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Your path to a better world is less healthcare, less help, and more soul-crushing labour? > "In the USA we want "good" jobs that come with personal fulfillment
by jodrellblank 4y ago
Your path to a better world is less healthcare, less help, and more soul-crushing labour?
> "In the USA we want "good" jobs that come with personal fulfillment, agency, mental stimulation... great"
That doesn't so much depend on the type of job, it depends on the management environment and coworkers. People can be happy with a sense of fulfillment and agency, or unhappy without those things in both skilled or menial, high or low paid jobs.
> "i.e. manufactured products, which can only be made by soul-crushing labor and toil."
In Henry Ford's autobiography, he wonders at the factory worker who is happy dipping metal components in liquid, with only the gentlest wave of the hands as their labour, over and over all day, and cannot be tempted by money to do anything more interesting or complex.[1]
Are the people making James Webb, or ASML's EUV-lithography machines or X-Ray machines doing soul-crushing labour? Are the people making hand-made wooden furniture doing soul-crushing labour with no agency and no mental stimulation? And, more importantly, do they need to be? Is that the only way we can imagine work and jobs? Does labour necessitate micromanagement, time tracking, awful bosses, skeleton staff, high stress, squeezing for maximum value extraction? Couldn't we change that instead, and keep the healthcare and welfare?
[1] in as many words; I forget the exact anecdote.