The jobs that pay the most money benefit the fewest people
…and the jobs that benefit the most people pay the least.
We’re incentivized to benefit the fewest people and wonder why resources are concentrated into the fewest hands.
2024-09-06: I found this expressed in almost the exact same way in a documentary about burnout.
One of the most pernicious things about our current economic system is that the more your work benefits others in an obvious and immediate sense, the more your work has a clear and undeniable beneficial effect on other human beings, the less you are likely to get paid for it.