9 ms·

I find the obsession with "jobs" to be one of the most sour elements of the corportocratic dialogue of the political and economic systems. Many people, includi

by jMyles 10y ago

I find the obsession with "jobs" to be one of the most sour elements of the corportocratic dialogue of the political and economic systems. Many people, including most professional drivers, will be happy not to have to do the chore anymore. They don't want or need jobs, they want and need fulfillment of their wants and needs. Stood next to the monumental task of actually automating the matter around us to please us (which, if our purpose in doing so is good, is a mitzvah), the creation of a system which fulfills these wants and needs without regard to any connection to a "job" seems straightforward and doable.

Udik 10y ago
Right, let's stop talking about jobs. Who's gonna give to today's truck drivers the money to pay the mortgage they have to keep paying for the next 20 years?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jMyles 10y ago
  I'm not saying we need to "stop talking" about the current economic configuration, including asking the very well-put and timely question in your second sentence. But the constant drone of "create jobs" at every political debate? The yardsticking of every public policy measure against how many "jobs" it will "create" or "destroy"? A central bank with a mandate not to simply implement fair and simple currency regulations, but to actually manipulate the money supply so as to "create jobs"? This is not just a discussion; it's an obsession. And I posit that it's as much about a moralistic work ethic (and a bunch of other things) as it is about any sound economic theory. We need to move on to new ideas about automation, economics, and sustainability.
  - hamilyon2 10y ago
    That may be question of national security i.e. ability to defend against adversary. Let's imagine 30 years from now. World is not yet united and peaceful place. Nation focusing on social nenefits, leisure time, innovation and freedom could be as economically and technically advanced as other nation focusing solely on full employment. But they will be substantially different when facing difficult realities of war: those benefits as well may be cut and those people should go to factories, computers, fields, whatever occupation current war needs. How do you explain a whole generation of people that their allowance will not be paid? How do you tell them that their occupation will be unpleasant? How do you train millions of people discipline, relevant skills, command-and-control? No major nation wants to lose next war, so we are locked in full employment race. (sorry for bad english)
    - dietrichepp 10y ago
      So you're saying that people should do busywork now, just in case we need to go to the factories to support tomorrow's war? Forgetting the fact that the factories are already automated, and going to war won't un-automate them, war is ever less likely and smaller in scale as global prosperity increases.
      - rblatz 10y ago
        Which world do you live in? It seems like we are slowly inching closer and closer to world war 3.
        majewsky 10y ago
        Americans are more and more averse to going to war, which is why the USA is sending drones instead of people now. The situation is similar in Europe. Not so much in the other parts of the world, though. A reasonable explanation could be proximity: When the war takes place in their own country, people are more likely to pick up guns instead of waiting for drones to be sent.
        dietrichepp 10y ago
        I'm guessing you're young? Seems like we were a lot closer to WW3 in the 1980s, and it's only been getting less likely since then. The US hasn't had a draft since 1973.
- a-saleh 10y ago
  Well, that is how we quickly go to the argument of "Lets replace the complicated social security system with basic livable wage being handed out to ever-one." comoonlz known as universal basic income. If one looks at it from economic-theory or game-theory perspective it sounds like a solution to many problems, nobody knows yet if that would work in practice though, especially on large scale. As far as I know, open questions that remain are: - Will we be able to afford it? Sort of back-of-the-napkin calculations can show, that if we introduced i.e UBI in Germany for everybody (80 mil) on a level of minimum wage (1473 E ?), it would eat their federal budget for Ministry of Health and Social Security and Ministry of Economics and Labour - What would be the unintended consequences? (i.e on small scale uneployment rose by single digits, but we can't really tell what will happen on country scale)
  - eru 10y ago
    We could raise taxes much higher with less economic impact, by solely taxing land rents. (Land prices go up, as other taxes go down, as you can see on the Swiss/German border. Taxing land rents has no economic deadweight loss, since the supply of land is fixed.)
    - froogle 10y ago
      Not entirely true; the disadvantage to land taxes is that they discourage prospecting and finding things like oil. You can ameliorate that in a number of ways, but land taxes aren't entirely without their problems.
      - eru 10y ago
