Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do people waste so much time at work?

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 230 posts

Re: Why do people waste so much time at work?

#191

Post by fwn »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #71
toolz wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one seems to be suggesting taking work away from people that want it, rather, it's to alleviate people from working who don't want it. If you want to work 80 hour weeks to drive a car that can go faster than you'll ever legally be able to push it and live in a house so large you only use a quarter of the living space regularly. Go for it. As for me, I'd rather have my basics met, so I could spend more time doing t…

I think a lot of the slightly crazier competitive types would be completely happy competing in virtual market games that have no real physical effects. I'm totally fine with slightly insane people gambling and trying to out-deal each other, providing they're not doing any physical damage. The problem we have now isn't so much that competitive people exist, but they're not just allowed to do physical damage, they're e…

I guess powerobsessed, competitive people will just rush towards politics the minute their time spent in the job won't increase power anymore.

Re: Why do people waste so much time at work?

#192

Post by toolz »

ams6110 wrote: post #189
toolz wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one seems to be suggesting taking work away from people that want it, rather, it's to alleviate people from working who don't want it. If you want to work 80 hour weeks to drive a car that can go faster than you'll ever legally be able to push it and live in a house so large you only use a quarter of the living space regularly. Go for it. As for me, I'd rather have my basics met, so I could spend more time doing t…

So what you are saying is, you want other people to fund your "basics" so you can go camping and do other stuff you enjoy. Wow, nice for you.

Am I supposed to apologize that I want everyone to have an income that would allow them to live and be healthy? Yeah it does sound nice that I could work for just the extras and then spend the rest of my life enjoying them. I don't feel the slightest bit sorry that I'm appreciative that we live in a world where technology could take care of most our basic needs and every day the need for human input is shrinking.

Re: Why do people waste so much time at work?

#193

Post by caseysoftware »

caseysoftware wrote: post #132

I think this involves setting some clear boundaries and expectations. I learned some things while I was consulting that I've carried into everything since: - After a certain time each evening (7pm for me), stop sending email. You can still write and respond to it but schedule it to go out the next morning. If people see you respond at 2am, they'll begin to expect it. - Do the same for weekends. Schedule email for Mon…

I should note two extra benefits from not always being available:

- many problems often resolve themselves

- those people who would rather ask someone instead of google, tend to learn to google.

Re: Why do people waste so much time at work?

#194

Post by Delmania »

floppydisk wrote: post #109
Delmania wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim that Jamestown was "saved by capitalism" is the typical libertarian/conservative story touted out in discussions about socialism and capitalism. The situation was a lot more nuanced than that. The setup of Jamestown as between the Crown and the investors, not the colonists, who were essentially indentured servants for 7 years. Also, the climate was not right for the types of crops the colonists were trying…

That's an incredibly frustrating response because it doesn't actually address anything substantive but simply attempts to cast dispersion on the arguments. I'll reiterate the request I made to a commentator below in the thread. Are there counter examples of a society working without incentive that allows people to work or not work and if so, why aren't they with us today / if they are, why aren't they more influentia…

Fair enough, my aim was to remove Jamestown from the equation, as that was not some failed experiment in socialism, but a poorly planned colony.

In terms of what you're looking for, there is not pure society like that. The closest you'll get are nations that highly socialist. Here's a Quora question on the topic: http://www.quora.com/Which-are-the-rich-socialist-countries-....

Fully removing incentives doesn't work, but I would claim you do need to make sure people avoid the poverty trap (and that's only part of it).

To respond to your other question, the classic example would be mortgage backed securities that were part of the housing crisis. They provided -some- value, but overall, they were nothing more than scheme to make money off people's payments and nonpayments of mortgages.

Also, CEO's, on average, make 300% of the average worker's salary. I'm not sure the average CEO is 300% more productive than an field worker or an engineer. They do have a hand in leading the organization, but honestly, most of that work is done by the people below them in the org chart.

Re: Why do people waste so much time at work?

#195

Post by juliangregorian »

dragonwriter wrote: post #184
juliangregorian wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and that reminds me of another great example for money's imaginary quality: The total amount of money in existence is many magnitudes more than it would theoretically take to end global poverty. However, no one dares attempt this, because it would knock the struts out that prop up the whole system (namely, debt).

> The total amount of money in existence is many magnitudes more than it would theoretically take to end global poverty. No quantity of money can end poverty, and no reasonable theory suggests that any amount of money can. Systems of distributing goods and services (whether or not money is used as a proxy in those systems) might, but the quantity of money existing is pretty much irrelevant to that. > However, no one…

> No quantity of money can end poverty

What definition of poverty are you using? Certainly studies have been done: https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2013-01-19/...

> the quantity of money existing is pretty much irrelevant to that.

I mean, that's what I'm saying, but as it is now, if I had a billion dollars, I could build a few wells in Africa, yanno?

> Money is debt...

Clearly, but in addition to that, my point is that the system of money needs people to be in debt. There's no "neutral state" as it were, and indeed, many of the efforts of the IMF and World Bank are calculated to get poor countries further in debt.

Re: Why do people waste so much time at work?

