So yeah, I can also see auditors not wanting to wear their IRS swag...especially during tax season.
I also thought about how the money for my project came from coercion - the customer had no option to cancel the service we provided them, or to select a provider who gives them a better deal, or to simply manage their welfare and insurance by themselves (the biggest expenses of welfare state). My coworkers would talk about tax payers in a demeaning tone - as if they rightfully owed us something.
After a few months if thinking I followed the gut feeling and quit. I encourage anyone working for their “public sector” and especially tax departments to think about the morality of your work, and remember that life is like 80 years if you’re lucky, so spend it on productive and useful things - not the kind of parasitic work that happens at IRSs around the world
But... they do? Tax payers use public services every day.
I get what you’re saying but if someone opted to not pay taxes surely it wouldn’t be fair for them to drive on public roads, or use public transit? Or drink water provided by city-maintained pipes? How on earth would you enforce that? If someone wished to live a life where they used absolutely zero tax payer funded things how would they even start?
> I encourage anyone working for their “public sector” and especially tax departments to think about the morality of your work
Many years ago I worked for a local government authority. It’s honestly some of the most rewarding work I’ve done before or since. I created pages and backend tools for people to look up trash collection, how to vote, what’s going on at their local recreation centres, so on. All of those things played a part in creating community. And yes, they were paid for by taxes. Which meant no ads, no up sell, no invasive tracking, no monetisation to worry about. I could just make a tool that served people.
The tools I created are probably already long gone, but the community still exists. When I’m old I don’t think I’ll have the slightest regret about the work I did. The two years I spent at a startup, burning myself out to create a product that failed and has since vanished from the earth? I’ll regret that more.
The flip side of what you speak of is the force and coercion required to fund all these nice things.
I’ll use my country as an example: a family father may earn €4600/month (a good salary indeed!) but after income tax and “employment fee” receive €2650. When they spend, they pay a 25% sales tax (VAT). This means he gets to spend about €1700 of the €4600 value he creates. (Source: https://www.ekonomifakta.se/Fakta/Skatter/Rakna-pa-dina-skat...)
So as a back of the envelope calculation, you could say that if a government project costs €2650x2, one “effective” expert slave labourer is used for it.
And the moral issue is this: these men (main tax funding group) must therefore, in order to fund their families, work more than otherwise, and not see their children. Their wives must often work too, and the obvious solution is to leave the kids in (government) daycare - which effectively is a daily abandonment trauma. The work I did for the government had a direct effect of children not seeing their fathers and mothers, but their upbringing being outsourced to the state. I think this is such a moral ugliness, I can have no part in it any more.
Donations to public interest organizations works a bit like this. Part of the donation is removed from your revenue so it's like sending tax money directly to things you believe in.
What can't we take this seriously? There was a right wing terror attack just days ago, rhetoric all over the internet is filled with imagery of violence and revolt and retribution. And all anyone wants to talk about is the spin directed in the other direction about who is culpable, and whether or not content moderation and censorship are the same thing, and whether or not it actually constituted a coup.
But, people got hurt and killed on Wednesday, and the same communities continue to threaten the same kind of thing. Is it so hard to believe that people at Facebook or Twitter or wherever, who are geeks just like us, are genuinely afraid right now?
I'll take my downvotes now, thanks.
The person you replied to didn't suggest otherwise.
You seem to be ranting at someone who is just pointing out that being associated with Facebook is much like being associated with the IRS... another very unpopular and potentially dangerous job.
Obviously physical violence in reaction to non-physical action(s) is completely uncalled for. People shouldn’t be afraid to work for Google, Facebook and Twitter for fear of physical retribution. They should be utterly ashamed and embarrassed to though.