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Tell HN: There's something deeply disturbing in the modern-world concept of jobs
There's something I find deeply disturbing in the modern world about the concept of jobs. When people say "no one wants to work [hard] anymore" I actually do think they're on to something.
The head of Maui’s Emergency Management Agency asserted on Wednesday that he has no regrets about failing to activate warning sirens as the apocalyptic wildfires swept through the island: "We would not have saved those people."[1] It's as if he's saying "We did nothing. It's all you could ask of us."
The problem is that a lot of (mostly progressive?) people seem to treat jobs not as an instrumental thing - a position for getting serious work done - but instead as a kind of reward or perk. Jobs are things to be handed out. And if you don't like someone they should lose it, etc.
So many people I know don't really take their job seriously. In municipal gov especially. I think to people in the civil service jobs in the early 1900s, something like the show Parks and Rec would be more horror than comedy. This warps people's perception of work in several ways, which is too long to get into here, I just want to reflect on how strange it is that we got here.
For example, I think in most of history if something like this[2] happened (guys bipping cars all over SF’s Fisherman’s Wharf, one by one, without caring that they were seen), aside from vigilantes, both the mayor and maybe the police chief would resign in disgrace. Or the chief wouldn't stop a public warpath until the mayor resigned. Instead it will go unmentioned.
It feels like almost everyone in every position has this vague fog of do-nothing about them. This is in every part of society. Almost every post. I just find it baffling. The amount of getting things done is very low.
For instance England's (late) queen: She could have done, or at least said, all kinds of things during 2008 or brexit, aimed at least some kind of patriotic unity, but just sat there. When a country needed a figurehead the most in decades nothing of note came from the family.
I don't know if its an inability to do anything or a lack of imagination about what is to be done, or what. It's not like there's no work to be done.
Imagine being a top scientific journal president and knowing that a number of papers in your journal are essentially fake or bad science. Wouldn't you be embarrassed? Wouldn't you do something about it?
There's this film of careless inertia covering the whole world.
[1]https://nypost.com/2023/08/16/maui-chief-doesnt-regret-not-activating-sirens-during-wildfire/
[2]https://twitter.com/henrykleeKTVU/status/1691936290315624500
- smoldesu 3y ago> I don't know if its an inability to do anything or a lack of imagination about what is to be done, or what. It is the fact that our lives are ruled by money, and we are inherently selfish creatures. What do you think late-stage capitalism looks like? Everyone starts working harder so we can all die faster and make more money for our boss? If you want to solve it, hire better workers and pay them better. That's the capitalist solution anyways; bugger to you if that guy is solely motivated by money too. And their replacement is probably financially-motivated too, so don't bother trusting them to hold the door for you. You want something "deeply disturbing" to think about? This site is the one that demands marginal returns for their angel investments. Half the users here are either an investor or a builder, each one looking to swindle the other. That is what the opposite of work looks like, not apathy. These people are creating the illusion of a job well done to appease their shareholders and force their customers to stay-put. Then they have the gall to blame operational failures on Joe Shmoe in accounting, when their problem is obviously executive malfunction.
- confd 3y ago[dead]
- not_your_vase 3y ago> In municipal gov especially. I wish. Although I guess this could be location dependent. But I think I know what you are talking about. I'm in Central Europe. Municipal workers are usually a bit better than workers in the private sphere. But people suck at their job, with almost no exception. They have no idea what they are doing, but if you point it out, than you will get burned. But of course, in the past decade or two the word "responsibility" has disappeared (or at least its meaning has changed significantly). As long as you do the very bare minimum, you will get a positive feedback, that reinforces that you are the master of not sucking (even though unfortunately it is not true). I stopped caring about what others are doing. I do pay attention to it, but ultimately I concentrate on my own work, so I can be proud of it. It took a long time learning doing this, and sometimes I still mess up. But ultimately I don't think that there is any other way. Unfortunately.
- aristofun 3y agoI think you're projecting your own personal issues and insecurities on the whole world and of course find evidence to support them (as you'd find for any POV). This is a dangerous mistake people like doing these days — to generalize and over simplify extremely complex matters. In my perspective, I find today as much stupidity and lack of professionalism, attitude towards any job as it was 20 years ago. With some fluctuations in specific areas, niches presumably correlated to covid, wars, economy issues and other general sources of chaos.