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One aspect I don't ever see discussed is whether it's moral or abusive for people to perform jobs that don't respect their capacities as a human being. If your

One aspect I don't ever see discussed is whether it's moral or abusive for people to perform jobs that don't respect their capacities as a human being. If your job is to follow a script 60 times an hour without deviation is your job one that humans should be permitted to do? Or is it an abuse? If your job is to ignore circumstances and human empathy is it a job humans should be permitted to do? Or is it an abuse? If an abuse is what permits survival should it be embraced or scorned? I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think at the very least there's a clear way to look on things with human eyes and a human perspective.

flippyhead 10y ago
> Or is it an abuse? It's not like slave labor or something, in theory they could quit, get more education or whatever, and find a different job. Hard to see at-will employment as an abuse by the employer.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  In theory they could quit and educate up, but in practice they often can't -- especially if they're tied (primarily by family) to some languishing/backwards part of the country.
  - dvtv75 10y ago
    Some of us are highly educated, and are still forced to take the bottom line work-or-starve jobs.
    - hutzlibu 10y ago
      But not in IT, right? The cases of high education/low pay I know of, are in liberal arts.
  - ctdonath 10y ago
    I have grave doubts about "can't" in most cases. I've picked up & moved 1000 miles on a whim with no job lined up on arrival, and wasn't keen on severing ties in the process - so yes I've a clue about it. You'd be hard-pressed to find such "can't" cases. Turning on a TV (colloquially speaking) at all is a disqualifying factor. There's a free lending library, there's free Internet access, there's free job-placement services. Suck it up & make it happen, or quit complaining. Never before in history has so much job opportunity been so available to so many so easily; it's not trivial mind you, but the alternative for most who ever lived was to start digging & planting. I've been following David Hines on Twitter as he documents people & regions you're referring to. A recurring takeaway (which he doesn't intend) is your assertion, which is people choosing to stay in such circumstances because they choose family & familiarity over prosperity. The USA was founded & settled by people who took the "move" imperative seriously; when doing so now takes just a few days' pay and a few hours comfortable transport instead of months of hard covered-wagon travel which was long the norm, I find it hard to sympathize. Cultures which value status quo over productivity improvement can't thrive.
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      "I have grave doubts about "can't" in most cases. I've picked up & moved 1000 miles on a whim with no job lined up on arrival, and wasn't keen on severing ties in the process - so yes I've a clue about it." Did you leave behind a spouse and children? Then no, you don't have a clue about it. "You'd be hard-pressed to find such "can't" cases." No, I wouldn't be. A single parent who is working 2 minimum wage jobs to feed their family. An extremely common example. "Turning on a TV (colloquially speaking) at all is a disqualifying factor." Wrong. " There's a free lending library" Which you have to be able to get to in between your two jobs and making sure your children get to school. "there's free Internet access" Only in some places, that may or may not be open during your minuscule amount of free time. "there's free job-placement services" Which are worth about as much as they cost. "Suck it up & make it happen" Said the guy who's never had to experience any of that.
      - hutzlibu 10y ago
        ". A single parent who is working 2 minimum wage jobs to feed their family. An extremely common example." But nobody forced her or him to make a child and then split up, right? So you can argue, they had a choice of taking care for safe income first and a stable relationship, before making babys and then complaining it is hard to feed them, without proper qualification and then demanding society has to help them ... So, I indeed think that society should help those in need, but I don't think it MUST. Because it means in the end, forcing other people to work for other peoples mistakes. (in general, there are exceptions obviously)
- st3v3r 10y ago
  Who's gonna pay the bills while they do that? You?
markc 10y ago
Depends largely on whether the person doing the job is doing so with full agency. The more coercive the employee/employer relationship is, the more we have to examine it for abuse. As with so many things there's a continuum, with clear cases where it's moral and clear cases where it's not, and lots of gray area in-between. The challenge is making rules that do a decent job of creating a dividing line.
acchow 10y ago
whether it's moral or abusive for people to perform jobs that don't respect their capacities as a human being. Utilitarianism only contains "pleasure" and "pain", and none of this orthogonal dimension of "human capacity" or "rationality" or "dignity". As long as the total utility is higher, the means are irrelevant. A libertarian would probably say it's fine (since the person voluntarily took the job). Immanuel Kant would say it's definitely amoral, since he prizes human capacity/rationality as ultimate. John Rawls would probably not care, tho it's less clear there...
- Filligree 10y ago
  That's a vast misrepresentation of utilitarianism. All it says is "maximize a utility function", without defining either what the utility function is, or how it should be aggregated across multiple people. Very few utilitarians would define it as happiness.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    Hedonic utilitarianism is actually the standard notion of utilitarianism. You're thinking of consequentialism in general.
- aidenn0 10y ago
  If it's a hedonic net negative for people to perform jobs that don't respect their capacities as a human being, then utilitarianism would have something to say.
  - acchow 10y ago
    But that would show up in the measure for total utility, and so we would decide not to put people in those jobs because it reduces total utility. It's already accounted for. It seemed grandparent was trying to allude at some outside measure - suppose if these people didn't get "pain" from doing these jobs - as if there's some value outside of utility for respecting someone's human capacity. And Kant does believe in this.
AJ007 10y ago
Life in general is abusive. Our Western lifestyle with a steadily increasing standard of living has been on a steady march away from this for quite some time. Most people still don't have the luxury to pass on physically dangerous and repetitive labor.
ctdonath 10y ago
"Permitted" is a word I find distasteful in such a subject. That implies that there is a third party, beyond employer & employee, imposing himself upon the other two without their consent. If both enter into the contract freely, 'tis nobody else's business but to ensure the contract is, in fact, freely entered into. Many jobs "don't respect their capacities" precisely because it needs doing, but nobody wants to do it - the only way to get it done is to pay someone accordingly. Following a script may be boring as he11, but may currently be the only way to build widgets which bring joy and/or give life to others. Of late, when visiting the pharmacist I wonder how much joy they really get out of filling little bottles with precise numbers of little pills, this after many years of studying pharmaceuticals at a intellectually high and stimulating level - and I thank them for doing such a mind-numbing job, precisely because it keeps me alive for decades (vs dead within weeks of a stroke). Scrubbing toilets isn't exactly rewarding either, but keeps our society sanitary & healthy. In neither case is anyone forced to do so, but does need to for there to be food on the table and a roof overhead. I have been mulling over "bottom line" sustenance vs minimum wage, poverty lines, guaranteed income, etc. Of late I note that one's "fair share" amounts to 8 acres of generally workable land, plenty for sustenance farming and then some. That's the baseline scenario for what work is expected of an individual: elicit your own food, shelter, clothing out of your fair share of land; from there, you can barter your way up to better living. It is fair, in terms of what our species has been given / ended up with, to consider that where to begin such questions (and not to start with a luxurious society where doing nothing can net you $30,000/yr).
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  > If both enter into the contract freely Ah, yes, the "freedom" thing again. When you're on a salary that barely keeps you afloat, that you cannot really afford to lose, suddenly you start reading different meanings into that word.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    Other people have freedoms, too, one of which is to not associate with you financially.
profalseidol 10y ago
Look no further than Karl Marx's critique of political economy: Das Kapital

