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I recommend people watch Japan A story of love and hate (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x56bwzc http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x56bwzc) which, aside from be

I recommend people watch Japan A story of love and hate (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x56bwzc http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x56bwzc) which, aside from being a great look at Japan, epitomizes the absurdity of exchanging our time for a salary that increasingly fails to cover the cost to live and leaves us without free time. 30,000 Japanese kill themselves each year due to work related stress. Great quote from the doc: Naoki:"You (the West) game me this f*cking Capitalist system 100 years ago..." Cameramen: "And now you're rich" Naoki: "Is this rich...is this a good system?" I hope - and expect - that one day offices are viewed in the same way we view the factories of the early industrial age: prisons of drudgery and misery. I'm not naive, civilization and its innumerable benefits (like actually being able to live past 65) has a cost. But the notion that sitting in traffic each morning to reach a room where one stares into a screen for 9 hours - every day, for 40 odd years - is desirable is the greatest con capitalism has ever pulled.

bshepard 9y ago
I agree with the sentiment, but respectfully propose that the office con is part of a larger and even more brazen : commodifying all of reality. Besides all of the relatively well-known ethical and psychological problems with selling and buying time and land, commodification also greatly diminishes the development of what Marxists like to call "the productive forces" -- if not for this artificial system of value created to mask European conquest, we could easily be in some an unimaginably technologically advanced post-scarcity heterotopia right now.
- jxub 9y ago
  I don't see how the capitalism was created to mask the European domination. I think it's just the result of going through the path of least resistance as the concepts of trade, money and globalization are all at play, and not of some intentional/evil cooperation. However, I imagine your point might be explained by some actions of East India Company or such, and I'm not well enough versed on that. Moreover, could you expand a bit on "ethical and psychological problems with selling and buying time and land"? This sounds like a novel idea to me.
brisance 9y ago
Capitalism is hardly a “Western” concept. Japan, like many Asian countries, were within China’s sphere of influence long before there was any contact with Westerners.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Capitalism is hardly a “Western” concept. It is, based on all conventional historical sources, originating around the 15th century or so with the city states of Italy. >Japan, like many Asian countries, were within China’s sphere of influence long before there was any contact with Westerners. Which is irrelevant. It was a feudal economy back then, and it tried to be so even after contact with Westerners for a while. But it realized that with those pesky westerners it couldn't defend itself if it didn't get in with the program and build an industry.
  - brisance 9y ago
    >It is, based on all conventional historical sources, originating around the 15th century or so with the city states of Italy.< The parent comment was speaking of “capitalism” as an euphemism for “wage slavery”, not in the classical sense of capitalism as defined by economics i.e. private ownership of the means of production. In that comment, payment for services i.e. wages is hardly “Western”, nor invented in the 15th century CE. >Which is irrelevant.< It is relevant because Japan imported many things from China, including the Kanji writing system, culture, mercantilism, systems of government etc.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      >The parent comment was speaking of “capitalism” as an euphemism for “wage slavery” Well, the TFA speaks specifically about the "modern" form of "wage slavery" in Japan -- as tied to big corporations, office and factory jobs, consumer culture, etc, not generally about working to make a living by being paid a wage. Which is tied to capitalism. People didn't work like that before their contact with capitalism and when "free trade" was imposed on them by force.
terrytrend 9y ago
On the money. Fuck the 9-5 corporate work life. I've been doing this everyday for 12 years..and I'm about to blow my brains out. I encourage everyone to find one thing they love and find a way to do it everyday for the rest of your life.
- kirso 9y ago
  A bit too radical, lots of people enjoy having a job and stability that it brings. Entrepreneurship is romanticised by entreporn on Medium. Essentially there is no black and white answer, everyone should just do what gives him/her meaning.
  - mercer 9y ago
    I think it's interesting that: > I encourage everyone to find one thing they love and find a way to do it everyday for the rest of your life. ...is translated to entrepreneurship, when that doesn't have to be a given. I'm still struggling with the alternative possibilities, but I just wanted to point that out. That said I do agree with your conclusion. It's the path to get there that can keep me up at night, and perhaps not framing it purely in terms of being employed or self-employed might help (not saying that that's what you were saying, btw).
- LeozMax 9y ago
  https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvqqxw/who-stole-the-four-hour-workday-0000406-v21n8 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvqqxw/who-stole-the-four...
- LeozMax 9y ago
  The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 enshrined the eight-hour day as the norm. That was to be the last in a century of reductions. Every hour of work became more and more productive, while the owning class gobbled up an ever greater share of the benefits. We have stopped imagining, as Keynes thought it so reasonable to do, that our grandchildren might have it easier than ourselves. We hope that they'll have jobs, maybe even jobs that they like.
- factsaresacred 9y ago
sin7 9y ago
I have worked all kinds of jobs. Office work is cake.
- seangrant 9y ago
  Sounds like your life has been gracious to give you many different experiences. I think the distaste is mostly from people who've worked their lives in an office job. Yeah it's cake, but are you gonna do it for 40 years and die happy?
mmsimanga 9y ago
