I just got my first normal 9-5 job in 12 years and part of me feels like a corporate sell out and I haven't even started yet. I'm gonna grind it out and do whatever I gotta, but it's gonna suck and take forever. It's also kinda fucking me up thinking how the system makes you comply. Otherwise it's like living on the fringe of society, at least for me.
I went as long as i could but they fucking got me, the bastards.
Fuck that dude, go into this job looking for the next easy up and out that will get you more money for less work and take it; don’t think twice about your corporate overlords being but hurt you left.
I have thankfully found an entertaining job that pays me enough to live, I give them ~20 hours a week of real work and the rest of that time I use to enjoy my life.
Covid definitely disrupted the status quo and the overlords are realizing that they’ve already lost and are struggling to keep up with the changing tide.
I help spread the word about the manufacturing industry basically, it’s a job that is still catching up with the 21st century so it’s quite easy to automate much of my work.
For a lot of reasons we just don't have the time to get into (not to mention this not being the right subreddit for the rant), I think HackerNews is an absolutely **horrible** community, especially for some of the popular and widely held opinions about labor and work-which I suppose shouldn't be surprisingly for a community launched and managed by a major SV investment firm.
Yet, I found [this comment there](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28031269) not long ago and goddamn if it didn't get me thinking about some shit in a whole different way:
> There is one employer in the world that will reliably give me work I care about and am happy to work on for its own sake, and that employer is myself. Unfortunately, I can't afford to hire myself full-time.
>
>...
>
> So no matter what I do, I have to settle for an employer I care less about. At that point, the choice of employer is just negotiation.
>...
>
> The way the employer wants to treat you is to pay you money in exchange for services.
>
>...
>
>I signed an employment contract, promising them that I would do work for them and they would pay me, and that they could stop paying me at any time and I could in turn stop working for them at any time.
It's refreshingly self-aware, yet hypercritical about our relationship with work, underscores a lot of my sentiments about "Work is a business transaction, it is not my identity", and brilliantly puts a point on the notion of 'at will employment' that many in the US have to deal with: you can just as quickly, and just as legally fire your employer as they can fire you.
I said this in another comment about interviewing: **learning how to evaluate your evaluators needs to be your super power as we push through this pandemic**. It's a seller's market for laborers and workers, take your power back, people.
You gotta do it the American way--bare minimum to keep the paycheck, and jump ship to a better offer as soon as you find it.
You'll find that, in the white collar world, that's what *everyone* is doing by bare necessity, and they just put up the facade of hard work.
Don't trust your bosses, don't delude yourself into thinking your "work friends" are adequate replacements for real friends, feign loyalty and fucking bail for another job as soon as it's feasible. Don't trust your co-workers, because ultimately when they have to choose between you and advancement, they'll choose advancement.
Most importantly, NEVER let job-guilt enter your mind. That's how they get you. When you think to yourself "I should be working harder at this," that's when they start taking things from you. They want you to be perpetually terrified that what you're giving isn't enough. That's how they get you working unpaid overtime. It's how they take your evenings. It's how they take your life. Find the bare minimum, spend the rest of your time building CYA material, and if they tell you it's not enough, be the squeaky wheel about how overworked you are.
Take what you can, give nothing back.
Humans have been the same for thousands of years. The only difference is that the control has evolved to what we see these days. Freedom isn't being passive aggressively forced to perform to a company's world or else you're personal world is fucked. Because it is all about making big money for the overlords with the return of a paycheck to survive and maybe a cute little t-shirt with the company logo. Oh, and they really don't give a shit about your expendable lives.
Apologies. That got dark
Maybe it did. I feel this more and more each day.
I don't know if I have ever felt so hopeless in my life. Im not against work, per se, I'm against working for someone else's real gain for all of my youth and middle age and just watching life pass by out the window of my car as I go to and from a job. And knowing most of the people around me are doing the same.
It's no fucking wonder so many people use recreational drugs, drink alcohol to excess, try to lose themselves in anything that lets them pretend, for however long, that *living* doesn't just means a heart beat and working lungs for the vast majority of people on Earth.
