7 ms·

André Gorz predicted the revolt against meaningless work (2023)

103 points by robtherobber 1y ago

brudgers 1y ago
related? David Graeber's On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs https://davidgraeber.org/articles/on-the-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs-a-work-rant/ https://davidgraeber.org/articles/on-the-phenomenon-of-bulls...
- dkdcio 1y ago
  it’s mentioned and linked a few paragraphs in so probably related
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  > The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ’60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them. Isn't this sort of similar to 1984 Like they had ways to provide enough but they wouldn't because then they would lose the power or something similar
  - immibis 1y ago
    Stories like 1984 try to convey (among other things) the mechanisms and effects of power. Everything else (laws, money, work) is subordinate to power relationships. People who are good at obtaining and maintaining power may collectively be called "the ruling class". By definition, people with lots of power control us. That's what it means to have power. But the exact appearance of that power differs in each society. In North Korea you worship the leader or they shoot you dead, because "he is literally God and how dare you defy God". In the USSR you report good numbers to your boss or you are kidnapped and brought to a gulag, because "you are interfering with our progress towards glorious communist utopia, comrade". And in the United States of America you seek out a boss to submit yourself to 40 hours a week, or else you find yourself unable to obtain food because "it's a free market and you didn't earn enough money; we can't give you food because that would be slavery".
    - nradov 1y ago
      The key difference is that in the USA you can also start your own business and obtain food that way. No one will stop you, you can just go ahead and do it. Something like 20-25M people work full time in their own business and have no boss.
      - immibis 1y ago
        ???????
        Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
        I think he seems to explain that in the situation that you had presented between multiple different countries, every other country doesn't even give you the freedom/opportunity to be the powerful person without requiring some same set of ideologies (communism good, or the NK example) Whereas, in a capitalist system with no matter how much of its flaws, as long as you can produce value (whatever that is in current society), you have power and can actually be your own boss in that sense. I am worried how much of that can change in recent year but still, I feel like socialism can be good for generating extreme amounts of money /value because as a society on whole, people are willing to take on more risks if there is something to fall back on (like not having to worry that you or your family will starve if you fail) Sweden has more amounts of billionaires per capita than america (source wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...)
        immibis 1y ago
        Everyone has at least some power in every situation. Even actual slave owners couldn't force their slaves to work - they just could (and did) kill them if they refused. What you say about capitalism could work if capitalism rewarded creating value, but capitalism actually rewards taking money, and pro-capitalist theory says that's strongly coupled to creating value, but in reality we observe that it's actually very weakly coupled. If we allow alternative definitions of value (like the common "value = whatever brings money") then we could say the same thing about totalitarian dictatorship - in that system, value is defined as whatever the dictator likes, and if you create that, you are rewarded just like in capitalism. It's not true that in capitalism you don't need a certain ideology to become powerful. You do need one - profit above all else, bribes are okay if you can get away with them, each person's moral value is solely determined by their net worth, that sort of thing. If you don't think that way, you won't become powerful in capitalism. (Well, occasionally it happens by luck, but that's true in any system, and if you didn't have the skill to deliberately seek power, you also don't have the skill to hold onto it. See Notch or the average lottery winner.) The ideology you need to become powerful in a system usually isn't the one it says on the tin. Believing in God in a theocracy doesn't make you powerful, just average. Believing you're God's chosen prophet might make you powerful; but more likely is believing the whole God thing is a scam and it's really a dictatorship, so you suck up to the guy at the top while publicly praising God. In USSR, believing you're helping create a communist utopia doesn't make you powerful, just average (and more delusional than average). More likely to make you powerful in the USSR is believing that it's useful for the plebs to believe they're creating a communist utopia and they deserve for you to steal all their wealth because they're so stupid for believing that nonsense. You don't get powerful in feudalism by believing the king is chosen by God; you're more likely to get powerful in feudalism by believing that if you murder the king you might get to be the new king. The Gervais Principle applies to more than just corporations. I avoid the word "socialism" because in practice it can be substituted by "something that isn't capitalism" and different people don't agree on what, specifically, that thing is.
BenFranklin100 1y ago
As people get older, they often come to realize that any job that puts a roof over ones head, food on the table, and allows quality time with friends and family, is meaningful work.
- wayfwdmachine 1y ago
  You know that this is bullshit right? We can all, regardless of our age, differentiate between meaningful and meaningless work. The fact that we need money to fulfil our obligations to our family, the bank or whatever it might be is completely separate from that. We can do meaningless jobs if we have to at any age. This does not make them meaningful. If a person, at any age, can choose between a meaningless and meaningful job - which do you think they would take? If they have to choose between a meaningless job and starvation? Cool. Now grow up and do some meaningful with your time. And so should I.
  - BenFranklin100 1y ago
    “Grow up do something useful with your time”? No further comment is needed.
  - nickff 1y ago
    I actually don't understand what you or the article mean by "meaningful and meaningless work", the article approaches an explanation in one paragraph, but they seem to have left a lot to interpretation by the reader. Perhaps you could enlighten me? >"In a system where, as Gorz puts it, “we produce nothing of what we consume, and consume nothing of what we produce,” it is up to each and every one of us, connecting with others as a collective mass, to regain control over the meaning of work and over the determination of the needs that legitimize it. This is also the way for us to question the disastrous impact that the economy is having on the environment through its blind logic of profit and growth."
    - Pet_Ant 1y ago