        That's an interesting point. And yes, it's entirely fixable. At the most crude, you could separate natural resources from the rest of the land rights, people already do that. By the way if memory serves right Germany, which doesn't have general land taxes, already doesn't let you own mineral resources below your land by default. Would be interesting to see what effect that regulation already has on people prospecting.
  - drabiega 10y ago
- tluyben2 10y ago
  That is the right question to ask. You don't have to stop talking about jobs but whether or not you do, they will be gone. And we have to deal with it. I love these discussions about basic income and 'my tax moneyz' and 'I work for people who don't' (can't should be the word here but people always say don't) and all that other stuff, but give solutions then; how do you solve that given those jobs are gone and the people doing that kind of jobs cannot be 'reschooled' to other jobs (those jobs are gone too)? It doesn't really matter what you 'think' about things; they'll happen and there is not very much to do about it; we (humanity) have to come up with a way not to let these (most?) people die in the streets while there are no jobs. And of course, once that is accepted, make sure not everyone hangs themselves or others out of boredom. Not saying this will happen next year, but within 100 years for sure. Some things, like trucks, will happen faster than others and that's why (parts of) this needs to be fixed now instead of when it already happened. I for one would be happy when this 'stress of needing to have a job' goes away for future generations: I like what I do and i'll do it forever, but the stress to 'have a job' was pushed way too hard by parents, schools, university and society as a whole. And the 'failure' of not having a job too.
- randycupertino 10y ago
  Increasingly, "short term" disability is the stopgap for displaced blue collar workers. SSDI is rapidly becoming secret Welfare/the new deal: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/disability-insurance-americas-124-billion-secret-welfare-program/274302/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/disabili... States love it because it comes out of federal budgets, and feds love it because it's a social security net that doesn't have the pejorative inklings of "welfare."
discodave 10y ago
> fulfillment of their wants and needs But what if these wants and needs include contributing to society but there are not enough opportunities to do so? While many people do jobs out of necessity, they also get an amount of satisfaction out of doing something with a purpose.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Assuming automation meets greater than 100% of material needs, people could serve society by creating funny GIFs and sharing vacation photos.
  - tajen 10y ago
    That's funny, because creating GIFs is what 9Gag does, and it requires very few humans. Actually admins create most gifs, give them 300 points, and reissue them every 3 months.
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      Nothing will require any humans at that point. But an economy can still form. Read "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Ki...
      - collyw 10y ago
        Bollocks. They were talking about computers taking our jobs 30 years ago when I was in School. Everyone seems to be working more hours these days rather than less.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Everyone seems to be working more hours these days rather than less. At lower real hourly wages. Which is the effect of automation competing with human labor, it doesn't outright destroy jobs, it just reduces the market-clearing price of the forms of labor it is able to compete with.
personjerry 10y ago
The problem is that our society typically thinks of "jobs" as "contributing to society". Hence, there is a stigma against being unemployed. Furthermore, the more hours you work a week the more "respectable" you typically seem, especially in North America (I believe, in contrast to Europe). We need to realign our thinking to better accommodate the impending reduction in jobs.
- melvinram 10y ago
  This is not true. "more hours" does not make you more respectable. Contributing more value makes you more respectable. In some cases, contributing more value requires more hours. In other cases, this is not the case.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    This may be true, but average people often struggle to understand the "more value" that a certain job creates, especially in science and IT. The definition of "more value" is also contested. For example, I would argue that most bureaucracy is creating negative value, even though the people working in these bureaucracies may be very respectable individually.
    - treebeard901 10y ago
      It almost seems as if the definition of value has changed dramatically. Before it was quantifiable, now it seems to be way more abstract. I blame corpspeak. We all tend to over value ourselves. That's probably not a bad thing if it has healthy limits. I have seen people convinced they "add value" when I can find no quantifiable way to justify the cost for the "value" they bring.
pygy_ 10y ago
Work is power. Having a paid job means you don't have to rely on the goodwill of someone or something else to get fed. Automation is stripping the masses of the last speck of power they had.
- eru 10y ago
  Just give them a basic income guaranteed by law.
  - pygy_ 10y ago
    That's not unlike building a really comfortable guillotine. Please, lie down, make yourself at ease...