My take is that organisations after some time begin to mimic animal farm or emperor's clothes type behavior. CEO genuinely believes their contribution to a company they ran for five years yet has been around 50 years is worth hundreds of millions. I have no issues with founders taking that amount of money. Director of marketing doesn't want to be outdone, vice president ... This is why we are so busy and why companies are chasing growth at all costs.
- prostoalex 9y ago
  Most boards would likely block any kind of cash compensation approaching eight or nine figures, and will strongly insist on stock options. The headlines you see about 9-figure CEO compensation are mainly related to companies whose stock has outperformed. CEOs whose stock languished and didn’t amount to much compensation rarely make magazine covers.
  - mmsimanga 9y ago
    Fair enough. Everything is legal, above board and not all CEOs get the big payload when they eventually sell their shares. Does that make it right?
TangoTrotFox 9y ago
> "...the notion that sitting in traffic each morning to reach a room where one stares into a screen for 9 hours - every day, for 40 odd years - is desirable is the greatest con capitalism has ever pulled." I think you're ignoring the biggest benefit of capitalism. While many people will do something fairly similar to what you're describing, it's not explicitly required or unchangeable. You have the ability, even if extremely challenging, to strive for better. For a person washing toilets, this could be the dream of sitting in front of that screen one day. For the person in front of that screen, it could be starting their own business or taking an early retirement and living the rest of their years off the beach. Capitalism enables people to move up. The system you described would actually be perfectly reflective of a more social economic system like communism. The government would measure your competency and then offer you a series of jobs. You would take that a job off that list and you would do it til the day you were allowed to stop working. All without any chance for ever achieving something better beyond that list of jobs they decided you were qualified for. And of course you'd receive the same compensation when you're 18 as when you're 50 with decades of experience, because that's fair... I think it would be phenomenally interesting to live in a pre-industrial time, just to experience it - but I suspect we'd quickly find that the tedium and unfairness of the systems we have to do would seem like utopia compared to the tedium and unfairness of those times. And so too can we expect people a few hundred years from now to live in what we would consider a utopia, yet themselves lack contentment striving for something better which will indeed come about a few centuries beyond. It's the nature of man to always strive for better and, at least to date, achieve it.
- mayniac 9y ago
  >For a person washing toilets, this could be the dream of sitting in front of that screen one day. For the person in front of that screen, it could be starting their own business or taking an early retirement and living the rest of their years off the beach. And socialism could eliminate entirely the need to have someone washing toilets. I work in an office of about 2,000 people, over 10 floors, each with 2 sets of bathrooms for each gender. Going by 200 people per floor, assuming 50/50 gender split, that's 50 people per bathroom. It takes about half an hour to clean and restock each bathroom each day. Would you be hugely inconvenienced if you had to give up half an hour of your time every 50 days to clean the bathroom you use at work? I definitely wouldn't, and I think a lot of people would probably treat the bathrooms better if they did have to clean them on occasion. Furthermore, the cleaners we have now aren't brain-dead animals: they have intellect, ideas, and ambitions of their own. I've met plenty of caretakers and other low-skilled workers who had been trained in other fields in the past, lost their jobs for varying reasons, and couldn't retrain due to time or financial constraints and got stuck in menial labour. Much of the time they simply cannot realistically ever move up the ladder. To quote Stephen Jay Gould: >“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” We have created a lot of menial jobs for the sake of them: and in a lot of cases, they have been created because as this article mentions, a lot of well-educated workers no longer have the time to do non-work related tasks themselves. Would takeaway deliver drivers really be as common as they are now if people were working twenty hours a week, and had time to cook for themselves? What about Starbucks employees? Taxi drivers? There are millions of people who could actually use their full potential if they weren't constrained by wage slavery. Those people would also be much more efficient at what they do if they had the freedom to do what they enjoyed. >Capitalism enables people to move up. The system you described would actually be perfectly reflective of a more social economic system like communism. The government would measure your competency and then offer you a series of jobs. You would take that a job off that list and you would do it til the day you were allowed to stop working. All without any chance for ever achieving something better beyond that list of jobs they decided you were qualified for. And of course you'd receive the same compensation when you're 18 as when you're 50 with decades of experience, because that's fair... This is a huge misunderstanding of communism. There are many, many different forms of anti-capitalism, and very few actually believe a centralised government forcing people to work in pre-determined fields is a good idea. I'm not as clued up on communist/socialist theory as I should be, but afaik what you're describing is a form of state socialism, and one which almost all anti-capitalists vehemently disagree with. I've seen many arguments started by people suggesting state ownership of capital: almost everyone agrees that the risk of corruption is far too high with a centralised state. I highly recommend reading The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin. It paints an excellent picture of a more reasonable anarcho-communist society, without a centralised state, which could realistically exist. Just to make this comment relevant to the original article: he originally suggested, in the late 19th century, that the industrial era had already increased production to the point that nobody should have to work more than four hours a day. Furthermore, that the time people saved could be spent building tools of automation to further reduce people's workload. It is, if anything, far more relevant today than it was when it was written.