      I once got invited a meeting so that we could bill the client for my time even if I had no idea what the project was about. But they had no work for me to do, so I went to the meeting and ate sandwhiches and faded into the background. So, I got paid: it was useful. However, it did not make an positive contribution to the world in a way that it provided my life with meaning. I have volunteered at the foodbank and with the homeless. I got paid nothing, but it had an effect on the world that aligned with my values and provdided meaning, but it was effectively useless for me.
mc32 1y ago
If Covid conditions had gone on longer, decades, then output would have gone down, the treasury from which subsidies and government checks came from would have dried up. Even bullshit jobs add to GDP. Even socialist and communists had bullshit jobs to keep people busy. That said, the jobs I’d consider non essential are things like advertising, lifestyle, gambling/gsming and the sort. They add to the economy but I’d rather not have them.
- sentientslug 1y ago
  What kind of jobs do you put into the lifestyle category? Depending on what you mean by that, I think that lifestyle jobs can have some non monetary value to society by increasing wellbeing.
- onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
  Why does having yet another toaster add more value to the economy than the ad for the toaster?
  - mc32 1y ago
    Without advertising I'm good with a good old toaster -I don't/won't need a new one. With advertising I might have to get that new toaster that would match the new color palette of the kitchen I had to change due to "lifestyle" folks.
- jmcmichael 1y ago
  Federal spending is not funded by taxes, the US Treasury will never 'dry up', and the US will never default on its debts or entitlements. It may fail to pay, however that is not a default, it is a refusal or repudiation of an obligation.
  - mc32 1y ago
    ...so paying taxes is just there to control people and expropriate their money? Please let Newsom in on this discovery. He says he's for the common man and woman. He's gotta do something. But sure, Weimar had more money than god --it just had no purchasing power.
CrackerNews 1y ago
After reading this, it could be said that instead of work, we have abstracted it away. The capitalism of Marx dealt with the real work of productive factories. Neoliberal capitalism however outsourced work, and knowledge workers worked about work. The expertise remained for workers whose jobs were exported, making them overqualified. Instead of capitalism creating the conditions for socialism, capitalism creatively destroys the working class. Human capital, prescribed as a solution, stops to matter. The logical conclusion is the decreasing population and falling birth rates. Perhaps, basic income could provide relief for those affected. I doubt it would be successful in the long run as capitalism adapts to maintain the exploitative framework of "work". Instead of the intent of individuals directing the flow of the economy, it is wrested back by the central business and economic planners. What happens next would be speculation.
wagwang 1y ago
As usual with communist work, the critique is poignant but the prescription is trash. It is true that we live in a post labor society, that a fraction of the work done is actually required for survival and that automation and the forces of international capitalism has crushed what is left of the true working(production) class, and that much of "GDP" is just meaningless consumerism that has no bearing on productivity. However, the proposed self-determining, post-work activity will be equally if not less meaningful. This left-existential view that you can "community" your way into purpose is just BS. Purpose comes from needs and having a post industrial society where needs are cheaply met means nihilism is inevitable.
- cheschire 1y ago
  Gene Roddenberry had a different perspective on the outcome.
  - krapp 1y ago
    Gene Roddenberry was not a political scientist and wasn't trying to develop a plausible theory or model of a post-scarcity society, and Trek depends on magitech like replicators, free energy and FTL that we can't have in our universe. So his perspective isn't really worth much beyond its entertainment value. Taking Trek seriously for its politics is about as pointless as taking Asimov seriously for cybernetics and AI.
- marcus_holmes 1y ago
  Humans are social creatures. Part of our set of needs is having a community around us, be it family, or friends, or whatever. If we get cut off from community we tend to develop mental problems and die young. I guess we could AI our way out of this, and create some kind of pretend AI community around ourselves, but I don't think that's workable; we'd always know it was actually AI. Like winning an FPS game against bots isn't actually satisfying. There are lots of intentional communities (amongst other experiments) where people are trying this stuff out. There are lots of problems, but the root hypothesis; that people are happier when living together and sharing their lives, seems to be confirmed.
samaltmanfried 1y ago
Some people's jobs might be 'meaningless', but we're on the verge of lots of people's jobs being outright 'useless'. Anyone who's worked in a large corporation knows how small some people's useful output is already. I've been wondering whether increased automation is going to cause some kind of employment crisis in western countries. It's possible we're on the verge of a "second industrial revolution" because of AI. I'll confess that I totally underestimated AI, and figured that by the time AI was writing decent code society would have formulated a plan for what to do when white-collar workers start becoming redundant. This obviously isn't what happened. What is going to happen to the swarms of Uber Eats riders on ebikes? Or all of the new immigrant truckers? Western governments have been keeping immigration relatively high to keep the service sector packed with unskilled, lowly paid service workers. What are we going to do with them all if drones replace Uber Eats riders, or self-driving trucks take over logistics? What I'm seeing now makes me doubt that we're going to look after all these people.
- Havoc 1y ago
  This is why some form of UBI seems inevitable. Thinking all these people will retrain as data scientists or whatever is deluded and if you don’t do something the fabric of society will tear itself apart so it’s in the interests of the well off to come up with a solution here
  - gwbas1c 1y ago
    I think it's more practical to work at lowering the retirement age. UBI has a lot of complications, but instead figuring out how to have people retire at 55, then 45, then 35, then 25, can get you close to that direction while ignoring the complications with outright UBI.
    - R_D_Olivaw 1y ago
      While I like this idea, in theory, I think inevitably we need a new bracket that isn't "retirement" per se. So many people hit retirement age and they simply cannot stop working. And still do things and still continue working (if off the books they must). I wonder if, with your proposed system, we should start working towards something between full employment and retirement and let it be a significant epoch of life. I've always felt like 45-55 should be a time where you should be heavily incentivized (if not outright subsidized) to give back while you've still got the juice in you. Not sure where I'm going with this... Just a thought