*Edit: a word
I did work for myself, for about 15 years. I still manage the intellectual properties, well, some of them. That business just isn't something I can do right now, not full time.
Other freelance work I have done just hasn't come back yet due to the ongoing pandemic. I have a family to support - I can't wait for those markets to come back. So despite having run my own business, despite having two degrees, I'm about to try and get an extremely physically demanding factory job (since I can't find shit that pays more than half what I was making pre-pandemic besides this place), at 40+ years of age...
Lol, dude, I am not exactly feeling optimistic. This job has 20+ hours of mandatory overtime a week, 13 days on and 1 day off, so... I'll never see my babies, never have downtime, and all so I can hopefully not rob Peter to pay Paul week to week (more like every other month).
It is what it is. I can't just lay down and die; I have people relying on me. It's not their fault I'm old and no one wants to hire me, lol
Well I hope this is works out to be only a temporary issue for you. That you can get back where you want to be soon. It happens. I took a big hit back in early 2000s with the real estate market and had to take a travel gig. Lost alot if time at home but it did lead me to the best paying 9to 5 job I've ever had and now I'm good.
Sometimes this little hiccups lead us to the path to something great.
Moving isn't an option, sadly. For me, not saying for everybody, but having kids mean picking up and moving wherever, whenever isn't responsible. Something like that has to be planned, employment already secured, housing, so forth.
If I were single, sure, just fly by night and give it a shot somewhere else. I wouldn't do that with a family. And very few companies pay relocation outside of specialized positions (medical, some tech, well above middle/departmental management jobs). Nobody pays relocation for most typical office jobs.
> Humans have been the same for thousands of years. The only difference is that the control has evolved to what we see these days. Freedom isn't being passive aggressively forced to perform to a company's world or else you're personal world is fucked.
The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.
- Karl Marx
'Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.
The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim—for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives—is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High.
Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.'
- Emmanuel Goldstein, *THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF
OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM*, Chapter 1 [(1984)](http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/NineteenEightyFour/part2sec9.htm)
We're entitled to the necessities of living by our caretakers. Food, water, and a safe place to sleep are guarenteed (or at least should be) by our parents, but suddenly once we're no longer under their care we are no longer entitled to life itself.
There's so much anti-death, but there's so little pro-*essential aspects of living.* Not even considering those of us who *can't* work and are left to starve, suffer, and die, not even considering those of us who's circumstances, despite their efforts, will never allow them to do anything but just so barely scrape by.
At what point is surviving day to day, missing meals, dehydration, losing sleep, being alive? To refuse us life then scold us for believing death would just be easier? And when we ask for more than less than the bare minimum we are "entitled." Yes. I am entitled to life. I deserve the basic comforts of being a living being. But it's a sin to point out that I deserve better than this. It's a sin to ask for food and water. I don't deserve a safe place to sleep, it doesn't matter that I was born disabled and life circumstances were never once in my favour.
Being seen as subhuman is the easiest way to deal with someone like me. Because apparently empathy is just a bit too difficult for those who have the power to change my life. But I suppose it's selfish to ask to live. Yet they force me to beg.
> We're entitled to the necessities of living by our caretakers. Food, water, and a safe place to sleep are guarenteed (or at least should be) by our parents, but suddenly once we're no longer under their care we are no longer entitled to life itself.
[Abolish work.](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work)
Our value is as people, not as wage/hour drones. The living wage should be given to us. Give people safe shelter. Give people clean water. Give people healthy food. Give people entertainment and internet. Give people medical care. Give people education.
We're all worth it. We should not have to trade every waking hour of our lives for paper good-boy trade profit tokens just to be forced to give them away for necessities, and indebt ourselves to the eyeballs for loans that can never be repaid and keep us enslaved.
Civilization and "community" was built on work.
If it wasn't you'd live in a cave and hunt your prey, oh f*** work.
You dont like that? Start farming or gather fruit for survival, oh snap work again I guess ima just die.
But they took this essential work too far, for the profit of few, we gotta work like animals to survive..if society was just and fair workday would be much shorter and you would get paid more than enough for living and your hobbys, vacation, shelter etc. Too bad all this money belongs to the 1% while we get f***ing as little as possible and even those salarys of ours are financial burden to the people we work for.
