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I think waste is a bit strong, but our society is closer to an oligarchy than a meritocracy, and a side effect of this is that we have many talented people doin

I think waste is a bit strong, but our society is closer to an oligarchy than a meritocracy, and a side effect of this is that we have many talented people doing menial work so they can afford to better themselves because they don't have the wealth and connections of someone from a different social class, even if some of the people from that other class are less talented. With that said, it is a meritocracy to some degree, but it's only that for the very best, who also conform to other (arbitrary) standards. Everyone else has to grind through. I think the worst part is that it's presented as something else, which a lot of people buy into.

dgb23 6y ago
I think this response and some others vastly underestimate the value and complexity of „unskilled“ or „menial“ work. I ultimately respect middle class nerds with a sense for abstraction and upper class leaders with fine manners and so on. But the worker, who had to make hard tradeoffs, learn to serve and deal with having little, is naturally on a different level. You don’t know the value of work, if you never _had_ to work. And I think the world would be a better place if the most powerful understood that.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  I think that's true. But nevertheless it's not right that those from certain backgrounds should have to do this work while those from others do not.
- thevardanian 6y ago
  I mean if that were true then he could afford rent, clothing, a $10 library card, healthcare, education, etc. Like there's this peculiar mentality in America that is absolutely psychotic. While those so called "menial tasks" are no doubt important, rather invaluable to functioning of society, we should not imply let alone pretend, that they provide enough. So in terms of sheer economic value, if we believe our current way of measuring labor, those "menial tasks" are in fact not valuable. Because if they were they could provide a decent life, let alone being able to provide roof over your head. What I find bewildering is how so many Americans, even here, can justify the sheer waste of time, and psychological trauma, with "If he graduated with minimal debt and was able to get a good paying job, I'm not seeing the societal waste". Such justifications either feel like exuding gross privilege or worse a result of some mass Stockholm Syndrome.
  - throwaway316943 6y ago
    The idea is that a menial job shouldn’t be seen as a prison sentence. The problem is that Americans (and their cultural sphere) seem to hate the working class, I don’t know when this happened but it drips from the tongues of so many people even while they bemoan the conditions they’re forced into. You really fucked up somewhere. Working class jobs are not bad if they pay well and have benefits and time off. Any job sucks if it doesn’t. You don’t pay people based on economic value, they get paid what they can negotiate. I see a lot of negotiating happening in the future.
- sushisource 6y ago
  I agree with the overall point, but I don't agree that those who "came up from the bottom" are sort of magically imbued with this moral superiority that > But the worker, who had to make hard tradeoffs, learn to serve and deal with having little, is naturally on a different level. Implies. Take running for example. No one in modern society "needs" to run, but I took up endurance running and doing something like running a marathon teaches you a lot. Probably many of the same lessons you're imagining. All that to say, growing up poor I'd agree is probably pretty likely to imbue you with those learnings. It doesn't mean that people who haven't experienced scarcity have never learned those lessons.
- matwood 6y ago
  > You don’t know the value of work, if you never _had_ to work. I know there is a lot of negativity towards hard work not paying off nowadays, but doing the work you're talking about when I was younger has carried me through life. At a minimum, I wake up every morning amazed that I'm getting paid to play with and figure things out on a computer. It's a long ways from when I was a barely a teenager and my dad made me help him split firewood (he sold) using the hydraulic splitter or pick and sort oysters (he also sold in season), or the other random jobs I had until my first programming job in college. And you're also right about there being some complexity in all jobs. I could go on about all the important lessons I learned at my various jobs that have helped me my entire career.
- adamsea 6y ago
  > I think this response and some others vastly underestimate the value and complexity of „unskilled“ or „menial“ work. IMHO the parent poster is not talking about, let’s say the “inherent” value of such work, but the value our society places on it when it comes to money - aka when it comes to acquiring the basic necessities and securities of life and what it takes to live a decent life in the modern world. Otherwise, I agree with your comment 100% and suspect several of the other posters do too.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
    That's it. The majority of these jobs keep the lights on and are very difficult, but the pay is not commensurate to those characteristics. It should be, but it's not. That, consumerism, and the narrative that this country is mostly a meritocracy serve as effective barriers to people moving out of their socio-economic positions even if they are talented, hard working, and so on.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  I mean menial in the sense that these jobs don't have pay that reflects their difficulty and importance. During college I worked on the dock for an LTL trucking company, and it was difficult. The pay was about double minimum wage, but given the difficulty, risk, and importance of what we did, the pay should have been more.

