People do care, about their own self interest and making money. Homo economicus, here we are! A critique of this attitude must look at its origins, and I think the reason we see this so much, is because the narrative of the last 40 years or so has been that: If we all look out for our own self interest, the market will balance everything out, and things will be great! Turns out, doing the bare minimum in an almost maliciously compliant way doesn't yield great results, who could've seen it coming?
The Who Cares Era
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Re: The Who Cares Era
#42I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…
> The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) This doesn't happen because nobody cares. It happens because the financing dries up, or labor is straight up not available. And that still comes back to money.
That's not a satisfactory explanation, because you're saying that the owner of the land can't make use of it and should have given it to someone else, but they don't actually care what the best use of the land is, so they take the slow way.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#43This is late stage capitalism at work. Our economy and political systems incentivized the behavior that lead us here, and the current apathy we see is the working class realizing the rot in the bottom of society.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#44People tend to care when they feel that they are being given a good deal. In my experience (UK), people are usually more pleasant in smaller towns, and I ascribe that to, well, the cost of living is lower relative to their wage, they probably have a decent flat or a small house at least, maybe a car, etc. In London if you work in a coffee shop then you either have a well off partner or you are in some shoebox countin…
There's also no real future to look forward to. Take London. Outside of finance, technology and law, even manager level positions won't earn you enough to ever own the roof over your head. The median salary is just under 50k pounds. Once you pay out of your ass for the myriad of taxes, you are left with say 30k. That's enough to rent yourself a really shitty apartment from an absentee landlord living either abroad or somewhere in a large house in Surrey. Anywhere within commute distance to London, living is so expensive that a large portion (probably the majority) of the population has the beautiful outlook that they'll never own anything and will work until the day they drop dead. Why bother? What is the point of making an effort?
The cost of living a good life has completely run away from the vast majority of the population.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe (and I mean this genuinely, I don't know for certain) "Who cares?" is a cause of wage stagnation.
I think the arrow goes the other way.
I was wondering if maybe this is the result of a tight labor market. A lot lf what I see kind of lines up with what happens if you have to make do with underskilled or otherwise sloppy staff.
The throughline I think is that there's no consequence for being bad at one's job. Not to say I'm perfect - I am pretty sure I've been a mediocre employee before, but I've also never been sacked.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#46I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…
This is happening all over and I think a lot of it has to do with society moving from communities to larger societies where they increasingly feel less significant. They work for a large bureaucratic systems that don't give two shits about them. The small mom and pop businesses are all consolidated into cold soulless corporations who's only goal is numbers go up. So you do just enough to fulfill that goal and use the rest of your mental and physical energy on things that make you feel better about being a insignificant cog.
My work was a kind-of dysfunctional mom and pop shop. Then the owner decided to get in bed with VC to boost his business. It became a numbers go up game headed by a CEO who lives 800 miles away. We lost benefits, worse insurance, less flexibility in work hours and loss of work from home for certain roles. That totally incentivizes people, right? Then the moron president VC installed uses AI like a crutch and talks about a future with more robots and less people. Again, totally incentivizes people to work more, right? Yet these detached morons wonder why people are apathetic. Then add on the state of the world being delivered via 24/7 fast news and meme cycles. People are literally being mentally beaten into submission. So it becomes "fuck em, I'm doing the minimum."
Re: The Who Cares Era
#47I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…
> Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible. To be fair, the society decided to encourage such behavior.
A bit much to say society did that, they have forced this due to their very well organized and connected unions and the power they have to cause the population to fear for their safety if the "cops are on strike".
The only way to end the power they have is to work towards a prosperous society where it doesn't make sense to be a violent criminal.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#48I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…
Honestly, I hate to say it because it’s become an annoying topic—but the problem is social media. Full stop. People are so distracted, scrolling ad-nauseam, that the only hope and dream they have is: to become an “influencer.” They’ll sell a view of their children and family life to the highest bidding sponsor. Then, peddling products to a fresh batch of spectators who think, “Ah! Wouldn’t that be the life? I should…
Honestly, maybe social media has accelerated the trend, but this has been happening for all of my life now (almost 44 years).
One Nation under God
has turned into
One Nation under the influence
of one drug
Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation
- TV, the drug of the nation
edit: stoopid HN parser
Re: The Who Cares Era
#49I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…
> There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. Even worse, it's become a sort of cultural expectation. Among my friend group here in the UK, people think you're weird for even trying and classify you as a tryhard for simply doing well. It's very different to Asia and I'm not surprised the UK is falling behind.
Asia has the whole "lying flat" thing. It may be less widespread, but it's there too.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#50I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…
I think it's inflation. And I don't just mean Covid era inflation. Inflation has been an on-again, off-again problem since the collapse of Bretton Woods.
It's because of inflation that slowly and subtly, everything gets shittier all the time. It encourages businesses to cut corners, shave costs, and find cheap labor overseas. It encourages you to not give a fuck about your job because you haven't had a raise in 5 years and the price of gas just keeps on climbing.
Inflation destroys everyone's belief in the future. Why work hard when everything is always getting a little bit worse anyway?
We've staved off a lot of the worst material effects with tech and productivity increases, but half the time the benefits from those just go to shareholders (indeed, even if all you did was hold the S&P 500 in recent decades, your portfolio is one of the bright spots in all this).
But I think the spiritual effects can't be staved off once you internalize the idea that it'll continually cost you more to keep on getting the same results. The bar of soap you buy will be a little thinner, there'll be a little less meat in your burger. You're always fighting the current. There's never a rest. If you feel this way then why would you care about what you're doing?
Historically I don't think there are a lot of societies that find an easy solution to this, the solutions usually involve defaults and wars.
Maybe this is part of why the crypto cult is so rabid, Bitcoin has deflationary properties, it's the opposite of the inflation trend.