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All of these come after the question: “What is life worth?” In both the US and in most Asian cultures work is worth more than life for the vast majority of the

All of these come after the question: “What is life worth?” In both the US and in most Asian cultures work is worth more than life for the vast majority of the average lifespan. Working long hours is considered a badge of honor. In the US you work towards retirement—that’s the goal. That’s the endgame. The fundamental question is: is that right? Is it worth it? Should we spend 40 years trying to make as money as we can so that we can then do nothing? The entire system, from top to bottom, is designed for this. And we give little breaks in between those 40 years so people don’t become depressed and kill themselves. Whenever I hear about people justify why they work so hard it’s almost always because they want to become rich so they won’t have to work. It makes me think of that line from Office Space, “You don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin. He's broke and he don't do shit.“ We do what the media tells us because we never stop to think about what we actually want.

taurath 8y ago
> Whenever I hear about people justify why they work so hard it’s almost always because they want to become rich so they won’t have to work I think most people want to work so they can afford certain things - depending on their values either a really neat place to live, a bunch of experiences, etc, but then find that in order to work to afford those things you get caught up in a cycle. There's plenty of people who aren't optimizing for retired life in their 60s and 70s - but at the same time recognize that after they actually CAN'T work any more they need to take some care of themselves. We tend to talk about work and jobs as if they're always mind-numbing drudgery - I think that's what people buy into, especially by having families and needing to be a breadwinner. You don't need to have a family. You don't need a big house. But for a lot of people, they want a family, and they want a big house. I wish there were more society did to set up alternate lifestyles, but it is sort of the engine that keeps society going.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- wallace_f 8y ago
  >There's plenty of people who aren't optimizing for retired life in their 60s and 70s Is it ever reasonable to optimize for? Go vacation to the most beautiful places you've ever been when your fitness level will be questionable? Go spend a bunch of money on food when your senses will be dulled by age?
ataturk 8y ago
The problem with being broke and lazy is that the quality of life totally sucks and that a single health emergency probably means you are going to die. Food for thought. Also, it sucks but I can tell you firsthand that having a million dollars isn't that helpful. I don't worry about bills, but I can't really retire young. Well, I could, but I would never be able to travel, pay for my kids' college, or have any unexpected expenses for the rest of my life, which would totally suck.
- ojhughes 8y ago
  I don’t see how wealth should effect an individuals ability to survive a medical emergency. In the US they really try and brainswash people with nonsense like this
hycaria 8y ago
Working with retirement as a goal seems like a very bad idea.
FooBarWidget 8y ago
> The fundamental question is: is that right? Is it worth it? Should we spend 40 years trying to make as money as we can so that we can then do nothing? Consider that 100-200 years ago, you had to work your entire life just to stay alive. There was no retirement.
- hrktb 8y ago
  People knew there was no way out, so work style was different though (keeping work/life balance was not a phylosophical question). Granted people working in mines for instance just had a shitty life all around.
  - lstodd 8y ago
    > People knew there was no way out, so work style was different though (keeping work/life balance was not a phylosophical question). Really? My grandparents and grandgrandparents told me an entirely different story. Please provide references for your statement.
    - y4mi 8y ago
      your grandparents are post industrialization as well. I'm pretty sure the grandparent post is talking about the world before that point also, if your grandparents are ~80 yrs old now, they would've started working around ~60 yrs ago. The specified timeframe was 100-200yrs ago.
- anticensor 8y ago
  Well, you "retired", but only if you had your family (siblings, cousins, children) looking after you.
hrktb 8y ago
> In the US you work towards retirement—that’s the goal. That’s the endgame. To further your point, I think this is more a utilitarian societal lie (like cheaters get caught etc.) than anything. The age of retirement is set to get non efficient people out of the market, and as people get fitter and fitter it gets pushed ahead (right now it is raised (or is discussed to be?) 65 in a number of countries for instance). Doing everything one dreams to do during retirement is lunacy, chances are this time is spent in an hospice or retirement isn’t even reached.
- marvin 8y ago