    - pygy_ 10y ago
      On the other hand, it may be the most humane way to deal with the fact that the economy has reached peak human. How did we deal with horses in the beginning of the 20th century?
      - tome 10y ago
        It's a lot easier to stop horses breeding.
        judahmeek 10y ago
        If automation ever gets to the point where a law guaranteed basic income is required, there's no reason that incentivized or mandatory sterilization can't be required as well, especially if made a prerequisite for said basic income.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        We shot them, butchered them, and turned them into cat and dog food. That's how the pet food industry got its start. Good example for your argument, maybe, but I doubt it's going to win you many converts.
raddad 10y ago
This is essentially what Jacque Fresco had in mind when he designed the Venus Project. Very interesting read. Will it work? I wish it would but not likely in a capitalist system. https://www.thevenusproject.com/ https://www.thevenusproject.com/
PavlovsCat 10y ago
> seems straightforward and doable. Of course it is. Just like not exploiting people was always straightforward and doable, just like feeding and clothing the poor of the world is doable. Something being doable isn't enough for it to be done, sadly. While I agree that "chores" are not an end of itself, and think we will always (have to) find things to be creative and skillful about, even if food, shelter and medicine grew on trees, I think everything else staying the same increased automation alone will not lead there. Why would it? > Let's take robots on assembly lines: If it's used to free up the workforce for more creative work, say, controlling production, making decisions about it, finding creative ways to act and so on, then it's to the good. If it's used as a device to maximize profit and throw people into the trashcan, then it's not good. -- Noam Chomsky ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kICLG4Zg8s&t=14m49s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kICLG4Zg8s&t=14m49s ) > If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality. -- Stephen Hawking ( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/cvsdmkv https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama... )
refurb 10y ago
I don't see a system where some people don't work as doable. Let's say we institute a UBI and 50% of jobs are eliminated through automation. Everyone has a basic standard of living, but those who still have jobs (who designs the robot?) have a much better standard of living (they would have to or why work?). Now you have a huge amount of income inequality and 50% of the population can't do a dam thing about their situation because there are no jobs. The only way to fix that is to redistribute so much wealth that the incentive to work is basically eliminated. I think that's been tried before and it failed horribly.
- thebigspacefuck 10y ago
  I would see it as you aren't working for anyone but yourself. You working for your own meaning, your own purpose, with your own drive and abilities. You completely own your success or failure. Work would become it's own reward and would be similar to volunteering.
  - rosege 10y ago
    Sounds like the Star Trek universe
- Bombthecat 10y ago
  Now one must understand why it must be like the movie elysium. Just without a happy end.
- geoelectric 10y ago
  The point isn't to eliminate income equality. That's next to impossible in a capitalist society with a relatively free market and wealth ownership. The point is to raise the level of the bottom to something people can live on safely and with some level of dignity. And with UBI in particular, it's to shift the impetus of your efforts from basic survival to improving your lifestyle from the lowest common denominator. People make shitty decisions with a gun to their head--with some room to experiment they'll usually be more successful. Further, they might find other ways to individually create societal value (art, science, invention, philosophy) than just simply making their employer money. The only way you can do that right now is if you're already well-off or if some committee somewhere agrees what you're doing is valuable and subsidizes it. That's not a great way to innovate. And they might not create value. Some people will sit at the bottom. But that needs to be OK--they do that now anyway while being a distinct drain on a society that wasn't built to accommodate that basic human nature. Nothing is perfect. Most people work for their own self-validation if you give them a chance, though. Think we've all had that experience during time off where you're eventually compelled to do something productive just so you can know you did something.
kafkaesq 10y ago
I find the obsession with "jobs" to be one of the most sour elements of the corportocratic dialogue of the political and economic systems. Umm -- what these people are "obsessed" with is feeding their families, paying for their mortgages and their children's education, and perchance, scraping together some semblance of a soft landing for when they hit retirement age (approaching for many of them like an... oncoming truck). If you have (realistic) proposals for how they're going to manage this (forced) transition, by all means please come forth with them. Portmanteau words aren't going to help.

