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crack mayor posted:I have never had a job where I couldn't wait to get there in the morning? I am definitely in the crowd of people who go to work because it pays the bills. I think it's weird when people say that if they were suddenly millionaires they would keep working. It's either they have no identity outside of their job or they have no dreams. Part of the problem is that, as a society, we've decided to bind the ideas of "work" and "employment" together so tightly that there's almost no distinction between them. If I hit the lotto, I would absolutely continue working because I'd absolutely want to continue feeling productive and useful, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be employed. As it is, I would love to donate my time and skills to charity organizations and non-profits, but then when would I find time to have an actual income and do anything else with my life? I think Helsing's comment on video games and Netflix is actually pretty relevant here. We tend to see time outside of work as time for socializing or free time for sitting around doing nothing, but there's no reason that has to be the case. You can learn new skills, take classes, pick up hobbies, pursue personal projects, and do any number of other things that I suspect most people would find more fulfilling and productive than their actual jobs. Zachack posted:Sales positions and other middlemen can (although don't necessarily) act as filters, feelers and buffers. Even a Best Buy TV salesperson can be useful if they can act as a buffer between the buyer and the manufacturer simply by saying "we've had a lot of returns on that model". I'd say it's questionable whether this actually provides any value in modern society. It'd be much better to simply have information on things like returns readily available from the manufacturer/retailer, as a number that's required by law rather than something that a salesperson may or may not be telling the truth about. In fact, there's very little (probably nothing) that a salesperson can tell me that couldn't be better and more clearly understood by things like customer reviews or purchasing data.
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Oct 18, 2014 19:18
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Amused to Death posted:No, I know exactly what I'd do, anyone here who has had ever taken a vacation of been unemployed knows what they'd do. However many people feel doing whatever you want all day with no real purpose or obligations actually does get kind of old after a while. Being unemployed doesn't mean having no obligations or purpose, though, at least not inherently. And I'd also argue that there are a huge number of people who do work and don't feel any purpose or obligation associated with their job, aside from being present so they can receive a paycheck. It's a cultural thing that we associate not working with sitting around doing nothing.
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Oct 18, 2014 21:28
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Pedro De Heredia posted:The way people spend their time outside of work has to do with what they need after having worked (rest, contact with people they like, etc.). The way people spend their time when they don't have to work anymore isn't the same, because the needs aren't the same, which is why people say that they start getting bored after being unemployed too long or having a vacation that's too long. I'm not sure I agree with this, because it sounds as if you're saying most people are (and should be) defined entirely by their jobs. I'd argue that most people seek out hobbies and other interests because they're disengaged from or unfulfilled by their work, and that obviously people would seek out rest and social contact regardless of how they spend their day. This is why I think it's important to separate the idea of "employment" (which is what we're really talking about in this thread) from work. Most people would probably gravitate towards some kind of work, but that doesn't mean that employment as it currently exists has inherent value.
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Oct 18, 2014 23:44
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PT6A posted:I wouldn't say that. Oftentimes, character is the ability to do poo poo you don't want to do but have to without complaint. That can be work, yes, but it can also mean cleaning your toilet, and doing the dishes, and all the little tasks that we hate doing but still have to do. Talking about adults working to "build character" strikes me as exceptionally condescending. Sure, whatever, maybe flipping burgers as your first job really does teach you something useful, but beyond that it reeks of just world nonsense that we tell ourselves to feel better about the fact that some people will spend their whole lives doing menial work for very little pay.
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Oct 23, 2014 03:44
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Torka posted:I legitimately don't understand how someone could ever get bored of self-directed activity unless they suffered from a serious lack of imagination. Most people never really learn how to pursue self-directed activities or projects because it's not something we really value or teach. Secondary and post-secondary education is extremely job oriented, and there's an expectation that you'll move into the working world either before you complete your education or as soon as you do. Anyone who's unemployed for an extended period of time is expected to put most of their effort into finding a job and vacations are generally viewed as recuperation time.