  I've been working towards early retirement for a decade now, but I've never thought about this perspective before. Seeing it from a devil's advocate perspective, you could consider retirement a beautiful dream that people will tirelessly work towards until they are practically spent. Retirement age as the age where most people are not net contributors any longer, is a very different perspective than the age where most people have enough savings to live for the rest of their lives without working. Of course, there is no sinister cabal that deliberately shapes society in this direction, but there are certainly powers that would want (and probably try to) to pull society in this direction. If most people could choose how to spend their time (working productively, working on stuff that no one pays for, not working) by the age of 40, there would be a smaller supply of in-demand specialists. And that would mean higher salaries and less return on capital!
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
You need to consider what work and, more generally, what society is. Society is fundamentally a group of people working together to satisfy each others needs and wants. Work, or productivity, is making progress towards this goal and is something we tend to reward with money, though not always. I think a fair analogy for society's productivity is a grocery store. Imagine there was a grocery store, the only grocery store in existence that also happened to be the only way to get food. Everybody would come in and take whatever they needed, but you didn't necessarily have to pay. If only some people don't pay this isn't that big a deal - the grocery store as a whole eats the losses but continues working more or less fine. And for those that simply cannot pay at all, well - there's not really any other option. But then there are those that could pay, but for whatever reason, do not. If enough people did this - the store would eventually go out of business as it would not be making enough to sustain itself. If everybody just did as they want, society would collapse. More generally here money is an indicator of how much you've contributed to society. People look at disbelief at how much Jeff Bezos is worth, yet somehow think nothing of how much Amazon has completely revolutionized the world of purchasing things as well as brought prices to lower than ever levels. The reason he's worth as much as he is is because he has contributed immensely to society. Of course the system isn't ideal and some people manage to make enormous amounts of money while contributing next to nothing to society - people who deal with finance are the prototypical example here. And similarly there are also people that contribute immensely to society, yet never see much in the way of reward from it. Herman Melville is now seen as one of the more important individuals in our literary history, yet received no recognition during his life and died without his work ever really being recognized, let alone rewarded. Yet for all of its flaws, our system does generally do a good job of creating a system where people who contribute to society are rewarded which creates a strong incentive system to contribute to society, even if only to make yourself rich in the process.
- massysett 8y ago
  Finance contributes next to nothing? Finance is exactly how Jeff Bezos assembled billions of dollars to fund a company that had no profitability.
- Pica_soO 8y ago
Joeri 8y ago
My father in law worked nights and weekends his whole life with big plans for what to do after retirement. Then he passed away unexpectedly at 57. My father on the other hand just didn’t retire, because he loves working too much, but he goes on a lot of vacations.
squirrelicus 8y ago
Counter point to the question "what is life worth?", which I think is a bit of sophistry in that it complects the discussion to tangential subjects like the price you would pay to save a life. I would rather ask "what is the value of not working?" To me, an American and a male, work is the number one way I choose to be valuable. If I chose not to work, or to work less, I would unquestionably provide less value to my society and my loved ones. I like being valuable. I like doing, hard frustrating things so my loved ones don't have to. I like working, even if (and because) I fucking hate it sometimes. Therefore, I love that I work. It is the most valuable thing I do.
- deckiedan 8y ago
  To me, an American and a male, work is the number one way I choose to be valuable. If I chose not to work, or to work less, I would unquestionably provide less value to my society and my loved ones. Don't sell yourself short. Your loved ones love you too - for who you are, not for the money you bring in. Quality time spent with your loved ones should be waaaay higher up the valuable list. Maybe ask them: If I earned 30% less, but had an extra day of time off per week with you guys, would you day that was worth it? Of course, there's basic provision - providing enough that off time can be quality time. Providing enough that schooling can be decent... But your value is way greater than your income.
  - squirrelicus 8y ago
    Yeah, that's just millennial nonsense. I spend time with my family AND I work. If I chose not to work anymore, my wife would leave me and my kids would remember me as a valueless deadbeat. And they'd be right. Unless I had a reason of course, like disability. Which I don't. This also assumes I'd want to spend 30% more of my work time with my family. I wouldn't. It would drive me crazy. I can't handle that much emotional fuckwittery in a week. The workplace is nice because feelings don't really matter. It's refreshing.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
reactor 8y ago
I think most of us keep working because we are lazy to live a life.
golergka 8y ago
I still haven't found a more fun and rewarding thing than work.

