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An additional negative aspect of this mentality is that effort, rather than value, is praised. Working hard should never be a goal. It should be a means to a

An additional negative aspect of this mentality is that effort, rather than value, is praised. Working hard should never be a goal. It should be a means to a goal.

ekianjo 13y ago
Well if your grandparents hadn't worked their asses off, you would live in a very different world right now. It's easy to say now that you are in a comfortable place where you can afford everything for almost nothing, but it was a very different world back then. Let's not forget that. And even now, you can afford things because people in China and other countries are working their asses off to make cheap stuff for developed countries. You don't get a first world country economy without hard work somewhere by someone.
- jdimov 13y ago
  Your history is just as flawed as your understanding of work, value and progress (in other words, you've been brainwashed). "Hard work" has always been a domain reserved exclusively for the slaves. The "virtue" of hard work is just a shallow manipulation tactic devised by those in power. None of this has changed today. What IS changing, however, is that as knowledge becomes more readily available, fewer and fewer people are willing to buy into this crap. And that's good. Now, you may begin to worry about who is going to do all the work that slaves are doing today so you may continue to live comfortably. The correct answer, of course, is: machines. (And btw., no, we're not where we are because of your grandparents' hard work. If your grandparents had anything to do with humanity's progress, it was ONLY through insight, not through hard work.)
  - nhaehnle 13y ago
    The "virtue" of hard work is just a shallow manipulation tactic devised by those in power. How is this an argument against what ekianjo wrote? Yes, there has (almost?) always been a privileged upper class that had much more leisure than the masses. Still, the fact remains that living standards would have been lower had a majority of the population not worked their asses off. Should the distribution of work be adjusted? Absolutely! In our current world, inequality is so high, and to a large extent unjustly high, that it's sickening. But there is still a whole lot of work that needs to be done to maintain our living standards.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
      - dang 13y ago
        What's sickening is how brainwashed you are. Personal attacks like this are absolutely unwelcome on Hacker News. People who do it repeatedly—or even once, if they don't have a history as a valuable contributor—will be banned.
    - mkingston 13y ago
      - Should the distribution of work be adjusted? Absolutely! In the modern world, I unequivocally agree with this statement. But, I find this to be a fascinating question when applied to less recent periods throughout history. Would we be where we were today if the ancient Greeks didn't have a ruling class and a slave class? If the Europeans didn't have the same 1500 years later? It's largely been the working (I use this term quite loosely: consent is not implied) class that has enabled (a small number of) the leisure class to make the majority of societal and technological progress. How true is this today? I'm willing to bet those making technological and societal progress are now largely in the working class. Sorry my comment is inconclusive; it's something I've been long meaning to investigate further.
      - nhaehnle 13y ago
        I have asked similar questions myself in the past; I agree that it's a fascinating (and fascinatingly uncomfortable) topic. Like you, I don't have a conclusive answer.
      - herokusaki 13y ago
        What you consider in your comment echoes Bertrand Russell's famous essay In Praise of Idleness. Russell, however, goes farther and outright states that >Leisure is essential to civilization [...] http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - bigchewy 13y ago
    oh, boy, not sure why I'm getting involved here. Insight has been a major factor in progress for perhaps the last 100-200 years, and even then for only a small (but increasing!) portion of the population. Brick buildings built through insight are a drawing. Someone has to actually mine the material, create the brick, lay the brick, etc. Those people get paid and then they can afford to buy things. Absolutes like >> ONLY through insight, not through hard work. show that you are emotionally connected to your line of thought and likely should step back and think through the ratio of insight / work over time.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    > Your history is just as flawed as your understanding of work, value and progress (in other words, you've been brainwashed). "Hard work" has always been a domain reserved exclusively for the slaves. Haha, to wake up and see that is really entertaining. You're a guy who has made money in IT and you think everyone can live the same way as you. You don't realize you are living in a small bubble that does not apply to 99.9% of all other workers out there. You don't realize there is a whole working class below you who's working to make sure stuff gets cleaned, garbage gets collected, meals get cooked, tables are waited and so on ? > The correct answer, of course, is: machines. Amusing, again. There's just so much machines can do, and there are still many jobs where it's completely irrealistic to replace people by machines (mostly because the investment is not worth it). If you think otherwise, I'd recommend you go out and visit actual industries making stuff, not just IT related ones, and try to understand why most of them still employ people no matter how many machines they have.
