You are not your job • Hacker News Board

Re: You are not your job

#311

Post by 9rx » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 1:52 PM UTC

abcde666777 wrote: post #145

mathieuh wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this exactly Marx's criticism of capitalism through the theory of alienation? Human relationships get mediated and hidden as relationships between commodities and money.

Probably a valid criticism. Of course coming up with a better alternative is always where the devil's at.

We know how to come up with better alternatives, but as Marx also pointed out, the capitalists won't sit back and idly watch their world crumble. So putting anything else into practice is effectively impossible.

About the only time all the pieces fell into place to even begin to see anything else was Revolutionary Catalonia. However, the USSR quickly waged war with it to ensure its demise, and within no more than a few years it was no more. The capitalists who seized all the capital in the USSR under the guise of pretending to move away capitalism didn't want the people to realize that the USSR was still under capitalism all the same. That would threaten the capitalists who controlled the capital.

Re: You are not your job

#312

Post by abcde666777 » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

johnisgood wrote: post #172

abcde666777 wrote: post #122

Being able to see ourselves as something beyond our job (our means of survival) is a luxury. If a person can't provide for themselves the rest goes out the window fast. The only way to ease the anxiety in people isn't with fluff about their 'human worth', but rather to help them envision other tangible and plausible ways in which they can provide for themselves. The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we…

BTW YouTubers get paid for... generally themselves alone. I mean come on, many are getting paid for reacting to other people's videos. Wild.

I'd argue they get paid for their ability as performers and entertainers. It's a craft that often has be developed well beyond their innate personality, and often involves a lot of acting as well.

Re: You are not your job

#313

Post by 999900000999 » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

I don't think it'll happen, but we only need a fraction of people employed.

Robo Socialism is possible, I'd rather send a robot up to clean a roof , build a house, down a pipe , etc.

Robo taxis will be safer in due time.

Instead as the number of viable jobs continues to shrink we'll blame each other.

Re: You are not your job

#314

Post by steveharing1 » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

Many people define themselves based on their job & tbh its what they learn from the Society, I remember steve jobs once said in a video i watched that Everything you see is created by someone who is just a human like you, and many people just don't wanna create their own bcs they are too comfortable being in someone else's creation , I'm not talking about Mother nature, I'm talking about tech and stuff like these jobs , which a human has created, so many people needs to come out this thinking and they can casually define themselves based on their interests and even goals.

Re: You are not your job

#315

Post by mettamage » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 2:07 PM UTC

sph wrote: post #218

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a very old essay on Cracked that says something very similar: https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-y...

Good god, serious life advice targeted at young men (but applicable to anybody) before the manosphere, incels and culture wars took over. Unimaginable stuff today. What a relic.

Well... it was 2012 so makes sense.

> they fall for those jerks because those jerks have other things they can offer.

Ha! That reminds me that I, somewhat unknowingly, in the past have emulated the good parts of a jerk to be more attractive myself.

What are the good parts of a jerk?

They are: adventurous, spontaneous, in the moment, doesn't take everything too seriously, thrill seeking and confident. It made me much more pro-active as I'm a fairly passive person (romantically speaking) normally. Oh and I still was nice too. And I emulated those things because they sounded fun as well, I just never thought of amping it up a bit.

Re: You are not your job

#316

Post by tvier » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

abcde666777 wrote: post #122

Being able to see ourselves as something beyond our job (our means of survival) is a luxury. If a person can't provide for themselves the rest goes out the window fast. The only way to ease the anxiety in people isn't with fluff about their 'human worth', but rather to help them envision other tangible and plausible ways in which they can provide for themselves. The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we…

This comment defines value as what people pay for things, then comes to the conclusion that they way to value people must be based on what people will pay for them.

That's not insightful, that's just circular reasoning, and it fails to explain normal human behavior.

Does a child have no value to it's parents because it's "easily produced"[1] and "disposable and replaceable"?

[1] I imagine OP has never given birth

Re: You are not your job

#317

Post by amiga386 » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 2:14 PM UTC

lynx97 wrote: post #149

encrypted_bird wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your average person doesn't know how to grow their own food And, you know the sad part? A lot of places don't allow you to even try to learn. For example, my current place that I rent has a yard (it's a nice little trailer home), but I'm not allowed to have a garden. They even chopped down the nice tree that was growing in the yard when I first moved in. Oh, I can certainly try to grow stuff inside in containers, b…

You can't afford a $10 plastic container for growing plants? If that is true (which I doubt), I would be willing to drop you a few bucks via PayPal.