flippyhead 10y ago

> Or is it an abuse? It's not like slave labor or something, in theory they could quit, get more education or whatever, and find a different job. Hard to see at-will employment as an abuse by the employer.

clock_tower 10y ago
In theory they could quit and educate up, but in practice they often can't -- especially if they're tied (primarily by family) to some languishing/backwards part of the country.
- dvtv75 10y ago
  Some of us are highly educated, and are still forced to take the bottom line work-or-starve jobs.
  - hutzlibu 10y ago
    But not in IT, right? The cases of high education/low pay I know of, are in liberal arts.
- ctdonath 10y ago
  I have grave doubts about "can't" in most cases. I've picked up & moved 1000 miles on a whim with no job lined up on arrival, and wasn't keen on severing ties in the process - so yes I've a clue about it. You'd be hard-pressed to find such "can't" cases. Turning on a TV (colloquially speaking) at all is a disqualifying factor. There's a free lending library, there's free Internet access, there's free job-placement services. Suck it up & make it happen, or quit complaining. Never before in history has so much job opportunity been so available to so many so easily; it's not trivial mind you, but the alternative for most who ever lived was to start digging & planting. I've been following David Hines on Twitter as he documents people & regions you're referring to. A recurring takeaway (which he doesn't intend) is your assertion, which is people choosing to stay in such circumstances because they choose family & familiarity over prosperity. The USA was founded & settled by people who took the "move" imperative seriously; when doing so now takes just a few days' pay and a few hours comfortable transport instead of months of hard covered-wagon travel which was long the norm, I find it hard to sympathize. Cultures which value status quo over productivity improvement can't thrive.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    "I have grave doubts about "can't" in most cases. I've picked up & moved 1000 miles on a whim with no job lined up on arrival, and wasn't keen on severing ties in the process - so yes I've a clue about it." Did you leave behind a spouse and children? Then no, you don't have a clue about it. "You'd be hard-pressed to find such "can't" cases." No, I wouldn't be. A single parent who is working 2 minimum wage jobs to feed their family. An extremely common example. "Turning on a TV (colloquially speaking) at all is a disqualifying factor." Wrong. " There's a free lending library" Which you have to be able to get to in between your two jobs and making sure your children get to school. "there's free Internet access" Only in some places, that may or may not be open during your minuscule amount of free time. "there's free job-placement services" Which are worth about as much as they cost. "Suck it up & make it happen" Said the guy who's never had to experience any of that.
    - hutzlibu 10y ago
      ". A single parent who is working 2 minimum wage jobs to feed their family. An extremely common example." But nobody forced her or him to make a child and then split up, right? So you can argue, they had a choice of taking care for safe income first and a stable relationship, before making babys and then complaining it is hard to feed them, without proper qualification and then demanding society has to help them ... So, I indeed think that society should help those in need, but I don't think it MUST. Because it means in the end, forcing other people to work for other peoples mistakes. (in general, there are exceptions obviously)
st3v3r 10y ago
Who's gonna pay the bills while they do that? You?