    - Executor 13y ago
      Take a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SuGRgdJA_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SuGRgdJA_c. We will see an increase in automation for jobs that we didn't expect to be so. The speed of this transformation depends on our creative and technical ability. If you think that work defines you, read up about the Puritans in America. They had an extreme motto that 100% of your waking life must be allocated to work. You could say they are the only religious that had a fear that someone around them was having a good time.
      - ekianjo 13y ago
        > If you think that work defines you [...] I don't, and I've never implied that. > We will see an increase in automation for jobs that we didn't expect to be so. We've seen increases in automation for hundreds of years, yet there was never a depletion of jobs for people. There's more jobs now that there has ever been before (not talking about short time scale here). Industry automation has led to the creation of the expansion of the Services industry. And there will still be tons of professions where you can't automate stuff - at best you can improve people's work using computing aids, make them work more efficiently, but at some point of the supply chain you still need human action. For the services industry, there's also the bias that most people want to deal with other people and not with computers, so automation will face cultural limits as well in some areas. I'm not worried.
- mwcampbell 13y ago
  I think you misunderstood the GP. In the cases you described, hard work is clearly valuable. The problem is that there's a lot of emphasis on hard work for its own sake, not hard work as a means to producing something valuable.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  But there's little to no positive connection between who does the hard work and who gets rewarded for it. Nobody in China nor other country is working their ass off to make cheap stuff for developed countries. They're working their asses off to feed themselves and their families. The effort: very high. The value: not so much for them. I get what you're saying, but covering the effort in valor and moral superiority as opposed to the value realized from that effort just seems to be a way to separate the worker from the fruits of their labor.
  - crusso 13y ago
    The value: not so much for them. How is a "dramatic reduction in poverty" not of much value? http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-poverty/statistics-on-poverty-in-china/ http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/sta...
    - mrow84 13y ago
      I think pessimizer was saying that the relative return to the labour at the bottom end is low. It is like (to be hyperbolic) living a life of luxury, but on giving the starving man who labours for you a bit of food, suggesting that that is ample reward for his efforts, because of how much value that bit of food has for him. Then, you can top that off by saying that it doesn't matter how much food he produces for you, it isn't of much value because you have so much already. People reject the labour theory of value, probably correctly in fundamental terms, but the marginal and subjective theories of value both seem to promote (and justify) this kind of structural inequality. An example from the relatively recent NPR Planet Money t-shirt project [0] suggests that for that product just under 12% of the cost (6% of the sale price) went to the people who made the yarn, cut the cloth, and sewed it all together. [0] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/13/250747279/episode-503-adding-up-the-cost-of-the-planet-money-t-shirt http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/13/250747279/episode-...
      - crusso 13y ago
        I think pessimizer was saying that the relative return to the labour at the bottom end is low At which end of the economic ladder do you think improvements occur for there to be a dramatic reduction in poverty within a whole society?
- knodi123 13y ago
  My grandparents did indeed work their asses off. And in china, people are now working their asses off. But robots are only going to get better; this process has already started and is having a huge impact. Manufacturing is only going to get cheaper; this process has been going on for centuries and will not stop just because we want to have more jobs. The total comfort available in the world today requires less total off-ass-working than it did in my grandparents' day, and it will take even less work in my grandchildren's day. Let's begin a gradual transition instead of just assuming the status quo is a fixed constant.
sliverstorm 13y ago
Effort is praised because it is positive for kids' development. It is a better place for them to root their self worth. You get kids who can handle failure and try, try again.

