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

The history of what we call work

thenation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 66 posts

Re: The history of what we call work

#41

Post by agumonkey »

watwut wrote: post #34
agumonkey wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another dimension to this. All duties aren't the same. Hunting is a duty.. but it's not the same as redoing 200x print copies for your petty boss. The former is 100% beneficial to you (a bit selfish but hey), massages your senses, strengthen your body, sharpen your skills. It's play time, somehow very freeing. The latter is dull and unless you gamify it, grinds you for no good reason.

Office worker finds working in hobby garden freeing, strengthening body and sharpening skills. However, for farmer it is a lot of work and duty. Hunting for food, when you have to do it often is work like any other. No matter how much you like aspects of it initially.

I understand your point. Regular obligations exist in both sides. But when you operate as you wish for your own benefit, the basis is flipped.

ps: Sincerely, I mentioned above about volunteering. I used to wake up at 6 in the morning to unload truck 3 times a day. For free. Yet, I woke up every day very nicely, went there free minded, felt like a damn game to me. I gained daily rhythm (important for health), daily physical activity, sense of contribution as it was a food charity helping people in the area and zero obligations.

Meanwhile my colleagues, who were paid employees were all angry. All. Ranting about not being paid enough, won't make more efforts for that money, not being respected, having to obey or I'm fired, having to follow some stupid orders not being useful, having to come early for nothing, paranoia of being less favored.

Being a free man requires a lot of effort, but gives you a lot. Seeking your own goals is powerful.

Re: The history of what we call work

#42

Post by throwaway769879 »

sillyquiet wrote: post #25
pozdnyshev90 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IOW, 'work' isn't some activity that exists outside of your 'real' life, it IS your life in a very literal sense Not exactly. You sell your labor power in order to earn a living so you can go out an acquire goods to survive. You work to have the means to live . That doesn't mean it is your life. You don't reap the benefits of what you create.

I meant that sentence as a follow on to the preceding - I was talking about the work performed by people that don't live in rich privileged agricultural societies. > You don't reap the benefit of what you create And your risk is also much lessened and abstracted. If you produce a few bugs in your code, you don't get eaten by a tiger or have your family starve to death.

> If you produce a few bugs in your code, you don't get eaten by a tiger

That would be ... so cool!

Re: The history of what we call work

#43

Post by nivertech »

sillyquiet wrote: post #37
nivertech wrote: post #35

The Evolution of The Human Workforce: hunter-gatherers farmers slaves serfs employees on-site employees WFH contractors temps freelancers China-fication Uberization (gig workers) Robotization

no offense, but this is absurdly reductionist. I guess its apropos for twitter.

What's wrong with being reductionist or using analogies or metaphors?

Analogies are simplified models, all models are wrong, some are really wrong, but some are really useful.

The best professors are using them to explain complex phenomenons in simple terms.

I compressed decades of my history learning into a single tweet here. Most people are unable to be succinct. They're writing 500 pages books about subjects that can be summarized in a tweet.

Please show what's wrong with the way I explaining the evolution of work?

Re: The history of what we call work

#44

Post by abecedarius »

I think the reason most people in rich countries don't aim for FIRE is that they value positional goods. (For themselves or for their children.) You can't expect to keep up with the Joneses by working less than the Joneses.

It'd be useful to spell out just how this competitive nature is supposed to be transcended, in the author's future. There's a bit of handwaving towards the end about confiscating Bezos and Musk's resources, but not really much more. We've seen that approach in action for over 100 years.

Re: The history of what we call work

#45

Post by nineplay »

sillyquiet wrote: post #36
nineplay wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Man the Hunter” I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of stuff that gets left out falls under the heading of "women's work". There's an enormous blind spot that underlies most discussions of work where working 'at home' is disregarded as though it is the natural state of women and not worth mentioning. Women have always worked full time. Out of the home, in the home, with their partners, with their villages.…

Very very true, but to clarify too, those roles aren't as cut and dry either - it's true hunting was mostly a job for boys and young men, but older less spry men were also crafters and fabricators for their societies. They were also, a lot of the time, the 'elites' I spoke of - spiritual leaders, chieftains, hunting group leaders (which probably formed the kernel of later period dedicated warrior groups), etc. Elderl…

You make a good point, there's a lot of distribution and men didn't necessarily go out, hunt, and spend the rest of the day relaxing by the campfire either. The poster further up called it 'pop-antropology' and that is an accurate description. Take one part of what one society does and confidently declare that everything else doesn't count.

