8 ms·

Nobody actually wants to go back to work. All they want is the financial security they feel from having a job. If any of these people hit the lottery for exampl

Nobody actually wants to go back to work. All they want is the financial security they feel from having a job. If any of these people hit the lottery for example would they be begging to go back to work?

ianleeclark 6y ago
So we can do a blood sacrifice at the altar of The Cheesecake Factory because people don't want to work a shitty job?
mc32 6y ago
It’s not a yes or no thing. Some people don’t like being cooped up and would rather be able to socialize in person at work, etc. Some people are fearful and would rather stay at home. There are many in between.
- choward 6y ago
  That's true but you're only cooped up because of stay at home orders. Were people who worked full time from home complaining about being cooped up? Maybe a little but not enough to want to go into an office 40 hours a week. Sure it's nice to get out and escape from your family a little bit and socialize with different people but why does this have to equate to going to work?
  - em-bee 6y ago
    the difficulty here is of having to develop a new way to deal with this situation. it's the same problem some people face at retirement. they just have a hard time adjusting to the new situation. those of us who work from home don't have that problem. neither those that are already practicing a range of activities that don't require going outside. like reading, practicing a music instrument, painting, knitting, contributing to FOSS, etc. we just spend more time on those. everyone else needs to pick up a new hobby. if your daily routine consists of going to work, and hang out with friends in your free time, then you'll have to completely relearn how to get through the day, pick up new hobbies and find other new meaningful activities.
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  Even your examples seem to acknowledge that getting back to the actual work is not what people are after. There are many drawbacks to a lockdown. Not having to do the actual work, as some sort of guilt of not being a productive member of society, very rarely seems to be one of them. What people want is financial and health security (which in the US are strongly linked), social interactions and some other liberties like working out and traveling. The actual work aspect mostly benefits the owners of the businesses. And I can see that as a small business owner you'd be exposed to the same pressure for financial security, many times over. But don't confuse "not wanting to stay at home with nothing to do and no clear idea of whether you'll even have a home in a month" with "wanting to work", it's not helpful in analyzing what's actually happening.
  - mc32 6y ago
    Work benefits us all. If owners of enterprises, be they sole proprietorships, coöperatives, state owned, private, public corps, etc., didn’t employ people we wouldn’t have foods, medicines, goods and services. So it’s not only to have purchasing power but also to have things that one can purchase at all.
    - black_puppydog 6y ago
      I never said work doesn't benefit others. It's just that that benefit to other people is usually not what drives people to demand an opening-up.
  - abnry 6y ago
    "Want[ing] financial and health security" is a funny way to say "Wanting to be able to buy food and pay the rent." Not everyone has the luxury of a work at home job that allows them to put half of their salary in the bank each month.
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
But we should remember that part of the financial security people feel from having a job is personal security: I'm a real adult, I can support myself, the things I have and the food on my table aren't conditional on the continued generosity of someone else. Handing out money is by itself an imperfect substitute.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  True. And yet... is that a good thing? Should that be part of our basis for identity? Is it something to applaud, or to help people recover from? I think it's something to applaud, but I'm not sure...
- krapp 6y ago
  If you have a job, the things you have and the food on your table are conditional on the will and whim of your employer, which in the US, at least, can be far more capricious than any government welfare program. The only people who actually have personal security are the independently wealthy - everyone else lives and dies at the mercy of some greater system, a state or an employer.
gpm 6y ago
By this argument nobody ever wants to work. If you hit the lottery in normal times would you continue to work at your current job? What we do want, basically always, is for the "average" person to work. And we want that because if most people aren't working we stop producing enough food and other goods/services and we all suffer for it. That's as true now as ever. The government handing out money doesn't create food, or tractors, or houses, or nails, or clothing, and so on and so forth. It helps continue the distribution of the goods we do have in the short term, due to how we choose who to give goods to (i.e. selling them to people with money), but without people directly creating goods or indirectly creating value to sell to other people for goods (the other people being in other countries that are still producing goods) we will run out in short order.
- lmm 6y ago
  You're putting the cart before the horse. We want to keep everyone in reasonable comfort. A certain amount of work is necessary for that. But it's probably a lot less than half of society doing 40-hour weeks.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It seems to me like the minimum economy to maintain our standard of living would necessarily be all of it. The economy is what produces all the goods and services we enjoy in the first place. Some restrictions may be worth the cost, but the idea of finding broad sections of business activity that can be shut down without discomfort seems unrealistic.
    - Super_Jambo 6y ago
      If we made it our goal? If all our technological effort went into automating away drudgery? If all our persuasive marketing was not driving ever more consumption but making the simplest and cheapest lifestyle changes to improve our happiness? Sure.
    - nostrademons 6y ago
      You underestimate how many people are "employed" in making their boss feel powerful and their customers feel special. Or how many people are employed in ensuring that folks working for competitors are unable to sell their products. Most of these are white-collar office workers rather than "essential" workers, but there's still a massive amount of waste that comes from people playing financial or competitive games rather than directly contributing to their customers' well-being.
nightski 6y ago
I know for me personally, I am still working full time from home. For me it's not the desire of financial security, it is the heartbreak of seeing our entire community being destroyed. All of the small shops, restaurants, breweries and things that made this a great place to a live are slowly going out of business one by one. The PPP loans were a joke for saving main street.
michaelbrave 6y ago
I think if everyone had enough to live most people would still work, but they would be a lot less willing to put up with things like bad bosses, crappy hours, being understaffed and all the other things we generally dislike about our jobs. Employers would have to rise to the occasion if the need for the job was lessened.
- Loughla 6y ago
  What kills me is the argument against a basic standard of living tends to come down to 'but who will be the plumbers, janitors, or fast food workers and retail?' Well, I, for one, would be a janitor and be perfectly happy for the rest of my life - low stress, low pressure. Seems nice. Fast food workers and retail would be more difficult, just because people would have to treat them like humans, if they didn't need the money from the job to survive. But that's never talked about. Sometimes those shitty jobs are only shitty because the people you have to interact with make them that way. In a prior career, I worked full-time retail management. I actually really liked that job, except for all of the shitty people who asserted their authority over me because I needed the job, and they didn't need to see me as a human due to my job.

