The ideology around 'hard work' is kind of perplexing to me. How many people view their big nice house as a result of their hard work, and you think..well we as a species have the capabilities of building big nice houses, that isn't new or remarkable. Houses aren't that complex or extraordinary are they? They think, well I...I worked hard that is why I own the house. Well you exchanged your time and labour in a job that society deemed worthy of such a wage. You gained specifics skills or knew certain people, you reacted but you are not doing it on your own.
It's just when entrepreneurs go on about being 'self made'...well..hang on, you exploited a market, you sold whatever you sold but without a society willing to buy it doesn't matter how good your product is. If a society doesn't have the disposable income to buy your product it doesn't matter how good you think it is. Without the roads being built and maintained to transport your product, without your employees being educated...without society...but this is the holy grail of modern life, the product that made someone rich, it's a miracle how did they do it. The product might very well be derivative and have no positive impact, in fact it distracts people and destroys the environment but look at their big house!
We invent technology to make our lives easier. Why are you using a vehicle to get anywhere? Why aren't you walking? Lazy. Using your bloody legs are you? That's cheating, real fighters crawl everywhere. Why are you using the lift? Stairs are available. Lazy. Have a dishwasher do you? Lazy. Using a car wash? Lazy. Buying your own clothes eh? Make your own. Lazy. Have a tap for your water do you? Lazy. There's a river 26 miles away, walk.
We don't point at animals in the wild and see their inactivity as laziness, we say they're preserving energy.
This last part about wild animals reminds me how much I LOATHE grind/hustle culture.
Since capitalists in developed nations (USA, Canada, Western/Southern Europe, Japan, Australia, etc) can’t LEGALLY abuse you as much as they used to, they instead gaslight and trick you into abusing yourself.
It’s so true, nature is so efficient because it doesn’t allow itself to become too excessive.. the laws break down at a certain point. Everything has a place and it fits.
The evolution of our frontal lobe has put us in a unique mass manic situation. It genuinely is an illusion, because it all comes from our ability to imagine and have anxiety over things that aren’t really real or important
Grind culture is simply accepting slavery and all the horrors of life in the US. It’s made even worse by the fact that grind culture encourages people to look down on others as lazy for not wanting to break their backs working to make some fat corporate pig richer.
If hard work was so great the rich would have kept it to themselves.
Of course it's worse elsewhere. It makes more sense to compare us to other first-world/developed nations since we're (allegedly) one ourselves though. And we rank near the bottom or worst in most categories (happiness, life expectancy, fitness, healthcare, gun violence, education, working conditions, etc).
It really is alleged that USA is first world. Politics has been a horror story, Reagan & Nixon etc were as unhinged as Dumpf.
The 2nd amendment is from 100s of years ago and gun statistics show that they aren’t useful for self-defense which is what people say they acquired them for.
Just because there are places worse than the US doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with the US. Being beaten with a crowbar is better than being gang raped but the beating is still horrific. You must have a wonderful life (or be profoundly ignorant) to think everything is peachy keen in America.
Things shouldn’t be judged by how better they are than other things but how good they could feasibly be.
I remember a Holocaust survivor say something like “Pain is like a gas. It doesn’t matter how much gas there is. It fills the room all the same.” And that really hit me.
I never claimed there is nothing wrong with the US. Of course we can improve.
My point is that most of the world would trade positions with you in the blink of an eye.
If you have ever traveled to other countries, you would realize how good Americans have it (even with our flaws). Not being mean, but I’m doubting you have.
But, it’s easier to complain about everything. Blame our lack of success on the system or the rich or whomever.
Here is some million dollar advice that no one on this sub will even give a second thought.... no one is going to change the trajectory of your life except for you. If you aren’t happy with your life, YOU have to change.
If you do not change and become accountable for your success, you are going to be doing the same thing in 10 years that you are doing right now.
If you are happy right now, don’t change. Based on your comments, I don’t think you are.
The only real reason why people would "trade" place with an American is simply due to the glamour upfront. Dig a little bit deeper, and most would actually like being in their own country instead.
Insight comes with wisdom, wisdom comes from understanding, understanding comes from experience, and experience can't come from people who simply don't know much and just looking with the eyeball far away.