103 points by robtherobber 1y ago

related? David Graeber's On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs https://davidgraeber.org/articles/on-the-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs-a-work-rant/ https://davidgraeber.org/articles/on-the-phenomenon-of-bulls...

dkdcio 1y ago
it’s mentioned and linked a few paragraphs in so probably related
Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
> The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ’60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them. Isn't this sort of similar to 1984 Like they had ways to provide enough but they wouldn't because then they would lose the power or something similar
- immibis 1y ago
  Stories like 1984 try to convey (among other things) the mechanisms and effects of power. Everything else (laws, money, work) is subordinate to power relationships. People who are good at obtaining and maintaining power may collectively be called "the ruling class". By definition, people with lots of power control us. That's what it means to have power. But the exact appearance of that power differs in each society. In North Korea you worship the leader or they shoot you dead, because "he is literally God and how dare you defy God". In the USSR you report good numbers to your boss or you are kidnapped and brought to a gulag, because "you are interfering with our progress towards glorious communist utopia, comrade". And in the United States of America you seek out a boss to submit yourself to 40 hours a week, or else you find yourself unable to obtain food because "it's a free market and you didn't earn enough money; we can't give you food because that would be slavery".
  - nradov 1y ago
    The key difference is that in the USA you can also start your own business and obtain food that way. No one will stop you, you can just go ahead and do it. Something like 20-25M people work full time in their own business and have no boss.
    - immibis 1y ago
      ???????
      - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
        I think he seems to explain that in the situation that you had presented between multiple different countries, every other country doesn't even give you the freedom/opportunity to be the powerful person without requiring some same set of ideologies (communism good, or the NK example) Whereas, in a capitalist system with no matter how much of its flaws, as long as you can produce value (whatever that is in current society), you have power and can actually be your own boss in that sense. I am worried how much of that can change in recent year but still, I feel like socialism can be good for generating extreme amounts of money /value because as a society on whole, people are willing to take on more risks if there is something to fall back on (like not having to worry that you or your family will starve if you fail) Sweden has more amounts of billionaires per capita than america (source wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...)
        immibis 1y ago
        Everyone has at least some power in every situation. Even actual slave owners couldn't force their slaves to work - they just could (and did) kill them if they refused. What you say about capitalism could work if capitalism rewarded creating value, but capitalism actually rewards taking money, and pro-capitalist theory says that's strongly coupled to creating value, but in reality we observe that it's actually very weakly coupled. If we allow alternative definitions of value (like the common "value = whatever brings money") then we could say the same thing about totalitarian dictatorship - in that system, value is defined as whatever the dictator likes, and if you create that, you are rewarded just like in capitalism. It's not true that in capitalism you don't need a certain ideology to become powerful. You do need one - profit above all else, bribes are okay if you can get away with them, each person's moral value is solely determined by their net worth, that sort of thing. If you don't think that way, you won't become powerful in capitalism. (Well, occasionally it happens by luck, but that's true in any system, and if you didn't have the skill to deliberately seek power, you also don't have the skill to hold onto it. See Notch or the average lottery winner.) The ideology you need to become powerful in a system usually isn't the one it says on the tin. Believing in God in a theocracy doesn't make you powerful, just average. Believing you're God's chosen prophet might make you powerful; but more likely is believing the whole God thing is a scam and it's really a dictatorship, so you suck up to the guy at the top while publicly praising God. In USSR, believing you're helping create a communist utopia doesn't make you powerful, just average (and more delusional than average). More likely to make you powerful in the USSR is believing that it's useful for the plebs to believe they're creating a communist utopia and they deserve for you to steal all their wealth because they're so stupid for believing that nonsense. You don't get powerful in feudalism by believing the king is chosen by God; you're more likely to get powerful in feudalism by believing that if you murder the king you might get to be the new king. The Gervais Principle applies to more than just corporations. I avoid the word "socialism" because in practice it can be substituted by "something that isn't capitalism" and different people don't agree on what, specifically, that thing is.