markc 10y ago

Depends largely on whether the person doing the job is doing so with full agency. The more coercive the employee/employer relationship is, the more we have to examine it for abuse. As with so many things there's a continuum, with clear cases where it's moral and clear cases where it's not, and lots of gray area in-between. The challenge is making rules that do a decent job of creating a dividing line.

acchow 10y ago

whether it's moral or abusive for people to perform jobs that don't respect their capacities as a human being. Utilitarianism only contains "pleasure" and "pain", and none of this orthogonal dimension of "human capacity" or "rationality" or "dignity". As long as the total utility is higher, the means are irrelevant. A libertarian would probably say it's fine (since the person voluntarily took the job). Immanuel Kant would say it's definitely amoral, since he prizes human capacity/rationality as ultimate. John Rawls would probably not care, tho it's less clear there...

Filligree 10y ago
That's a vast misrepresentation of utilitarianism. All it says is "maximize a utility function", without defining either what the utility function is, or how it should be aggregated across multiple people. Very few utilitarians would define it as happiness.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  Hedonic utilitarianism is actually the standard notion of utilitarianism. You're thinking of consequentialism in general.
aidenn0 10y ago
If it's a hedonic net negative for people to perform jobs that don't respect their capacities as a human being, then utilitarianism would have something to say.
- acchow 10y ago
  But that would show up in the measure for total utility, and so we would decide not to put people in those jobs because it reduces total utility. It's already accounted for. It seemed grandparent was trying to allude at some outside measure - suppose if these people didn't get "pain" from doing these jobs - as if there's some value outside of utility for respecting someone's human capacity. And Kant does believe in this.

AJ007 10y ago

Life in general is abusive. Our Western lifestyle with a steadily increasing standard of living has been on a steady march away from this for quite some time. Most people still don't have the luxury to pass on physically dangerous and repetitive labor.

ctdonath 10y ago

"Permitted" is a word I find distasteful in such a subject. That implies that there is a third party, beyond employer & employee, imposing himself upon the other two without their consent. If both enter into the contract freely, 'tis nobody else's business but to ensure the contract is, in fact, freely entered into. Many jobs "don't respect their capacities" precisely because it needs doing, but nobody wants to do it - the only way to get it done is to pay someone accordingly. Following a script may be boring as he11, but may currently be the only way to build widgets which bring joy and/or give life to others. Of late, when visiting the pharmacist I wonder how much joy they really get out of filling little bottles with precise numbers of little pills, this after many years of studying pharmaceuticals at a intellectually high and stimulating level - and I thank them for doing such a mind-numbing job, precisely because it keeps me alive for decades (vs dead within weeks of a stroke). Scrubbing toilets isn't exactly rewarding either, but keeps our society sanitary & healthy. In neither case is anyone forced to do so, but does need to for there to be food on the table and a roof overhead. I have been mulling over "bottom line" sustenance vs minimum wage, poverty lines, guaranteed income, etc. Of late I note that one's "fair share" amounts to 8 acres of generally workable land, plenty for sustenance farming and then some. That's the baseline scenario for what work is expected of an individual: elicit your own food, shelter, clothing out of your fair share of land; from there, you can barter your way up to better living. It is fair, in terms of what our species has been given / ended up with, to consider that where to begin such questions (and not to start with a luxurious society where doing nothing can net you $30,000/yr).

Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> If both enter into the contract freely Ah, yes, the "freedom" thing again. When you're on a salary that barely keeps you afloat, that you cannot really afford to lose, suddenly you start reading different meanings into that word.
- gozur88 10y ago
  Other people have freedoms, too, one of which is to not associate with you financially.

profalseidol 10y ago

Look no further than Karl Marx's critique of political economy: Das Kapital