Why people work in taboo industries

What is our motivation? What is it that drives us every day to get out of bed? According to Aristotle, the answer to these questions is Eudaimonia, which roughly translates to happiness. Happiness is the main incentive for all of our actions.

We, humans, come in many shapes and forms and can have vastly different values than one another. Materialistic items, or even materialism as a whole, can be a great source of happiness. For some more than others.

One of the things that many of the taboo industries have in common, is the amount of money that is involved in them. Gun production, drug industries, tobacco, casinos, alcohol, all have an incredible amount of money going in and out all the time, which can make it rather appealing for some.

Is money the only reason to work in taboo industries?

With the money in mind, some would easily attribute this to just greed. But then again, why do people feed their greed? Because it gives them a sense of satisfaction, which ultimately leads back to happiness.

Furthermore, just like other companies, taboo industries can offer great employment benefits as well, such as being a flexible and result-oriented culture that can help a person grow as an individual, not so restrictive dress codes, not having any issues with tattoos and more. Additionally, online casinos are known as being good employers, offering great benefits such as the ability to work from home, insurance and free food, good salaries and generally offer more hospitality than what’s mostly available locally.

This was one of the experiments that European companies first undertook when they were starting to focus on outsourcing some of their departments to slightly less expensive countries. The most active countries in this regard were Norway when it was trying to diversify its economy from oil, which is why we see quite a lot of digital agencies and development companies stemming from Oslo. This naturally includes gambling companies as well, especially the ones that don’t focus on the local clientele due to the issues with the legal side of things.

The most unique approach was probably taken by Spinia, an international gaming platform. It tried to only test these new employee retention methods through its local office the Spinia.com Norway branch. In the end, the outcome of this experiment was quite clear. The retention mechanisms cost much more than just providing the basics, but in the long run it helps keep skilled employees and save much more money on training and keeping future applicants.

What is considered taboo?

Belief also plays a major role in this as well. Taboo is defined as something that is looked down upon and avoided for either religious or social reasons, meaning that whether or not something is considered as taboo will depend on where you live, or rather, the society you live in.

We live in a day and age where everything is becoming global and the number of international businesses is constantly growing. As a result, what one society might deem to be taboo, those operating it and the society where it resides might not. Luckily for these businesses, there are always exceptions in societies, where there are outliers that do not uphold the same principals as the society they live in.

Some might not even have a choice in the matter and only be working to make ends meet. It is not uncommon to see those working as strippers and prostitutes simply because they don’t have another choice, some even have a child or two that they also need to take care of.

The better question would be to ask why we even consider some of these industries as taboo, keyword being some. It is pretty obvious as to why drug production, human trafficking, scams and alike are considered taboo and socially unacceptable.

On the other, gaming, gun production and the oldest profession in the world are not as vivid as to why they should be considered unacceptable, as there are rather compelling arguments both for in favor of and against them.

Maybe it’s time we took another look at the subject, took in all of the arguments, thought about it ourselves and made up our minds as to what should and should not be acceptable, or in other words, taboo, how it affects others around us and why we should stop people from partaking in events that do not bring harm.