bshepard 9y ago

I agree with the sentiment, but respectfully propose that the office con is part of a larger and even more brazen : commodifying all of reality. Besides all of the relatively well-known ethical and psychological problems with selling and buying time and land, commodification also greatly diminishes the development of what Marxists like to call "the productive forces" -- if not for this artificial system of value created to mask European conquest, we could easily be in some an unimaginably technologically advanced post-scarcity heterotopia right now.

jxub 9y ago
I don't see how the capitalism was created to mask the European domination. I think it's just the result of going through the path of least resistance as the concepts of trade, money and globalization are all at play, and not of some intentional/evil cooperation. However, I imagine your point might be explained by some actions of East India Company or such, and I'm not well enough versed on that. Moreover, could you expand a bit on "ethical and psychological problems with selling and buying time and land"? This sounds like a novel idea to me.

brisance 9y ago

Capitalism is hardly a “Western” concept. Japan, like many Asian countries, were within China’s sphere of influence long before there was any contact with Westerners.

coldtea 9y ago
>Capitalism is hardly a “Western” concept. It is, based on all conventional historical sources, originating around the 15th century or so with the city states of Italy. >Japan, like many Asian countries, were within China’s sphere of influence long before there was any contact with Westerners. Which is irrelevant. It was a feudal economy back then, and it tried to be so even after contact with Westerners for a while. But it realized that with those pesky westerners it couldn't defend itself if it didn't get in with the program and build an industry.
- brisance 9y ago
  >It is, based on all conventional historical sources, originating around the 15th century or so with the city states of Italy.< The parent comment was speaking of “capitalism” as an euphemism for “wage slavery”, not in the classical sense of capitalism as defined by economics i.e. private ownership of the means of production. In that comment, payment for services i.e. wages is hardly “Western”, nor invented in the 15th century CE. >Which is irrelevant.< It is relevant because Japan imported many things from China, including the Kanji writing system, culture, mercantilism, systems of government etc.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >The parent comment was speaking of “capitalism” as an euphemism for “wage slavery” Well, the TFA speaks specifically about the "modern" form of "wage slavery" in Japan -- as tied to big corporations, office and factory jobs, consumer culture, etc, not generally about working to make a living by being paid a wage. Which is tied to capitalism. People didn't work like that before their contact with capitalism and when "free trade" was imposed on them by force.

terrytrend 9y ago

On the money. Fuck the 9-5 corporate work life. I've been doing this everyday for 12 years..and I'm about to blow my brains out. I encourage everyone to find one thing they love and find a way to do it everyday for the rest of your life.

kirso 9y ago
A bit too radical, lots of people enjoy having a job and stability that it brings. Entrepreneurship is romanticised by entreporn on Medium. Essentially there is no black and white answer, everyone should just do what gives him/her meaning.
- mercer 9y ago
  I think it's interesting that: > I encourage everyone to find one thing they love and find a way to do it everyday for the rest of your life. ...is translated to entrepreneurship, when that doesn't have to be a given. I'm still struggling with the alternative possibilities, but I just wanted to point that out. That said I do agree with your conclusion. It's the path to get there that can keep me up at night, and perhaps not framing it purely in terms of being employed or self-employed might help (not saying that that's what you were saying, btw).
LeozMax 9y ago
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvqqxw/who-stole-the-four-hour-workday-0000406-v21n8 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvqqxw/who-stole-the-four...
LeozMax 9y ago
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 enshrined the eight-hour day as the norm. That was to be the last in a century of reductions. Every hour of work became more and more productive, while the owning class gobbled up an ever greater share of the benefits. We have stopped imagining, as Keynes thought it so reasonable to do, that our grandchildren might have it easier than ourselves. We hope that they'll have jobs, maybe even jobs that they like.
factsaresacred 9y ago

sin7 9y ago

I have worked all kinds of jobs. Office work is cake.

seangrant 9y ago
Sounds like your life has been gracious to give you many different experiences. I think the distaste is mostly from people who've worked their lives in an office job. Yeah it's cake, but are you gonna do it for 40 years and die happy?

mmsimanga 9y ago

My take is that organisations after some time begin to mimic animal farm or emperor's clothes type behavior. CEO genuinely believes their contribution to a company they ran for five years yet has been around 50 years is worth hundreds of millions. I have no issues with founders taking that amount of money. Director of marketing doesn't want to be outdone, vice president ... This is why we are so busy and why companies are chasing growth at all costs.

prostoalex 9y ago
Most boards would likely block any kind of cash compensation approaching eight or nine figures, and will strongly insist on stock options. The headlines you see about 9-figure CEO compensation are mainly related to companies whose stock has outperformed. CEOs whose stock languished and didn’t amount to much compensation rarely make magazine covers.
- mmsimanga 9y ago
  Fair enough. Everything is legal, above board and not all CEOs get the big payload when they eventually sell their shares. Does that make it right?