BenFranklin100 1y ago

As people get older, they often come to realize that any job that puts a roof over ones head, food on the table, and allows quality time with friends and family, is meaningful work.

wayfwdmachine 1y ago
You know that this is bullshit right? We can all, regardless of our age, differentiate between meaningful and meaningless work. The fact that we need money to fulfil our obligations to our family, the bank or whatever it might be is completely separate from that. We can do meaningless jobs if we have to at any age. This does not make them meaningful. If a person, at any age, can choose between a meaningless and meaningful job - which do you think they would take? If they have to choose between a meaningless job and starvation? Cool. Now grow up and do some meaningful with your time. And so should I.
- BenFranklin100 1y ago
  “Grow up do something useful with your time”? No further comment is needed.
- nickff 1y ago
  I actually don't understand what you or the article mean by "meaningful and meaningless work", the article approaches an explanation in one paragraph, but they seem to have left a lot to interpretation by the reader. Perhaps you could enlighten me? >"In a system where, as Gorz puts it, “we produce nothing of what we consume, and consume nothing of what we produce,” it is up to each and every one of us, connecting with others as a collective mass, to regain control over the meaning of work and over the determination of the needs that legitimize it. This is also the way for us to question the disastrous impact that the economy is having on the environment through its blind logic of profit and growth."
  - Pet_Ant 1y ago
    I once got invited a meeting so that we could bill the client for my time even if I had no idea what the project was about. But they had no work for me to do, so I went to the meeting and ate sandwhiches and faded into the background. So, I got paid: it was useful. However, it did not make an positive contribution to the world in a way that it provided my life with meaning. I have volunteered at the foodbank and with the homeless. I got paid nothing, but it had an effect on the world that aligned with my values and provdided meaning, but it was effectively useless for me.

mc32 1y ago

If Covid conditions had gone on longer, decades, then output would have gone down, the treasury from which subsidies and government checks came from would have dried up. Even bullshit jobs add to GDP. Even socialist and communists had bullshit jobs to keep people busy. That said, the jobs I’d consider non essential are things like advertising, lifestyle, gambling/gsming and the sort. They add to the economy but I’d rather not have them.

sentientslug 1y ago
What kind of jobs do you put into the lifestyle category? Depending on what you mean by that, I think that lifestyle jobs can have some non monetary value to society by increasing wellbeing.
onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
Why does having yet another toaster add more value to the economy than the ad for the toaster?
- mc32 1y ago
  Without advertising I'm good with a good old toaster -I don't/won't need a new one. With advertising I might have to get that new toaster that would match the new color palette of the kitchen I had to change due to "lifestyle" folks.
jmcmichael 1y ago
Federal spending is not funded by taxes, the US Treasury will never 'dry up', and the US will never default on its debts or entitlements. It may fail to pay, however that is not a default, it is a refusal or repudiation of an obligation.
- mc32 1y ago
  ...so paying taxes is just there to control people and expropriate their money? Please let Newsom in on this discovery. He says he's for the common man and woman. He's gotta do something. But sure, Weimar had more money than god --it just had no purchasing power.

