From 05fa3051e12acddfe320912a93e1927bcf1b64f6df2a14589594144df3b9f3e2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nicholas Johnson Date: Mon, 23 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Subject: Fix spelling errors --- content/entry/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work.md | 12 ++++++------ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) (limited to 'content/entry/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work.md') diff --git a/content/entry/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work.md b/content/entry/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work.md index 08517b1..0651134 100644 --- a/content/entry/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work.md +++ b/content/entry/automation-bullshit-jobs-and-work.md @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ I understood why he prolonged his work. It was to give him more hours to make mo What surprised me more was when I brought this phenomenon up to others, they were apathetic. Some of them nonchalantly shared with me their own stories of bullshitting on the job for money. I learned wasting time on the job is not only very common, but it's seen as normal. -My only thought was "Surely there are better ways to organize society than this. Having a system that incentivizes timewasting is just stupid." And I still believe that. Just imagine all the different ways human societies can plausibly be organized and we're supposed to believe that the optimal economy is one where people are incentivized to spend thousands of collective hours bullshitting at work? I don't buy it. +My only thought was "Surely there are better ways to organize society than this. Having a system that incentivizes time-wasting is just stupid." And I still believe that. Just imagine all the different ways human societies can plausibly be organized and we're supposed to believe that the optimal economy is one where people are incentivized to spend thousands of collective hours bullshitting at work? I don't buy it. Why do people act like a better system is impossible? Do I just have a more active imagination than everybody else? I mean it doesn't take that much imagination to think of improvements. For example, what about UBI[3] where the government redistributes wealth from the hyper-rich to everybody else? @@ -52,11 +52,11 @@ According to Graeber, the reason we're not working less is basically because the He also notes in his 2013 essay[4] that people's attitudes about work are extremely convenient to the ruling class. Those who shame the unemployed for not working hard doing pointless jobs they hate are unknowingly spreading a meme that keeps the ruling class in power. It ensures that the working class is too busy doing pointless box-ticking to incite the political inertia needed to change their circumstances. -Another example of this is people who criticize protestors for not being at work. "Get a job!" they shout. If you go to enough protests, and I've been involved in a few, then you'll probably eventually hear that phrase. I'm reminded of a relevant paragraph about Fractal Wrongness[5] from RationalWiki (CC-BY-SA 3.0): +Another example of this is people who criticize protesters for not being at work. "Get a job!" they shout. If you go to enough protests, and I've been involved in a few, then you'll probably eventually hear that phrase. I'm reminded of a relevant paragraph about Fractal Wrongness[5] from RationalWiki (CC-BY-SA 3.0): > "Debating a person who is fractally wrong leads to infinite regress, as every refutation you make of that person's opinions will lead to a rejoinder, full of half-truths, leaps of poor logic, and outright lies, which requires just as much refutation to debunk as the first one—kind of like a recursive Gish Gallop, where each point both surrounds and is surrounded by an equally wrong argument." - RationalWiki -I imagine this is what it would be like to debate the kind of person who shouts "get a job" at protestors. +I imagine this is what it would be like to debate the kind of person who shouts "get a job" at protesters. Returning to the topic of automation, people seem pessimistic about not having to work. I can understand why people don't want jobs they like to be automated, but why are people so pessimistic about not having to work jobs that are, by their own estimation, shitty, demeaning, and miserable? How can this be accounted for? @@ -82,13 +82,13 @@ Ultimately the Puritan work ethic is an attempt to divorce the purpose of labor So one of the most important questions we should ask ourselves about work is how can we increase caring and decrease suffering? There are several right answers to that question, but I'll just offer two to get started. # Democracy in the Workplace -In general, the more agency and personal freedom people have, the more their wellbeing increases. This is reflected in the desire for a democratic form of government. The idea that government is there to benefit the people, that everyone gets exactly one vote, no matter the color of their skin, sexual orientation, wealth, caste, or popularity. Democracy has become sacrosanct. +In general, the more agency and personal freedom people have, the more their well-being increases. This is reflected in the desire for a democratic form of government. The idea that government is there to benefit the people, that everyone gets exactly one vote, no matter the color of their skin, sexual orientation, wealth, caste, or popularity. Democracy has become sacrosanct. Now let's think about work again. In every job I've had except for one, I've had a boss telling me what to do. The boss gave orders, and I followed them until I was off the clock. I had zero agency and zero freedom. And as we all know, that's the most common experience for workers. -It's strange that when it comes to work, the expectation of democracy vanishes. Workplaces are essentially dictatorships where you do what the boss says for as long as the boss says to do it. If you decline, you're fired. Since non-rich people need jobs to survive, declining to follow orders isn't an option. The choice is between doing whatever you're told and dieing. +It's strange that when it comes to work, the expectation of democracy vanishes. Workplaces are essentially dictatorships where you do what the boss says for as long as the boss says to do it. If you decline, you're fired. Since non-rich people need jobs to survive, declining to follow orders isn't an option. The choice is between doing whatever you're told and dying. -And the mere fact that one can (in theory) change jobs does nothing to alleviate the problem. Almost all workplaces are structured in undemocratic command hierarchies where workers have no autonomy or ownership. The lack of agency is unescapable. +And the mere fact that one can (in theory) change jobs does nothing to alleviate the problem. Almost all workplaces are structured in undemocratic command hierarchies where workers have no autonomy or ownership. The lack of agency is inescapable. When people think their government is behaving undemocratically, they risk their lives on an insurrection. When the workplace they go to for eight hours a day five days a week is utterly undemocratic, that's just the way things are. -- cgit v1.2.3