Re: The history of what we call work

#46

Post by losvedir »

francisofascii wrote: post #18
sillyquiet wrote: post #13

'Gathering food' is not the extent of the 'work' that hunter-gatherer societies performed, which is kind of the basis of that ridiculous pop-anthropology notion of hunter-gathers working some silly low number of hours per week. Food preparation and preservation, shelter, crafting necessaries like eating implements, food storage vessels, clothing, and weapons - these keep a member of that society (except for some of t…

The world still has some hunter gatherer societies living today, so studying them could give us some insight into how many hours our hunter gatherer ancestors worked.

I don't think that's a given. Or, at least, not if the extent of the argument is "well, they seem primitive to me, I assume my ancestors were primitive, so...".

The hunting and gathering (and storing, and shelter, and guarding, and...) surely were as varied as semi-modern (pre globalization) societies. The amount of work would depend on the natural environment and climate, hunting or fishing, trade with other local tribes, culture and mythologies.

I'd argue that the few, highly sequestered, remaining hunter gatherer societies, by virtue of being the only ones still around, are likely to be very much outliers in some dimensions and actually plausibly quite different from our own ancestors.

Re: The history of what we call work

#47

Post by sillyquiet »

nivertech wrote: post #43
sillyquiet wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no offense, but this is absurdly reductionist. I guess its apropos for twitter.

What's wrong with being reductionist or using analogies or metaphors? Analogies are simplified models, all models are wrong, some are really wrong, but some are really useful. The best professors are using them to explain complex phenomenons in simple terms. I compressed decades of my history learning into a single tweet here. Most people are unable to be succinct. They're writing 500 pages books about subjects that…

There's a point where all nuance and complexity is lost such that the model becomes useless. IOW this is, besides being incorrect, over-simplified. Your assumptions, especially for the future, are completely unjustified in this format.

As far as its incorrectness, this model implies both that this history of work is a progression, which it's not, and that each stage succeeds the previous, which it does not. Many of these stage overlap, sometimes by millennia.

Re: The history of what we call work

#48

Post by wayoutthere »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #26
wayoutthere wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter perspective is that some amount of degrowth will happen eventually. And in the west, decades of austerity have led to oppressive working conditions to the point people aren’t having children. We’re already seeing this effect on the workforce; my hypothesis is that much of the worker shortage is due to older workers dying from Covid or simply retiring and there aren’t enough millennials and Gen Z to fill t…

Yes, but at the point 'degrowth' surviving companies will likely be the most productive companies bar government bailouts. I don't really disagree with you for the most part. I just really see negative birth rates as inherently bad things.

Well either one of two things are going to happen in a “shrinking pool” global economic environment: governments will go hard populist left (likely to communism, which actually makes sense in a world where long-term degrowth or stagflation is likely), or a handful of mega corporations become the de-facto world government which allows them to continue productivity growth at all costs (read: the death of billions of poor people from lack of water / food).

Either way, the second half of this century is going to be bleak. That’s the other reason young people aren’t having kids: why bring them into a world that’s likely to be pretty awful?

Re: The history of what we call work

#49

Post by trisiak »

francisofascii wrote: post #18
sillyquiet wrote: post #13

'Gathering food' is not the extent of the 'work' that hunter-gatherer societies performed, which is kind of the basis of that ridiculous pop-anthropology notion of hunter-gathers working some silly low number of hours per week. Food preparation and preservation, shelter, crafting necessaries like eating implements, food storage vessels, clothing, and weapons - these keep a member of that society (except for some of t…

The world still has some hunter gatherer societies living today, so studying them could give us some insight into how many hours our hunter gatherer ancestors worked.

The article makes a point that contemporary hunter gatherers are not living the life like their ancestors. "Modern" cultures displaced them into much less favorable environments.

Re: The history of what we call work

#50

Post by nzmsv »

sillyquiet wrote: post #47
nivertech wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with being reductionist or using analogies or metaphors? Analogies are simplified models, all models are wrong, some are really wrong, but some are really useful. The best professors are using them to explain complex phenomenons in simple terms. I compressed decades of my history learning into a single tweet here. Most people are unable to be succinct. They're writing 500 pages books about subjects that…

There's a point where all nuance and complexity is lost such that the model becomes useless. IOW this is, besides being incorrect, over-simplified. Your assumptions, especially for the future, are completely unjustified in this format. As far as its incorrectness, this model implies both that this history of work is a progression, which it's not, and that each stage succeeds the previous, which it does not. Many of t…

You clearly invented the second paragraph: I can point out that gig worker and WFH employees coexist presently, and they are on different levels in the "model". I'm imagining that it has to be viewed through a sliding window.

In any case, it's cute. Lighten up a bit.

Post reply on HN