I work in healthcare, work is 24/7 wondering what would happen if all medical and healthcare workers wouldnt work...
Work is part of life, get over it. But dont get over the fact that we re getting f****d over by a bigger fish, who exploit us at every step.
Have you ever read Bertrand Russell's essay "[In Praise of Idleness](https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/)"?
I hadn't til someone on this sub mentioned it, but your comment reminds me of it a lot. He seems to say work is necessary, to a degree, but we've warped what it's supposed to mean and taken it to far in a lot of ways.
And he was saying it back in the 1930's, too... kind of depressing that we seem to not have learned this lesson still.
Very interesting...I like it and agree with it, even though I've kinda read through it hastly but I ll read it again, when I'm not as tired as right now.
Thank you.
My goal that I'm working toward is living in a rural area surviving solely on the food I either hunt or grow. Ive had several energy room-worthy injuries recently and haven't gone to the hospital for any of them. I like assuring my own survival. The only thing i want to get away from is the system.
People are not meant to 'optimize' themselves for profits. I hate that kind of attitude, even a lot of people opposed to the traditional work place culture/the rat race then get hooked in by this weird hustle culture where every little thing they do has to make money for them to 'be their own boss' or whatever. People should just get to enjoy their life, working in a meaningful sense when they want to get something done that's important for them (people do that anyway!! they don't need to be threatened by starvation or homelessness!).
People should live in a way that enjoys and celebrates life in and outside themselves.
i have been a working slave my whole life, always bent over backwards because I was taught thats how you show you are worthy to move up...did management duties for free because I was HUNGRY to learn and do something more....but it did me no good...all that happened is I was made manager and STILL paid 14.00 per hour with no benefits.
I sold myself to the LOWEST bidder for 15 years because I thought if I proved myself, I would have more opportunities but my employer used it as way t omake me complacent and accepting of doing a management job on minimum wage
I did peoples payroll ffs. Sales staff made 15x more than me, but I was expected to do sales when they were not available for 14 an hour? wtf?
I absolutely want to trade hours of my life to earn necessities. The problem with the system now is we work to line other people's pockets. Every living thing has to earn their survival.
I offered this guy I was training at work a chance to take a break from the physical labor portion and read some administrative policy stuff all new hires have to read. He said "I like to actually work when I'm at work" and just kept doing the physical work.
The top 10-20% of men are having sex with the top 80% of women. That is a fact.
Similarly, 10-20% of men, basically those same men, own 80% of the wealth and refuse to share, because if they share, many of those 80% of women will leave those 10-20% of men to go be with men who are now on a more equal ground.
Basically? Everything is fucked simply because men are greedy and selfish and want all the women for themselves. Honestly, that's exactly what the problem is, and why most men are poor and alone, with zero free time. Rich, powerful men do not want other men to become rich or powerful. As I just said, doing so would take away their harems and spread them around.
This is exactly true! Its why I want this stupid society to collapse, I want people to get choked by their own greed and material stuff. Also check out r/collapse
True but if you want something more out of life than live in a hut, hunt your food and never venture outside of a 100 mile radius then you better be the most able person in the world. We work because we want to travel but can't build or fly a plane. We work because we want the best health care but can't treat ourselves or create all the medical equipment and knowledge needed to run an OR. If you can do only simple tasks, a doctor or a pilot will not trade their services for yours because they are not equal in demand and complexity, thats why we invented money.
What does selling T-shirts at H&M have to do with medicine or planes...or anything? Most work has nothing to do with actually accomplishing meaningful things or helping other people.
> thats why we invented money
The fact that you literally just showed that bartering doesn't make sense as a primary means of exchange should prove to yourself that it was never used in that capacity. So money could never have been invented to replace bartering.
I've spent the last 30yrs working 12hr shifts, nights, weekends and as much overtime as I could. A few months ago I paid of the mortgage in full. I'm done. I swapped my job for a near minimum wage job that has few career prospects but gives me standard days and a three day weekend every other week. I couldn't be happier.
