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At risk of sounding belittling to those spend their life giving their labor to someone else, I think we can't go on indefinitely because we aspire to get someth

At risk of sounding belittling to those spend their life giving their labor to someone else, I think we can't go on indefinitely because we aspire to get something better out of our lives, and somewhere perhaps deep in our minds or hearts we know we need better. After all this whole concept of spending a career at someone else's company only started in the late 20th C when the industrial rev created the modern corporation.

whimsicalism 5y ago
> After all this whole concept of spending a career at someone else's company only started in the late 20th C when the industrial rev created the modern corporation. Psh, what preceded that was far worse and also involved a lifetime of laboring for someone else's benefit.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
  In some colonies. Oppression and servitude was not a universal constant.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Not merely in colonies. Feudalism was the law of the land for essentially most of the world The yeoman artisan period has always been more myth than reality.
    - arvinsim 5y ago
      By the looks of it, we are going back to feudalism soon.
- josephg 5y ago
  So? The fact that slavery- and slavery-adjacent relationships were common through a lot of human history doesn't make them acceptable now. My take on this is that there's some part of our minds that knows we don't have to be servants to our companies. And knowing that, yet subjugating ourselves anyway creates an itch. That itch grows a little every day we wake up to an alarm and haul ourselves into the office for useless meetings. We know deep down this isn't an acceptable road for our lives. But we're here anyway, with a story that somehow justifies closing jira tickets - day in, day out. Coincidentally, depression is an evolved mechanism for stopping you from doing something that you know deep down is unhealthy for your soul but habitual. It works by every day making it harder to do the thing you know you shouldn't do. The longer you resist it, the deeper depression burrows, until you finally can't bring yourself to make pleasantries with your spouse - or, in this case, haul yourself into the office. For my money, burnout is a depression symptom which grows out of a long term, habitual suppression of your will. "I want X, but I can't have it because of <habitual rationalisation>". After growing up being told we can do anything, we aren't adapted for existence as a few pixels in a giant org chart. Burnout is a healthy backstop to force you to pursue the life you need, even if each day you can convince yourself you don't want it.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    > So? The fact that slavery- and slavery-adjacent relationships were common through a lot of human history doesn't make them acceptable now. I was only responding to the implicit claim of the grand parent. FWIW, I think "that's how it always has been" has no impact on the morality of something, so I am inclined to agree with you. But we don't need to paint a rosy picture of a lost past to critique the status quo.
  - omnomnomnom69 5y ago
    Your take on depression is extremely interesting and makes a lot of sense to me due to my own experiences which I will not elaborate on. What research are you basing this on?
TimTheTinker 5y ago
Actually the concept was alive and well long before that. Mid- and post-industrial revolution Europe had many large companies with many employees. In fact, the British East India Company (founded in the year 1600) was the first company to sell shares of ownership to raise enough capital to buy/build the necessary supplies to do large-scale business (in their case, mostly ship construction). Of course, modern labor laws were created in response to the horrible human rights abuses committed by business owners against their employees beginning at that time. The opposition of "big capital" vs "labor" (and hence the philosophy built on that dichotomy that underpins Marxism) didn't really exist prior to these large industrial revolution companies. Prior to that, small businesses (and banks/lenders) were the bread and butter of economic society.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Heck, back in ancient Egypt, a whole town was built to house the craftsmen working for the Pharaoh building his pyramid. And that was only a small part of the logistics and network needed to make it all work.
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  Maybe practicalpants is advocating getting rid of capitalism and going back to serfdom? Luckily Marxism hasn't really been taken seriously by economists since it couldn't resolve it's main tenant (labour theory of value) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_problem
WalterBright 5y ago
> spending a career at someone else's company The nice thing about working for someone else's company is you work 40 hours, then it leaves your mind for the rest of the time. If there's some problem at work, it's usually "not in my job description." Like, printer doesn't work? Call the Department of Inhuman Resources. Not your problem. If you work for yourself, it's 24/7. No vacations, either. All problems are your problem. Printer quit? Whatcha gonna do about it? It isn't for everyone.
- imgabe 5y ago
  Maybe it's better to have problems you care about. Solving problems that aren't directly related to your well-being is unnatural. That's not how humans evolved. Until fairly recently in human history, if you had a problem in your work (which was probably farming), it was a direct threat to your survival that demanded your attention. You cared deeply about it and solving it in the best way possible mattered immensely. I'm not saying we should go back to being one problem away from death, but also solving problems that just fundamentally don't matter to us personally doesn't seem to be great either.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Back when I had a bunch of employees, I was awake many nights worrying about meeting payroll. But working for someone else - payroll was not my department.
- mancerayder 5y ago
  The people in the 40 hours, though, dream of the working for yourself, at least you're the cause of success and failure instead of an unpredictable re-org, a new boss, a rapid company expansion or shrinking, a colleague who wants your throat, etc. But a 24/7 stress of self-employment is not for the faint of heart either. What's the compromise?
  - garrickvanburen 5y ago
    I was my worst boss. For a long time. Took 5(+?) yrs to recover.
cma 5y ago
It surely goes back much farther: “…man never regards what he possesses as so much his own, as what he does; and the labourer who tends a garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner, than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits…In view of this consideration, it seems as if all peasants and craftsman might be elevated into artists; that is, men who love their labour for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, ennoble their character, and exalt and refine their pleasures. And so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often serve to degrade it…But, still, freedom is undoubtedly the indispensable condition, without which even the pursuits most congenial to individual human nature, can never succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness… …we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is.” ― Wilhelm von Humboldt
- ballenf 5y ago
  And that’s why we feel ownership over the code we’re paid to write. The gardens were hired to tend.
setr 5y ago
I mean before that you largely had a job that was assigned at birth, and you kept at it till you were down and out, with no real expectation of changing that state. The notion of significant social mobility is itself fairly novel to post-revolution. You weren’t beholden to someone else’s corporation, but you were to someone else’s land or tribe/community.

