3 ms·
Humanity is much more productive per capita than 50 years ago, but we are collectively working more hours, not less. The goal should not be for everyone to do
by lesam 4y ago
Humanity is much more productive per capita than 50 years ago, but we are collectively working more hours, not less.
The goal should not be for everyone to do no work.
The goal should not be for everyone to work full time and fear unemployment.
- cs137 4y agoPart of the problem is that people have been conditioned into accepting this weird binary division between Work (measurable, institutionalized, subordinate labor) and Not-Work (everything else) that doesn't exist in healthy societies. The kibbutzniks worked a lot harder than U.S. office workers, but didn't have the problem of alienation and the epidemic of mental ill-health (plus chronic inflammation, obesity, et al) that we have. Almost all of us want the institutional, authoritarian nightmare we call "Work" to die, and it's past high time that it does... but, unfortunately, we've been stripped of our imagination when it comes to the question of how work (that is, useful activity) will get done without it.
- nradov 4y agoCollective farms similar to kibbutz also exist in the US. They are an option for those who prefer that lifestyle. You can even start one yourself.
- bhk 4y agoWho are you to tell everyone what their goals should be?
- CodeSgt 4y agoWe work more in large part because we consume much more. Increased consumption requires increased supply which requires increased production which means more work to be done.
- bombcar 4y agoDebt also provides a large motivator, and just as you get close to being out of it you easily pick up more.
- CodeSgt 4y agoDebt is just a product of consumption.
- lesam 4y agoShelter costs have also increased massively, not only because shelter has gotten better but because there’s more room in people’s budget for landlords to capture. Medical and educational costs have risen in the US, I would argue for the same reason. And some adversarial work has expanded for no reason- look at all the effort spent in high frequency trading that could be replaced by venues running auctions every 100ms instead of having competitions for fractions of a microsecond.
- swayvil 4y agoIf your boss is gonna take as much labor out of you as possible, no matter how productive you are, and no matter what advances in production methods you have achieved, productivity doesn't matter so much.