An extreme proviso; yet to be seen in the real world. Don't confuse 'protecting the USA' with 'protecting US interests'. Don't confuse 'brainwashed drivel ' with 'sound thinking' either.
by any legitimate standard bureaucrats and politicians would have to be at the absolute bottom. their value to society is not only nil but actually negative.
"by any legitimate standard bureaucrats and politicians would have to be at the absolute bottom. their value to society is not only nil but actually negative." Couldn't agree more. What about entertainers? Hollywood and sports celebrities, are they worth their pay?
Traders would be good. Long term investors would be even better. And national guard on top of it all.
IMO the most important profession, and definitely the most valuable (or destructive) to society, is political leadership. Poor political leadership results in either your country being conquered and potentially wiped out e.g. Carthage, Aztecs/Incas; or it being independent but turning into a complete hellhole and/or exterminate its own people e.g. USSR, Zimbabwe, N Korea, Cambodia etc; or it vastly underperforming its potential e.g. China, Brazil, India. The next most important is the armed forces. If you have a crap army and generals and an enemy has a great one, you are dead meat. Everything else is pretty much secondary. Some people mention things like police or doctors. They forget that up until Robert Peel, most countries didn't actually have any police force. So for all but 200 years of human history, *police didn't exist*. We got by reasonably with just vigilantism and court-appointed bailiffs. Ditto with doctors. Up until around the 17th century, treatment by a doctor actually *increased mortality*, because most of their treatments were harmful e.g. leeching, blood-letting and so on. Again, humans existed for thousands of years without any competent doctors. Sure, both of them provide a very useful service. But N Korea has doctors and police, and I wouldn't want to live there. The high seas have no doctors and no police, and I'd be fine sailing round the world for a year or two. Saudi Arabia or Iran would be better off with no police than its current police force.
Really? Let's take the government of a western democracy, for example the USA, and imagine transferring it in exchange for the government of, say, N Korea. In each case the government will have absolute power. Do you think for a moment that the USA under N Korean dictatorial leadership for 10 years would do anything other than become one of the worst places to live on the planet? Do you think that N Korea governed by the current US Congress, president, and supreme court would do anything other than improve massively from its current status? Compare the fates of Nigeria and Singapore since independence 50 years ago - pretty much the entire difference is down to differing quality of political leadership. Can you think of any other job that can make such a huge difference, whether positive or negative, to the quality of people's lives?
I think Scientists and Entrepreneurs are likely a lot higher up in the grand scheme of things than politicians or the military.. but in 3rd world countries I guess being a scientist or an entrepreneur is a kind of luxury...
How about the value to society of lazy academics/communists who do nothing but write these kind of papers? btw this is just Marx done all over again, the labor theory of value has been shown to be crap, doesn't stop these brilliant 'think tanks'- surely that must be a joke...
+1 "Fairness", a subjective word means different things to different people. You are worth what ever u can get your hands on legitimately, its that simple. How can a trader think this way, our job contributes almost nothing to society. For that matter what the hell do most journalists contribute to society, opinions skewed by their political alignment? What do athletes, actors, singers, entertainers contribute to society, nothing of tangible value. How about business though, they contribute virtually all products and services, and the chips fall where they fall, so what is the problem with how they compensate their employees? I have a huge problem with the bailouts, should not ever happen, those massive banks should have went tits up. That is real wealth redistribution (and natural).