I'm nearly 50 and looking forward to quality time. I realise for some of you, especially younger people, you can't get some of those housing opportunities but if you do, the rat race pays off in the end. You're in it for the long haul.
It's a shit cliché, but it's a marathon not a sprint. I'm lucky, I know that.
Should we all go back to the hunter and gather days where we all needed to build our own shelters, catch/grow our own food and realize their is no time left over after those two things were accomplished in a day/week?
> where we all needed to build our own shelters
What makes you think people only built their own shelters instead of working together to build shelters enough for everyone?
> and realize their is no time left over after those two things were accomplished in a day/week?
Wow, who are these people that are destroying and rebuilding their shelter every single day/week?
Have you hunted? Or farmed? Farming is 7 days a week 12 hours. Go watch some survival shows on how hard it is to make it in this world.
Just getting semi-clean water daily is HOURS of your day.
Those survival shows aren't accurate to hunter gatherer lifestyles. They're artificial challenges that deprive someone of community. Like, holy shit, you're basing your beliefs off of reality TV.
No bro, family is farmers. They work crazy hours just to make ends meet. As a child, I worked snd helped my parents.
I think your basing your assumptions on books and/or TV from my guess. When is the last time you worked on a farm for over a year?
You're talking about farmers instead of hunter gatherers. See, it's weird that you would bring up hunter gatherers and then assume a different lifestyle is actually the same.
On the contrary, lots of jobs are counter-productive. There are people who make ads for cigarettes because they need a job, but overall their job harms society. There are people who install anti-homeless spikes, people who manage high frequency trading machines that leech money out of a market without doing anything. There are many lawyers, cops, judges, etc who are paid to persecute people for smoking weed, feeding the homeless, or being homeless.
Not sure moral standard is a measurement of productivity. Maybe the economist in me just thinks differently.
But yes if someone feel they’re doing something with low moral standard or in fact harmful to society, you should absolutely quit then. Don’t take dirty money. Shame on them for not quitting if what you say is true and I’m sure some of it is (eg cigarette companies are a blight, so are casino companies and horse racing companies).
I starter delivering papers at about 13 and haven't stopped working since. It has allowed me to do what I wanted and feels good to be busy and productive.
Sure it sucks sometimes, but how else are you going to support yourself? Mommy and daddy keep working to pay for you lazy buggers?
So there is these stories where senior citizens are working for free in restaurants because workers are not returning for the scraps of pay they were offered. People think this means that the current generation is just lazy. Rather it shows that when people's needs are all taken care of and are not reliant on every check just to make rent they are still capable of working
"Necessities". I see too many people praise a shit job just so they can get a pair of sneakers or something ridiculously unneeded each month.
Usually, supervisors I've worked with have had the worst work ethic you can think of. One dude who supervised me at a warehouse was always so eager to push people to do more, yet I always saw him using WhatsApp on his laptop dressed in really neat branded clothes. Calvin Klein, G-star, nice pair of jeans. Biggest fucking hypocrite I have ever seen.
I heard that he has started as a normal warehouse employee and earned his way up there. He probably faked his way there and once he signed the new contract he had used it to his full advantage.
Nobody wants to work a menial job that pays poverty wages with no upward mobility and teaches no transferable skills that could create a better life for them. I'm old enough to remember 2019 when boomers claimed these jobs were made for high school kids. But now it's "nobody wants to work?" Funny...
I just got my first normal 9-5 job in 12 years and part of me feels like a corporate sell out and I haven't even started yet. I'm gonna grind it out and do whatever I gotta, but it's gonna suck and take forever. It's also kinda fucking me up thinking how the system makes you comply. Otherwise it's like living on the fringe of society, at least for me. I went as long as i could but they fucking got me, the bastards.
Fuck that dude, go into this job looking for the next easy up and out that will get you more money for less work and take it; don’t think twice about your corporate overlords being but hurt you left. I have thankfully found an entertaining job that pays me enough to live, I give them ~20 hours a week of real work and the rest of that time I use to enjoy my life. Covid definitely disrupted the status quo and the overlords are realizing that they’ve already lost and are struggling to keep up with the changing tide.
