6 ms·

I was again, arguing about work on reddit. Someone said that even animals "work" to survive. I found that the comparison was not really good. Food and shelter

by jokoon 5y ago

I was again, arguing about work on reddit. Someone said that even animals "work" to survive. I found that the comparison was not really good. Food and shelter are abundant. Technology improved the human condition, but it made humans be much much less social, which is the main cause of inequalities. The individual car/kitchen/living room/bathroom generate exclusion. I'm an introvert, I want to have my safe space, but I don't need to cook alone, to eat alone, to work alone, or to be alone 99% of the time. I guess that's what people criticize about current capitalism. It's not only the inequalities (that always were always present in civilization), but it's rather the individualism, the atomization, the complex logistics and mechanization of how everything is turned into money, without limits. In earlier times, in hunter gatherer societies, food was scarce and work was important. But today, you cannot tell people that working in fast food or in customer support is mandatory to eat and have a roof on your head.

agumonkey 5y ago
Would you mind sharing the link. I often think about efforts of primitive~ survival vs efforts in societies. It seems there's something egotistic about survival (like animals) that satisfies a sense of self (nobody ever said no to hunting when they're hungry)
- e1g 5y ago
  I’m currently reading “Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots” [0] and it’s an anthropological exploration of these topics. I don’t know if I recommend it to all yet, but if you often think about the philosophy of labor, it might tickle your brain in the right way. [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0525561757/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr= https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0525561757/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch...
  - nefitty 5y ago
    Maybe my Kindle will finally get a workout. Thank you!
  - justalanm 5y ago
    Thanks for the tip, I can suggest (after getting some introductory anthropology reading) this as well https://www.amazon.it/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612194192 https://www.amazon.it/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612194192
  - raptor99 5y ago
    I assume you've already read Wealth of Nations among other foundations?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
neilwilson 5y ago
"Food and shelter are abundant." Only because somebody made them by working Monday to Friday. That somebody could make less by working Monday to Tuesday. Food and shelter would be less abundant and the person currently working a full week to produce the surplus would instead have the rest of the week to themselves. The productivity, and the free time, would accrue to those expending the effort of production - as morally it should. Now you have changed the frame of the question: how do you persuade those highly skilled people who have the capacity to operate machinery that produces the basic surplus to give up the free time that by right is theirs and produce that basic surplus? We may have a magic money tree, but we don't have a magic porridge pot.
- fifticon 5y ago
  the wealth piled up with people like elon musk and jeff bezos indicate this is not what is being solved or handled here. The 188b$ of Bezos and 264b$ of Musk are clearly not dedicated to providing me with hamburgers and sleeping quarters. If I divided those 452b$ amongst 334m americans, I'd get around 1300$ per head. Though net worth is not the same as yearly income, I note that Musk's 264b$ represent 5.600 times the average american's yearly income. As I see it, a lot of that "necessary work to provide food and shelter", that you refer to, is not spent doing that, but instead spent piling money on top of people like Musk and Bezos. I agree with the people that think we could still handle the work required for 'food and shelter', without all the necessary work yielded to enrich our billionaires. What we currently have, and have had for most of human history, is feudalism under many different names. We may currently have a much more humane treatment of our thralls, but we have an entitled 'nobility' profiting off the work of others, as much as at any time. It is much like peasants 500 years ago, who could handily themselves live off what their farms produced, but for some reason had to pass on the major part of what their work produced, so that the lord could 'protect' them against being beaten up by the neighbour lord (and, incidentally, against being indiscriminately beaten by his own men, too). Currently we organise our Lords through capitalism.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    >Currently we organise our Lords through capitalism. And that's how I want it. I may have a low chance of winning but nobody argues against my right to throw my hat in the ring if I want to rise above my station. Nobody but the anticapitalists that is.
rileyjshaw 5y ago
“The managers tell us that the swimmers, crawlers, walkers, and fliers spent their lives working in order to eat. These managers are broadcasting their news too soon. The varied beings haven’t all been exterminated yet. You, reader, have only to mingle with them, or just watch them from a distance, to see that their waking lives are filled with dances, games, and feasts. Even the hunt, the stalking and feinting and leaping, is not what we call Work, but what we call Fun. The only beings who work are inmates like us.” - Fredy Perlman, Against Leviathan
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  > The only beings who work are inmates like us. What about ants?
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    Ants are basically a hivemind right? Their individuality is subsumed to the colony. I don't know if ants even play, which I think is the basic requirement for individuality.
justalanm 5y ago
> In earlier times, in hunter gatherer societies, food was scarce and work was important. But today, you cannot tell people that working in fast food or in customer support is mandatory to eat and have a roof on your head. Just a note: hunter gatherers exist today, it's not something that humanity has given up completely, you've given it up, but it might be temporary (it seems that many current hunter gatherers went back to it in order to flee from disease and slavery brought by the westerners). Moreover, we now know that many hunter gatherers "work" less on average than those working in agriculture or - following your example - in customer support.
- gls2ro 5y ago