An additional negative aspect of this mentality is that effort, rather than value, is praised. Working hard should never be a goal. It should be a means to a goal.

ekianjo 13y ago

Well if your grandparents hadn't worked their asses off, you would live in a very different world right now. It's easy to say now that you are in a comfortable place where you can afford everything for almost nothing, but it was a very different world back then. Let's not forget that. And even now, you can afford things because people in China and other countries are working their asses off to make cheap stuff for developed countries. You don't get a first world country economy without hard work somewhere by someone.

jdimov 13y ago
Your history is just as flawed as your understanding of work, value and progress (in other words, you've been brainwashed). "Hard work" has always been a domain reserved exclusively for the slaves. The "virtue" of hard work is just a shallow manipulation tactic devised by those in power. None of this has changed today. What IS changing, however, is that as knowledge becomes more readily available, fewer and fewer people are willing to buy into this crap. And that's good. Now, you may begin to worry about who is going to do all the work that slaves are doing today so you may continue to live comfortably. The correct answer, of course, is: machines. (And btw., no, we're not where we are because of your grandparents' hard work. If your grandparents had anything to do with humanity's progress, it was ONLY through insight, not through hard work.)
- nhaehnle 13y ago
  The "virtue" of hard work is just a shallow manipulation tactic devised by those in power. How is this an argument against what ekianjo wrote? Yes, there has (almost?) always been a privileged upper class that had much more leisure than the masses. Still, the fact remains that living standards would have been lower had a majority of the population not worked their asses off. Should the distribution of work be adjusted? Absolutely! In our current world, inequality is so high, and to a large extent unjustly high, that it's sickening. But there is still a whole lot of work that needs to be done to maintain our living standards.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - dang 13y ago
      What's sickening is how brainwashed you are. Personal attacks like this are absolutely unwelcome on Hacker News. People who do it repeatedly—or even once, if they don't have a history as a valuable contributor—will be banned.
  - mkingston 13y ago
    - Should the distribution of work be adjusted? Absolutely! In the modern world, I unequivocally agree with this statement. But, I find this to be a fascinating question when applied to less recent periods throughout history. Would we be where we were today if the ancient Greeks didn't have a ruling class and a slave class? If the Europeans didn't have the same 1500 years later? It's largely been the working (I use this term quite loosely: consent is not implied) class that has enabled (a small number of) the leisure class to make the majority of societal and technological progress. How true is this today? I'm willing to bet those making technological and societal progress are now largely in the working class. Sorry my comment is inconclusive; it's something I've been long meaning to investigate further.
    - nhaehnle 13y ago
      I have asked similar questions myself in the past; I agree that it's a fascinating (and fascinatingly uncomfortable) topic. Like you, I don't have a conclusive answer.
    - herokusaki 13y ago
      What you consider in your comment echoes Bertrand Russell's famous essay In Praise of Idleness. Russell, however, goes farther and outright states that >Leisure is essential to civilization [...] http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- bigchewy 13y ago
  oh, boy, not sure why I'm getting involved here. Insight has been a major factor in progress for perhaps the last 100-200 years, and even then for only a small (but increasing!) portion of the population. Brick buildings built through insight are a drawing. Someone has to actually mine the material, create the brick, lay the brick, etc. Those people get paid and then they can afford to buy things. Absolutes like >> ONLY through insight, not through hard work. show that you are emotionally connected to your line of thought and likely should step back and think through the ratio of insight / work over time.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > Your history is just as flawed as your understanding of work, value and progress (in other words, you've been brainwashed). "Hard work" has always been a domain reserved exclusively for the slaves. Haha, to wake up and see that is really entertaining. You're a guy who has made money in IT and you think everyone can live the same way as you. You don't realize you are living in a small bubble that does not apply to 99.9% of all other workers out there. You don't realize there is a whole working class below you who's working to make sure stuff gets cleaned, garbage gets collected, meals get cooked, tables are waited and so on ? > The correct answer, of course, is: machines. Amusing, again. There's just so much machines can do, and there are still many jobs where it's completely irrealistic to replace people by machines (mostly because the investment is not worth it). If you think otherwise, I'd recommend you go out and visit actual industries making stuff, not just IT related ones, and try to understand why most of them still employ people no matter how many machines they have.