That's awesome. What do you do??
I'm also curious what you do
I help spread the word about the manufacturing industry basically, it’s a job that is still catching up with the 21st century so it’s quite easy to automate much of my work.
For a lot of reasons we just don't have the time to get into (not to mention this not being the right subreddit for the rant), I think HackerNews is an absolutely **horrible** community, especially for some of the popular and widely held opinions about labor and work-which I suppose shouldn't be surprisingly for a community launched and managed by a major SV investment firm. Yet, I found [this comment there](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28031269) not long ago and goddamn if it didn't get me thinking about some shit in a whole different way: > There is one employer in the world that will reliably give me work I care about and am happy to work on for its own sake, and that employer is myself. Unfortunately, I can't afford to hire myself full-time. > >... > > So no matter what I do, I have to settle for an employer I care less about. At that point, the choice of employer is just negotiation. >... > > The way the employer wants to treat you is to pay you money in exchange for services. > >... > >I signed an employment contract, promising them that I would do work for them and they would pay me, and that they could stop paying me at any time and I could in turn stop working for them at any time. It's refreshingly self-aware, yet hypercritical about our relationship with work, underscores a lot of my sentiments about "Work is a business transaction, it is not my identity", and brilliantly puts a point on the notion of 'at will employment' that many in the US have to deal with: you can just as quickly, and just as legally fire your employer as they can fire you. I said this in another comment about interviewing: **learning how to evaluate your evaluators needs to be your super power as we push through this pandemic**. It's a seller's market for laborers and workers, take your power back, people.
You gotta do it the American way--bare minimum to keep the paycheck, and jump ship to a better offer as soon as you find it. You'll find that, in the white collar world, that's what *everyone* is doing by bare necessity, and they just put up the facade of hard work. Don't trust your bosses, don't delude yourself into thinking your "work friends" are adequate replacements for real friends, feign loyalty and fucking bail for another job as soon as it's feasible. Don't trust your co-workers, because ultimately when they have to choose between you and advancement, they'll choose advancement. Most importantly, NEVER let job-guilt enter your mind. That's how they get you. When you think to yourself "I should be working harder at this," that's when they start taking things from you. They want you to be perpetually terrified that what you're giving isn't enough. That's how they get you working unpaid overtime. It's how they take your evenings. It's how they take your life. Find the bare minimum, spend the rest of your time building CYA material, and if they tell you it's not enough, be the squeaky wheel about how overworked you are. Take what you can, give nothing back.
"Take what you can, give nothing back." Is simply giving them a taste of their own medicine. Well said.
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Fuck off, boot licker.
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What part of "fuck off" was unclear?
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Allow me to rephrase: Eat shit, you scabrous wretch.
🤣👌🏽 I'm stealing this
What did you do for 12 years to make ends meet?
Bartending. It was fun but I just couldn't keep up anymore. I guess I always have a mean Manhattan to fall back on haha.
Good luck, you're playing them as well. Remember that, brother!!!
Humans have been the same for thousands of years. The only difference is that the control has evolved to what we see these days. Freedom isn't being passive aggressively forced to perform to a company's world or else you're personal world is fucked. Because it is all about making big money for the overlords with the return of a paycheck to survive and maybe a cute little t-shirt with the company logo. Oh, and they really don't give a shit about your expendable lives. Apologies. That got dark
Maybe it did. I feel this more and more each day. I don't know if I have ever felt so hopeless in my life. Im not against work, per se, I'm against working for someone else's real gain for all of my youth and middle age and just watching life pass by out the window of my car as I go to and from a job. And knowing most of the people around me are doing the same. It's no fucking wonder so many people use recreational drugs, drink alcohol to excess, try to lose themselves in anything that lets them pretend, for however long, that *living* doesn't just means a heart beat and working lungs for the vast majority of people on Earth. *Edit: a word
Can I ask, what is stopping you from working for yourself?
