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Comment by IanCal | Hacker News Reader

> Work = being part of society

That's a sad state of affairs.

I agree. If I'm unemployed I'm not part of society? What if I still get out of the house? Volunteer? Attend social gatherings? What if I'm retired? Am I not part of society? Who defines what is "work" in the future anyway?

> Lots of conflicting incentives that can discourage work in the existing rules.

Its sad to see this sentiment echoed. Especially considering how some jobs are just useless/white collar welfare (some middle management at large organizations I've been a part of in the past come to mind) or how some jobs will continue to be automated in the future. Work shouldn't be the most important thing that defines ones worth as an adult in our society!

Society is a group of people whose collaborative efforts are able to accomplish more than any one individual and more than simply a sum of individuals. That means 'work', which is another word for 'doing something for someone else'. It is selfish to believe that one can belong to a group of people and obtain the benefits without contributing to it.

A lot of work does little to benefit society. It is a collaborative effort to enrich your employer.

That is a viewpoint that ignores the level at which humans, especially in the US, live at. The amount of work and people that goes into having convenient access to food, transportation and clean water is incredible. And those are just basic needs that we take for granted. Your employer creates good and services that people consume, therefore, the work enriches society. If your short-sightedness only extends to the point where you are evaluating who is making the bigger paycheck, I'd say that is a shortcoming of your self-awareness, not of society.

The level most people in the US live at is called "poverty". The amount of work that goes into food, transportation and clean water is incredibly small, compared to the amount of people it supports, and it could be made immensely more efficient if we weren't using technology that is 100 years old. The only thing a market creates is blind demand for more useless crap, while destroying the very firmament on which it operates. This libertarian "belief" in the benefits of markets is utterly contradicted by scientific evidence which shows that capitalism is the force that is destroying our environment, while extenuating the inequality between the rent-seeking and the rent-paying. I'm sure your dad taught you to "work hard", but we don't live in the forest anymore. It's time for you to educate yourself about what would be beneficial for society as a whole, rather than believing in adages that (shockingly) uphold and entrench the advantages you have inherited from your birthplace and skin color.

Why do you get to define what society is? Sure, if you take the definition that "society is the group of people who are working", then you get the conclusion that you are required to work to be in society.

I'm going to present a different definition of society:

> A society is a group of people involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society)

> the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community. (Google [https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+of+society&oq=def...)

> an organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes. (Dictionary.com http://www.dictionary.com/browse/society?s=t)

It seems the definition that you're providing for "Society" doesn't line up with the common definition of the word. It doesn't mean "work". It can, as the parent comment states, mean "Volunteer" or "Interacting with people socially".

You don't get to exclude people from society by using convenient definitions.

Well, you can go make your society where the only thing that matters is that people believe the same thing. And then I'll live in current society, where people put forth an effort to support that society's needs. And then we can figure out which one gets to define society based on which one survives long enough to write down the definition. (Also, wouldn't a society imply exclusion by its very definition?)

I'll point out that if you're arguing that the surviving society gets to make the definition, then the definitions I presented are backed by society (Wikipedia, Google, Dictionary.com), whereas the definition you have proposed is your own.

And don't overlook the fact that the society he is presenting is destroying the only place where any other society could be built, namely The Earth.

I think perhaps you're being somewhat broad by defining work as doing anything for anyone else. Or maybe I'm being overly narrow by assuming they mean "have a job" by "work", something paid and typically contractual.

Would you class volunteering your time as work? How about developing open source software, or writing interesting short stories for fun? Painting? Being a parent? If you help a friend move house do you say you're "going to work"?

If you include everything that provides some value as "work" then sure. But I feel that there are a huge range of things that provide value to society that may not be paid for or done as a typical job.

Well, you can be rich

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