A $10 plastic container doesn't have nearly enough space for sustenance farming. Neither does a typical city home's garden. And for health reasons they're not going to let you raise animals (there are pretty funky diseases you and your neighbours can get from even just poultry, never mind pigs and cattle)

You can certainly grow various fun things in buckets - tomatos, herbs, etc. But you can't survive on it. Not with a small city garden.

And that's the point - in pre-industrial times, you had to survive off what you could grow, and you had a lot more land, which you used most of to grow your own food, and used most of your own time to grow food, and you were fucked at the first bad harvest (though you would likely have been part of a social contract where your local landowner took a portion of your crops to cover for these eventualities)

In post-industrial times, peasants found they could work in factories and earn much more than they could selling a portion of their crop. Countries stopped being 90% farmers. Normal people could specialise, not just the landed gentry who didn't wonder where their next meal was coming from.

And here we are typing to each other on websites.

It's sad if the city or your landlord won't let you have a garden. Gardens are wonderful things. You should try and grow something. But we're in a discussion context of "people don't even know how to grow their own food any more". Thank goodness for that, because if we did, we'd be spending all day tending to our crops, living in abject poverty, at constant risk of starvation, and we'd have no time for computers. Thank goodness for modern agricultural practise.

Re: You are not your job

#318

Post by abcde666777 » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 2:22 PM UTC

ear7h wrote: post #243

abcde666777 wrote: post #122

Being able to see ourselves as something beyond our job (our means of survival) is a luxury. If a person can't provide for themselves the rest goes out the window fast. The only way to ease the anxiety in people isn't with fluff about their 'human worth', but rather to help them envision other tangible and plausible ways in which they can provide for themselves. The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we…

Throughout this diatribe I think you had multiple opportunities to see the value of human life. That you didn't, makes me think you actually don't value your own life and while that's entirely your right. But, to project onto others that they're "in denial" for valuing their own, their families', or complete strangers' lives isn't the radical ultra-rational flex you think it is. To pick one mere point where you might…

I don't presume to be able to know the value of human life. There are too many unknowns and I'm not omniscient.

Perhaps we're immensely valuable - sparks of divinity. Perhaps we're not - mere bags of sentient meat.

I don't know which of those statements is more true. Either/neither/both?

Re: You are not your job

#319

Post by abcde666777 » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

tvier wrote: post #316

abcde666777 wrote: post #122

Being able to see ourselves as something beyond our job (our means of survival) is a luxury. If a person can't provide for themselves the rest goes out the window fast. The only way to ease the anxiety in people isn't with fluff about their 'human worth', but rather to help them envision other tangible and plausible ways in which they can provide for themselves. The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we…

This comment defines value as what people pay for things, then comes to the conclusion that they way to value people must be based on what people will pay for them. That's not insightful, that's just circular reasoning, and it fails to explain normal human behavior. Does a child have no value to it's parents because it's "easily produced"[1] and "disposable and replaceable"? [1] I imagine OP has never given birth

Just going to poke you a little for the statement about not having children ;). It strikes me as a little elitist and I'll tell you why:

You don't need to have had children to have loved people and to have lost people, and to fully understand the depth and weight of those things.

Re: You are not your job

#320

Post by jplusequalt » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

Gareth321 wrote: post #279

jaapz wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we value about ourselves are generally not that valuable to others. I love my own personality and humanity, my soul if you will, but nobody's paying me for it, and so I have to value it accordingly. This is only true if by "value" you mean monetary value. Your personality and humanity may not be valuable to the person paying you to do your job, it still has value…

There is an intractable problem is economics which is how to assign value to a thing. It's probably more of a philosophical debate. One arm of the debate is something called marginal utility. That is, a think is worth a different amount to different people. I value a particular guitar more than my neighbour does. I think it's worth $100. He thinks it's worth $50. Who is right? Authoritarian nations use top-down econo…

>Prove to me that this value exists. Prove to me it can be measured. To pre-empt your reply, I don't think you can.

Why does any of this matter? Do you require a person proves their utility to you before you hold the door open for them? When a child falls and scrapes their knee, do you ask about their grades in school, or parents net worth, before lending them a hand?

My point: human society is deeply interwoven with sentimental behaviors that make zero sense in economic theory. You can try to apply all the models you want to model human compassion and it will get you nil.

But that doesn't mean we should optimize that out of societies. I think it's the most wonderful part of our societies, and if we were to remove it, we'd stop being humans.