Want to make the world a better place? Sell biscuits

I hear millennials want meaningful jobs that change the world. So everyone is working for charities and not for profits, sojourning to the developing world to save babies, and going into politics. They’re also overcrowding the academic job market but that’s by the by. Some are also duped into working for management consultants because apparently greed is good something, I dunno. I’m here to tell you that if you really want to make the world a better place you should sell biscuits.

What the fuck am I talking about? Economics teaches us that people demand goods that bring them maximum utility at least cost. This utility is literally “the good” in economics. And there’s nothing erroneous about this conceptualisation of the good. Try saving the children without mundane things like toothpaste and see how far you get. Economics also teaches us that firms who deliver goods at lower cost or higher quality than their competitors, or to previously unreached customers, will prosper while their competitors will go bankrupt.  

It follows then that if you can deliver something that people demand at lower cost you are doing good and making the world a better place. Hence biscuits, or toothpaste, or toilets, or tea. There is an enormous universe of goods that are basically uncontroversial (no deforestation in toilet manufacturing) and form a core part of people’s day to day existences. Make them better and cheaper!

I appreciate that these things aren’t glamorous. But that’s also gives you immense scope to kick ass. Imagine if some of the talent locked up in universities studying how giving peasants a goat effects human capital formation was released to deliver better fridges at lower cost. What a bonanza for humanity!

Now you might quickly find that nothing is entirely uncontroversial. Maybe your shampoo company uses palm oil. Maybe your carrot farmers are killing the bees with all their pesticides. Maybe your salt extraction operation is destabilising aquifers. What a fantastic opportunity to do some good by being a person of principle at the helm of one of these firms!

If good people all work for advocacy groups “raising awareness” there are few good people left over to run Tyson foods (biggest producer of chicken in the US) and decide not to use factory farming methods. All those fucks at Nike who cynically exploited Kaepernick for profit and then bent over to China were responding to a cultural space very aware of social justice issues. What’s needed is for the social justice warriors to actually work for Nike. If you hate the profit motive, you can go work for a profit-driven company and make it care about something else as well.

People seem to think that commercial firms can’t possibly do good. But it’s actually pretty obvious that they are doing good because they’re profitable. What’s less obvious is that a not-for-profit is doing good because there’s little way to check whether people demand its services. So if you want to be confident that you’re making the world a better place, go work for Lindt chocolate or something.

Now obviously there are a lot of important jobs outside the private sector. I like markets and capitalism but don't mistake me for some rabid libertarian. All I'm saying is, don't forget that mundane goods are critical to the quality of our lives. If you can make them better and cheaper, you're making lives better.