  I am not sure what you are arguing here. There might be hunter-gatherers, but they are few. Our society has given up on that and in the current state (people living on Earth) we cannot go back to that stage. For for all the purposes humanity has given up completely on being hunter-gatherers. Even if some people are still doing that, it is not a feasible for everybody.
  - justalanm 5y ago
    > Our society has given up on that That's the point when I say: "you've given up on that", meaning that some societies have moved to something else, but there are many in the world. It's important to understand that it's a choice, there's no "right way forward", it isn't evolution, just organization. > we cannot go back to that stage Not saying we have to, but it might happen in the future for many reasons (nuclear wars, climate collapse, worse pandemics, etc). The point above is about that, what if we find a DIFFERENT way? It's up to us. > humanity has given up completely on being hunter-gatherers This statement doesn't help anyone and it isn't true, there are millions of hunter gatherers, and many more that are in between that and very limited agriculture. Do not mistake the west for humanity. P.S.: this is just food for thought, in the sense that we must be open to new ideas, even those that completely destroy our "normal" perception of the world if we really want to advance as a species.
    - gls2ro 5y ago
roenxi 5y ago
I don't think I've ever heard anyone arguing that people shouldn't have reliable access to food and shelter. My complaint is when people start getting shelter in much nicer parts of the world than I get to live in, for free. If people want to fall back on the generosity of others they should be shuffled to the least desirable shelters and given last pick of the food. Anything else is unfair to people who are working hard. To reverse "you cannot tell people that working in fast food or in customer support is mandatory to eat and have a roof on your head" - I can absolutely say that people willing to work in fast food or customer support should have priority to choose their homes and dining habits before people who rely on public largess.
sleepysysadmin 5y ago
>I was again, arguing about work on reddit. Someone said that even animals "work" to survive. I found that the comparison was not really good. Seems like a good comparison to me. Society is not post-scarcity. People in society must produce a surplus and contribute that surplus. Economics is how we measure how much contribution happened. >Food and shelter are abundant. Food prices are climbing and housing is in bubble territory. Abundance is complicated. >I guess that's what people criticize about current capitalism. Marx has many valid arguments against capitalism. It's very obvious today that socialism is dead. It officially died in 1989. Though that doesnt solve the problems with capitalism. >In earlier times, in hunter gatherer societies, food was scarce and work was important. But today, you cannot tell people that working in fast food or in customer support is mandatory to eat and have a roof on your head. Nobody is saying they must work the mcjob. Many many other jobs out there. Entrepreneurship is important to capitalism. However we absolutely are saying you must contribute something to society in order to eat and have a roof over their head. If you don't, that's your decision, you deal with the consequences. Our society is not at the point where work is optional. Perhaps getting people out of the mcjobs and building a fully automated factory where food just comes out at no cost. Where housing can be 3d printed in a weekend anywhere in the world. We get to the point where maslow heirarchy of needs is solved and you can decide to not-work as much as you like.
- badtension 5y ago
  I think the issue is we are not in a post scarcity world and do not work towards such a thing. If it is cheaper to hire a human instead of automatic a job - we do that. Eventually exporting jobs to the poorest countries where people suffer creating useless crap or fast fashion. What we are doing is not reasonable if you had the greater good of humanity and planet in mind. The return on investment alone is a bad compass that will make more and more people suffer.
heresie-dabord 5y ago
A worker should be able to exchange skill for a task that needs to be done. Work is a good thing. In the best possible case, work is a safe, useful, purposeful behaviour that benefits the employer, the workers, and society. > it made humans be much much less social, which is the main cause of inequalities Freedom from prejudice is a fine principle -- I fully support modern law. But people are not all "equal", they have different abilities. And some people hold wealth and information for the purpose of control. It goes without saying that corruption, cronyism, propaganda and violence are social anti-patterns. A just, accountable, fair, transparent system ("JAFTS") will pay people for the value of their work and skill. There will be useful work to do, and training to do the work. An intelligent social system will invest in people and reward good work. A compassionate social system will also care for all people's well-being. It is a smart investment. History tells us not to expect that a dictatorship, oligarchy, or mob rule will achieve sufficient cultural enlightenment. So we fight these tendencies with democracy, education, and workers' rights. Unless of course the socio-economic structure is unenlightened or stumbling towards something worse. In a dictatorship or oligarchy, either the power structure wins or the people revolt. History also tells us that people have enough sense to fight for food and shelter. In a democracy, people must want to protect the principles of democratic society.
- samhw 5y ago
  > But people are not all "equal", they have different abilities. 'Equal' in that context is used to mean 'equal in moral worth'. No one, obviously, is saying that all human beings in the world are identical in every respect. This discussion comes about because there are implicit moral principles we hold: (i) that people should not be punished without fault, and (ii) that people are not at fault for things over which they have no control. Our economic system self-evidently does punish people for things over which they have no control: their intelligence, their talents, their work ethic, and so forth. I don't personally feel that that's problematic – I think its faults are outweighed by its benefits – but I understand why some people do. And it's certainly not as simple as the absurd caricature that they believe all human beings are exactly the same as one another.
beepbooptheory 5y ago
Not sure if you care to hear this or not, but this almost a perfect way to articulate the humanism that is the starting point for Marx's analysis of history. But he was actually just following the way Aristotle thought about it!