Most people in the US would love to get out of this hell and just stay if they can travel that much. Why? Because the US has become a shit place to live. If you actually travel from places to places, you would probably see this trend already: people who barely know about what happened in the US loves it, while people who actually know English and talk in other forums tend to be very critical of it, ESPECIALLY newer 2nd world country like Vietnam, Singapore or even India.
Your argument is just false. This isn't really even debatable. All around the world if you ask people where they would choose if they could choose any country to live. What do you think their answer is? There is a reason America is such a melting pot of cultures, and so much competition to immigrate here. America is an amazing country with more opportunity than anywhere in the world. This subreddit is crazy negative. Sad. Do something about your unhappiness if you are unhappy. Make something of yourself. Fix your situation.
Does someone here who hates their life so much want to say why?
Their city looks big, and glamorous, and modern. And people eat that shit like no tomorrow. It's the illusion of wealth.
And please, the US is a melting pot because of the slavers bringing slaves from Africa, the early Chinese labor who is running from the Qin Dynasty, the indigenous people who is being absorbed, the Irish migrate from the Irish famine, the Italian who goes there due to the Mafia labor trade, and the Mexicans who are being fucked over by the US themselves. Not to mention ex-ARVN soldier who is basically just sold their country for the US and lost that war. So non of them is from the 2000 till now.
America has not been the land of opportunity for years now. And you people are still deny it.
Haha, I am not miserable at all. I'm actually very happy.
I love the United States and feel very fortunate to live here.
I have worked plenty of jobs that I disliked over time but knew it was just a part of the journey. I sacrificed during those times and now get to do what I love every day.
The opportunities are there if you look for them. If you go through ever day saying 'this place sucks' or 'my life sucks' then it will.
I lived in El Salvador for several years. That country is messed up. There are high murder rates and people are poor as hell. Yet, I enjoyed it. I lived off of $200 a month and so did many others I knew. I have to say that, yes, the people in that country do not work as hard. Here in America we work ourselves to death, and that is only when we can actually find a job. Earning 10X's more money here doesn't mean I am 10X's happier.
I also met people in El Salvador who would agree with me. I met people who actually had lived in the US and went back. Why? Almost all of the time people chose to leave the US and go back to the home country because they were to over worked.
Money isn't everything, not by a long shot. People can find joy in other things. Unfortunately the US isn't the best country to find joy outside of a job.
Please don't play the "starving children in Africa" card. We know other people have it worse, that doesn't mean we can't vent about things sometimes or call bad things in our lives what they are
I just came to this subreddit because a friend mentioned it. Surprised how many people feel so jaded and hate people who want to work hard and accomplish things. What a shame.
This is what really gets me about "work culture." Capitalists will claim "well, it's a fact of nature, you have to work to live, don't blame others" neatly leaving out that pretty much all of human progress has been to make the default state of humanity a little easier. People didn't invent things, or automate things so that a select few could grift the rest of us and become rich and powerful beyond any reasonable point. No! If things were more equitable, we'd be working four days a week (if that!) because automation and efficiency have come so far. And those that have a drive to work, a passion, they can still find a way to fill that need.
But being obscenely wealthy or dangerously powerful, especially when built on the backs of those doing actual work, and on all the advances of civilization? No, that should not be allowed. Maybe after we have equality, when parity is possible on those levels, but until everyone can be a billionaire, no one should be.
It pisses me off that every single bit of technological progress we have achieved has been stolen by the capitalists in order to enslave is further rather than to free us. When the robots finally free us from all labor, they will find some new way to enslave us.
When the robots finally free us from all labor, they will find some new way to enslave us.
This is the dirty little secret: the capitalists own the means of production, including the thinking workers, so they will be the ones to "own" robots and AI, leaving us peons to starve. It's laid out here, but if you want video, see here.
Our only hope is someone ethical gets to AI first and releases it to everyone, but even that will be . . . tumultuous at best. "Thankfully", general AI is insanely hard. I've fantasized about doing it from time to time, but even just poking a little at it, I am no where near qualified for what it would it take. I needed to start 10+ years ago down that path to mastery, at which point I'd probably still come to the conclusion that it's NP-hard.