whimsicalism 5y ago

> After all this whole concept of spending a career at someone else's company only started in the late 20th C when the industrial rev created the modern corporation. Psh, what preceded that was far worse and also involved a lifetime of laboring for someone else's benefit.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
In some colonies. Oppression and servitude was not a universal constant.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Not merely in colonies. Feudalism was the law of the land for essentially most of the world The yeoman artisan period has always been more myth than reality.
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    By the looks of it, we are going back to feudalism soon.
josephg 5y ago
So? The fact that slavery- and slavery-adjacent relationships were common through a lot of human history doesn't make them acceptable now. My take on this is that there's some part of our minds that knows we don't have to be servants to our companies. And knowing that, yet subjugating ourselves anyway creates an itch. That itch grows a little every day we wake up to an alarm and haul ourselves into the office for useless meetings. We know deep down this isn't an acceptable road for our lives. But we're here anyway, with a story that somehow justifies closing jira tickets - day in, day out. Coincidentally, depression is an evolved mechanism for stopping you from doing something that you know deep down is unhealthy for your soul but habitual. It works by every day making it harder to do the thing you know you shouldn't do. The longer you resist it, the deeper depression burrows, until you finally can't bring yourself to make pleasantries with your spouse - or, in this case, haul yourself into the office. For my money, burnout is a depression symptom which grows out of a long term, habitual suppression of your will. "I want X, but I can't have it because of <habitual rationalisation>". After growing up being told we can do anything, we aren't adapted for existence as a few pixels in a giant org chart. Burnout is a healthy backstop to force you to pursue the life you need, even if each day you can convince yourself you don't want it.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > So? The fact that slavery- and slavery-adjacent relationships were common through a lot of human history doesn't make them acceptable now. I was only responding to the implicit claim of the grand parent. FWIW, I think "that's how it always has been" has no impact on the morality of something, so I am inclined to agree with you. But we don't need to paint a rosy picture of a lost past to critique the status quo.
- omnomnomnom69 5y ago
  Your take on depression is extremely interesting and makes a lot of sense to me due to my own experiences which I will not elaborate on. What research are you basing this on?

TimTheTinker 5y ago

Actually the concept was alive and well long before that. Mid- and post-industrial revolution Europe had many large companies with many employees. In fact, the British East India Company (founded in the year 1600) was the first company to sell shares of ownership to raise enough capital to buy/build the necessary supplies to do large-scale business (in their case, mostly ship construction). Of course, modern labor laws were created in response to the horrible human rights abuses committed by business owners against their employees beginning at that time. The opposition of "big capital" vs "labor" (and hence the philosophy built on that dichotomy that underpins Marxism) didn't really exist prior to these large industrial revolution companies. Prior to that, small businesses (and banks/lenders) were the bread and butter of economic society.

WalterBright 5y ago
Heck, back in ancient Egypt, a whole town was built to house the craftsmen working for the Pharaoh building his pyramid. And that was only a small part of the logistics and network needed to make it all work.
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
Maybe practicalpants is advocating getting rid of capitalism and going back to serfdom? Luckily Marxism hasn't really been taken seriously by economists since it couldn't resolve it's main tenant (labour theory of value) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_problem

WalterBright 5y ago

> spending a career at someone else's company The nice thing about working for someone else's company is you work 40 hours, then it leaves your mind for the rest of the time. If there's some problem at work, it's usually "not in my job description." Like, printer doesn't work? Call the Department of Inhuman Resources. Not your problem. If you work for yourself, it's 24/7. No vacations, either. All problems are your problem. Printer quit? Whatcha gonna do about it? It isn't for everyone.

imgabe 5y ago
Maybe it's better to have problems you care about. Solving problems that aren't directly related to your well-being is unnatural. That's not how humans evolved. Until fairly recently in human history, if you had a problem in your work (which was probably farming), it was a direct threat to your survival that demanded your attention. You cared deeply about it and solving it in the best way possible mattered immensely. I'm not saying we should go back to being one problem away from death, but also solving problems that just fundamentally don't matter to us personally doesn't seem to be great either.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Back when I had a bunch of employees, I was awake many nights worrying about meeting payroll. But working for someone else - payroll was not my department.
mancerayder 5y ago
The people in the 40 hours, though, dream of the working for yourself, at least you're the cause of success and failure instead of an unpredictable re-org, a new boss, a rapid company expansion or shrinking, a colleague who wants your throat, etc. But a 24/7 stress of self-employment is not for the faint of heart either. What's the compromise?
- garrickvanburen 5y ago
  I was my worst boss. For a long time. Took 5(+?) yrs to recover.

cma 5y ago

It surely goes back much farther: “…man never regards what he possesses as so much his own, as what he does; and the labourer who tends a garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner, than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits…In view of this consideration, it seems as if all peasants and craftsman might be elevated into artists; that is, men who love their labour for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, ennoble their character, and exalt and refine their pleasures. And so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often serve to degrade it…But, still, freedom is undoubtedly the indispensable condition, without which even the pursuits most congenial to individual human nature, can never succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness… …we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is.” ― Wilhelm von Humboldt

ballenf 5y ago
And that’s why we feel ownership over the code we’re paid to write. The gardens were hired to tend.

setr 5y ago

I mean before that you largely had a job that was assigned at birth, and you kept at it till you were down and out, with no real expectation of changing that state. The notion of significant social mobility is itself fairly novel to post-revolution. You weren’t beholden to someone else’s corporation, but you were to someone else’s land or tribe/community.