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The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

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Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#51

Post by Hizonner »

arp242 wrote: post #42
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

Similarly … The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. 400BC

This is of course the famous quote from Socrates, and I absolutely hate this "argument". "Socrates was wrong in 400BC and it's wrong today" is one possible scenario, but it's also entirely possible that: - Socrates was right in 400BC. - at multiple points in 2,400 years there was a problem with "kids these days". - Socrates was wrong in 400BC, but it's fair today or at other points in history. It's just a complete no…

It's a non-argument in response to a stupid assertion generally made with zero meaningful evidence...

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#52

Post by reocha »

stevenwoo wrote: post #20
swayvil wrote: post #4

Modern work is weird. All your energy goes into it. But at the end of the day there's no satisfaction. Just emptiness and exhaustion. So you invest your remaining time in entertainments, drugs and shopping. Frantically groping for a scrap of joy. My friends in carpentry call it "feeding the monkey". The monkey must be fed, one way or another.

The mastodon items are modern American but isn't this alienation ala Marx or Hegel?

What swayvil described sounds almost exactly like alienation in the Marxist sense.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#53

Post by usrbinbash »

It's pretty simple really.

If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the necessities, then there is technically no difference between working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which in that case is the freedom to decide between working and living on the streets.

And people don't like being indentured servants. History should have made that clear by now.

People want perspective. In the past, a working man could support a family of five, buy a house, a car and afford vacation once or twice a year, plus save enough to retire comfortably.

Today people, despite burning themselves out in their job, struggle to pay rent in a flat shared with other working people, after loading themselves up with 100k in students debt, and no chance in hell to ever own property of their own.

If the powers that be want people to be willing to work, that work has to pay off.

If it doesn't, well...we're at the beginning of a retirement wave unprecedented in human history. 2 low-birthrate generations to follow. And our entire economic system is designed around constant growth.

I leave doing the math on that as an exercise for the reader.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#54

Post by dsr_ »

arp242 wrote: post #42
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

Similarly … The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. 400BC

This is of course the famous quote from Socrates, and I absolutely hate this "argument". "Socrates was wrong in 400BC and it's wrong today" is one possible scenario, but it's also entirely possible that: - Socrates was right in 400BC. - at multiple points in 2,400 years there was a problem with "kids these days". - Socrates was wrong in 400BC, but it's fair today or at other points in history. It's just a complete no…

You missed the big one:

If you can find reliable evidence across time, space and cultures that humans have complained about the same X, then complaining about X is part of human nature in, at least, cultures that leave durable evidence.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#55

Post by skrebbel »

My theory is that this is all true, and it’s fantastic. Generally, over the last century, in year X, nobody wants to work anymore compared to year Y (Y This is a success of social democracy and it is a success of technology. We can afford to have people work less hard and still be richer than we ever were. It’s the success story of western progress and the rest of the world is going through the same steps as we speak. That a few old-fashioned managers are surprised they can’t get people at the same bad terms as before is just a symptom of a very positive development.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#56

Post by miltondts »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #33
Belphemur wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always wondered if it was an actual Ancient Time quote. Doesn't seem like it : > It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/…

What is "Ancient Time"? Is that capitalization intentional? Edit: Oh, maybe you meant "Ancient Rome"?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history

"Ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans in the period 3000 BC – AD 500."

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#58

Post by lopkeny12ko »

As a tech lead, the big problem I see now is that people are not hungry anymore. The best engineers I've ever worked with were consistently asking for more and leveling up the team at the same time. Now, the post-covid hires, especially the junior engineers, just do the bare minimum to scrape by, and they seem totally unbothered by it.

One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day "walking her dog." I even called this out during a formal performance review and her behavior hasn't changed at all. (Work-from-home abuse is another component of this observation.)

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#59

Post by constantly »

almost_usual wrote: post #50
constantly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. First, it’s unfair to extrapolate one persons toxic mindset to work in general. But aside from that, what I’m saying is that there are plenty of examples of people who are happy at their jobs and if one wants to be happy at their jobs they can follow those examples or use them as inspiration.

I’m sure there were some happy servants in the past as well.

Your weird strawman aside, servants rarely or never had the same career and life mobility as hacker news posters.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#60

Post by gambiting »

swayvil wrote: post #46
gambiting wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Blaming workers for their poor conditions is elitist and fragile advice I literally don't see where I said such a thing.

You literally told the worker that his misery is his own fault for having chosen the wrong job.

I said if there is no satisfaction then you need to find a different job. The misery part was added by you.
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