Economy productivity as a civic virtue

Why Mike Rowe (TV's Dirty Jobs) is righter than he knows about productivity as a virtue

Jul 08, 2025

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This is a shortened version of ‘Rowe Your (Own) Boat: Economic Productivity as Civic Virtue,’ forthcoming in Reason Papers (Oct. 2025).

Productivity isn’t everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything.
—Paul Krugman

It is widely assumed that civic virtue belongs primarily to the political sphere—voting, protesting, town halls, and so on. These public actions are seen as morally weighty because they shape the institutions that secure our rights and liberties. But what if civic virtue also resides in the private domain—specifically, in work?

Enter Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs, a TV show that celebrates those who take on the essential but unglamorous work that keeps society running. Rowe argues that hard work is a virtue worth honoring. As he puts it:

You can choose to work hard. Just as you can choose to be grateful, or thrifty, or patient, or kind… people who embrace those virtues are far more likely to succeed than those who don’t1.

Rowe is righter than he knows. Economic productivity isn’t just personally virtuous. It is a civic virtue when it contributes to the peace and prosperity of a liberal society. That includes not just farming and plumbing, but inventing, managing, and even making errors productively. Productivity makes possible the civic institutions we care most about—like due process, social stability, and rights-protecting governance.

The Wider Domain of Civic Virtue

A rough definition of civic virtue is any virtue that contributes to the peace and prosperity of a liberal society2. Voting, running for office, or working in public schools are familiar examples. But those aren’t the only ways to contribute. As philosopher Jason Brennan notes:

There are countless ways of contributing to society and the common good. One contributes one’s share… just by working at a productive job that provides goods and services others want3.

Still, we are conditioned to see politics as the central domain of civic virtue. The reasons are intuitive. Political institutions govern our lives, they allocate resources, and they make the rules we must follow. As Aristotle put it, we are ‘political animals,’ drawn to collective governance as part of our nature4. But that doesn’t mean politics reliably fosters civic virtue. It often does the opposite.

Politics Is Anything But Virtuous

In a democracy, your individual vote is highly unlikely to swing an election. This means the incentives to be informed or intellectually honest are minimal. Instead, politics rewards tribalism. Political beliefs become loyalty tests. Irrationality—if it signals the right allegiance—can be socially and even personally beneficial5.

Moreover, politics tends to be zero-sum: someone wins, someone loses, and the stakes are high. That encourages motivated reasoning, virtue signaling, and often plain dishonesty. Voters and politicians alike learn to game the system—not to find truth, but to win allies, rewards, and status6.

So, while politics may aspire to civic virtue, its structure often undermines it. That invites the question: where else might civic virtue live?

Economic Productivity as Civic Virtue

The alternative is surprisingly simple: economic productivity—that is, productive effort that enables the peace and prosperity of robust society. Consider three reasons why.

1. Productivity is Opposite Undue Burden-Shifting

Civic virtue requires not offloading your responsibilities onto others without good reason. A society in which many unduly shift their burdens—say, by freeloading or faking incapacity—will strain the productive capacities of those who don’t7.

There are cases where burden-shifting is justified: illness, disability, bad luck. But when people who could contribute choose not to, they reduce the shared surplus needed to sustain civic society.

Every healthy liberal society needs people who choose to contribute economically when they could have coasted. Their effort funds everything from social programs to scientific research. The less that is produced, the less there is to go around.

2. Prosperity Enables Better Options

The rights and liberties we take for granted—due process, presumption of innocence, legal counsel—are expensive. Trials require judges, lawyers, investigators, and infrastructure. In a poor society, it is far cheaper to punish swiftly and harshly—often without confirming guilt. In wealthier societies, civic justice becomes viable8.

Or consider infrastructure: roads, bridges, water treatment, and public health aren’t free. They require not only taxation, but a productive base large enough to sustain them. The same is true for social trust. As political philosopher Brian Kogelmann notes:

When you establish inclusive institutions and bestow dignity on the bourgeoisie, growth almost certainly occurs… and you need growth to maintain those moral commitments9.

In short, moral advancement—like civic decency—is easier to afford when there’s more to go around.

3. Wealth Buys Room to Innovate and Improve

Productivity doesn’t simply buy food, medicine, or legal defense. It buys the right to fail. A prosperous society can afford to innovate, take risks, and learn from mistakes. That is why F. A. Hayek emphasized the value of accidents—productive failures from which civilization learns:

The advance and even the preservation of civilization are dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen10.

Without that buffer, mistakes become fatal. In leaner societies, there’s no tolerance for trial and error—only survival. That’s a recipe for stagnation, not moral or technological progress. Not only that, but the right kind of mistakes that reveal and drive paths to innovation.

Why Mike Rowe Is Righter Than He Knows

Rowe champions hard work and honest labor as personal virtues. But they’re more than that. When directed toward goods and services that sustain a peaceful and prosperous society, they become civic virtues.

Fixing HVAC systems, harvesting crops, managing supply chains, or writing code for medical records may not feel ‘civic.’ But they are. They create the material foundation for the rights and institutions liberal societies depend on. Productivity makes possible the very politics that often gets all the moral credit.

So, we need political engagement and we need economic productive. Without it, civic life is that much less dynamic, economically and morally speaking.

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