by jokoon 5y ago

agumonkey 5y ago

Would you mind sharing the link. I often think about efforts of primitive~ survival vs efforts in societies. It seems there's something egotistic about survival (like animals) that satisfies a sense of self (nobody ever said no to hunting when they're hungry)

e1g 5y ago
I’m currently reading “Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots” [0] and it’s an anthropological exploration of these topics. I don’t know if I recommend it to all yet, but if you often think about the philosophy of labor, it might tickle your brain in the right way. [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0525561757/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr= https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0525561757/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch...
- nefitty 5y ago
  Maybe my Kindle will finally get a workout. Thank you!
- justalanm 5y ago
  Thanks for the tip, I can suggest (after getting some introductory anthropology reading) this as well https://www.amazon.it/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612194192 https://www.amazon.it/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612194192
- raptor99 5y ago
  I assume you've already read Wealth of Nations among other foundations?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

neilwilson 5y ago

"Food and shelter are abundant." Only because somebody made them by working Monday to Friday. That somebody could make less by working Monday to Tuesday. Food and shelter would be less abundant and the person currently working a full week to produce the surplus would instead have the rest of the week to themselves. The productivity, and the free time, would accrue to those expending the effort of production - as morally it should. Now you have changed the frame of the question: how do you persuade those highly skilled people who have the capacity to operate machinery that produces the basic surplus to give up the free time that by right is theirs and produce that basic surplus? We may have a magic money tree, but we don't have a magic porridge pot.

