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The truth many will not want to admit is that knowledge work is essentially the “rentier income” version of labor. You secure an asset (specialized knowledge),

The truth many will not want to admit is that knowledge work is essentially the “rentier income” version of labor. You secure an asset (specialized knowledge), and then you just live off of it while doing the minimal work you can, by turning yourself into an asset. Even though this affords many people a comfortable life, much like being a landowner of a vast portfolio of properties, it contributes to the inequality and degradation of society, splitting people between those who must labor physically and those who look down at them comfortably from high balconies. Society will not be worse off with most people doing physical labor. It was that way for thousands of years and humanity flourished. People may not like it, but humanity can only truly relax and do nothing when it has reached its peak and every problem is solved, and we are just not there yet. Back to work.

lisper 2y ago
> turning yourself into an asset How is that any different from any other skilled labor? Recall the old joke about the plumber who charged $1 for banging on the pipe and $1000 for knowing where to bang. Even purely physical labor like digging ditches requires that you have certain physical traits (strength and stamina) that you can look at as assets. > Society will not be worse off with most people doing physical labor. Like what? There is virtually nothing that used to be done with human labor that can't be done by machine nowadays. Even ditch-digging is mostly done with backhoes, not men with shovels. For the moment we still need (some) humans to run the machines, but that's knowledge work too.
- deadbabe 2y ago
  With physical labor you still need to do the work to deliver value, where as with knowledge work, you may not need to do anything until you are needed, but people pay to simply have access to you. Many software engineers for example, don’t do much most of the time, but they are an asset due to their familiarity with company systems.
  - lisper 2y ago
    > with knowledge work, you may not need to do anything until you are needed That can be true for physical labor as well. Fire fighters. Ambulance drivers. Soldiers. All get paid to be on-call.
    - deadbabe 2y ago
      Yes, it’s rent-seeking behavior. And when you retire, sometimes you draw pension and do nothing for the rest of your life, you use your past service as an asset for future gains.
      - lisper 2y ago
        Past service can't be an asset. You can convert your present service into assets (i.e. you can save instead of spend) but the compensation for the service itself can only be done at the time it's rendered, even if the payment takes the form of debt. But the debt is the asset, not the past service itself. And I don't see anything wrong with that. It is quite literally the essence of capitalism. Rent-seeking is different. Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth [1]. That is not at all the same as making your living off of assets that you've earned with past labor. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
goatlover 2y ago
> Society will not be worse off with most people doing physical labor. It was that way for thousands of years and humanity flourished. What's the evidence that humanity flourished? The elites flourished off lots of slave and peasant labor. The standard of living was much lower while inequality was a lot higher. You would need to go back to hunter and gatherers, and it's hard to compare those lifestyles with today. For one things, billions of people don't live in nomadic tribes. Not everyone wants or can do physical labor. As a hunter gatherer, you had little choice but to pitch in.
c0redump 2y ago
This is an astoundingly bad take. Knowledge workers don’t passively gain money by holding a productive asset - they WORK. It’s in the name. The fact that you do not understand anything besides physical work as work is perplexing and, honestly, pathetic. It smacks of someone who has failed to make a life for themself, and is lashing out at anyone who is a viable scapegoat.
- deadbabe 2y ago
  It is not true that you don’t gain money passively by doing knowledge work. Some knowledge work is very involved yes, like a hybrid between physical and mental labor. But there is some knowledge work where you are simply being paid in case people need you a small % of the time, and most of the time you’re not doing much or very trivial tasks. Like a consultant.
caradine 2y ago
Nonsensical take. Quick question: What scarce resource is it that knowledge workers hoard? If a knowledge worker acquires knowledge does that mean they've reduced the pool of knowledge available to others? It's not at all the same as hoarding capital or property, is it? Anyway, all labor is knowledge work. The plumber has specialized knowledge that the software engineer does not, and we all sell our bodies and minds.
- deadbabe 2y ago
  They hoard opportunity, because knowledge work easily scales compared to physical labor, as it is not bound by limits of space or even time (a person’s knowledge could be used indefinitely after they are dead if written down or encoded somewhere).
  - caradine 2y ago
    [flagged]
- econ 2y ago
  Now that I think about it. My job as a cleaner quite often exceeds in complexity beyond any software I wrote. I should really write an article about it, it is quite hilarious. Think callback hell with the callbacks changing the whole time, fuzzy inaccurate data and nothing working the way it should turning the state upside down. Numbers to call that may or may not help/answer or give wrong information. Truly shit apps to "help" and much more. lol
ikrenji 2y ago
degradation of society is caused primarily by rising wealth inequality, not knowledge work you donut
- deadbabe 2y ago
  Knowledge work disproportionately accumulates wealth.
- ForHackernews 2y ago
  You sure about that? https://www.brookings.edu/books/dream-hoarders/ https://www.brookings.edu/books/dream-hoarders/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/the-hoarding-of-the-american-dream/530481/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/the-hoa...
  - ikrenji 2y ago
    do you really believe that the middle class sending their kids to a nice school is more detrimental to society than wage stagnation for the past 50 years? https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
    - ForHackernews 2y ago
      Where do you think all that money went? Pretending the top 20% are "the middle class" is part of the problem. Just because you don't have a private jet doesn't mean you aren't one of the rich ones.
      - ikrenji 2y ago
        it went to the top 1%? what's the point of making an argument if you don't even look at the data...
disambiguation 2y ago
Its not the only thing contributing to the degradation of society.
OfficeChad 2y ago
[dead]

