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This is hacker news, a community of entrepreneurs and innovators, no? I'm thinking this post is a thorough, and probably pretty spot on, analysis of the situat

This is hacker news, a community of entrepreneurs and innovators, no? I'm thinking this post is a thorough, and probably pretty spot on, analysis of the situation. A great problem statement. Ironically, it is a bit dystopian and defeatist, can we not turn that around? So with a slight rewording at the end, I turn it into an Ask Hacker News: What could a daring entrepreneur start doing to change the world into a place where society, and work, is better aligned with basic human needs?

p4wnc6 11y ago
I think there already are examples of the right sorts of things to do. For example, in Switzerland, it is a law that all employees (barring rare special exceptions) are legally entitled to 4 weeks of vacation, at least 2 weeks of which are entitled to be consecutive, per year. Making this a law is argued as inefficient by some, and that there could be a part of the job market in which employees seek to negotiate different options, and the mandate for fixed vacation time hinders competition. My interpretation of reality is that this is false. It just leads to the burnout and anti-human need sublimation I wrote about above -- which should not be viewed as though it is a positive reflection of market clearing conditions or some nonsense, especially not when the participants are often young people with no developed perspective yet on the trade-offs needed for their health and huge information asymmetry disadvantages. Your suggestion of viewing this as an entrepreneurial problem concerns me, because I think that way of viewing the problem is largely what has led to it being as anti-human and severe as it is.
- CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
  It was in the context of hn and as away to find actionable things to do I meant it. In the bigger scheme of things I advocate a radical restructuring of the economy. Land tax and similar capital taxes (capital rent actually) and basic income. Only, the actionable items to get there would be more long term and require more collaboration
qb45 11y ago
> What could a daring entrepreneur start doing to change the world into a place where society, and work, is better aligned with basic human needs? IIRC, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had a few things to say about work and motivation. Reading a book certainly is actionable ;) and I think some business owners/managers could benefit from reading this one, at least in terms of employee retention rate. Or maybe they wouldn't, I've never been a business manager, actually :) But this story isn't terribly long to read and I found it interesting on its own right.
- p4wnc6 11y ago
  There is actually a healthy body of professional research literature on this, such as Self-Determination Theory. You don't need to rely too much on the popular presentation in books like ZATAOMM. Here's a post touching on this topic [0], and the underlying data summary post that it was based on [1]. This is exactly the sort of thing I am referring to. We have useful structures to understand human health at work (such as heteronomous vs. autonomous goals), but since we use bureaucracy as the primary means of structuring work, it shields wealthy elites from ever having to care about these aspects of the human beings who provide them with labor. I think to crack this issue, we have to devise ways to make capital deployers have no choice but to prioritize these types of human aspects of labor providers. I don't care how we do that: through heavily enforced laws and employee unionization, or through market incentives that make it more worthwhile to care about worker cognitive health than to paper over it, or any other options. But without intervention, there doesn't seem to be any natural property of market economics that enables human flourishing in this way. [0] < http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2015/05/why-hire-underemployment-autonomy-and.html http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2015/05/why-hire-underemployme... > [1] < http://lesswrong.com/lw/bq0/be_happier/#work http://lesswrong.com/lw/bq0/be_happier/#work >
  - qb45 11y ago
    Just wanted to say that Zen... isn't a popular presentation of any such theory, did you actually read it?

p4wnc6 11y ago

I think there already are examples of the right sorts of things to do. For example, in Switzerland, it is a law that all employees (barring rare special exceptions) are legally entitled to 4 weeks of vacation, at least 2 weeks of which are entitled to be consecutive, per year. Making this a law is argued as inefficient by some, and that there could be a part of the job market in which employees seek to negotiate different options, and the mandate for fixed vacation time hinders competition. My interpretation of reality is that this is false. It just leads to the burnout and anti-human need sublimation I wrote about above -- which should not be viewed as though it is a positive reflection of market clearing conditions or some nonsense, especially not when the participants are often young people with no developed perspective yet on the trade-offs needed for their health and huge information asymmetry disadvantages. Your suggestion of viewing this as an entrepreneurial problem concerns me, because I think that way of viewing the problem is largely what has led to it being as anti-human and severe as it is.

CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
It was in the context of hn and as away to find actionable things to do I meant it. In the bigger scheme of things I advocate a radical restructuring of the economy. Land tax and similar capital taxes (capital rent actually) and basic income. Only, the actionable items to get there would be more long term and require more collaboration

qb45 11y ago

> What could a daring entrepreneur start doing to change the world into a place where society, and work, is better aligned with basic human needs? IIRC, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had a few things to say about work and motivation. Reading a book certainly is actionable ;) and I think some business owners/managers could benefit from reading this one, at least in terms of employee retention rate. Or maybe they wouldn't, I've never been a business manager, actually :) But this story isn't terribly long to read and I found it interesting on its own right.

p4wnc6 11y ago
There is actually a healthy body of professional research literature on this, such as Self-Determination Theory. You don't need to rely too much on the popular presentation in books like ZATAOMM. Here's a post touching on this topic [0], and the underlying data summary post that it was based on [1]. This is exactly the sort of thing I am referring to. We have useful structures to understand human health at work (such as heteronomous vs. autonomous goals), but since we use bureaucracy as the primary means of structuring work, it shields wealthy elites from ever having to care about these aspects of the human beings who provide them with labor. I think to crack this issue, we have to devise ways to make capital deployers have no choice but to prioritize these types of human aspects of labor providers. I don't care how we do that: through heavily enforced laws and employee unionization, or through market incentives that make it more worthwhile to care about worker cognitive health than to paper over it, or any other options. But without intervention, there doesn't seem to be any natural property of market economics that enables human flourishing in this way. [0] < http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2015/05/why-hire-underemployment-autonomy-and.html http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2015/05/why-hire-underemployme... > [1] < http://lesswrong.com/lw/bq0/be_happier/#work http://lesswrong.com/lw/bq0/be_happier/#work >
- qb45 11y ago
  Just wanted to say that Zen... isn't a popular presentation of any such theory, did you actually read it?