ianleeclark 6y ago

So we can do a blood sacrifice at the altar of The Cheesecake Factory because people don't want to work a shitty job?

mc32 6y ago

It’s not a yes or no thing. Some people don’t like being cooped up and would rather be able to socialize in person at work, etc. Some people are fearful and would rather stay at home. There are many in between.

choward 6y ago
That's true but you're only cooped up because of stay at home orders. Were people who worked full time from home complaining about being cooped up? Maybe a little but not enough to want to go into an office 40 hours a week. Sure it's nice to get out and escape from your family a little bit and socialize with different people but why does this have to equate to going to work?
- em-bee 6y ago
  the difficulty here is of having to develop a new way to deal with this situation. it's the same problem some people face at retirement. they just have a hard time adjusting to the new situation. those of us who work from home don't have that problem. neither those that are already practicing a range of activities that don't require going outside. like reading, practicing a music instrument, painting, knitting, contributing to FOSS, etc. we just spend more time on those. everyone else needs to pick up a new hobby. if your daily routine consists of going to work, and hang out with friends in your free time, then you'll have to completely relearn how to get through the day, pick up new hobbies and find other new meaningful activities.
black_puppydog 6y ago
Even your examples seem to acknowledge that getting back to the actual work is not what people are after. There are many drawbacks to a lockdown. Not having to do the actual work, as some sort of guilt of not being a productive member of society, very rarely seems to be one of them. What people want is financial and health security (which in the US are strongly linked), social interactions and some other liberties like working out and traveling. The actual work aspect mostly benefits the owners of the businesses. And I can see that as a small business owner you'd be exposed to the same pressure for financial security, many times over. But don't confuse "not wanting to stay at home with nothing to do and no clear idea of whether you'll even have a home in a month" with "wanting to work", it's not helpful in analyzing what's actually happening.
- mc32 6y ago
  Work benefits us all. If owners of enterprises, be they sole proprietorships, coöperatives, state owned, private, public corps, etc., didn’t employ people we wouldn’t have foods, medicines, goods and services. So it’s not only to have purchasing power but also to have things that one can purchase at all.
  - black_puppydog 6y ago
    I never said work doesn't benefit others. It's just that that benefit to other people is usually not what drives people to demand an opening-up.
- abnry 6y ago
  "Want[ing] financial and health security" is a funny way to say "Wanting to be able to buy food and pay the rent." Not everyone has the luxury of a work at home job that allows them to put half of their salary in the bank each month.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