CrackerNews 1y ago

After reading this, it could be said that instead of work, we have abstracted it away. The capitalism of Marx dealt with the real work of productive factories. Neoliberal capitalism however outsourced work, and knowledge workers worked about work. The expertise remained for workers whose jobs were exported, making them overqualified. Instead of capitalism creating the conditions for socialism, capitalism creatively destroys the working class. Human capital, prescribed as a solution, stops to matter. The logical conclusion is the decreasing population and falling birth rates. Perhaps, basic income could provide relief for those affected. I doubt it would be successful in the long run as capitalism adapts to maintain the exploitative framework of "work". Instead of the intent of individuals directing the flow of the economy, it is wrested back by the central business and economic planners. What happens next would be speculation.

wagwang 1y ago

As usual with communist work, the critique is poignant but the prescription is trash. It is true that we live in a post labor society, that a fraction of the work done is actually required for survival and that automation and the forces of international capitalism has crushed what is left of the true working(production) class, and that much of "GDP" is just meaningless consumerism that has no bearing on productivity. However, the proposed self-determining, post-work activity will be equally if not less meaningful. This left-existential view that you can "community" your way into purpose is just BS. Purpose comes from needs and having a post industrial society where needs are cheaply met means nihilism is inevitable.

cheschire 1y ago
Gene Roddenberry had a different perspective on the outcome.
- krapp 1y ago
  Gene Roddenberry was not a political scientist and wasn't trying to develop a plausible theory or model of a post-scarcity society, and Trek depends on magitech like replicators, free energy and FTL that we can't have in our universe. So his perspective isn't really worth much beyond its entertainment value. Taking Trek seriously for its politics is about as pointless as taking Asimov seriously for cybernetics and AI.
marcus_holmes 1y ago
Humans are social creatures. Part of our set of needs is having a community around us, be it family, or friends, or whatever. If we get cut off from community we tend to develop mental problems and die young. I guess we could AI our way out of this, and create some kind of pretend AI community around ourselves, but I don't think that's workable; we'd always know it was actually AI. Like winning an FPS game against bots isn't actually satisfying. There are lots of intentional communities (amongst other experiments) where people are trying this stuff out. There are lots of problems, but the root hypothesis; that people are happier when living together and sharing their lives, seems to be confirmed.

samaltmanfried 1y ago

Some people's jobs might be 'meaningless', but we're on the verge of lots of people's jobs being outright 'useless'. Anyone who's worked in a large corporation knows how small some people's useful output is already. I've been wondering whether increased automation is going to cause some kind of employment crisis in western countries. It's possible we're on the verge of a "second industrial revolution" because of AI. I'll confess that I totally underestimated AI, and figured that by the time AI was writing decent code society would have formulated a plan for what to do when white-collar workers start becoming redundant. This obviously isn't what happened. What is going to happen to the swarms of Uber Eats riders on ebikes? Or all of the new immigrant truckers? Western governments have been keeping immigration relatively high to keep the service sector packed with unskilled, lowly paid service workers. What are we going to do with them all if drones replace Uber Eats riders, or self-driving trucks take over logistics? What I'm seeing now makes me doubt that we're going to look after all these people.

Havoc 1y ago
This is why some form of UBI seems inevitable. Thinking all these people will retrain as data scientists or whatever is deluded and if you don’t do something the fabric of society will tear itself apart so it’s in the interests of the well off to come up with a solution here
- gwbas1c 1y ago
  I think it's more practical to work at lowering the retirement age. UBI has a lot of complications, but instead figuring out how to have people retire at 55, then 45, then 35, then 25, can get you close to that direction while ignoring the complications with outright UBI.
  - R_D_Olivaw 1y ago
    While I like this idea, in theory, I think inevitably we need a new bracket that isn't "retirement" per se. So many people hit retirement age and they simply cannot stop working. And still do things and still continue working (if off the books they must). I wonder if, with your proposed system, we should start working towards something between full employment and retirement and let it be a significant epoch of life. I've always felt like 45-55 should be a time where you should be heavily incentivized (if not outright subsidized) to give back while you've still got the juice in you. Not sure where I'm going with this... Just a thought