  - Executor 13y ago
    Take a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SuGRgdJA_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SuGRgdJA_c. We will see an increase in automation for jobs that we didn't expect to be so. The speed of this transformation depends on our creative and technical ability. If you think that work defines you, read up about the Puritans in America. They had an extreme motto that 100% of your waking life must be allocated to work. You could say they are the only religious that had a fear that someone around them was having a good time.
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      > If you think that work defines you [...] I don't, and I've never implied that. > We will see an increase in automation for jobs that we didn't expect to be so. We've seen increases in automation for hundreds of years, yet there was never a depletion of jobs for people. There's more jobs now that there has ever been before (not talking about short time scale here). Industry automation has led to the creation of the expansion of the Services industry. And there will still be tons of professions where you can't automate stuff - at best you can improve people's work using computing aids, make them work more efficiently, but at some point of the supply chain you still need human action. For the services industry, there's also the bias that most people want to deal with other people and not with computers, so automation will face cultural limits as well in some areas. I'm not worried.
mwcampbell 13y ago
I think you misunderstood the GP. In the cases you described, hard work is clearly valuable. The problem is that there's a lot of emphasis on hard work for its own sake, not hard work as a means to producing something valuable.
pessimizer 13y ago
But there's little to no positive connection between who does the hard work and who gets rewarded for it. Nobody in China nor other country is working their ass off to make cheap stuff for developed countries. They're working their asses off to feed themselves and their families. The effort: very high. The value: not so much for them. I get what you're saying, but covering the effort in valor and moral superiority as opposed to the value realized from that effort just seems to be a way to separate the worker from the fruits of their labor.
- crusso 13y ago
  The value: not so much for them. How is a "dramatic reduction in poverty" not of much value? http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-poverty/statistics-on-poverty-in-china/ http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/sta...
  - mrow84 13y ago
    I think pessimizer was saying that the relative return to the labour at the bottom end is low. It is like (to be hyperbolic) living a life of luxury, but on giving the starving man who labours for you a bit of food, suggesting that that is ample reward for his efforts, because of how much value that bit of food has for him. Then, you can top that off by saying that it doesn't matter how much food he produces for you, it isn't of much value because you have so much already. People reject the labour theory of value, probably correctly in fundamental terms, but the marginal and subjective theories of value both seem to promote (and justify) this kind of structural inequality. An example from the relatively recent NPR Planet Money t-shirt project [0] suggests that for that product just under 12% of the cost (6% of the sale price) went to the people who made the yarn, cut the cloth, and sewed it all together. [0] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/13/250747279/episode-503-adding-up-the-cost-of-the-planet-money-t-shirt http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/13/250747279/episode-...
    - crusso 13y ago
      I think pessimizer was saying that the relative return to the labour at the bottom end is low At which end of the economic ladder do you think improvements occur for there to be a dramatic reduction in poverty within a whole society?
knodi123 13y ago
My grandparents did indeed work their asses off. And in china, people are now working their asses off. But robots are only going to get better; this process has already started and is having a huge impact. Manufacturing is only going to get cheaper; this process has been going on for centuries and will not stop just because we want to have more jobs. The total comfort available in the world today requires less total off-ass-working than it did in my grandparents' day, and it will take even less work in my grandchildren's day. Let's begin a gradual transition instead of just assuming the status quo is a fixed constant.

sliverstorm 13y ago

Effort is praised because it is positive for kids' development. It is a better place for them to root their self worth. You get kids who can handle failure and try, try again.