Yes, being competent requires effort.

It certainly feels much better being an proactive member of society rather than a self-serving arsehole though.

So, there is that.

It feels better only as long as everybody else cares too. Being the only one competent in a room of imbeciles is a terrible feeling.

Hmm, this is perhaps why we get socially-negative businesses that often have very friendly (and driven, and hard-working, and intelligent) internal cultures. Competency becomes a fault line. When it becomes obvious that a large fraction of humanity just doesn't give a shit, a small group of people who are competent and driven turn their efforts to taking advantage of people who don't give a shit. Thus creating industries like market-makers, cryptocurrency, advertising, and AI.

▲

louthy 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> It feels better only as long as everybody else cares too.

Not sure who “everybody else” is in your statement, but as someone who founded a healthcare tech platform (since sold) [1], I spent 20 years caring about the many millions of patient medical records we held and making sure my team cared too. In my mind it wasn’t optional.

I did it because:

* it’s the right thing to do

* for professional pride

* and so I could sleep at night

And, at least at the beginning, I believed a data breach could be the death knell of the company. Over time the laissez faire attitude to data protection, by the industry as a whole, made it seem like a breach would be survivable, but luckily we never tested that theory.

I still walked away from it a wealthy man. Being competent and caring about your customers (and being able to sleep at night) doesn’t have to mean failure like it seems everyone here thinks.

[1] https://www.meddbase.com/

▲

rpdillon 4 hours ago | parent [-]

People don't think caring about your customers leads to failure, but it's a lot harder than not caring, and it does seem to be the case that it is mandatory to not care if you're going to be chasing massive valuations.

We're moving from a high trust society to a low trust society, I fear. It's a tough transition.

	▲	louthy 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I realise I’m a sample size of 1, but for me caring was good for business: caring means you can empathise, if you can empathise you can understand, if you can understand you can build a better product.