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Maybe you should do less 'work'

johnwhiles.com

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Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#241

Post by caffeine »

adenozine wrote: post #165
caffeine wrote: post #135

You are the boss of a company of one. Your company sells labor to the labor market, it makes investments in assets, it borrows funds, etc. It’s your job to decide how that company is run. It’s your job to decide what investments that company needs to make to get good returns. It’s also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-manage legal ha…

Do you have kids? This makes no sense from my perspective. I could literally put myself through anything that I needed to, if it meant the safety or well-being of my children. It's not a company, it's a primal force from thousands of years of primordial reinforcement. I'd manage with less capital, so that my kids have a chance at college. I'd manage with less chance of promotion, so that my kids can have my presence…

> Do you have kids?

Yes.

> I sincerely hope that you don't actually conduct this thinking deep into your lifestyle

I think what I said holds true about your economic decisions (which the article I’m commenting on is about).

I don’t believe you have to (or even really can) view your entire life through an economic lens. I didn’t mean to imply you are ONLY a company and nothing else.

I did mean the last bit that nobody else is going to make sure you don’t have a bad outcome as applying to life generally.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#242

Post by beaconstudios »

BobbyJo wrote: post #236
beaconstudios wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the parent is critiquing the argument that we are all homo economicus - an agent whose primary function is to operate within the market at maximum efficiency to optimise for profit. The counterargument is that no, we aren't, and optimising for market exploitation is both an effort in frustration and anathema to human wellbeing. The GP is encouraging us to act like robots by living our lives in accordance with market…

> The counterargument is that no, we aren't, and optimising for market exploitation is both an effort in frustration and anathema to human wellbeing I don't see how an argument that agrees with the parent is counter argument. They literally said we all need to look out for our own well being, and a part of that is managing our participation in voluntary exchange. > We aren't all totally independent actors competing i…

The model that the parent is positing is that we are all totally independent actors competing in a labour market and our primary goal should be to optimise our behaviour in said market.

While that's an accurate description of neoliberal economics, I'm arguing that it's neither natural, nor necessarily productive, nor conducive to human wellbeing to mould one's behaviour to fit that system. Or to be more concrete: you're wasting your life studying the labour market for opportunities, learning new disciplines to increase your wage, reading through employment contracts looking for advantages (obviously you should check for big fuck-you statements in contracts, just for self-protection). Not only is the market irrational, such that behaviour based on a rational model of the market is a poor guarantee of positive outcomes, but that living such a life based on market rationality is pretty immiserating and misaligned with what actually makes people happy.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#243

Post by alfalfasprout »

deltaonefour wrote: post #51
bluefirebrand wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is honestly a really big sickness within our industry and it seems to be everywhere. I don't think I will ever work towards a promotion again.

Working towards a promotion is not just about productivity. You have to display leadership qualities. But here's the key. Not all managers want leaders. It an be viewed as a threat. When the time is right, you can show off your leadership skills.

Don't forget politics. You can display leadership qualities all you want but politics play into whether your project will ultimately suceeed, be deprioritized, and who gets credit for what.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#244

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

caffeine wrote: post #219
Toine wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a certain extreme perspective, there is some truth to what you're saying, but wow, this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people. This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies, we're not robots only driven by free will, we don't live in an economy. We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven…

> We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven. Totally agree. > We are NOT companies Actually, we are humans. However, when it comes to our economic activity, we are also a company. Both things can be true at once. > this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people. Woah. Anything you specifically…

Despite enjoying Smurfs, a show about hardcore social animals, as a kid, I still hope young people believe they can fail.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#245

Post by dxdm »

caffeine wrote: post #219
Toine wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a certain extreme perspective, there is some truth to what you're saying, but wow, this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people. This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies, we're not robots only driven by free will, we don't live in an economy. We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven…

> We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven. Totally agree. > We are NOT companies Actually, we are humans. However, when it comes to our economic activity, we are also a company. Both things can be true at once. > this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people. Woah. Anything you specifically…

What you wrote sounds extremely biased towards turning life into economical transactions on the labor market, while I think there's already too much of this mindset, and people need to be reminded that there is much more to life than economic theory.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#246

Post by kqr »

caffeine wrote: post #219
Toine wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a certain extreme perspective, there is some truth to what you're saying, but wow, this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people. This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies, we're not robots only driven by free will, we don't live in an economy. We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven…

> We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven. Totally agree. > We are NOT companies Actually, we are humans. However, when it comes to our economic activity, we are also a company. Both things can be true at once. > this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people. Woah. Anything you specifically…

What set me off (not the one you're responding to) about your comment was the bit about not having a right to a good outcome.