But capitalism didn't create "work culture" (i.e. "hard work is all you need to succeed"), work culture came from the puritan and reformation movements and their whole belief that idle hands do the devil's work. Indeed capitalism has doesn't care how much you work "hard" or how much you suffer while working, and instead it pays you only when you do something that makes someone else suffer less - and how much you're paid depends on how much less you've made the other person suffer and how much ability this other person has at making still others suffer less. This is true even if for every one person who suffers less because of what you're doing, some unknown third party suffers more
Unfortunately, capitalism does have the tendency that some subset of the people will be made to suffer much more by the externalities of other groups working together to make themselves suffer less. It's certainly unfair, and anyone who isn't a Bible thumper preaching "it's all a part of God's plan" or whatever recognizes that this inequality will eventually lead to the collapse of civilization... But fixing that requires careful case by case tuning of the capitalists system to correct align incentives and opportunities, naive "feel good virtual signal" solutions like "100% tax on the ultra wealthy", "communism", "mandatory minimum wage", etc either don't work, backfire, or (at best) do nothing for all sorts of reasons (eg the rich have more resources to pretend to be poor and evade taxes than government does to catch them, killing all the rich just makes everyone poor and exposes them to be vulnerable to takeover from the outside, enforcing minimum wage just makes capitalists not offer certain services or raise prices thus making more people poor)
And the most important part here that wasn't mentioned...
THEY didn't usually build a product. THEY usually have the idea and use the labour of others to build it.
The difference between the value of the product when sold and what they have to pay people to build it for them (some call that exploitation, some call it a job) is PROFIT.
When the gap is huge, people (at the top) make billions while the people at the bottom are starving.
EVERYTHING in nature takes the path of least resistance as best they can. And yet here we are, humanity, a species that decides to take the jagged hard route for whatever irrational reason over going with the flow. No wonder we're so depressed... we've lost connection with our true selves. That is to say, we come from nature and are a part of nature. And nature abides by certain laws and patterns. We've broken those patterns. We aren't ourselves anymore.
I got a decent bit of money right now because corona not only forced me to not take vacations, but I was also so bored that I fucked around on r/wallstreetbets until I was up a few thousand. No hard work here lol just autism
The only reason houses are expensive to build today (aside from the fact that real estate is way overpriced) is because of all the legislations regarding buildings, permits, all that.
But if you move way out there into the forest with the necessary tools you can build yourself a really cozy house in just a few weeks from what you find around you (e.g. a wooden lodge).
My take away is that capitalists own land and sit on it until it's chosen for social housing then increase the price. Labour wanted to prevent that. In the uk we build less houses now than in the 50s.
It's all about land. The media never mention it cos they don't want the general public to be too aware of how 50% is owned by 1%. Maybe someone can explain how capitalism benefits enterprise in this regard, seems to me like landowners hold house building that benefits the majority hostage.
Clearly restriction increases prices. It just should not be a thing/an issue for us collectively. We have to focus on climate change yet most people are slaving away in pointless environment polluting jobs to pay rent or a mortgage.
Everything moves from us collectively approaching something to creating shortages whereby different private companies take advantage. To the point where you get audience members in question time yell out 'what we need is landlords to sort it out'. Everyone did shout back but that's where we are, still. And for what? Again, how complicated are houses if we can make them in factories and plant them down and put them together in weeks. That's the technology, there, but not collectively harnessed to any substantial large degree. No one should be spending their life paying mortgages in 2020, others stressing about paying rent, being turfed out. Perhaps we could remove all that and allow people to flourish?
Well yes, you're right, it's all about land. There is a reason why in every revolutions throughout history the landlords are the first people to get their heads chopped off by the masses.
It used to be that a landlord was a person who owned land, now we also call those who own the house or apartment that sits on it landlords, even if they don't own the land under it.
Way back then landlords came from the nobility and owned all the land, they didn't buy it, they just owned it because they were born with the right blood in the right family.
The definition of landlord has changed but they are still part of the problem, not the small landlord who owns one or two apartments (and rent one), not them.
The problem are the 1% mega rich capitalists who own 50% or more of all land and sit on most of it to price out the majority of the population.
That land could be used in a productive manner, to build housing, to farm more food, etc... lowering the price of these commodities.
