Quoting Art Carden:
In my profession as an economics professor and through churches I have attended, I've been around a lot of people who want to "make a difference." They almost inevitably equate "making a difference" with "working for a government or a non-profit organization like a church that is dedicated, at least in part, to helping poor people." Rarely do I hear anyone say "I want to work in accounts receivable for a company that makes faucets--or worse, a company that just sells faucets and other sundries."
I get this a lot. My interest in church is far smaller than Carden’s, but I have attended enough to be familiar with the sentiment.
But here's the irony: I suspect that you will probably make a bigger, albeit harder to see, difference in the lives of many by working in accounts receivable for Amalgamated Faucets …
… By helping the faucet company run a leaner operation, you can help them expand and improve their faucet offerings. This in turn helps people wash their hands carefully. This in turn reduces disease transmission. Reduced disease transmission means less tragedy and higher productivity. It might not seem like much, but congratulations: by helping Amalgamated Faucet produce more, better, and cheaper faucets, you're reducing the probability that someone, somewhere gets sick.
Is it romantic? No. Will people write books about you and give you humanitarian achievement awards? No. Will you be recognized in church? Sadly, almost certainly not. …
Here’s the thing. People, like one niece specifically but like dozens of people I meet generally every year have their heart in the right place.
But the corollary to saying “I want a job where I can help people” is that other people have jobs where they don’t help people. Who is that exactly? And if you can’t address specifically how other peoples’ jobs hurt people, perhaps more realism is in order about who’s helping them.
More generally, think about reciprocal gift-giving: I give you a gift, and you give me one in return. This is a form of helping people too. And when you help someone, typically they return the favor. The way you know you’ve helped someone is that they give you something in return. Thankfully, this behavior is very common in the employment sector, suggesting that most people’s job do help someone (often long chains of people). I really think what well-meaning people are willing to do is help someone who can’t give much in return: they’re not interested in the absolute amount they receive, but in the amount that is given relative to what the giver has. Returning full circle to religion, this is the lesson of the widow’s mite. I think it’s fair, and perhaps noble, to take this to heart … just be wary of the board strokes implied by “helping people”, and the collateral damage that does to the efforts of others.
BTW: On a slightly different note, there’s a huge campaign on to get healthcare professional to wash their hands more often. Notice the victory of romance over realism: it’s important that the saintly doctor wash their hands, but the people who make faucets, or install or repair them, or fill the soap dispensers, or watch the doctors from afar to keep tabs on their hand-washing … not so much.