fifticon 5y ago
the wealth piled up with people like elon musk and jeff bezos indicate this is not what is being solved or handled here. The 188b$ of Bezos and 264b$ of Musk are clearly not dedicated to providing me with hamburgers and sleeping quarters. If I divided those 452b$ amongst 334m americans, I'd get around 1300$ per head. Though net worth is not the same as yearly income, I note that Musk's 264b$ represent 5.600 times the average american's yearly income. As I see it, a lot of that "necessary work to provide food and shelter", that you refer to, is not spent doing that, but instead spent piling money on top of people like Musk and Bezos. I agree with the people that think we could still handle the work required for 'food and shelter', without all the necessary work yielded to enrich our billionaires. What we currently have, and have had for most of human history, is feudalism under many different names. We may currently have a much more humane treatment of our thralls, but we have an entitled 'nobility' profiting off the work of others, as much as at any time. It is much like peasants 500 years ago, who could handily themselves live off what their farms produced, but for some reason had to pass on the major part of what their work produced, so that the lord could 'protect' them against being beaten up by the neighbour lord (and, incidentally, against being indiscriminately beaten by his own men, too). Currently we organise our Lords through capitalism.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  >Currently we organise our Lords through capitalism. And that's how I want it. I may have a low chance of winning but nobody argues against my right to throw my hat in the ring if I want to rise above my station. Nobody but the anticapitalists that is.

rileyjshaw 5y ago

“The managers tell us that the swimmers, crawlers, walkers, and fliers spent their lives working in order to eat. These managers are broadcasting their news too soon. The varied beings haven’t all been exterminated yet. You, reader, have only to mingle with them, or just watch them from a distance, to see that their waking lives are filled with dances, games, and feasts. Even the hunt, the stalking and feinting and leaping, is not what we call Work, but what we call Fun. The only beings who work are inmates like us.” - Fredy Perlman, Against Leviathan

burntoutfire 5y ago
> The only beings who work are inmates like us. What about ants?
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  Ants are basically a hivemind right? Their individuality is subsumed to the colony. I don't know if ants even play, which I think is the basic requirement for individuality.

justalanm 5y ago

> In earlier times, in hunter gatherer societies, food was scarce and work was important. But today, you cannot tell people that working in fast food or in customer support is mandatory to eat and have a roof on your head. Just a note: hunter gatherers exist today, it's not something that humanity has given up completely, you've given it up, but it might be temporary (it seems that many current hunter gatherers went back to it in order to flee from disease and slavery brought by the westerners). Moreover, we now know that many hunter gatherers "work" less on average than those working in agriculture or - following your example - in customer support.

gls2ro 5y ago
I am not sure what you are arguing here. There might be hunter-gatherers, but they are few. Our society has given up on that and in the current state (people living on Earth) we cannot go back to that stage. For for all the purposes humanity has given up completely on being hunter-gatherers. Even if some people are still doing that, it is not a feasible for everybody.
- justalanm 5y ago
  > Our society has given up on that That's the point when I say: "you've given up on that", meaning that some societies have moved to something else, but there are many in the world. It's important to understand that it's a choice, there's no "right way forward", it isn't evolution, just organization. > we cannot go back to that stage Not saying we have to, but it might happen in the future for many reasons (nuclear wars, climate collapse, worse pandemics, etc). The point above is about that, what if we find a DIFFERENT way? It's up to us. > humanity has given up completely on being hunter-gatherers This statement doesn't help anyone and it isn't true, there are millions of hunter gatherers, and many more that are in between that and very limited agriculture. Do not mistake the west for humanity. P.S.: this is just food for thought, in the sense that we must be open to new ideas, even those that completely destroy our "normal" perception of the world if we really want to advance as a species.
  - gls2ro 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago

