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Comment by reflexive | Hacker News Reader

if you made that proposition to a fast food worker that he could do meaningful work instead of smelling like fried stuff all the time and always be worried about working enough hours for a crappy boss and no future, or to a janitor that he could help someone instead of cleaning pee all day, maybe they would do that instead

Are you saying that making food for people is meaningless? That cleaning doesn't help anyone?

Humans are always going to regard someone as being "at the bottom", just because that's how we think.

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I'm saying that churning out barely edible mater for a highly structured organization that pays you less that living wages and provides no benefits of any kind (maybe a free meal once in a while?) and treat you less well that the consumables that comes in, is not something that people aspire to.

If you want to meaningfully feed people, I believe it's called working at a soup kitchen. Usually staffed by volunteers. The reward for most meaningful work is often only in the human element. It sure ain't in the pocketbook.

Working in the fast food industry is not "making food for people," it's being a cog in a machine that transform the maximum amount of uncaring for its employees and products into the maximum of profits.

Janitorial work is necessary but not paid in proportion to the social good it provides.

And I take offense at your comment about "Humans are always going to regard someone as being "at the bottom", just because that's how we think.", it's not human nature, it's a social construct.

How meaningful are jobs that could fairly easily be automated out of existence if we didn't feel the need to occupy every human?

The reason those jobs haven't been automated is because automating a job is an expensive and difficult process, not out of charity for the people doing those jobs.

I've often thought about how meaningful my own work is, in the sense that: what if people just didn't buy my company's stupid product? Would anybody be worse off? Not really.

The only meaning I've found is the satisfaction of doing my job well, on its own terms - whether that's sweeping the floors at a burger joint, or making software builds.

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