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Oct 23, 2014 19:41
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computer parts posted:You've never said "I don't want to do x because it's too hard"? Never ever in your life? Not because you didn't have time or money to do it, but because it wouldn't be worth the effort you put in? You're basically saying there are things people don't do because they don't want to do them. Presumably, given unlimited time, you'd try to find stuff that you actually do want to accomplish, and failures wouldn't be the end of the world because you'd have enough time to try something else. Yeah, some people just really aren't cut out for managing their own projects and they'll never be any good at it, but that's not really an argument for why paid employment is inherently valuable to individuals or why more free time wouldn't be a good thing for everyone. All that said, I admit that I'm pretty biased. I tend to feel most productive and fulfilled when I have a lot of free time or when my schedule is highly flexible, and "work" (in the sense of employment) rarely makes me feel much of anything. I ditched my job a few years ago to freelance and I haven't looked back since. I have no problem admitting that this probably isn't true for most people, but at the same time I doubt that I'm particularly unique. Edit- I guess what I'm getting at is that leaving something unfinished shouldn't be seen as a personal failure. Most people work jobs that are effectively treadmills anyway, so I don't know why non-work related projects have to be finished to be meaningful. I think there's at least as much personal value in building half a shed as there is in showing up to work every day to take people's lunch orders. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Oct 23, 2014 |
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Oct 23, 2014 23:44
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Solenna posted:"Building character" through forcing yourself to put up with stupid bullshit until you stop caring is completely different and all too common though. I think good work is valuable for most people, but I also think a lot of companies try just try and mentally beat people down until they stop complaining, and I don't know the solution for that. There probably isn't one. I was struggling a little bit with how to respond to this, because I think the core of the issue is that there just aren't enough "good" jobs to go around, there never will be, and the bad jobs will always either beat you down or drive you into total apathy because what other reasonable response is there to spending eight or more hours of your day doing work that you don't care about? It's great that you find your job challenging and rewarding, but something like two thirds of US employees are unsatisfied with their jobs in one respect or another. That's a problem that there's not really a solution for, because the bad work needs to be done and it's never going to be engaging or personally satisfying. I think this is why a lot of us in this thread are being careful to distinguish between work and employment/wage labor. Good work is definitely valuable, but for a lot of (maybe most?) people being employed just means showing up somewhere, doing the same thing day in and day out, and getting a paycheck at the end of the week. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Oct 25, 2014 |
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Oct 25, 2014 08:50
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Helsing posted:If restaurant work as seen as dignified, well compensated and "middle class" work and it was compensated accordingly and given the same respect in society that other middle class occupations have then I don't think it would be see as a significantly worse occupation than, say, being an accountant or a technician or something. I think it's questionable how far these jobs could be improved before they just end up being replaced by automated solutions. A lot of work in the service and retail industries is considered bad in part because it involves rote, menial tasks. There's also the bigger issue that improving the working environment doesn't necessarily improve the job, so we're back to the idea that there's no real personal value in the work beyond financial compensation. Getting that financial compensation can be made less arduous, but that doesn't mean workers are getting more out of their jobs.
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Oct 25, 2014 18:43
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Helsing posted:Giving people some ability to control their own schedule, giving them more pay, replacing some of the worst jobs with automation and trying to reduce or remove the idea that some jobs are inherently un dignified would probably make a lot of stereotypically awful jobs less unpleasant. Some work is always going to be dull but I don't think it has to be absolute hell. How much can we really improve these jobs, though? I might just be lacking in creativity, but I'm a loss for ways that we can make every existing fast food job into a solid middle-class position. McDonalds isn't going to want to pay its cashiers middle class salaries and I doubt it would even be possible for them to operate that way. If they automate as many jobs as possible and leave only those positions that absolutely have to be held by a human being, where do all those people who lost their jobs go now that we're retooling the entire economy to turn bottom rung service and retail jobs into higher paying work?
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Oct 25, 2014 20:21
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wateroverfire posted:But who is making the stuff that you buy with your minimum income? How does society afford it? Is it all robots made by robots? That's the part that doesn't work imo. Manufacturing jobs are already heavily automated, in part because they paid well enough that automation was a viable alternative to human workers. A huge number of service jobs can (and probably will) be automated, but they haven't been yet because we still pay service workers practically nothing. It's getting a little bit outside of the bounds of this thread, but "how do we deal with a not insignificant number of people being permanently unemployed?" is almost certainly a question we're going to need to answer as a society within our lifetimes. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 22:41
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Typo posted:Then I got another job, and subsequently went back to school, I can absolutely say I that even though the job was kinda boring it was a much better period of my life than those 10 weeks. That's fine, but it doesn't say much one way or another about the value of wage labor. To put it another way, I think a lot of people would continue to work if they hit the lottery, but they wouldn't necessarily continue with their current jobs or careers. One thing you might want to read up on is the basic income grant pilot program that ran in Namibia, where the benefits (among other things) included higher rates of entrepreneurship and community participation. A city in Manitoba that ran a Mincome (not quite the same thing, admittedly) experiment had similar results. I'm of the opinion that there's a huge amount of personal value in work, but that the need to work to survive diminishes that value tremendously.