taurath 8y ago

> Whenever I hear about people justify why they work so hard it’s almost always because they want to become rich so they won’t have to work I think most people want to work so they can afford certain things - depending on their values either a really neat place to live, a bunch of experiences, etc, but then find that in order to work to afford those things you get caught up in a cycle. There's plenty of people who aren't optimizing for retired life in their 60s and 70s - but at the same time recognize that after they actually CAN'T work any more they need to take some care of themselves. We tend to talk about work and jobs as if they're always mind-numbing drudgery - I think that's what people buy into, especially by having families and needing to be a breadwinner. You don't need to have a family. You don't need a big house. But for a lot of people, they want a family, and they want a big house. I wish there were more society did to set up alternate lifestyles, but it is sort of the engine that keeps society going.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wallace_f 8y ago
>There's plenty of people who aren't optimizing for retired life in their 60s and 70s Is it ever reasonable to optimize for? Go vacation to the most beautiful places you've ever been when your fitness level will be questionable? Go spend a bunch of money on food when your senses will be dulled by age?

ataturk 8y ago

The problem with being broke and lazy is that the quality of life totally sucks and that a single health emergency probably means you are going to die. Food for thought. Also, it sucks but I can tell you firsthand that having a million dollars isn't that helpful. I don't worry about bills, but I can't really retire young. Well, I could, but I would never be able to travel, pay for my kids' college, or have any unexpected expenses for the rest of my life, which would totally suck.

ojhughes 8y ago
I don’t see how wealth should effect an individuals ability to survive a medical emergency. In the US they really try and brainswash people with nonsense like this

hycaria 8y ago

Working with retirement as a goal seems like a very bad idea.

FooBarWidget 8y ago

> The fundamental question is: is that right? Is it worth it? Should we spend 40 years trying to make as money as we can so that we can then do nothing? Consider that 100-200 years ago, you had to work your entire life just to stay alive. There was no retirement.

hrktb 8y ago
People knew there was no way out, so work style was different though (keeping work/life balance was not a phylosophical question). Granted people working in mines for instance just had a shitty life all around.
- lstodd 8y ago
  > People knew there was no way out, so work style was different though (keeping work/life balance was not a phylosophical question). Really? My grandparents and grandgrandparents told me an entirely different story. Please provide references for your statement.
  - y4mi 8y ago
    your grandparents are post industrialization as well. I'm pretty sure the grandparent post is talking about the world before that point also, if your grandparents are ~80 yrs old now, they would've started working around ~60 yrs ago. The specified timeframe was 100-200yrs ago.
anticensor 8y ago
Well, you "retired", but only if you had your family (siblings, cousins, children) looking after you.

hrktb 8y ago

> In the US you work towards retirement—that’s the goal. That’s the endgame. To further your point, I think this is more a utilitarian societal lie (like cheaters get caught etc.) than anything. The age of retirement is set to get non efficient people out of the market, and as people get fitter and fitter it gets pushed ahead (right now it is raised (or is discussed to be?) 65 in a number of countries for instance). Doing everything one dreams to do during retirement is lunacy, chances are this time is spent in an hospice or retirement isn’t even reached.

marvin 8y ago
I've been working towards early retirement for a decade now, but I've never thought about this perspective before. Seeing it from a devil's advocate perspective, you could consider retirement a beautiful dream that people will tirelessly work towards until they are practically spent. Retirement age as the age where most people are not net contributors any longer, is a very different perspective than the age where most people have enough savings to live for the rest of their lives without working. Of course, there is no sinister cabal that deliberately shapes society in this direction, but there are certainly powers that would want (and probably try to) to pull society in this direction. If most people could choose how to spend their time (working productively, working on stuff that no one pays for, not working) by the age of 40, there would be a smaller supply of in-demand specialists. And that would mean higher salaries and less return on capital!