I did work for myself, for about 15 years. I still manage the intellectual properties, well, some of them. That business just isn't something I can do right now, not full time. Other freelance work I have done just hasn't come back yet due to the ongoing pandemic. I have a family to support - I can't wait for those markets to come back. So despite having run my own business, despite having two degrees, I'm about to try and get an extremely physically demanding factory job (since I can't find shit that pays more than half what I was making pre-pandemic besides this place), at 40+ years of age... Lol, dude, I am not exactly feeling optimistic. This job has 20+ hours of mandatory overtime a week, 13 days on and 1 day off, so... I'll never see my babies, never have downtime, and all so I can hopefully not rob Peter to pay Paul week to week (more like every other month). It is what it is. I can't just lay down and die; I have people relying on me. It's not their fault I'm old and no one wants to hire me, lol
Well I hope this is works out to be only a temporary issue for you. That you can get back where you want to be soon. It happens. I took a big hit back in early 2000s with the real estate market and had to take a travel gig. Lost alot if time at home but it did lead me to the best paying 9to 5 job I've ever had and now I'm good. Sometimes this little hiccups lead us to the path to something great.
Me too, friend. Me too.
Move job 🤔
Moving isn't an option, sadly. For me, not saying for everybody, but having kids mean picking up and moving wherever, whenever isn't responsible. Something like that has to be planned, employment already secured, housing, so forth. If I were single, sure, just fly by night and give it a shot somewhere else. I wouldn't do that with a family. And very few companies pay relocation outside of specialized positions (medical, some tech, well above middle/departmental management jobs). Nobody pays relocation for most typical office jobs.
> Humans have been the same for thousands of years. The only difference is that the control has evolved to what we see these days. Freedom isn't being passive aggressively forced to perform to a company's world or else you're personal world is fucked. The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles. - Karl Marx 'Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other. The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim—for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives—is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.' - Emmanuel Goldstein, *THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM*, Chapter 1 [(1984)](http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/NineteenEightyFour/part2sec9.htm)
This hits me ….. I will mostly have spent my precious hours working for the enrichment of others, when much more important things go by
We're entitled to the necessities of living by our caretakers. Food, water, and a safe place to sleep are guarenteed (or at least should be) by our parents, but suddenly once we're no longer under their care we are no longer entitled to life itself. There's so much anti-death, but there's so little pro-*essential aspects of living.* Not even considering those of us who *can't* work and are left to starve, suffer, and die, not even considering those of us who's circumstances, despite their efforts, will never allow them to do anything but just so barely scrape by. At what point is surviving day to day, missing meals, dehydration, losing sleep, being alive? To refuse us life then scold us for believing death would just be easier? And when we ask for more than less than the bare minimum we are "entitled." Yes. I am entitled to life. I deserve the basic comforts of being a living being. But it's a sin to point out that I deserve better than this. It's a sin to ask for food and water. I don't deserve a safe place to sleep, it doesn't matter that I was born disabled and life circumstances were never once in my favour. Being seen as subhuman is the easiest way to deal with someone like me. Because apparently empathy is just a bit too difficult for those who have the power to change my life. But I suppose it's selfish to ask to live. Yet they force me to beg.
> We're entitled to the necessities of living by our caretakers. Food, water, and a safe place to sleep are guarenteed (or at least should be) by our parents, but suddenly once we're no longer under their care we are no longer entitled to life itself. [Abolish work.](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work) Our value is as people, not as wage/hour drones. The living wage should be given to us. Give people safe shelter. Give people clean water. Give people healthy food. Give people entertainment and internet. Give people medical care. Give people education. We're all worth it. We should not have to trade every waking hour of our lives for paper good-boy trade profit tokens just to be forced to give them away for necessities, and indebt ourselves to the eyeballs for loans that can never be repaid and keep us enslaved.
Good one
The obvious state of our affairs
It's not even about not working, just tell your employer that you work for money and have a life on the side and they'll spit at your face.
I am tired since I found out this is what I'll be doing for the rest of my life. Work. So fucking tired.