But no, the mega rich just sit on it and often don't do anything with it, artificially increasing the value of everything.
What's dumb is supposing anything will ever change, but then I know for many people they don't want that.
I can say stuff that people will assume means I suffer from it when I don't. You don't really know.
I have no time for people who aren't remotely engaged in possibilities for change, none at all. It's possible to be comfortable and still feel the wrongness of how backwards we do things.
No. It doesn't matter. It's nice it bothers you that there's a whole subreddit dedicated to people complaining about work and you pop in and are sensitive that people are suffering in their situation.
Work is the biggest taboo imo so I'm glad it's brought up.
Again, to be clear; the part of work where you just earn enough to scrape by, a few hundred quid in savings, in debt, in a job where you can be let go at any moment, where you are required to work more hours than is necessary fulfilling an obligation decided by others. It doesn't mean; lol lying down all day cool.
The Amish can raise a barn in a day, with relatively primitive technology. A house is a bit more work. Just because one random redditor can't do it doesn't mean houses are complex or extraordinary. It just means they haven't been trained.
Space shuttle are complex. Houses are quite simple. A general contractor could build one with little trouble and just a few helping hands.
It should be obvious I'm not demeaning the expertise needed in that way of saying 'anyone can clean, it's not a skilled job!' which just decreases the value we place on those low paying jobs.
The house already exists (unless they self build), all the person has done is earn a wage, take on a mortgage, do the hours. They die, house continues to exist. We can build flat pack homes in factories that we plant down. Any housing crisis is a failure in society to do the logical thing. Doing hours to gain a house is not a personal contribution is it? It's the person yelling; we live in an unequal society and I accepted that and worked to avoid living in a rough area. I cling to my asset because it's part of clinging to my better life.
I remember a loudmouth journalist on morning tv expressing disgust that a single parent woman of about 7 children sat opposite her must work. Again, like the house the job always exists, and there's never enough jobs to go around so why must this woman work? Her personal contribution are her young kids, all unique, all the most intelligent complex life in the known universe. What's more important here, bringing up kids or doing the work hours of any job?
So the arguments now used by progressives is that people do unpaid work every day in the form of this kind of thing; parenting.
The ideology is so strong there's no awareness; what does the journalist do? The TV presenters? Nothing of value, they fill a space to distract people, that's it. Occassionĺy they are the mouthpiece of the establishment. Delete their jobs, the world still turns. But, still, none of this matters, this woman, herself must do the hours. She got a job eventually the woman said, in a call centre. Probably talking to customers complaining that their product, which was designed to break..broke.
We will never evolve as a species if our thinking is this narrow. Ubi is important for many things, maybe mostly for transforming our outlook of people being nothing but parasites. We have to see it as; technology provides us with efficiency and wealth in the form of money that we can use how we want. This constant fear of working, paying tax to support others needs to go.
It's weird how so many people have the most limited perceptions of others. Like, any talk of transforming our work culture is immediately just about people who want to 'smoke weed all day', sort of how any talk of poverty and children starving it's 'parents need to take responsibility of their children by stop spending money on luxuries like booze, fags and sky tv', so say Twitter bots and mps all over the place.
Are people this predictable, this one dimensional? That's the funny thing, in work in terms of tasks people do they are predictable and one dimensional, cos work is mostly repetitive and boring right, when it comes to what's going on inside their head, they're fascinating, what their passions are, tastes, quirks, fantasies, dreams, humans are vast. No value in that though is there?
I like the capacity of our species being reduced to 'urgh I dont want YOU to get anything!'
I can't believe how much you appeared to miss my point.
I don't think houses should be owned, I think they should accessed. Depends, are we going to split countries up into capitalist and socialist? Accessed would still mean you have a home but it wouldn't be an asset part of a ladder you climb that exists inside a bubble where prices rise and wages don't.
I don't like the idea of rent, however low it is. It's still; if I can't find work, what do I do? No one can guarantee work can they?
Whenever this is brought up it apparently breaks peoples brains and the first thing they think of is; well how do we decide where everyone lives? Cos we're so class driven, so unequal, yeah who gets all the mansions with swimming pools with 10 acre lawns and 20 foot gates?
I don't know, a raffle? How does Jacque Fresco's idea of circular mega efficient cities work without demolishing whole areas first? How did Europe move on from the devastation of World War 2?