by jMyles 10y ago

Udik 10y ago

Right, let's stop talking about jobs. Who's gonna give to today's truck drivers the money to pay the mortgage they have to keep paying for the next 20 years?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jMyles 10y ago
I'm not saying we need to "stop talking" about the current economic configuration, including asking the very well-put and timely question in your second sentence. But the constant drone of "create jobs" at every political debate? The yardsticking of every public policy measure against how many "jobs" it will "create" or "destroy"? A central bank with a mandate not to simply implement fair and simple currency regulations, but to actually manipulate the money supply so as to "create jobs"? This is not just a discussion; it's an obsession. And I posit that it's as much about a moralistic work ethic (and a bunch of other things) as it is about any sound economic theory. We need to move on to new ideas about automation, economics, and sustainability.
- hamilyon2 10y ago
  That may be question of national security i.e. ability to defend against adversary. Let's imagine 30 years from now. World is not yet united and peaceful place. Nation focusing on social nenefits, leisure time, innovation and freedom could be as economically and technically advanced as other nation focusing solely on full employment. But they will be substantially different when facing difficult realities of war: those benefits as well may be cut and those people should go to factories, computers, fields, whatever occupation current war needs. How do you explain a whole generation of people that their allowance will not be paid? How do you tell them that their occupation will be unpleasant? How do you train millions of people discipline, relevant skills, command-and-control? No major nation wants to lose next war, so we are locked in full employment race. (sorry for bad english)
  - dietrichepp 10y ago
    So you're saying that people should do busywork now, just in case we need to go to the factories to support tomorrow's war? Forgetting the fact that the factories are already automated, and going to war won't un-automate them, war is ever less likely and smaller in scale as global prosperity increases.
    - rblatz 10y ago
      Which world do you live in? It seems like we are slowly inching closer and closer to world war 3.
      - majewsky 10y ago
        Americans are more and more averse to going to war, which is why the USA is sending drones instead of people now. The situation is similar in Europe. Not so much in the other parts of the world, though. A reasonable explanation could be proximity: When the war takes place in their own country, people are more likely to pick up guns instead of waiting for drones to be sent.
      - dietrichepp 10y ago
        I'm guessing you're young? Seems like we were a lot closer to WW3 in the 1980s, and it's only been getting less likely since then. The US hasn't had a draft since 1973.
a-saleh 10y ago
Well, that is how we quickly go to the argument of "Lets replace the complicated social security system with basic livable wage being handed out to ever-one." comoonlz known as universal basic income. If one looks at it from economic-theory or game-theory perspective it sounds like a solution to many problems, nobody knows yet if that would work in practice though, especially on large scale. As far as I know, open questions that remain are: - Will we be able to afford it? Sort of back-of-the-napkin calculations can show, that if we introduced i.e UBI in Germany for everybody (80 mil) on a level of minimum wage (1473 E ?), it would eat their federal budget for Ministry of Health and Social Security and Ministry of Economics and Labour - What would be the unintended consequences? (i.e on small scale uneployment rose by single digits, but we can't really tell what will happen on country scale)
- eru 10y ago
  We could raise taxes much higher with less economic impact, by solely taxing land rents. (Land prices go up, as other taxes go down, as you can see on the Swiss/German border. Taxing land rents has no economic deadweight loss, since the supply of land is fixed.)
  - froogle 10y ago
    Not entirely true; the disadvantage to land taxes is that they discourage prospecting and finding things like oil. You can ameliorate that in a number of ways, but land taxes aren't entirely without their problems.
    - eru 10y ago
      That's an interesting point. And yes, it's entirely fixable. At the most crude, you could separate natural resources from the rest of the land rights, people already do that. By the way if memory serves right Germany, which doesn't have general land taxes, already doesn't let you own mineral resources below your land by default. Would be interesting to see what effect that regulation already has on people prospecting.
- drabiega 10y ago
tluyben2 10y ago
That is the right question to ask. You don't have to stop talking about jobs but whether or not you do, they will be gone. And we have to deal with it. I love these discussions about basic income and 'my tax moneyz' and 'I work for people who don't' (can't should be the word here but people always say don't) and all that other stuff, but give solutions then; how do you solve that given those jobs are gone and the people doing that kind of jobs cannot be 'reschooled' to other jobs (those jobs are gone too)? It doesn't really matter what you 'think' about things; they'll happen and there is not very much to do about it; we (humanity) have to come up with a way not to let these (most?) people die in the streets while there are no jobs. And of course, once that is accepted, make sure not everyone hangs themselves or others out of boredom. Not saying this will happen next year, but within 100 years for sure. Some things, like trucks, will happen faster than others and that's why (parts of) this needs to be fixed now instead of when it already happened. I for one would be happy when this 'stress of needing to have a job' goes away for future generations: I like what I do and i'll do it forever, but the stress to 'have a job' was pushed way too hard by parents, schools, university and society as a whole. And the 'failure' of not having a job too.
randycupertino 10y ago
Increasingly, "short term" disability is the stopgap for displaced blue collar workers. SSDI is rapidly becoming secret Welfare/the new deal: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/disability-insurance-americas-124-billion-secret-welfare-program/274302/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/disabili... States love it because it comes out of federal budgets, and feds love it because it's a social security net that doesn't have the pejorative inklings of "welfare."