dgb23 6y ago

I think this response and some others vastly underestimate the value and complexity of „unskilled“ or „menial“ work. I ultimately respect middle class nerds with a sense for abstraction and upper class leaders with fine manners and so on. But the worker, who had to make hard tradeoffs, learn to serve and deal with having little, is naturally on a different level. You don’t know the value of work, if you never _had_ to work. And I think the world would be a better place if the most powerful understood that.

nicoburns 6y ago
I think that's true. But nevertheless it's not right that those from certain backgrounds should have to do this work while those from others do not.
thevardanian 6y ago
I mean if that were true then he could afford rent, clothing, a $10 library card, healthcare, education, etc. Like there's this peculiar mentality in America that is absolutely psychotic. While those so called "menial tasks" are no doubt important, rather invaluable to functioning of society, we should not imply let alone pretend, that they provide enough. So in terms of sheer economic value, if we believe our current way of measuring labor, those "menial tasks" are in fact not valuable. Because if they were they could provide a decent life, let alone being able to provide roof over your head. What I find bewildering is how so many Americans, even here, can justify the sheer waste of time, and psychological trauma, with "If he graduated with minimal debt and was able to get a good paying job, I'm not seeing the societal waste". Such justifications either feel like exuding gross privilege or worse a result of some mass Stockholm Syndrome.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  The idea is that a menial job shouldn’t be seen as a prison sentence. The problem is that Americans (and their cultural sphere) seem to hate the working class, I don’t know when this happened but it drips from the tongues of so many people even while they bemoan the conditions they’re forced into. You really fucked up somewhere. Working class jobs are not bad if they pay well and have benefits and time off. Any job sucks if it doesn’t. You don’t pay people based on economic value, they get paid what they can negotiate. I see a lot of negotiating happening in the future.
sushisource 6y ago
I agree with the overall point, but I don't agree that those who "came up from the bottom" are sort of magically imbued with this moral superiority that > But the worker, who had to make hard tradeoffs, learn to serve and deal with having little, is naturally on a different level. Implies. Take running for example. No one in modern society "needs" to run, but I took up endurance running and doing something like running a marathon teaches you a lot. Probably many of the same lessons you're imagining. All that to say, growing up poor I'd agree is probably pretty likely to imbue you with those learnings. It doesn't mean that people who haven't experienced scarcity have never learned those lessons.
matwood 6y ago
> You don’t know the value of work, if you never _had_ to work. I know there is a lot of negativity towards hard work not paying off nowadays, but doing the work you're talking about when I was younger has carried me through life. At a minimum, I wake up every morning amazed that I'm getting paid to play with and figure things out on a computer. It's a long ways from when I was a barely a teenager and my dad made me help him split firewood (he sold) using the hydraulic splitter or pick and sort oysters (he also sold in season), or the other random jobs I had until my first programming job in college. And you're also right about there being some complexity in all jobs. I could go on about all the important lessons I learned at my various jobs that have helped me my entire career.
adamsea 6y ago
> I think this response and some others vastly underestimate the value and complexity of „unskilled“ or „menial“ work. IMHO the parent poster is not talking about, let’s say the “inherent” value of such work, but the value our society places on it when it comes to money - aka when it comes to acquiring the basic necessities and securities of life and what it takes to live a decent life in the modern world. Otherwise, I agree with your comment 100% and suspect several of the other posters do too.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  That's it. The majority of these jobs keep the lights on and are very difficult, but the pay is not commensurate to those characteristics. It should be, but it's not. That, consumerism, and the narrative that this country is mostly a meritocracy serve as effective barriers to people moving out of their socio-economic positions even if they are talented, hard working, and so on.
omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
I mean menial in the sense that these jobs don't have pay that reflects their difficulty and importance. During college I worked on the dock for an LTL trucking company, and it was difficult. The pay was about double minimum wage, but given the difficulty, risk, and importance of what we did, the pay should have been more.