I don't think I've ever heard anyone arguing that people shouldn't have reliable access to food and shelter. My complaint is when people start getting shelter in much nicer parts of the world than I get to live in, for free. If people want to fall back on the generosity of others they should be shuffled to the least desirable shelters and given last pick of the food. Anything else is unfair to people who are working hard. To reverse "you cannot tell people that working in fast food or in customer support is mandatory to eat and have a roof on your head" - I can absolutely say that people willing to work in fast food or customer support should have priority to choose their homes and dining habits before people who rely on public largess.

sleepysysadmin 5y ago

>I was again, arguing about work on reddit. Someone said that even animals "work" to survive. I found that the comparison was not really good. Seems like a good comparison to me. Society is not post-scarcity. People in society must produce a surplus and contribute that surplus. Economics is how we measure how much contribution happened. >Food and shelter are abundant. Food prices are climbing and housing is in bubble territory. Abundance is complicated. >I guess that's what people criticize about current capitalism. Marx has many valid arguments against capitalism. It's very obvious today that socialism is dead. It officially died in 1989. Though that doesnt solve the problems with capitalism. >In earlier times, in hunter gatherer societies, food was scarce and work was important. But today, you cannot tell people that working in fast food or in customer support is mandatory to eat and have a roof on your head. Nobody is saying they must work the mcjob. Many many other jobs out there. Entrepreneurship is important to capitalism. However we absolutely are saying you must contribute something to society in order to eat and have a roof over their head. If you don't, that's your decision, you deal with the consequences. Our society is not at the point where work is optional. Perhaps getting people out of the mcjobs and building a fully automated factory where food just comes out at no cost. Where housing can be 3d printed in a weekend anywhere in the world. We get to the point where maslow heirarchy of needs is solved and you can decide to not-work as much as you like.

badtension 5y ago
I think the issue is we are not in a post scarcity world and do not work towards such a thing. If it is cheaper to hire a human instead of automatic a job - we do that. Eventually exporting jobs to the poorest countries where people suffer creating useless crap or fast fashion. What we are doing is not reasonable if you had the greater good of humanity and planet in mind. The return on investment alone is a bad compass that will make more and more people suffer.

heresie-dabord 5y ago

A worker should be able to exchange skill for a task that needs to be done. Work is a good thing. In the best possible case, work is a safe, useful, purposeful behaviour that benefits the employer, the workers, and society. > it made humans be much much less social, which is the main cause of inequalities Freedom from prejudice is a fine principle -- I fully support modern law. But people are not all "equal", they have different abilities. And some people hold wealth and information for the purpose of control. It goes without saying that corruption, cronyism, propaganda and violence are social anti-patterns. A just, accountable, fair, transparent system ("JAFTS") will pay people for the value of their work and skill. There will be useful work to do, and training to do the work. An intelligent social system will invest in people and reward good work. A compassionate social system will also care for all people's well-being. It is a smart investment. History tells us not to expect that a dictatorship, oligarchy, or mob rule will achieve sufficient cultural enlightenment. So we fight these tendencies with democracy, education, and workers' rights. Unless of course the socio-economic structure is unenlightened or stumbling towards something worse. In a dictatorship or oligarchy, either the power structure wins or the people revolt. History also tells us that people have enough sense to fight for food and shelter. In a democracy, people must want to protect the principles of democratic society.

samhw 5y ago
> But people are not all "equal", they have different abilities. 'Equal' in that context is used to mean 'equal in moral worth'. No one, obviously, is saying that all human beings in the world are identical in every respect. This discussion comes about because there are implicit moral principles we hold: (i) that people should not be punished without fault, and (ii) that people are not at fault for things over which they have no control. Our economic system self-evidently does punish people for things over which they have no control: their intelligence, their talents, their work ethic, and so forth. I don't personally feel that that's problematic – I think its faults are outweighed by its benefits – but I understand why some people do. And it's certainly not as simple as the absurd caricature that they believe all human beings are exactly the same as one another.

beepbooptheory 5y ago

Not sure if you care to hear this or not, but this almost a perfect way to articulate the humanism that is the starting point for Marx's analysis of history. But he was actually just following the way Aristotle thought about it!