discodave 10y ago

> fulfillment of their wants and needs But what if these wants and needs include contributing to society but there are not enough opportunities to do so? While many people do jobs out of necessity, they also get an amount of satisfaction out of doing something with a purpose.

nitrogen 10y ago
Assuming automation meets greater than 100% of material needs, people could serve society by creating funny GIFs and sharing vacation photos.
- tajen 10y ago
  That's funny, because creating GIFs is what 9Gag does, and it requires very few humans. Actually admins create most gifs, give them 300 points, and reissue them every 3 months.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Nothing will require any humans at that point. But an economy can still form. Read "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Ki...
    - collyw 10y ago
      Bollocks. They were talking about computers taking our jobs 30 years ago when I was in School. Everyone seems to be working more hours these days rather than less.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Everyone seems to be working more hours these days rather than less. At lower real hourly wages. Which is the effect of automation competing with human labor, it doesn't outright destroy jobs, it just reduces the market-clearing price of the forms of labor it is able to compete with.

personjerry 10y ago

The problem is that our society typically thinks of "jobs" as "contributing to society". Hence, there is a stigma against being unemployed. Furthermore, the more hours you work a week the more "respectable" you typically seem, especially in North America (I believe, in contrast to Europe). We need to realign our thinking to better accommodate the impending reduction in jobs.

melvinram 10y ago
This is not true. "more hours" does not make you more respectable. Contributing more value makes you more respectable. In some cases, contributing more value requires more hours. In other cases, this is not the case.
- majewsky 10y ago
  This may be true, but average people often struggle to understand the "more value" that a certain job creates, especially in science and IT. The definition of "more value" is also contested. For example, I would argue that most bureaucracy is creating negative value, even though the people working in these bureaucracies may be very respectable individually.
  - treebeard901 10y ago
    It almost seems as if the definition of value has changed dramatically. Before it was quantifiable, now it seems to be way more abstract. I blame corpspeak. We all tend to over value ourselves. That's probably not a bad thing if it has healthy limits. I have seen people convinced they "add value" when I can find no quantifiable way to justify the cost for the "value" they bring.

pygy_ 10y ago

Work is power. Having a paid job means you don't have to rely on the goodwill of someone or something else to get fed. Automation is stripping the masses of the last speck of power they had.