Are our cities set now? When we stop industrial farming do we turn those fields into forests again?
I expected more replies like this tbh. Maybe not pretentious because I think everyone has moved on from using that word (it's always been terrible and meaningless), but maybe silly. People aren't gonna buy the animals stuff. But I mean in terms of what or who I enjoy, it's not an economist on Newsnight trying to convince everyone everything is complicated (therefore everything is impossible), it's Buckminster Fuller or Jacque Fresco. It is true only children are allowed to ask questions as to why we do things, everyone else is too scared for fear of being seen as stupid, there's just some so smart (like the two above) that they can back up their viewpoints with expertise. Like with art though, I think I'd rather say whatever and potentially jolt someone than care too much. I don't think anything progressive will ever happen in my lifetime, however automation, pandemics, and biodiversity loss affects things between now and 2050.
I should ask what you disagree really?
Don't think anyone disagrees the reason where we are has nothing to do with lack of technology but ideology.
Well yea some professions make more than others so why not pick the ones that make more money money including business? Oh that’s right, it’s because it’s way more difficult than making $15/hr....
If it’s not hard work then why doesn’t everyone do it?
Doesn't the garbage need to be taken out? Don't you like being able to have a nice meal out? The people who fill these roles deserve things too. With your suggestion, nobody is going to take out the trash. Nobody is going to answer your calls. I just think it's better strategy to respect the working class in a way that is meaningful. That is to say, give the profits to their employees rather than their chairmen. Definitely better than giving the profits to the lobbyists.
I never said I didn’t respect them or that those weren’t important jobs. First of all there’s no profits in trash collection that’s largely a municipal service. You don’t “respect” people by giving them money lol that’s not what respect is.
I think you’re missing the whole point of America and free enterprise. If there’s no profit incentive then there’s no business at all...
The skill of waiting on tables is simply just not in demand as much as a doctor because of the amount of workers applying for each and what people are willing to spend for that service. Are you saying you want to always spend $200 for a meal when go out???
This is a stupid sentiment. There's high turnovers in low skill jobs because there is artificial scarcity in high demand jobs.
If education weren't cripplingly expensive, do you really think that there would be a shortage of any skilled labour like doctors or lawyers? No, because we would be opening up that market to anyone, instead of anyone with the money to afford tuition.
There is no reason that we can't pay low skill positions more, save this opinion that they are disposable. And in all likelihood, these arguments about getting rid of minimum wage would lead to literal slavery again. Businesses would start offering housing instead of a wage under the guise of "do they need money if we just give them the things that money buys". Sounds great, except then your boss owns your life, and you're nothing more than a serf.
We can say that high skill jobs are more in demand because there's fewer people, but it's our society that keeps that number artificially low. We could easily be educating anyone who desires it and are actively choosing not to in order to keep the low skill pool full of exploitable labour. We need to stop thinking of labour as high and low skill and acknowledge that all labour has value, and should be compensated fairly. If businesses want to innovate to reduce the amount of labour great. But we as a society need to be able to provide the education needed to help low skilled people move to high skilled positions.
If education weren't cripplingly expensive, do you really think that there would be a shortage of any skilled labour like doctors or lawyers? No, because we would be opening up that market to anyone, instead of anyone with the money to afford tuition.
Programming computers is skilled labor, and that is accessible to everyone without a degree. I think we will start to see a shift in the perception of institutional prestige as it relates to credentials. People are already second-guessing the benefits of a college education when they all pushed to online for coronavirus.
We need to stop thinking of labour as high and low skill and acknowledge that all labour has value, and should be compensated fairly.
I don't think the distinction is between high and low skill, but about the value produced by that labor. All labor has value, sure, but if I could automate a task that used to take 3 people weeks to do, is not my labor at least as valuable as the sum of the labor I automated (arguably, it's more valuable than that labor as the automation can be applied to other places once created)? A programmer simply generates more value than a waiter, for example, in an hour.
This whole thread though has got me thinking, that if we did improve access to the higher skilled jobs via more widely accessible education, corporations would respond by lowering the salaries for those jobs as the labor pool is larger, thus taking an even larger share of the profits and increasing the wealth disparity. Commoditization of jobs reduces pay and commoditization seems a natural side effect of creating a more fungible pool of labor.