TangoTrotFox 9y ago

> "...the notion that sitting in traffic each morning to reach a room where one stares into a screen for 9 hours - every day, for 40 odd years - is desirable is the greatest con capitalism has ever pulled." I think you're ignoring the biggest benefit of capitalism. While many people will do something fairly similar to what you're describing, it's not explicitly required or unchangeable. You have the ability, even if extremely challenging, to strive for better. For a person washing toilets, this could be the dream of sitting in front of that screen one day. For the person in front of that screen, it could be starting their own business or taking an early retirement and living the rest of their years off the beach. Capitalism enables people to move up. The system you described would actually be perfectly reflective of a more social economic system like communism. The government would measure your competency and then offer you a series of jobs. You would take that a job off that list and you would do it til the day you were allowed to stop working. All without any chance for ever achieving something better beyond that list of jobs they decided you were qualified for. And of course you'd receive the same compensation when you're 18 as when you're 50 with decades of experience, because that's fair... I think it would be phenomenally interesting to live in a pre-industrial time, just to experience it - but I suspect we'd quickly find that the tedium and unfairness of the systems we have to do would seem like utopia compared to the tedium and unfairness of those times. And so too can we expect people a few hundred years from now to live in what we would consider a utopia, yet themselves lack contentment striving for something better which will indeed come about a few centuries beyond. It's the nature of man to always strive for better and, at least to date, achieve it.

mayniac 9y ago
>For a person washing toilets, this could be the dream of sitting in front of that screen one day. For the person in front of that screen, it could be starting their own business or taking an early retirement and living the rest of their years off the beach. And socialism could eliminate entirely the need to have someone washing toilets. I work in an office of about 2,000 people, over 10 floors, each with 2 sets of bathrooms for each gender. Going by 200 people per floor, assuming 50/50 gender split, that's 50 people per bathroom. It takes about half an hour to clean and restock each bathroom each day. Would you be hugely inconvenienced if you had to give up half an hour of your time every 50 days to clean the bathroom you use at work? I definitely wouldn't, and I think a lot of people would probably treat the bathrooms better if they did have to clean them on occasion. Furthermore, the cleaners we have now aren't brain-dead animals: they have intellect, ideas, and ambitions of their own. I've met plenty of caretakers and other low-skilled workers who had been trained in other fields in the past, lost their jobs for varying reasons, and couldn't retrain due to time or financial constraints and got stuck in menial labour. Much of the time they simply cannot realistically ever move up the ladder. To quote Stephen Jay Gould: >“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” We have created a lot of menial jobs for the sake of them: and in a lot of cases, they have been created because as this article mentions, a lot of well-educated workers no longer have the time to do non-work related tasks themselves. Would takeaway deliver drivers really be as common as they are now if people were working twenty hours a week, and had time to cook for themselves? What about Starbucks employees? Taxi drivers? There are millions of people who could actually use their full potential if they weren't constrained by wage slavery. Those people would also be much more efficient at what they do if they had the freedom to do what they enjoyed. >Capitalism enables people to move up. The system you described would actually be perfectly reflective of a more social economic system like communism. The government would measure your competency and then offer you a series of jobs. You would take that a job off that list and you would do it til the day you were allowed to stop working. All without any chance for ever achieving something better beyond that list of jobs they decided you were qualified for. And of course you'd receive the same compensation when you're 18 as when you're 50 with decades of experience, because that's fair... This is a huge misunderstanding of communism. There are many, many different forms of anti-capitalism, and very few actually believe a centralised government forcing people to work in pre-determined fields is a good idea. I'm not as clued up on communist/socialist theory as I should be, but afaik what you're describing is a form of state socialism, and one which almost all anti-capitalists vehemently disagree with. I've seen many arguments started by people suggesting state ownership of capital: almost everyone agrees that the risk of corruption is far too high with a centralised state. I highly recommend reading The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin. It paints an excellent picture of a more reasonable anarcho-communist society, without a centralised state, which could realistically exist. Just to make this comment relevant to the original article: he originally suggested, in the late 19th century, that the industrial era had already increased production to the point that nobody should have to work more than four hours a day. Furthermore, that the time people saved could be spent building tools of automation to further reduce people's workload. It is, if anything, far more relevant today than it was when it was written.