eru 10y ago
Just give them a basic income guaranteed by law.
- pygy_ 10y ago
  That's not unlike building a really comfortable guillotine. Please, lie down, make yourself at ease...
  - pygy_ 10y ago
    On the other hand, it may be the most humane way to deal with the fact that the economy has reached peak human. How did we deal with horses in the beginning of the 20th century?
    - tome 10y ago
      It's a lot easier to stop horses breeding.
      - judahmeek 10y ago
        If automation ever gets to the point where a law guaranteed basic income is required, there's no reason that incentivized or mandatory sterilization can't be required as well, especially if made a prerequisite for said basic income.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      We shot them, butchered them, and turned them into cat and dog food. That's how the pet food industry got its start. Good example for your argument, maybe, but I doubt it's going to win you many converts.

raddad 10y ago

This is essentially what Jacque Fresco had in mind when he designed the Venus Project. Very interesting read. Will it work? I wish it would but not likely in a capitalist system. https://www.thevenusproject.com/ https://www.thevenusproject.com/

PavlovsCat 10y ago

> seems straightforward and doable. Of course it is. Just like not exploiting people was always straightforward and doable, just like feeding and clothing the poor of the world is doable. Something being doable isn't enough for it to be done, sadly. While I agree that "chores" are not an end of itself, and think we will always (have to) find things to be creative and skillful about, even if food, shelter and medicine grew on trees, I think everything else staying the same increased automation alone will not lead there. Why would it? > Let's take robots on assembly lines: If it's used to free up the workforce for more creative work, say, controlling production, making decisions about it, finding creative ways to act and so on, then it's to the good. If it's used as a device to maximize profit and throw people into the trashcan, then it's not good. -- Noam Chomsky ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kICLG4Zg8s&t=14m49s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kICLG4Zg8s&t=14m49s ) > If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality. -- Stephen Hawking ( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/cvsdmkv https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama... )

refurb 10y ago

I don't see a system where some people don't work as doable. Let's say we institute a UBI and 50% of jobs are eliminated through automation. Everyone has a basic standard of living, but those who still have jobs (who designs the robot?) have a much better standard of living (they would have to or why work?). Now you have a huge amount of income inequality and 50% of the population can't do a dam thing about their situation because there are no jobs. The only way to fix that is to redistribute so much wealth that the incentive to work is basically eliminated. I think that's been tried before and it failed horribly.

thebigspacefuck 10y ago
I would see it as you aren't working for anyone but yourself. You working for your own meaning, your own purpose, with your own drive and abilities. You completely own your success or failure. Work would become it's own reward and would be similar to volunteering.
- rosege 10y ago
  Sounds like the Star Trek universe
Bombthecat 10y ago
Now one must understand why it must be like the movie elysium. Just without a happy end.
geoelectric 10y ago
The point isn't to eliminate income equality. That's next to impossible in a capitalist society with a relatively free market and wealth ownership. The point is to raise the level of the bottom to something people can live on safely and with some level of dignity. And with UBI in particular, it's to shift the impetus of your efforts from basic survival to improving your lifestyle from the lowest common denominator. People make shitty decisions with a gun to their head--with some room to experiment they'll usually be more successful. Further, they might find other ways to individually create societal value (art, science, invention, philosophy) than just simply making their employer money. The only way you can do that right now is if you're already well-off or if some committee somewhere agrees what you're doing is valuable and subsidizes it. That's not a great way to innovate. And they might not create value. Some people will sit at the bottom. But that needs to be OK--they do that now anyway while being a distinct drain on a society that wasn't built to accommodate that basic human nature. Nothing is perfect. Most people work for their own self-validation if you give them a chance, though. Think we've all had that experience during time off where you're eventually compelled to do something productive just so you can know you did something.

kafkaesq 10y ago

I find the obsession with "jobs" to be one of the most sour elements of the corportocratic dialogue of the political and economic systems. Umm -- what these people are "obsessed" with is feeding their families, paying for their mortgages and their children's education, and perchance, scraping together some semblance of a soft landing for when they hit retirement age (approaching for many of them like an... oncoming truck). If you have (realistic) proposals for how they're going to manage this (forced) transition, by all means please come forth with them. Portmanteau words aren't going to help.