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There's a great read on this at https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/workplace-killing-people-nobody-cares https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/workplace-kill
by CalRobert 4y ago
There's a great read on this at https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/workplace-killing-people-nobody-cares https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/workplace-killing-peop...
Unfortunately we're not good at handling externalities we can't easily measure.
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She has said that the real inconvenient truth is not just that there is environmental pollution, which there certainly is, but that there is also social pollution. The work hours that companies are demanding of their employees are causing the breakup of marriages, burdens on raising children, and general disruption to family life. And the family unit is an important source of social support.
You can see this in stories from my book — the GE guy who’s on the road all the time and never sees his kids until he finally decides to quit. So she coined the term “social pollution,” and I think it’s a wonderful term.
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t’s true. He takes three points and puts them together. The first point, which is consistent with data reported by the World Economic Forum and other sources, is that an enormous percentage of the health care cost burden in the developed world, and in particular in the U.S., comes from chronic disease — things like diabetes and cardiovascular and circulatory disease. You begin with that premise: A large fraction — some estimates are 75 percent — of the disease burden in the U.S. is from chronic diseases.
Second, there is a tremendous amount of epidemiological literature that suggests that diabetes, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome — and many health-relevant individual behaviors such as overeating and underexercising and drug and alcohol abuse — come from stress.
And third, there is a large amount of data that suggests the biggest source of stress is the workplace. So that’s how Chapman can stand up and make the statement that CEOs are the cause of the health care crisis: You are the source of stress, stress causes chronic disease, and chronic disease is the biggest component of our ongoing and enormous health care costs.
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- throwaway0a5e 4y agoSocial pollution isn't a new concept. In the 1970s the, um, I'll be charitable here and say "well meaning but somewhat less than perfect", welfare efforts of the 1960s were often compared to factories that churned out some product and patted themselves on the back for great work while ignoring the havoc wreaked on the local environment. Industrial pollution was a big deal in the 1970s so it's unsurprising that people made this comparison back then. A key point of the comparison was that these messes take a long time to clean up. You screw a generation out of stable families and father figures and, well, we're still dealing with that, the same way that we're still dealing with industrial pollution of decades past.
- jseban 4y agoI agree about the criticism against long working hours, but it's unfortunate I think to use the nuclear family as an example of another superior example here, to shove people further into another old fashioned failing arbitrary power structure comes a bit short as a vision of a better alternative.
- barrysteve 4y agoWhat's arbitrary about a family? It's changed in size over the history of homo sapiens, but it has always existed and is pretty obviously a biological necessity and unavoidable natural law for us. The arguments against it are entirely abstract and ungrounded.
- jseban 4y agoYou assign an enormous amount of special status to certain people who you happen to be related to by blood, and that's arbitrary. It works when it works, and it doesn't work when it doesn't. What natural law says it's better to spend time with/live only with people who are related to by blood? The only necessity for reproduction is sexual intercourse. A family is susceptible to the same abuse and corruption as any other arbitrary power structure. The arguments against it are the divorce rates, and they are not abstract or ungrounded.
- ipaddr 4y agoDivorces are between people not related by blood (usually). The reason you provide resources to blood relatives (kids) is to give your genes the best chance to survive.
- jseban 4y agoWhat if a person not related by blood will give your kids better chances? What says that the parent will necessarily be the "best" person for their child through their whole life, and not someone else? That's arbitrary. You see no issues with swearing life long loyalty to blood relations? That's just going to be the optimal solution in every case? That's making it a little bit too easy don't you think?
- nonrandomstring 4y agoGreat link, thanks for that. The dark cynic in me says that in a country with a for-profit health system all these effects are considered good features of the workplace.