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Oct 28, 2014 14:06
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wateroverfire posted:I'm asking a question because I don't know, dude. No offense, but your question comes off as naive in almost any context. Products fail to be commercially successful all the time for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the product itself. Games have the added hurdle of requiring months (often years) of unpaid development just to create, all with the constantly looming risk that you're burning your savings and/or working yourself to death for nothing. And then, if you are successful enough to make a living, odds are you'll be making less money than you would be with a stable, boring development job. Entrepreneurship in general is just unrealistically risky for most people with familial/financial obligations, which is actually a problem that's pretty relevant to the topic of this thread.
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Oct 28, 2014 21:09
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PT6A posted:Also, World of Warcraft is equally monotonous and engineered to "addict" people, and it's quite popular among SA's demographic. I'd say it's a pretty good game, too, even if it isn't 100% my cup of tea. To be fair, a lot of freemium games (especially on mobile platforms) really are exceptionally scummy. King hasn't been shy about admitting that they effectively design monetization systems that they can attach games to, for example. I think games like FarmVille end up taking more poo poo than World of Warcraft or whatever because their designs just seem a lot more cynical.
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Oct 29, 2014 01:15
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PT6A posted:Yeah, I was being a little facetious there. You do realize there are venture capitalists that don't have TV shows, yes? The number of entrepreneurs that actually receive venture capital or that ever had even the slimmest chance in hell of receiving it is vanishingly small. Like, so small that VC isn't something we should even be talking about in the context of small business because it's almost completely irrelevant. Edit- I'll try to find some actual statistics, but I'm relatively sure that we're talking about a fraction of a fraction of a percent of new businesses.
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Oct 29, 2014 21:06
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wateroverfire posted:Yeah, most businesses are going to be too small to be interesting to venture capitalists or won't have the growth plan to give them a good exit. Crowd funding is a thing, though. Or planning your business around the resources you personally have to work with, etc. Crowdfunding's golden age has pretty much come and gone. It's still an important tool, but you probably won't be funding any large project that way unless you've already invested a pretty significant amount of time and work into it. And being able to work with your own personal resources is exactly the kind of problem that we're discussing here. Most people don't even have enough savings to cover six months of expenses, and realistically even that's not enough if your intention is to quit work and try to start a business full time. Look, no one is saying that it can't be done. It obviously can be, because people start small businesses every day. The point is that there are a huge number of obstacles that have very little do with one's own skills or the merit of the business, and the amount of risk involved makes it outright foolish and irresponsible for most people to try in the first place.
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Oct 29, 2014 21:42
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wateroverfire posted:If a person doesn't have a well thought out project then sure, it would be foolish or irresponsible to jump into it. But the "huge number of [unspecified] obstacles" are resolvable, mostly, once you start looking for concrete solutions to concrete problems. You might in the end decide it's not worth it or that it seems like more work relative to taking a boring job working for someone else, and often that's true, but it's not a faceless and unaddressable risk you're taking on by trying. No, you're pretty clearly intentionally misrepresenting what's being said here. There are no unspecified obstacles, I laid out the major obstacles very clearly in the post that you quoted: time and money. Many projects, no matter how well planned, are going to require a significant up front investment of both, and that's going to be unrealistic for many people. That's especially true in cases where a successful outcome is far from certain. Entrepreneurship almost universally favors people who are already well enough off to sustain themselves without employment for extended periods of time, and those who won't be financially ruined if their business fails. quote:I think the question is whether, in aggregate, people will engage in the activities society needs them to and in the right quantity. If they don't then no matter how personally fulfilling and productive their pursuits are modern society falls apart. Unless robots are doing everything that matters, and then it doesn't really matter what people do until the robots figure that out and liberate themselves. This is also why no one in this thread has come even close to seriously suggesting that we should immediately abolish all work or whatever it is you're trying to get at here. Most of the big issues being talked about come down to the fact that the labor market is fundamentally broken due to serious power imbalances and a cultural failure to acknowledge that most jobs hold little if any personal value beyond financial gain.
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Oct 30, 2014 22:53
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