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What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

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Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#411

Post by crdoconnor »

henrikschroder wrote: post #28
crdoconnor wrote: post #12

"These days, everybody from Left to Right – from the economist Dean Baker to the social scientist Arthur C Brooks, from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump – addresses this breakdown of the labour market by advocating ‘full employment’, as if having a job is self-evidently a good thing, no matter how dangerous, demanding or demeaning it is. " And, when you experiment with a job guarantee program and turn it into a basic i…

That's the biggest problem I see as well with reaching a post-labour future. Every single political party across the entire spectrum has full employment as their stated goal. Some experiment with basic income, but it's still just seen as a different way of doing welfare, and it's always assumed that the majority of government taxation will come from other people's labour. People just cannot wrap their heads around a…

>That's the biggest problem I see as well with reaching a post-labour future. Every single political party across the entire spectrum has full employment as their stated goal.

Yes, because the boring truth is that because people want jobs and we need them to do stuff.

The only reason we really have a "reserve army of the unemployed" is as an inefficient way of enforcing "labor market discipline" for private companies. That's why they lobby for austerity, etc.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#412

Post by brokenmasonjars »

I know people how love work. Actually majority of people who I'm surrounded by in my daily life - love work. It's been weird growing up...as every job I've ever held has turned me into a depressed turn. I hate work. I hate all of work. I hate spending time outside of my own parameters. I prefer waking up whenever I want. I prefer not having obligations. Work not only ruins this but adds an additional set of things to the mix; the commute, co-workers, and the sheer fact of hey - here comes the weekend and the time of freedom ticks away towards another week of hell and torture. I left the workforce to get a PhD. I used money I saved to learn to trade with my brokerage account, lots of losses before I got decent enough at it. I don't see my PhD as something for job holding, it was just something I wanted to accomplish. Trading is my income. Often I have to deal with the nonsense of people asking me what I do and I prefer just to lie and say I telework as an assistant or something because..I don't want to hear uneducated thoughts about how I make my money. That said..I'm not rich but eh..suppose it was the need to adapt and avoid things I hate that got me to this point. Either or..having grown up in a very bias setting that favors work I really look forward to the continue destruction of the labor force. This mentality that you must work for even the purpose of character must die. Not everyone is going to trade, a basic minimum income is needed etc..but yea..jobs must die and the sooner the better.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#413

Post by nathan_f77 »

jcoffland wrote: post #356
cesarbs wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

I don't want to work with you if you're a nine-to-fiver either. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with you for feeling this way but I don't want to work with people who don't love what they do. Edit: to clarify, by nine-to-fiver I mean someone who is just punching the clock in order to make a living but does not care much about what they are doing. I don't really care what hours you work if you're real…

I feel like everyone who downvoted you is missing the whole point of the article that was posted.

The point is to imagine what your life would be like if you didn't have to work for money. Imagine if you could work on startup ideas and software projects simply because you were passionate about solving a problem or creating something, and not because of the money. And it doesn't even have to be something useful, or something that people will pay for. You can work on literally anything you love doing, and you can find people who feel the same way.

That's the opposite of a "nine-to-fiver" who is primarily there for the money, although they might also enjoy the work.

Of course, you can be passionate about working on something while maintaining a healthy work/life balance. That's not really what people mean when they say "nine-to-fiver".

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#414

Post by Tempest1981 »

I'm hoping someone can explain this:

You don’t need profits to ‘reinvest’, to finance the expansion of your company’s workforce or output, as the recent history of Apple and most other corporations has amply demonstrated.

How do you reinvest without profits, and what is the Apple example? Apple makes a profit, and reinvests... confusing. Is he suggesting a loan, perhaps?

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#415

Post by [deleted] »

internaut wrote: post #403
stale2002 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are empty houses, but not in places where people want to live. There is absolutely a housing shortage in popular metropolitan areas (take your pick) . If there wasn't, then prices wouldn't be so high.

Why aren't we building down? Each plot owns the land beneath, yes? So build downwards if zoning prohibits building up.

[deleted]

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#416

Post by Tempest1981 »

internaut wrote: post #403
stale2002 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are empty houses, but not in places where people want to live. There is absolutely a housing shortage in popular metropolitan areas (take your pick) . If there wasn't, then prices wouldn't be so high.

Why aren't we building down? Each plot owns the land beneath, yes? So build downwards if zoning prohibits building up.

