my life, but its still a very uncertain situation to be in. Maybe I will find new work within the next couple months, which would be relatively soon, but until then Im burning through my savings faster than Id like.
Its not an easy situation to volunteer for, even if its easier than other people might have it. Particularly at a time where it seems like everyone else is stressed about how the economy is so hard on them and its a struggle to get by, its very enticing to have a well paying job at a stable established company that gives benefits.
Are you willing to move for a job?
Generally Im open to it, but I guess it would depend where exactly Im supposed to be going.
On the other hand, if you read history, it seems pretty easy to find things that weren't considered unethical before and now they are? This suggests that at least some ethical standards are rising.
A lot of what Trump is doing looks like undoing progress in setting higher ethical standards - which shows that they were lower before.
While I tend to agree with the OP, this is an extremely important point as well. Westerners are beyond blessed to have systems that are, in general, ethical. I've spent much of my adult life living in Africa. Here, corruption is the expected behavior from leadership. And I'm not talking about the US-style "fancy trips and maybe a job promise" corruption, but about literally siphoning the state's money into offshore accounts and subverting the system to remain president-for-life.
Even in the West, it wasn't that long ago that mankind lived under kings who believed that the peasant class (and indeed the nation!) existed to serve them. The very concept of leaders existing to promote the welfare of the people is new. President Trump, as awful as many of his decisions are, is open about trying to make America great - not about trying to install his child in the throne.
Obviously we can and should demand more. But we should also be grateful for the progress humanity has made.
I have believed for years that Elon is trying to become a king. Trump is self-serving, but within a bigoted, short-sighted, and imperialistic mindset is trying to improve America.
Well that's the propaganda part. Your informed takes are as good as your sources and critical thinking. If your trusted sources are telling you that Harris is the anti-christ and Trump will Fix inflation, that's your information. And we sadly know schools (especially in red states) have been failing our students more and more over the decades and governments slashes funding. You create a voter base who do not look past the ovious biases.
Being uninformed is a social failing, but I'm not sure it's an ethical failing. (yes, there are "informed" people who simply want to save on taxes. Definitely unethical).
Also
People are driven 100 times more on fear than ethics. Carter ended his first (and only term) trying to fix an economic problem started by Nixon that ran through Ford, and Reagan took credit for that while turning the US debt up to 11. Likewise, Reagan would not be taken to blame until his effects were felt decades later.
Even if a president is doing what's best for a country, the people will only remember how they felt under him (similar to many human interactions). Not the legacy he'd leave. That can make it harder than it already is for an elected leader to do the right thing, vs. the "popular" thing.