Depending on what one means by "good", that one doesn't have a right to it is a fairly strong statement of political opinion, but it was presented as a universal truth.

I also think it's very important that people are allowed to enter risky ventures and "fail" while still being secure of a somewhat good outcome. Anything else puts a lid on innovation. (As they say, if you don't fail a lot, you aren't running bold enough experiments.)

----

You may have meant it descriptively ("I have observed that most societies don't allow for individual failure") and not prescriptively ("societies shouldn't allow for individual failure") but the rest of your comment was written in a prescriptive tone so it was hard to pick up on.

Either way, congrats on writing a popular and controversial comment!

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#247

Post by deltaonefour »

ironmagma wrote: post #191
deltaonefour wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the other side of the coin. Your employer is free loading off of you. You are paid a fraction of the amount of money that your work actually generates. If your work generates 100 dollars... you're paid 10. So essentially your employer is fucking you and any other attitude other than to treat the situation for what it is, is delusional. Don't call us 'people'. You're the one that doesn't get it. Now I'm not sayin…

> You are paid a fraction of the amount of money that your work actually generates There are organizations that don't do this. They are called nonprofits. Why don't people just work for nonprofits all the time? Because they are less stable and there is less upward mobility. So there's something that is actually bought by this extractive capitalism, and we sign up for it when we sign up to work at for-profit companies…

Nobody is promoting communism here. But capitalism is imperfect in the sense that it's unfair. The unfairness motivates productivity. It's the best system but it is still highly flawed. Wealth inequality is one of the major consequences of capitalism that we haven't quite figured out how to tame.

It is freeloading in every sense of the word. You pay a slave a dime for work that generates you hundreds of dollars the slave still benefits, but you are still freeloading even if the slave is benefiting by a ten cents.

It's how things are, I'm not calling for a better system. But I'm not so stupid as to sell 100% of my loyalty to a company that in the end is shafting me.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#248

Post by ozim »

dxbydt wrote: post #220
caffeine wrote: post #135

You are the boss of a company of one. Your company sells labor to the labor market, it makes investments in assets, it borrows funds, etc. It’s your job to decide how that company is run. It’s your job to decide what investments that company needs to make to get good returns. It’s also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-manage legal ha…

ffs. Humans have lived on the planet for 200000 years. This way of organizing people as a company interacting with the labor market with assets & investments & risk management...is at best a 100 years old. Its like a drop in the ocean of time. That said, when I was taking courses in Finance as a young 20 something, I came up with this same exact analogy & took it to its logical end - I conceived a stock exchange call…

What is your idea of how people were living for most of that history?

You think being human stock ticker is worse than:

living on average 25 years, starving most of your life, having high chance of being literal slave not figurative, being ostracized and killed for any silly reason by local community, being dumped into trash or simply killed if local community found you were not useful or weak

So if you take it into perspective of 200000 years - being human ticker is actually really nice and comfortable.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#249

Post by deltaonefour »

alexashka wrote: post #65
deltaonefour wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the other side of the coin. Your employer is free loading off of you. You are paid a fraction of the amount of money that your work actually generates. If your work generates 100 dollars... you're paid 10. So essentially your employer is fucking you and any other attitude other than to treat the situation for what it is, is delusional. Don't call us 'people'. You're the one that doesn't get it. Now I'm not sayin…

I don't employ anyone. I'm not coming from a place of a disgruntled employer complaining about the workers being 'lazy' or whatever. I'm coming from a place of what the blog talks about - someone who came in starry eyed doing good work, only to find out you won't get paid 3x for doing 3x the work relative to everyone else, but instead they'll try to get you to do 4x the work for a 10% yearly bonus, until you drop dea…

I think I misinterpreted your post. We're talking about the same thing.

Re: Maybe you should do less 'work'

#250

Post by Noumenon72 »

cinntaile wrote: post #91
dahfizz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but I should not have to subsidize your laziness. I don't care if you want to lay on the couch all day, but it is not okay to steal money from me to do so.

He says everyone should work 20-30 hours, not more. How do you equate that with laying on the couch all day?

He's taking it to the limit to illustrate that even if you are minimally productive, he wouldn't care as long as you don't ask him to support you.
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