Great question the answer is pretty much no.

Either you live with the guilt or you change your moral framework to make it not bad.

Thr unsavory businesses are paying a premium for being unsavory. There are SOME people who will not work there, which reduces the size of the labor pool and drives prices up. There are others who can be bought, for a price, and that also drives prices up.

Industries with neutral or beneficial impacts on society do have this pressure, so the wages are lower. Simple supply and demand.

This is where I believe Karl Marx’s concept of alienation becomes more of a blessing than anything else. Marx argued, broadly speaking, that under capitalism, workers are doomed to feel disconnected (alienated) from the work they do. I think this disconnection works wonders in the kinds of jobs where what you do has negative consequences. Employees can pull a Nuremberg: “I’m just following orders,” and that way, even though they’re technically helping to create more harm in the world, from their point of view, they were just doing their job. Surviving, like all of us.

It is a clear conscience achieved through self-emptying.

(There’s also the case of people who honestly enjoy causing harm in the world, but that’s a separate issue.)

I left my industry because it made me question my morals daily. It’s not worth the money

I can’t. One of my job requirements is that I need to work someplace I think is at least neutral, or is good. So far it’s only been neutral and I am ok with that.

I do think some people can be a force for good in a bad place but I am not strong enough to do that.

Edit to add an example - I heard a story about a guy working in corrections - a prison warden - who was working to change the system from punitive to remedial, and had reduced recidivism by a huge amount, like it’s 5%, compared to 50% in most of the nation. I think he is a good person in an evil industry (the American prison industry). Randy Liberty. Not kidding, that is his real name.

People will literally do anything for money.

I have a friend who worked relatively high in big tobacco. He rationalized that his job is going to exist no matter what, and that if he takes it, he will be able to benefit and do something about it. I don’t know what he meant by doing something, but it didn’t seem to eat at him. But either way he only worked there for about 2 years before getting recruited somewhere else

You’re supposed to feel at the very least uncomfortable with it if your involvement/impact is minimal. And you should carry that guilt for as long as you’re there since the least you can do is feel bad about it. And ofc, once you don’t, you’ve lost your moral north and you become one more of them… Maybe try to steal a little or even sabotage things discreetly?

You can’t solve systems by focusing on individuals.

None of us a free moral agents. We’re surrounded by systems of family, culture, and law that compel and coerce us. And all of that is built in to the signifiers “employment” and “labor”. It’s incoherent to slice off a traunch of all these interconnected systems, strip it of all context, and pretend it’s a free moral choice.

Changing systems requires collective action. Individuals are weak and the Western obsession with individualism is no coincidence.

yes, with the right conscience a person can feel good about anything they do. Maybe not with your conscience or my conscience, but this falls under the “everybody’s different” category.

I have foundthat its pretty hard to find a job that doesnt have some form of ethical concern, whether its animal welfare and factory fsrming, the single use plastic crisis, exploitation of immigrants, perpetuating and expanding the use of fossil fuels, polluting in other ways etc… in fact its usually a combo of many of these.

Like a pharma company that produces a billion kilos of plastic waste every month, but on earth day its all about the workers carrying a fucking jar all week to measure their personal garbage production and see how they can reduce it!

“Sometimes I think the world would be better off without me. That’s why I have to keep living.”

I work in IT. Some days are better than others. Framing seems to be key to keeping my psyche intact.

I constantly wrestle with the environmental impact of this field. More so now than ever. Everything that goes into consumer and professional electronics generates a lot of waste, and as a professional, I’ve had my hands on more systems than the average home user.

I also do not work at any FANG company, nor for anyone in surveillance like Palantir or Flock. Besides, I don’t get invited to those parties.

Everyone in IT has contributed to both negative social and environmental impacts in some way. Some, much more than others. AI has thrown gasoline on the fire, but we still have the same problems as before: pointless commutes, e-waste, planned obsolescence, power-hungry software, enriching the rich, and so on.

Meanwhile, (without doxxing myself) I work at a company that helps their customers do good things.

I think that’s where I keep my conscience clear for the most part: I’ve made decisions that place me in a relatively better place, with some sense of karmic balance that tips towards better than it is bad. Telling oneself “it could be worse” certainly seems fragile - and it is - but it is what it is.

I’ll add that, in a capitalist system, even the concept of employment is coercive and not 100% voluntary. Also, the way companies proceed in this environment exploits the built-in demand for employment, while exploiting and extracting all kinds of things, both real and virtual. IMO, this puts the most (if not all) of economy on trial for ethical concerns, so we’re only left “how (non)ethical is your workplace?”

The world is complex and the vast vast majority of people in the world are wonderful humans. The closest thing we have to super villains are people like Martin Shkreli, Jeffrey Epstein, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. and those kinds of folks only make up 0.01% of the world’s population. If someone’s actions appear to be evil then it’s far more likely that you just don’t understand their perspective. And you don’t have to agree with someone’s perspective to understand their perspective. For example, maybe someone is working for a defence contractor designing new missiles because they were personally affected by a terrorist attack. I can understand that perspective while also believing that better missiles won’t reduce terrorism. I’m not excusing bad behaviour, I’m explaining why other people might not see their actions as bad behaviour and will have a clear conscience.

I’m gonna be real with it. As long as the money is good I don’t really care about negativity affecting others / planet / future. 🤷‍♂️

It’s a dog eat dog world. My survival or ability to survive supersedes my care of others. As long as I can pay for the roof over my head and food I’m my stomach, other people don’t matter to me.