#196

Post by erikb »

toolz wrote: post #57
erikb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote mentions that people either work to make a living or to make a reason for living. My argument is that there is another reason which is quite common: to get a bigger piece of the pie. If you put in more hours on friday night because you want a raise then the reason is not that you want to pay your bills (you already do that), and it's not because you couldn't do anything else on friday night that would be re…

No one seems to be suggesting taking work away from people that want it, rather, it's to alleviate people from working who don't want it. If you want to work 80 hour weeks to drive a car that can go faster than you'll ever legally be able to push it and live in a house so large you only use a quarter of the living space regularly. Go for it. As for me, I'd rather have my basics met, so I could spend more time doing t…

Saying a lot of "you" makes the impression that you(!) think I think that way. I haven't posted my own opinion though. I just added another reason people(!) have for working.

About the other argument you are right. Other people's respect is also an important reason to work.

Re: Why do people waste so much time at work?

#197

Post by fwn »

icebraining wrote: post #178
jrs235 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, I mostly agree with your sentiments. This comment is not in opposition but made to extend the discussion even beyond just money. In order for a universal basic income system to work, we'll probably need to ditch democracy or put into writing some difficult to change protections. Seeing that the Constitution is being treated as either a) a living breathing document whose meaning changes with time or b) just…

Why doesn't that happen now, then? The current majority could, right now, decide to massively increase the taxes on, say, the 40% richest and redistribute that money to the rest of the 60%. In fact, the current majority can, right now, decide to implement UBI, and then do all those things you describe. Essentially, it's a slippery slope argument, with no great explanation of why UBI would change the conditions to sta…

One might argue that a majority can not decide anything since it's not an agent, nor is the relative amount of people who share a specific opinion somehow relevant in most of contemporary politics.

Also taxation is not a one way route as it might backfire through tax avoidance or just collective time re-allocation.

I'd bet there is no single agent on any developed country either powerful enough or knowledgeable enough to implement the UBI as it will most likely require massive legal and political changes.

So I guess it's pretty obvious why no one implemented the UBI yet.

Edit: never mind. I guess I miss understood you. Sorry.^^

Re: Why do people waste so much time at work?

#198

Post by juliangregorian »

floppydisk wrote: post #177
juliangregorian wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and that reminds me of another great example for money's imaginary quality: The total amount of money in existence is many magnitudes more than it would theoretically take to end global poverty. However, no one dares attempt this, because it would knock the struts out that prop up the whole system (namely, debt).

The grandparent noted that while we can increase the amount of currency in people's pockets, that doesn't fundamentally change the number of goods and services available to the total population. If you define poverty as lack of money, then yes, we can fiat more than enough money into existence. However, if you define poverty as lack of access to goods and services, increasing the amount of money available won't work.…

Let's break things down nice and simple. As you said, everyone needs a roof over their head and food in their belly. Well, there's plenty of that to go round. We don't need to fiat more money or otherwise increase the money supply, because as you astutely observed, that would potentially lead to a post-war Germany-type situation. If, however, the world's poorest were gifted adequate funds from the world's richest, they would be able to afford the biological necessities.

Re: Why do people waste so much time at work?

#199

Post by geebee »

Anderkent wrote: post #60
benihana wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically 9,999 people are completely dependent on the work of one person for them to survive and prosper. Sounds really rosy, for everyone involved.

Those 9999 people would be completely fine if they were born earlier. We enable some people to be incredibly productive, at the cost of other peoples ability to support themselves. "But society came and paved over the place where all the roots and berry plants grew and killed the buffalo and dynamited the caves and declared the tribal bonding rituals Problematic. This increased productivity by about a zillion times,…

Interesting link, thanks for posting it. The analogy to eminent domain is a clever one.

This reminds me of a bit I heard recently about early British hunter-gatherers and the transition to agriculture.

http://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=15-P13-00009&se...

An interesting question that comes up is why British hunter gatherers were slow to adopt agriculture when there is a 2,000 year gap in when wheat was first introduced and when Britain become more agricultural. One possibility is that they simply didn't want to become more agricultural.

"..it may well have been the case that the Mesolithic peoples of Europe really did not want to switch to an agricultural economy, but at some point they would have had to switch as their own hunter-gatherer economy would have ceased to be viable as they lose more land to this encroaching advancement of arable agriculture."

Re: Why do people waste so much time at work?

#200

Post by jrs235 »

icebraining wrote: post #178
jrs235 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, I mostly agree with your sentiments. This comment is not in opposition but made to extend the discussion even beyond just money. In order for a universal basic income system to work, we'll probably need to ditch democracy or put into writing some difficult to change protections. Seeing that the Constitution is being treated as either a) a living breathing document whose meaning changes with time or b) just…

Why doesn't that happen now, then? The current majority could, right now, decide to massively increase the taxes on, say, the 40% richest and redistribute that money to the rest of the 60%. In fact, the current majority can, right now, decide to implement UBI, and then do all those things you describe. Essentially, it's a slippery slope argument, with no great explanation of why UBI would change the conditions to sta…

Because coming to a consensus of what amount or what should be provided and how to provide is very difficult. Also there are numerous people who still believe in a work ethnic that things are earned not given. The shrinking middle class hasn't thrown in the towel yet.
Post reply on HN