The cost per sq ft is higher. You often hit aquifers. Less light. More difficult egress in an emergency. (Just giving some reasons why building down isn't done more, but it is happening.)

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#417

Post by dmichulke »

jcoffland wrote: post #387
cesarbs wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the false dichotomy? Can't someone designate a certain amount of time of their day to work, and focus on other things in the remaining hours? I love writing software, but that does not mean I don't love other things. Years ago I lived and breathed software. That's not the case anymore. I'd much rather help my daughter with her homework than read about the latest uber nifty JavaScript transpiler that will change m…

> Working is a means to bring in some cash that enables me to enjoy other things in life. Because you work mainly for the money is why I would not want to work with you. Not because you like other things.

Everyone who works, works mainly for the money. If there was no salary they wouldn't work there.

You could prove your point and offer your employer to work without your salary / equity. Would you?

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#418

Post by nathan_f77 »

Practicality wrote: post #20
nhaehnle wrote: post #13

The essay opens on a horrible false dichotomy. No, full employment alone won't solve the problems of inequality that the essay very capably outlines. But full employment may be necessary anyway , because having the sense of being needed and being useful may be an important factor to many people's well-being. Full employment is really just another way of saying that everyone can get this sense of being needed/useful v…

Maybe, but it doesn't need to be useless labor. In the town I grew up in we had automated trash collection for a few years. The town eventually voted to get rid of the automated trash collectors because of jobs . Seriously. People that did those jobs HATED their jobs. Now a group of people have a job again that they hate. Surely we can find something that fulfills their desire to be helpful without a completely unnec…

Imagine if your town took the savings from the automated trash collection and just gave them directly to the people who had to do those jobs manually. It costs the town exactly the same amount of money, and frees up those people to do whatever they want with their time. Instead, they made the system more inefficient on purpose, so that people had to perform an unnecessary manual task in order to get money.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#419

Post by thirdsun »

cesarbs wrote: post #240
vacri wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Knowledge workers have it easy . It's hard to get here, but once we're here it's a great gig. We're paid well, we're in demand, and there's a robust freelancing sector to our industries, be it software, legal, medical, engineering, or whatever. That link describes a call center worker as a knowledge worker. That's absolute nonsense. You could, in theory, argue that a call center worker is about manag…

This is the bit that hits close to home to me: > they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall fro…

It doesn't have to be like that. Personally, I work for a small company that manufactures a physical product (shoes actually) and manages a few retail stores, but also develops most of its internal software (CRM, ERP, BI), tools, website and shop in-house, which results in the fact that development and software engineering is just one of many areas the company focuses on.

I can't remember the last time I couldn't leave 4 pm sharp with the rest of the colleagues from manufacturing, sales, design or accounting. It's certainly long ago and rarely happens.

Plus, being a two man dev operation we enjoy a lot of freedom and are able to chose technologies and tools we see fit for the task. Furthermore you are confronted with all kinds of real world problems, interact with people of all trades (as opposed to living in a SV startup bubble) and colleagues value our work, actually perceive it as some kind of magic (in contrast to being code monkeys). To me this is a very enjoyable work environment, that combines the best parts of a 9-5 job and exciting startup atmosphere.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#420

Post by mac01021 »

edblarney wrote: post #216
Animats wrote: post #79

We're there already. There are vast numbers of people who cannot make an economic contribution large enough to cover their costs. Education won't help. Teach a human how to do something, and you have one human who can do it. Teach a computer how to do something, and you can have as many computers as needed doing it. The US has already hit "peak school" in terms of economic benefit. About half of college graduates tak…

"Education won't help. Teach a human how to do something, and you have one human who can do it. Teach a computer how to do something, and you can have as many computers as needed doing it. " This is pragmatically not true. There are tons and tons of jobs that can't be done by computers. The 'entertainment sector' was not even a part of the economy 100 years ago. Now it's a big chunk. Think of how big sports are. That…

Tangentially:

I wonder how far we are from peak entertainment (in developed countries, I mean). With a fixed population size and a fixed number of hours in the day for each person, there is a hard limit on the number of hours of entertainment that can be delivered by industry.

And I'm not even sure I would spend anything more than I do now on entertainment even if all my working hours suddenly became leisure time (unless you're going to start counting activities like home improvement and amateur science and engineering projects as entertainment).

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