lisper 2y ago

> turning yourself into an asset How is that any different from any other skilled labor? Recall the old joke about the plumber who charged $1 for banging on the pipe and $1000 for knowing where to bang. Even purely physical labor like digging ditches requires that you have certain physical traits (strength and stamina) that you can look at as assets. > Society will not be worse off with most people doing physical labor. Like what? There is virtually nothing that used to be done with human labor that can't be done by machine nowadays. Even ditch-digging is mostly done with backhoes, not men with shovels. For the moment we still need (some) humans to run the machines, but that's knowledge work too.

deadbabe 2y ago
With physical labor you still need to do the work to deliver value, where as with knowledge work, you may not need to do anything until you are needed, but people pay to simply have access to you. Many software engineers for example, don’t do much most of the time, but they are an asset due to their familiarity with company systems.
- lisper 2y ago
  > with knowledge work, you may not need to do anything until you are needed That can be true for physical labor as well. Fire fighters. Ambulance drivers. Soldiers. All get paid to be on-call.
  - deadbabe 2y ago
    Yes, it’s rent-seeking behavior. And when you retire, sometimes you draw pension and do nothing for the rest of your life, you use your past service as an asset for future gains.
    - lisper 2y ago
      Past service can't be an asset. You can convert your present service into assets (i.e. you can save instead of spend) but the compensation for the service itself can only be done at the time it's rendered, even if the payment takes the form of debt. But the debt is the asset, not the past service itself. And I don't see anything wrong with that. It is quite literally the essence of capitalism. Rent-seeking is different. Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth [1]. That is not at all the same as making your living off of assets that you've earned with past labor. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

goatlover 2y ago

> Society will not be worse off with most people doing physical labor. It was that way for thousands of years and humanity flourished. What's the evidence that humanity flourished? The elites flourished off lots of slave and peasant labor. The standard of living was much lower while inequality was a lot higher. You would need to go back to hunter and gatherers, and it's hard to compare those lifestyles with today. For one things, billions of people don't live in nomadic tribes. Not everyone wants or can do physical labor. As a hunter gatherer, you had little choice but to pitch in.

c0redump 2y ago

This is an astoundingly bad take. Knowledge workers don’t passively gain money by holding a productive asset - they WORK. It’s in the name. The fact that you do not understand anything besides physical work as work is perplexing and, honestly, pathetic. It smacks of someone who has failed to make a life for themself, and is lashing out at anyone who is a viable scapegoat.

deadbabe 2y ago
It is not true that you don’t gain money passively by doing knowledge work. Some knowledge work is very involved yes, like a hybrid between physical and mental labor. But there is some knowledge work where you are simply being paid in case people need you a small % of the time, and most of the time you’re not doing much or very trivial tasks. Like a consultant.

caradine 2y ago

Nonsensical take. Quick question: What scarce resource is it that knowledge workers hoard? If a knowledge worker acquires knowledge does that mean they've reduced the pool of knowledge available to others? It's not at all the same as hoarding capital or property, is it? Anyway, all labor is knowledge work. The plumber has specialized knowledge that the software engineer does not, and we all sell our bodies and minds.

deadbabe 2y ago
They hoard opportunity, because knowledge work easily scales compared to physical labor, as it is not bound by limits of space or even time (a person’s knowledge could be used indefinitely after they are dead if written down or encoded somewhere).
- caradine 2y ago
  [flagged]
econ 2y ago
Now that I think about it. My job as a cleaner quite often exceeds in complexity beyond any software I wrote. I should really write an article about it, it is quite hilarious. Think callback hell with the callbacks changing the whole time, fuzzy inaccurate data and nothing working the way it should turning the state upside down. Numbers to call that may or may not help/answer or give wrong information. Truly shit apps to "help" and much more. lol

ikrenji 2y ago

degradation of society is caused primarily by rising wealth inequality, not knowledge work you donut

deadbabe 2y ago
Knowledge work disproportionately accumulates wealth.
ForHackernews 2y ago
You sure about that? https://www.brookings.edu/books/dream-hoarders/ https://www.brookings.edu/books/dream-hoarders/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/the-hoarding-of-the-american-dream/530481/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/the-hoa...
- ikrenji 2y ago
  do you really believe that the middle class sending their kids to a nice school is more detrimental to society than wage stagnation for the past 50 years? https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
  - ForHackernews 2y ago
    Where do you think all that money went? Pretending the top 20% are "the middle class" is part of the problem. Just because you don't have a private jet doesn't mean you aren't one of the rich ones.
    - ikrenji 2y ago
      it went to the top 1%? what's the point of making an argument if you don't even look at the data...

disambiguation 2y ago

Its not the only thing contributing to the degradation of society.

OfficeChad 2y ago

[dead]