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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

#221

Post by vsareto »

hollerith wrote: post #201
vsareto wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The housing market is probably permanently ruined for individual family buyers as long as they are competing with businesses/individuals buying multiple residential properties as investments. Subsidies or government backed contributions won't be the answer. Universities have a societal function and could conceivable operate without profit in mind, but they still chose to be greedy and act like for-profit businesses o…

It wouldn't be Hacker News without the constant stream economically-illiterate ideas for "improving" our lives in the comments!

I'm not sure what you mean? Could you explain?

Does it really bother you someone could be ignorant of something here?

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#222

Post by jack_pp »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #171
Borg3 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude really? The cost of working from home is absolutly minimal. You gain much more than you loss. You do NOT waste time and money commuting. You can eat healtier food. You can take break when you really need it. People who say that they need to get compesation for WFH cant do basic math...

Work from home is literally an employee subsidized office. Who pays for the internet? You do. Who pays for the electicity? You do. Who pays for water? You do. Who pays for the ac during the heat of the day? You do. Who pays for square footage dedicated to a desk? You do. Who fixes networking it related issues? You do. Who is the custodian and building maintainer? Also you. Companies save money hand over fist by shove…

You already have those things. Network rarely like maybe once a year goes down at home, if your company doesn't provide food then you either order and the cost is the same or you can cook and it's cheaper.

You are right, companies save money and you save commute time. It's win/win.

That's if you like working from home which I don't.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#223

Post by afpx »

brazzy wrote: post #125
usrbinbash wrote: post #53

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 mad…

>And people don't like being indentured servants. History should have made that clear by now. History has also made it clear that people can be made to endure living conditions they don't like or a very long time. I submit that, historically, life for the common people was far, far more often barely tolerable or even intolerable, than agreeable. We like to hear about peasant and slave revolts in history classes, but…

A lot of people echoing each other online isn’t much of a revolt, either.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#224

Post by shove »

irrational wrote: post #219
shove wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a similar vein, this poem by Pedro Pietri: Telephone Booth (number 905 1/2) woke up this morning feeling excellent, picked up the telephone dialed the number of my equal opportunity employer to inform him I will not be into work today Are you feeling sick? the boss asked me No Sir I replied: I am feeling too good to report to work today, if I feel sick tomorrow I will come in early

My company would call that taking a mental health day, which is considered a legitimate reason for not coming into work.

Mine too, but I’ve not always had the pleasure of working for the enlightened

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#225

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#226

Post by VerminOctopus1 »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #168
justin_oaks wrote: post #6

To be honest, people generally don't want to work. In what way is this surprising?

Source? I don't find this true at all. People simply don't want to do meaningless, consuming or alienating work.

I think this depends on what your definition of “work” is. I’m going to assume the poster you’re replying to means your typical office, service, or labor job - most of which are as you said, meaningless, consuming or alienating.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#227

Post by justin_oaks »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #168
justin_oaks wrote: post #6

To be honest, people generally don't want to work. In what way is this surprising?

Source? I don't find this true at all. People simply don't want to do meaningless, consuming or alienating work.

The term "work" may not be sufficiently precise. And that's how "Nobody wants to work" can be both simultaneously true and false at the same time, depending on what is meant by "work".

To say "Nobody wants to to engage in drudgery anymore" is true and always has been. To say "Nobody wants to be employed at a job that's meaningful and rewarding" is false (for most people at least; there may be exceptions).

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#228

Post by PM_me_your_math »

alisonatwork wrote: post #205
usrbinbash wrote: post #53

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 mad…

I think it's important to note that the good old days of a working man being able to support a family of five was only true for a brief period of history in a handful of elite countries. In most of the world, and for most of human history, it hasn't been the case that any single person working 40 hours a week could provide a luxurious lifestyle for a large family. While some lament the loss of this golden age their g…

[flagged]

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#229

Post by happytoexplain »

whitexn--g28h wrote: post #174
arp242 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two datapoints is hardly enough for that, and out of the billions of people who have lived in the last 2,500 years an infinitesimal small percentage have complained about roughly the same thing, so "any and all arguments that touch on this must be invalid" seems just as much of an invalid non-argument to me. You can pick almost any topic and find people unfairly whinging about it "across time, space, and cultures" be…

It’s specifically dismissing the idea that the problem is new. That this is the first time kids have been different, that workers wanted better conditions. Nobody wants to work “anymore”… The kids “these days”

"Any more" and "these days" only imply an arbitrary amount of novelty. They are correct phrases whether we're observing a problem this year that wasn't present last year, or this millennia that wasn't present last millennia.

Regardless, novelty is a straw man. The implication that it's wrong to complain about something because it's not new is fallacious.

Yes, a person may compare younger people unfavorably to their own generation at the same age on some property they observe to be different when in fact it's only their perspective/memory that is different. But demonstrating that a complaint is not new is not evidence of that.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#230

Post by pram »

welshwelsh wrote: post #185
usrbinbash wrote: post #53

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 mad…

A working man can still support a family of five, buy a house, a car and a vacation once or twice a year. He just needs to be realistic. House: you can still find houses with plenty of room for ~$100k. It just needs to be in an affordable area: think McKeesport, not San Francisco. Car: for $5k you can get a 2005 Ford Focus or Honda Civic. They're reliable cars that will get you from A to B perfectly fine, easy to rep…

Now this is some “folksy wisdom”
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