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

You need to consider what work and, more generally, what society is. Society is fundamentally a group of people working together to satisfy each others needs and wants. Work, or productivity, is making progress towards this goal and is something we tend to reward with money, though not always. I think a fair analogy for society's productivity is a grocery store. Imagine there was a grocery store, the only grocery store in existence that also happened to be the only way to get food. Everybody would come in and take whatever they needed, but you didn't necessarily have to pay. If only some people don't pay this isn't that big a deal - the grocery store as a whole eats the losses but continues working more or less fine. And for those that simply cannot pay at all, well - there's not really any other option. But then there are those that could pay, but for whatever reason, do not. If enough people did this - the store would eventually go out of business as it would not be making enough to sustain itself. If everybody just did as they want, society would collapse. More generally here money is an indicator of how much you've contributed to society. People look at disbelief at how much Jeff Bezos is worth, yet somehow think nothing of how much Amazon has completely revolutionized the world of purchasing things as well as brought prices to lower than ever levels. The reason he's worth as much as he is is because he has contributed immensely to society. Of course the system isn't ideal and some people manage to make enormous amounts of money while contributing next to nothing to society - people who deal with finance are the prototypical example here. And similarly there are also people that contribute immensely to society, yet never see much in the way of reward from it. Herman Melville is now seen as one of the more important individuals in our literary history, yet received no recognition during his life and died without his work ever really being recognized, let alone rewarded. Yet for all of its flaws, our system does generally do a good job of creating a system where people who contribute to society are rewarded which creates a strong incentive system to contribute to society, even if only to make yourself rich in the process.

massysett 8y ago
Finance contributes next to nothing? Finance is exactly how Jeff Bezos assembled billions of dollars to fund a company that had no profitability.
Pica_soO 8y ago

Joeri 8y ago

My father in law worked nights and weekends his whole life with big plans for what to do after retirement. Then he passed away unexpectedly at 57. My father on the other hand just didn’t retire, because he loves working too much, but he goes on a lot of vacations.

squirrelicus 8y ago

Counter point to the question "what is life worth?", which I think is a bit of sophistry in that it complects the discussion to tangential subjects like the price you would pay to save a life. I would rather ask "what is the value of not working?" To me, an American and a male, work is the number one way I choose to be valuable. If I chose not to work, or to work less, I would unquestionably provide less value to my society and my loved ones. I like being valuable. I like doing, hard frustrating things so my loved ones don't have to. I like working, even if (and because) I fucking hate it sometimes. Therefore, I love that I work. It is the most valuable thing I do.

deckiedan 8y ago
To me, an American and a male, work is the number one way I choose to be valuable. If I chose not to work, or to work less, I would unquestionably provide less value to my society and my loved ones. Don't sell yourself short. Your loved ones love you too - for who you are, not for the money you bring in. Quality time spent with your loved ones should be waaaay higher up the valuable list. Maybe ask them: If I earned 30% less, but had an extra day of time off per week with you guys, would you day that was worth it? Of course, there's basic provision - providing enough that off time can be quality time. Providing enough that schooling can be decent... But your value is way greater than your income.
- squirrelicus 8y ago
  Yeah, that's just millennial nonsense. I spend time with my family AND I work. If I chose not to work anymore, my wife would leave me and my kids would remember me as a valueless deadbeat. And they'd be right. Unless I had a reason of course, like disability. Which I don't. This also assumes I'd want to spend 30% more of my work time with my family. I wouldn't. It would drive me crazy. I can't handle that much emotional fuckwittery in a week. The workplace is nice because feelings don't really matter. It's refreshing.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

reactor 8y ago

I think most of us keep working because we are lazy to live a life.

golergka 8y ago

I still haven't found a more fun and rewarding thing than work.