Occupational Choice, Liberal Freedom, and Social Necessity

Liberal societies aim to let citizens choose occupations freely based on talents and personal inclinations, without state or family coercion. They avoid imposing a duty to be socially productive and do not promote a detailed account of the common good, relying instead on incentives and markets to shape occupational choice indirectly. Over time, this freedom can generate social structures that disrespect people with a motivational psychology marked by strongly pro-social work. Such workers accept risky or burdensome tasks that society needs, including military, health care, elderly care, and humanitarian service, by treating personal preferences as irrelevant and responding to what people need. The resulting wrong concerns how liberal societies treat this motivational structure.

"An avowed goal of liberal societies has always been to permit citizens to make a choice about occupation freely, according to their talents, but also according to their personal inclinations, values, and preferences-unconstrained by the state, the family, or another authority. Distinct from many socialist countries, liberal states do not postulate a duty to be socially productive, and they refrain from fostering a robust, detailed view of the common good. Occupational choice, according to a liberal understanding, can only be steered indirectly by incentives and market mechanisms."

"Originally intended as a freedom from authorities, the liberal freedom of occupational choice has started to produce structures that are increasingly disrespectful to people with a particular type of motivational psychology. Willingly stepping up for work that we all need but that is especially risky or burdensome gets increasingly difficult to rationalize in the highly individualized and economically complex societies of today."

"When stepping up for such tasks, people need to take their personal preferences to be irrelevant and simply respond to what needs to be done. Work in the military, but also in health care, elderly care, or humanitarian service may involve tasks that require such an attitude. I call the problem which this attitude poses for liberal societies the problem of strongly pro-social work."

"People I call strongly pro-social workers do not necessarily have stronger pro-social preferences or interest in community than others. Instead, they take their personal preferences to be irrelevant and simply respond to what people need in taking up risky or burdensome tasks they would personally prefer to avoid. To understand the distinctive wrong which I think liberal societies commit towards strongly pro-social workers, we must first understand the fundamentally different structure of motivation and rationality"

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