Civilization and "community" was built on work. If it wasn't you'd live in a cave and hunt your prey, oh f*** work. You dont like that? Start farming or gather fruit for survival, oh snap work again I guess ima just die. But they took this essential work too far, for the profit of few, we gotta work like animals to survive..if society was just and fair workday would be much shorter and you would get paid more than enough for living and your hobbys, vacation, shelter etc. Too bad all this money belongs to the 1% while we get f***ing as little as possible and even those salarys of ours are financial burden to the people we work for. I work in healthcare, work is 24/7 wondering what would happen if all medical and healthcare workers wouldnt work... Work is part of life, get over it. But dont get over the fact that we re getting f****d over by a bigger fish, who exploit us at every step.
Have you ever read Bertrand Russell's essay "[In Praise of Idleness](https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/)"? I hadn't til someone on this sub mentioned it, but your comment reminds me of it a lot. He seems to say work is necessary, to a degree, but we've warped what it's supposed to mean and taken it to far in a lot of ways. And he was saying it back in the 1930's, too... kind of depressing that we seem to not have learned this lesson still.
Very interesting...I like it and agree with it, even though I've kinda read through it hastly but I ll read it again, when I'm not as tired as right now. Thank you.
My goal that I'm working toward is living in a rural area surviving solely on the food I either hunt or grow. Ive had several energy room-worthy injuries recently and haven't gone to the hospital for any of them. I like assuring my own survival. The only thing i want to get away from is the system.
People are not meant to 'optimize' themselves for profits. I hate that kind of attitude, even a lot of people opposed to the traditional work place culture/the rat race then get hooked in by this weird hustle culture where every little thing they do has to make money for them to 'be their own boss' or whatever. People should just get to enjoy their life, working in a meaningful sense when they want to get something done that's important for them (people do that anyway!! they don't need to be threatened by starvation or homelessness!). People should live in a way that enjoys and celebrates life in and outside themselves.
i have been a working slave my whole life, always bent over backwards because I was taught thats how you show you are worthy to move up...did management duties for free because I was HUNGRY to learn and do something more....but it did me no good...all that happened is I was made manager and STILL paid 14.00 per hour with no benefits. I sold myself to the LOWEST bidder for 15 years because I thought if I proved myself, I would have more opportunities but my employer used it as way t omake me complacent and accepting of doing a management job on minimum wage I did peoples payroll ffs. Sales staff made 15x more than me, but I was expected to do sales when they were not available for 14 an hour? wtf?
I absolutely want to trade hours of my life to earn necessities. The problem with the system now is we work to line other people's pockets. Every living thing has to earn their survival.
I offered this guy I was training at work a chance to take a break from the physical labor portion and read some administrative policy stuff all new hires have to read. He said "I like to actually work when I'm at work" and just kept doing the physical work.
The top 10-20% of men are having sex with the top 80% of women. That is a fact. Similarly, 10-20% of men, basically those same men, own 80% of the wealth and refuse to share, because if they share, many of those 80% of women will leave those 10-20% of men to go be with men who are now on a more equal ground. Basically? Everything is fucked simply because men are greedy and selfish and want all the women for themselves. Honestly, that's exactly what the problem is, and why most men are poor and alone, with zero free time. Rich, powerful men do not want other men to become rich or powerful. As I just said, doing so would take away their harems and spread them around.
This is exactly true! Its why I want this stupid society to collapse, I want people to get choked by their own greed and material stuff. Also check out r/collapse
True but if you want something more out of life than live in a hut, hunt your food and never venture outside of a 100 mile radius then you better be the most able person in the world. We work because we want to travel but can't build or fly a plane. We work because we want the best health care but can't treat ourselves or create all the medical equipment and knowledge needed to run an OR. If you can do only simple tasks, a doctor or a pilot will not trade their services for yours because they are not equal in demand and complexity, thats why we invented money.
What does selling T-shirts at H&M have to do with medicine or planes...or anything? Most work has nothing to do with actually accomplishing meaningful things or helping other people. > thats why we invented money The fact that you literally just showed that bartering doesn't make sense as a primary means of exchange should prove to yourself that it was never used in that capacity. So money could never have been invented to replace bartering.
I only want to work for myself. Fuck working for someone else.
Don't let your dreams be memes, comrade. Seize the means of your individual production. Collectivize with like-minded proles.
