Honest work is just fine. What I don’t like is high pay for bullshit work and bullshit pay for honest work.
I just want the freedom to eat cheese in foreign places, without the need to pay thugs at borders to get to the next place with cheese.
is also a dream of mine, though I don’t much like cheese :)
Reading an article in the FT yesterday, an 80 yr old woman who was ardently opposed to Magyar and pro Orban because he’ll let in swathes of immigrants and help Ukraine in the war, leading to an unbearable and unlivable Hungary.
Just when I think Australia is the only country with truly horrible people, it’s “nice” to see other nation states are also burdened with them.
They said, I just wish Australia would join the EU. I worked just go live in Hungary :)
When I was like 13, 14 when my parents were really pushing me to get a job, I already didn’t want to work. Decades later, I still don’t want to work, and I like what I do. There’s a reason I play the lotto, it’s the only way I’m getting out of this shit-cycle. I’d like to spend more time hanging out with my nieces and nephews, who are growing up so fast. My grandparents only have a few years left at best, I’ve already missed out on spending the best years I could with them. Saw my dad last year, probably the first in nearly a decade in of itself. I want to spend time just sitting at a beach watching the waves come in. Or seeing a mountain for the first time.
I don’t want to work. I’ve never wanted to work. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t do nothing, I don’t want to be lazy. Like, my ideal “job” is working in engineering on the Enterprise with Geordi. But that can’t happen. So really I just want enough money so if I do work, I have enough money to tell upper management their plans “aka shit they saw on LinkedIn” is fucking stupid. What you going to do fire me, I’d be rich, that’s not a threat! Eat shit you overpaid worthless peices of shit… (I might have some things to work on…,)
More like society has some things to work on.
Does my desire to rot mean nothing to you, ma’am? (Rest is different than that, for those who don’t understand and are haters)
No i think that some people do want to work. I actually use it for my definition of what being “politically right” means. How else do you prove that you’re superior to other people if not through your hard work? At least that’s the mindset there.
Consider as an example the Nazis in germany. They waged war against their neighbors to prove to the world that they were better soldiers, more industrious, more hard-working, and therefore deserve to live more than their neighbors. That was literally the whole point. Showing that you can build more machines, more guns, more engines, …
On the flipside of that…
There are tonnes of jobs that need to be done but that nobody likes to do. Take garbage disposal. Very few people are willing to do this, and the people that do this surely don’t get paid even nearly enough.
There aren’t jobs you’ll find many volunteers for. Sometimes there is just work to be done and somebody has got to do it
Honestly, I bet there’s people who would step up and do it because it needs to be done. Especially when whatever stinky thing in question isn’t Their Job For The Rest Of Time™ and they don’t have to keep going back to it every day.
– Frost
Rotating volunteer positions go a long way in distributing the burden of unpleasant jobs. Volunteers gain the personal satisfaction and social clout of having performed a service, without having to put up with it for any longer than they actually want to. It’s just like rotating chores at home on a larger scale.
am unemployed and volunteer my time to help the community, have never been so busy. will have more time to rest once I get a job
I have some bad news for you
I was less busy when I did a postdoc.
People want to be useful. What people don’t want is to have the surplus value of their labor stolen from them. People are cool with working and helping out others as long as they actually get to reap what they sow and not have it stolen from them.
ITT: tons of people defending capitalism by forswearing the last 200,000 years of social progress.
To quote Bernie, who might have been quoting someone else: poverty isn’t an inevitability. It’s a policy choice.
Just plain inaccurate. There are no staunch capitalists on this website.
That being said, getting to do work and gain access to goods through that can provide a sense of safety as you are able to sustain yourself. But there are loads of caveats to every part of that sentence.
Out of curiosity, Source 2, pls. Thx.
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Thanks for the Source of this Image!
If we wanted to perform labor, we wouldn’t have invented machines or fantasize about robot butlers.
People do want to work! Loads of people build all sorts of things for the joy and satisfaction of the craft. Plenty of people volunteer to help people - literally the definition of doing something you don’t have to do! Anyone that says that isn’t work is delusional.
We need a new word for what we call “work”. No one wants to be exploited for their effort, but most people have always had the desire to do some sort of work.
but most people have always had the desire to do some sort of work.
not true for me, at least not in any conventional sense of the word. I would call it “function” maybe but that can be abstract and includes idling.
Consider a bridge. Its purpose is literally to stand there and not move at all. It is as far away from “work” as anything could possibly be. Any action, any movement which you might call “work” is one that the bridge is supposed to NOT fulfill. It is not supposed to move. It is not supposed to do anything. It is supposed to stand perfectly still, do nothing at all, idling. That is its function, but it is not work, no matter how you define work.
What we’ve been trained to identify as “work” under this power hierarchy is more definitively “toil”. The definition has been overridden so that we cannot differentiate the bait and switch.
Work is labor that benefits the person doing it, is self-actualizing, is voluntary, and is an overall positive experience.
Toil is labor without clear benefit. It is not fun. It is repetitive and draining. It is often involuntary or coerced.
For most who labor under capitalism, the labor they perform is not actually work, but toil.
/the ghost of Ammon Hennacy grins
I picked up the idea through Bookchin but I have no doubt he got it from other libsocs like Hennacy.
I dunno, I work for a professional body for scientists and I still don’t feel fulfilled. I’m doing work that is (supposedly) helping better the human race, but it sure doesn’t feel that way.
I have several hobbies that could make bank if I wanted to put in time and effort.
That requires treating executive dysfunction, which can’t happen unless I have money. In order to get money I have to work jobs I absolutely hate, and that suck all energy and will to live out of me, and I don’t want to do anything with my hobbies.
If I didn’t have to worry about food, housing, and whether I have electricity or not, I could sell a handful of things a month and be just fine on utilities and a luxury purchase every so often.
