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American culture does not yet recognize this as a problem. It should. "Hard work" is severely overvalued and even dangerous. The Japanese even have a word for i

• tsotha 13y ago
  >The Japanese even have a word for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi ... which was in the article, for those of us who read it. >Whenever someone like Moritz pulls 8 all nighters, there is some greedy, selfish, entitled, son of a bitch, benefiting from that. Yeah, that greedy, selfish, entitled, son of a bitch was Moritz Erhardt. You don't get this kind of internship by accident, nor are there press gangs roaming the street looking for people to force into investment banking. >When are we going to realize that capitalism is not the ideal and "free" system we idealize it as? You have an odd notion of freedom. Did B of A keep him chained to the desk, you figure?
  • readme 13y ago
    Literal chains are not the only ones that exist in our society. Unfortunately, you can't expect all the world's type A personalities to suddenly stop throwing themselves on the line like Moritz did. The only way to create a safe working environment for everyone is to legislate it. Look how effective OSHA was. All I'm suggesting is to legislate that companies could not assign work to employees beyond what human capacity can handle. To you, it is "freedom" to allow the corporation to oppress the worker. To you, "freedom" is to say "do whatever you want", and allow the corporation to oppress the worker by controlling his income. To me, freedom is not just "do whatever you want" the government will stay out of it. Freedom is being able to live like a human who is not constantly enslaved by some master, whether it be a corporation or a government. To achieve that, we need to keep corporations in check, since they will always have their claws around every worker's lifeblood, which is more than enough to take someone's freedom away instantly. Working more than 8-10 hours a day is crossing into dangerous territory. Your assertion that if someone doesn't like it they could just get up and leave is naive, since the problem will always be perpetuated by thousands of other oppressed workers in line to take his place.
    • tsotha 13y ago
      >Literal chains are not the only ones that exist in our society. Unfortunately, you can't expect all the world's type A personalities to suddenly stop throwing themselves on the line like Moritz did. Well, your twisted definition of the word aside, that's what freedom is. Nobody had a gun to Ehrhardt's head (unlike you, I wasn't on a first-name basis) - he was doing what he did for his own benefit. Would I have done it? No. But he wasn't a child. He was an adult capable of making his own decisions. There's no need for legislation, particularly in light of the fact this is news because it's highly unusual. >To you, it is "freedom" to allow the corporation to oppress the worker. If by "oppress" you mean "allow the employee to decide for himself what he's willing to do", then yes. That's freedom. >Your assertion that if someone doesn't like it they could just get up and leave is naive, since the problem will always be perpetuated by thousands of other oppressed workers in line to take his place. With his skills he would have had no trouble finding a job that didn't require more than 40-50 hours a week. We're not talking about unskilled labor here.