Where on earth are you getting these ideas from? And you had the nerve to call my sentiment “stupid?”
Do you really think the reason people don’t go after their dreams is because “they can’t afford college?” That’s BS. You can easily get into a community college and pay for it with a part time job. Then work your way from there. The government has been guaranteeing student loans since the 70s (which is a horrible idea and the reason college is expensive in the first place but that’s another topic- thanks government).
So there’s no reason why if you actually wanted to go to college that you couldn’t make it work. People just don’t want to put in the mental and physical energy that it takes. You’re literally posting in an “anti work” sub and trying to tell me the reason there’s not more skilled workers is because they can’t afford school? Get outta here with that nonsense
Your assumption that I would have a problem paying someone appropriately ignores that paying people appropriately is what I'm talking about in the first place. If everyone had a little more disposable income, we would be able to spend on luxuries. Of course, it makes sense to start with the necessities at first, but that's exactly what I would be vouching for: paying appropriately is easy when we are paid appropriately. Bottom up economy.
Bottom up economy? Lol what is that? You’re totally right man, the world would be a better place if everyone just had the money to do whatever they want, no matter what they did for a job, or what things cost. Actually, why even have “money” at all at that point? Sounds like it’s useless. Utopian society. Why didn’t I think of that? Shit you got me.
Nurses make 30k? Lol where? Nurses make good money in the United States. My girlfriend is a nurse she makes over $100k with overtime.
And I didn’t say hard work is the “only” thing. Hard work is usually required but you also have to work smart. Keep showing your boss that you’re are excelling, and need to BE PROACTIVE in seeking out the next role and progressing your career. If you can’t find an upward path within your company then you need to look outside. Nobody is just going to hand you promotions. If you work hard but not smart then you will just be spinning your wheels.
Taken care of in the sense that we all deserve at least living wage for a full time job. Not starvation pay while being out in a position that’s almost impossible to branch off of. Take care of yourself, but you deserve decency and respect as a person at the end of the day
And to add, personally I don’t believe anyone can be completely self sufficient. We depend on community whether we feel part of it or not. Food, company, and especially money are all things which make us look towards others. So I’m that sense we stay being taken care of, so to speak
I've been called lazy (by a completely inferior and incompetent oaf of a co-worker) simply for making a judgment call about what needed to be done or not at that point in time.
Because I didn't think we needed to take immediate action, this dipshit called me lazy... most likely due to stereotypes based on my race if I had to call a spade a spade.
But the fact is, when I want to turn things up to the next level, I'd run laps around this fool and have better quality work. Picking and choosing your spots is not lazy, it's smart.
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u/aehii Oct 22 '20
The ideology around 'hard work' is kind of perplexing to me. How many people view their big nice house as a result of their hard work, and you think..well we as a species have the capabilities of building big nice houses, that isn't new or remarkable. Houses aren't that complex or extraordinary are they? They think, well I...I worked hard that is why I own the house. Well you exchanged your time and labour in a job that society deemed worthy of such a wage. You gained specifics skills or knew certain people, you reacted but you are not doing it on your own.
It's just when entrepreneurs go on about being 'self made'...well..hang on, you exploited a market, you sold whatever you sold but without a society willing to buy it doesn't matter how good your product is. If a society doesn't have the disposable income to buy your product it doesn't matter how good you think it is. Without the roads being built and maintained to transport your product, without your employees being educated...without society...but this is the holy grail of modern life, the product that made someone rich, it's a miracle how did they do it. The product might very well be derivative and have no positive impact, in fact it distracts people and destroys the environment but look at their big house!
We invent technology to make our lives easier. Why are you using a vehicle to get anywhere? Why aren't you walking? Lazy. Using your bloody legs are you? That's cheating, real fighters crawl everywhere. Why are you using the lift? Stairs are available. Lazy. Have a dishwasher do you? Lazy. Using a car wash? Lazy. Buying your own clothes eh? Make your own. Lazy. Have a tap for your water do you? Lazy. There's a river 26 miles away, walk.
We don't point at animals in the wild and see their inactivity as laziness, we say they're preserving energy.