Why do we work so damn much? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why do we work so damn much?

#41

Post by lazylion2 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

trixie_ wrote: post #10

Why do many millionaires and billionaires continue to work super hard? People on TV, people in power, they are set for life financially and yet they still work. It's because just like the rest of us - it's what we do. We don't know how not to work without feeling like we should be doing something 'productive'. It's more cultural than anything else.

I believe its an evolutionary thing. Evolution does not want you to be content with sitting on the beach doing nothing all day. you need to move around, explore and procreate, enlightened people don't do that.

Re: Why do we work so damn much?

#42

Post by vishnugupta » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

cirrus3 wrote: post #13

This is mostly a rant on the style of article title and intro. The content may be interesting, but I seriously doubt it. It starts off with: > Hunter-gatherers worked 15-hour weeks. Why don’t we? Uh, well, for starters, 15 hours is apparently what it took to survive and live a comparatively successful lifestyle back then, a lifestyle that really only involved SURVIVING to see the next day. Dial that up to what it tak…

> Hunter-gatherers worked 15-hour weeks. Why don’t we?

Yeah, this drivel of a narrative must be extinguished. The world as it is now is completely different from the world in the 90s that I grew up in. To an extent that someone teleported from 90s to now will take a month or so just to make sense of it all. And this narrative is comparing the worlds that are thousand of years apart.

And what is the basis for that 15hr number? Did a group of people try to live the life of a hunter-gatherer for a decade or two? Or is it all based on back-of-the-envelop calculation, that goes "I need 2-3hr/day to gather food and eat"? If they did, then they have completely missed the ordeal (also under the category of work) our ancestors had to put up with just to survive the unforgiving nature.

Next time we hear something like this we should challenge them to actually live the life of a hunter-gatherer and then come back. At the very least live with and observe similar societies and gather data.

Re: Why do we work so damn much?

#43

Post by themodelplumber » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:01 AM UTC

cirrus3 wrote: post #24

The article seems to answer the question right up front. > as we’ve gotten richer and built more technology, we’ve developed a machine not for ending our wants, not for fulfilling them, but for generating new ones, new needs, new desires, new forms of status competition. > You can’t solve the problem of scarcity with our current system because our current system is designed to generate endlessly the feeling of more s…

> our current system is designed

Do people really believe this language is accurate or likely to be helpful? What are we going to do, locate the designer and thwart their evil plan? Or attempt to locate the blueprint?

It seems to me that this kind of wording gives way too much credit to human consciousness.

Re: Why do we work so damn much?

#44

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:02 AM UTC

MrStonedOne wrote: post #25

barnaclejive wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine reading this and extracting out a perspective focusing on why millionaires keep working. Hard cringe.

Millionaires don't need to work, yet still do, so looking at them provides a unique view into the human condition.

[deleted]

Re: Why do we work so damn much?

#45

Post by barnaclejive » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

themodelplumber wrote: post #43

cirrus3 wrote: post #24

The article seems to answer the question right up front. > as we’ve gotten richer and built more technology, we’ve developed a machine not for ending our wants, not for fulfilling them, but for generating new ones, new needs, new desires, new forms of status competition. > You can’t solve the problem of scarcity with our current system because our current system is designed to generate endlessly the feeling of more s…

> our current system is designed Do people really believe this language is accurate or likely to be helpful? What are we going to do, locate the designer and thwart their evil plan? Or attempt to locate the blueprint? It seems to me that this kind of wording gives way too much credit to human consciousness.

^ this

Re: Why do we work so damn much?

#46

Post by barnaclejive » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:04 AM UTC

barnaclejive wrote: post #31

barnaclejive wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine reading this and extracting out a perspective focusing on why millionaires keep working. Hard cringe.

> Millionaires don't need to work, yet still do, so looking at them provides a unique view into the human condition. Does it tho?, "lets look harder at why the millionaires work.. that seems like a good starting point." /s

OP seems to like his downvote privilege more than owning up to his ignorance.

Re: Why do we work so damn much?

#47

Post by tolbish » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

themodelplumber wrote: post #43

cirrus3 wrote: post #24

The article seems to answer the question right up front. > as we’ve gotten richer and built more technology, we’ve developed a machine not for ending our wants, not for fulfilling them, but for generating new ones, new needs, new desires, new forms of status competition. > You can’t solve the problem of scarcity with our current system because our current system is designed to generate endlessly the feeling of more s…

> our current system is designed Do people really believe this language is accurate or likely to be helpful? What are we going to do, locate the designer and thwart their evil plan? Or attempt to locate the blueprint? It seems to me that this kind of wording gives way too much credit to human consciousness.

Would "built" have sufficed?

Re: Why do we work so damn much?

#48

Post by Mandelmus » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

themodelplumber wrote: post #43

cirrus3 wrote: post #24

The article seems to answer the question right up front. > as we’ve gotten richer and built more technology, we’ve developed a machine not for ending our wants, not for fulfilling them, but for generating new ones, new needs, new desires, new forms of status competition. > You can’t solve the problem of scarcity with our current system because our current system is designed to generate endlessly the feeling of more s…

> our current system is designed Do people really believe this language is accurate or likely to be helpful? What are we going to do, locate the designer and thwart their evil plan? Or attempt to locate the blueprint? It seems to me that this kind of wording gives way too much credit to human consciousness.

It's a collective design that's been arrived at iteratively over many generations but it's still designed insofar that it's composed of countless consciously created and refined incentive structures, cultural norms, legal constructs, and institutions that in concert further our current system.

Re: Why do we work so damn much?

#49

Post by howaboutnope » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:21 AM UTC

Blackstone4 wrote: post #15

I meet plenty of professionals who despite having made millions and could retire, still work. Why? I believe a large part of their identity and self-worth is tied up in their work and net worth… they get respect and power… their roles give them a position in society. For many, they get used to the amount of money they’ve made but it’s never enough. The type of personality that drove them to work hard and become rich…

> a large part of their identity and self-worth is tied up in their work and net worth… they get respect and power… their roles give them a position in society. For many, they get used to the amount of money they’ve made but it’s never enough

For me that just sounds like a lack, a wound that won't heal no matter how many extrinsic things are thrown at it.

Re: Why do we work so damn much?

#50

Post by hiram112 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 6:27 AM UTC

cirrus3 wrote: post #24

The article seems to answer the question right up front. > as we’ve gotten richer and built more technology, we’ve developed a machine not for ending our wants, not for fulfilling them, but for generating new ones, new needs, new desires, new forms of status competition. > You can’t solve the problem of scarcity with our current system because our current system is designed to generate endlessly the feeling of more s…

I hear this trope all the time, that if I just avoided my Starbucks and IPhone, Netflix and Spotify subscriptions, I could live like a King on 10 hours per week job, in our modern land-of-plenty utopia.

But that's baloney. A 3BR average home in my city is now 6x median income, and that's with average households being 2 full-time workers instead of 1. And this isn't some 3k sq ft McMansion - another common strawman - it's the same dumpy house that a single earner easily afforded at 3x salary 40 years ago.

All the other big-ticket items that I spend 80% of my salary on have increased at similar rates.

A lot of Americans do overspend and are obsessed with keeping up with the Jones. You realize that when you go to the grocery store and 1/2 the cars in the parking lot are $50k SUVs and gigantic pickups.

But even if you're a modest person making $50k a year in a medium COL city, the cost of the new Iphone or flat screen TV you bought is inconsequential to the expenses you can't avoid - housing, health care, education, transportation, etc. All of these have almost doubled in price relative to the income of a single full time worker in the last four decades.