But we should remember that part of the financial security people feel from having a job is personal security: I'm a real adult, I can support myself, the things I have and the food on my table aren't conditional on the continued generosity of someone else. Handing out money is by itself an imperfect substitute.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
True. And yet... is that a good thing? Should that be part of our basis for identity? Is it something to applaud, or to help people recover from? I think it's something to applaud, but I'm not sure...
krapp 6y ago
If you have a job, the things you have and the food on your table are conditional on the will and whim of your employer, which in the US, at least, can be far more capricious than any government welfare program. The only people who actually have personal security are the independently wealthy - everyone else lives and dies at the mercy of some greater system, a state or an employer.

gpm 6y ago

By this argument nobody ever wants to work. If you hit the lottery in normal times would you continue to work at your current job? What we do want, basically always, is for the "average" person to work. And we want that because if most people aren't working we stop producing enough food and other goods/services and we all suffer for it. That's as true now as ever. The government handing out money doesn't create food, or tractors, or houses, or nails, or clothing, and so on and so forth. It helps continue the distribution of the goods we do have in the short term, due to how we choose who to give goods to (i.e. selling them to people with money), but without people directly creating goods or indirectly creating value to sell to other people for goods (the other people being in other countries that are still producing goods) we will run out in short order.

lmm 6y ago
You're putting the cart before the horse. We want to keep everyone in reasonable comfort. A certain amount of work is necessary for that. But it's probably a lot less than half of society doing 40-hour weeks.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It seems to me like the minimum economy to maintain our standard of living would necessarily be all of it. The economy is what produces all the goods and services we enjoy in the first place. Some restrictions may be worth the cost, but the idea of finding broad sections of business activity that can be shut down without discomfort seems unrealistic.
  - Super_Jambo 6y ago
    If we made it our goal? If all our technological effort went into automating away drudgery? If all our persuasive marketing was not driving ever more consumption but making the simplest and cheapest lifestyle changes to improve our happiness? Sure.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    You underestimate how many people are "employed" in making their boss feel powerful and their customers feel special. Or how many people are employed in ensuring that folks working for competitors are unable to sell their products. Most of these are white-collar office workers rather than "essential" workers, but there's still a massive amount of waste that comes from people playing financial or competitive games rather than directly contributing to their customers' well-being.

nightski 6y ago

I know for me personally, I am still working full time from home. For me it's not the desire of financial security, it is the heartbreak of seeing our entire community being destroyed. All of the small shops, restaurants, breweries and things that made this a great place to a live are slowly going out of business one by one. The PPP loans were a joke for saving main street.

michaelbrave 6y ago

I think if everyone had enough to live most people would still work, but they would be a lot less willing to put up with things like bad bosses, crappy hours, being understaffed and all the other things we generally dislike about our jobs. Employers would have to rise to the occasion if the need for the job was lessened.

Loughla 6y ago
What kills me is the argument against a basic standard of living tends to come down to 'but who will be the plumbers, janitors, or fast food workers and retail?' Well, I, for one, would be a janitor and be perfectly happy for the rest of my life - low stress, low pressure. Seems nice. Fast food workers and retail would be more difficult, just because people would have to treat them like humans, if they didn't need the money from the job to survive. But that's never talked about. Sometimes those shitty jobs are only shitty because the people you have to interact with make them that way. In a prior career, I worked full-time retail management. I actually really liked that job, except for all of the shitty people who asserted their authority over me because I needed the job, and they didn't need to see me as a human due to my job.