Why do we assume everyone should be working? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why do we assume everyone should be working?

#111

Post by pickleglitch » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #29

We don't assume everyone should be working. Some categories everyone accepts shouldn't be working: children, students, retirees, new parents, the sick, and the disabled. There's a widespread assumption that you should eventually save enough money to retire, which divides life into phases: working and retired. That's one reason behind feeling like you should accumulate more money: not so you can buy more stuff, but be…

>Some categories everyone accepts shouldn't be working: children, students, retirees, new parents, the sick, and the disabled.

There are plenty of people who do not accept this.

We had to outlaw child labor because lots of people thought children should work. Students are shamed for taking on debt to pay for their schooling. People think they should have to work their way through school. Retirement is coming to be seen as a luxury. A great deal of jobs in America don't provide any kind of parental leave, so clearly some people think new parents should work. Same thing with sick leave. People go to work sick every day because that's what the system demands of them.

The only category that is even close is disabled people, but even then it's not universal. Goodwill thinks disabled people should work, and they have a legal exemption from minimum wage so they can employ them. There are also lots of people think the disabled should just be exterminated because they can't work.

Re: Why do we assume everyone should be working?

#112

Post by _DeadFred_ » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #81

sscaryterry wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scarcity can and is manipulated, see de Beers!

Yes. All forms of artificial scarcity must be declared to be literally illegal. Diamonds are nothing, we've got the entire intellectual property industry to contend with.

This was tried and we ended up with intellectual property rights because encouraging the creation of works was more important than having zero/poor quality works but a free for all.

Re: Why do we assume everyone should be working?

#113

Post by Izkata » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

bradfitz wrote: post #5

> utilizing a resource to it’s fullest at all times is not a given Typos like this (it's instead of possessive its) used to be bother me but now it's a hint that it might be human-authored, which is quaint, so it's stopped bothering me as much.

For most of my life I thought no apostrophe was always wrong, since that's how you do both contractions and possessives in general with a name or noun. For some reason all throughout school people would say "it's" as a possessive was wrong without trying to explain "its" was a parallel to the separate words "his" and "hers", rather than "bradfitz's" or "that person's" like it looked like. Only someone in my 20s did I realize the connection and "its" stopped looking wrong.

Re: Why do we assume everyone should be working?

#114

Post by 317070 » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 2:46 PM UTC

hamper653 wrote: post #102

317070 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those workers receive pay from somebody else than their employer to do that, one might count them, but I don't know any countries where they do. I don't think there are economic metrics that take weekends into account when defining regular employment. I'm not sure what you're aiming at with this question.

There is no ontological difference between: - a worker taking a few weeks of paid rest as a compensation for working several months, - and a worker taking a few years of paid rest as a compensation for working several decades. Whatever practicalities you may invoke to make them seem different, these situations are in essence the same.

A retiree and a person during a weekend are not even close to the same. For one, the econometrists have no problem distinguishing them, because they don't look the same at all. I can get accurate numbers for retirees, and they will not be confused by people who are off for the weekend.

For two, in context of the original article, what matters is "are they working" which the author clarified to "having a job". A person during the weekend has a job, a retired person does not. Again, no confusion.

For three, in the context of minimum guaranteed wage: a person during the weekend is not paid by the government, but by his employer. A retired person is paid his pension by the government. So one can go in the bucket of people that is actually receiving a minimum income already, the other one does not. So within the context of my first post, they also don't look the same.

If there is a parallel you are seeing and I'm missing, feel free to point it out. What I agree with is that from the person's perspective, they are both not working (in a sense not meant by the OP) and both receiving an income (though from a different source). But after that all similarity stops as far as I can tell.

Re: Why do we assume everyone should be working?

#115

Post by tjwebbnorfolk » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:04 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #78

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> must attack things like the very concept of trillion dollar semiconductor fabs Computers used to be the size of these fabs. Now we have them in our pockets. Not because we need to attack or rebel or something. It's because a lot of people worked very hard over many decades to make it possible. And it wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts -- it's because they had bills to pay and mouths to feed. No matter how s…

> No matter how smart you are, it is not possible to create a GPU in one's basement. Is this really such a law of the universe or just insufficient technology? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30043719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46178789

I mean, there's not like some "big silicon" conspiracy keeping people from homelabbing their own chips. I suppose we'll find out at some point, but it sure as hell isn't possible in 2026 AD.

Re: Why do we assume everyone should be working?

#116

Post by ItsMonkk » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #61

dostick wrote: post #14

UBI is the inevitable future. We are now living in a time period in history when we wait for government bureaucrats to finally realise that UBI is a right and not a privilege. At this moment more than half of employment can be classified as “bullshit jobs” - inconsequential that would make no difference if they disappeared one day, created to satisfy the requirements of the capitalist economy. We have been productive…

UBI is inherently inflationary and as far as I can tell there's no solution to that problem.

UBI funded through LVT is not inflationary.

Re: Why do we assume everyone should be working?

#117

Post by wvenable » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

copperx wrote: post #49

wvenable wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human life requires some consumables. Even with less stuff, you will always need some stuff.

We need very few non perishables aside from the roof on your head.

Even a roof on your head is perishable over time.

Re: Why do we assume everyone should be working?

#118

Post by fittingopposite » Mon, Aug 10, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #12

seu wrote: post #2

Before that, a more important question is: why assume that buying or having "more stuff" leads to a better life?

Human life requires some consumables. Even with less stuff, you will always need some stuff.

That 'some' is actually very little compared to rich countries' GDP per capita. You could argue that a lot is wasted acquiring useless stuff.

Re: Why do we assume everyone should be working?

#119

Post by cykros » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 11:57 AM UTC

hamper653 wrote: post #73

simianwords wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it would be naive to assume that you would be paid to be an artist or poet in a socialism as opposed to a farmer

In socialism, you wouldn’t be paid. That’s the whole point.

Yea, we saw the bread lines.

Re: Why do we assume everyone should be working?

#120

Post by IAmBroom » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 12:20 PM UTC

ElProlactin wrote: post #17

> I was talking to a friend of mine and I asked this. She said “of course everyone should be working, I mean, I’d like to be able to buy more stuff” This sounds like the type of thing you hear from a person sipping a rare single-origin pour-over after their pilates class in Palo Alto. In the real world, the average person would probably tell you something like "of course everyone should be working, I mean, I need to…

> Most people in this world work because they need to earn money to pay for basic necessities of life, not because they want to buy more stuff.

Most people make more than subsistence incomes; ergo, they are working for more than basic necessities.