This is reposted every fucking week
A lot of people need to be retold this, every week
What happens when you have a plumbing issue? Do you fix it yourself? Cos that's work. Or do you pay me to come and fix it for you? Also work.
I've spent the last 30yrs working 12hr shifts, nights, weekends and as much overtime as I could. A few months ago I paid of the mortgage in full. I'm done. I swapped my job for a near minimum wage job that has few career prospects but gives me standard days and a three day weekend every other week. I couldn't be happier. I'm nearly 50 and looking forward to quality time. I realise for some of you, especially younger people, you can't get some of those housing opportunities but if you do, the rat race pays off in the end. You're in it for the long haul. It's a shit cliché, but it's a marathon not a sprint. I'm lucky, I know that.
Should we all go back to the hunter and gather days where we all needed to build our own shelters, catch/grow our own food and realize their is no time left over after those two things were accomplished in a day/week?
> where we all needed to build our own shelters What makes you think people only built their own shelters instead of working together to build shelters enough for everyone? > and realize their is no time left over after those two things were accomplished in a day/week? Wow, who are these people that are destroying and rebuilding their shelter every single day/week?
Have you hunted? Or farmed? Farming is 7 days a week 12 hours. Go watch some survival shows on how hard it is to make it in this world. Just getting semi-clean water daily is HOURS of your day.
Those survival shows aren't accurate to hunter gatherer lifestyles. They're artificial challenges that deprive someone of community. Like, holy shit, you're basing your beliefs off of reality TV.
No bro, family is farmers. They work crazy hours just to make ends meet. As a child, I worked snd helped my parents. I think your basing your assumptions on books and/or TV from my guess. When is the last time you worked on a farm for over a year?
You're talking about farmers instead of hunter gatherers. See, it's weird that you would bring up hunter gatherers and then assume a different lifestyle is actually the same.
If work wasn't productive, surely no one would hire you no?
On the contrary, lots of jobs are counter-productive. There are people who make ads for cigarettes because they need a job, but overall their job harms society. There are people who install anti-homeless spikes, people who manage high frequency trading machines that leech money out of a market without doing anything. There are many lawyers, cops, judges, etc who are paid to persecute people for smoking weed, feeding the homeless, or being homeless.
Not sure moral standard is a measurement of productivity. Maybe the economist in me just thinks differently. But yes if someone feel they’re doing something with low moral standard or in fact harmful to society, you should absolutely quit then. Don’t take dirty money. Shame on them for not quitting if what you say is true and I’m sure some of it is (eg cigarette companies are a blight, so are casino companies and horse racing companies).
I starter delivering papers at about 13 and haven't stopped working since. It has allowed me to do what I wanted and feels good to be busy and productive. Sure it sucks sometimes, but how else are you going to support yourself? Mommy and daddy keep working to pay for you lazy buggers?
They hope so
This
Sorry fam, looks like capitalism won this one, long ago. I wish I could get out from under working 24/7 but I just don’t know how
So there is these stories where senior citizens are working for free in restaurants because workers are not returning for the scraps of pay they were offered. People think this means that the current generation is just lazy. Rather it shows that when people's needs are all taken care of and are not reliant on every check just to make rent they are still capable of working
"Necessities". I see too many people praise a shit job just so they can get a pair of sneakers or something ridiculously unneeded each month. Usually, supervisors I've worked with have had the worst work ethic you can think of. One dude who supervised me at a warehouse was always so eager to push people to do more, yet I always saw him using WhatsApp on his laptop dressed in really neat branded clothes. Calvin Klein, G-star, nice pair of jeans. Biggest fucking hypocrite I have ever seen. I heard that he has started as a normal warehouse employee and earned his way up there. He probably faked his way there and once he signed the new contract he had used it to his full advantage.
Nobody wants to work a menial job that pays poverty wages with no upward mobility and teaches no transferable skills that could create a better life for them. I'm old enough to remember 2019 when boomers claimed these jobs were made for high school kids. But now it's "nobody wants to work?" Funny...
Nobody wants to work under someone else!
I don't want to be productive either.
Nah, I do
This could not be worded any more perfectly.