Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think a pay bump is the right prescription for burnout. In fact, it may contribute to it, because the recipient may feel that they need to work harder to justify the additional income. Increased spending may further strain finances despite the raise, also causing a jump in stress.

The best way for a company to keep an employee trapped is to grossly overpay them. People quickly scale their obligations up to meet their income, and that usually means that employees will not have the option to go somewhere else if they are paid well above market.

As the employee seeks a new position on the open market and becomes aware of their predicament, the stress they experience goes up, not down.

"More money, more problems", as they say. This is not to justify wage slavery or underpaid workforces, but only to indicate the solution to every problem is not "throw money at it".

We should recognize that the industrialized working habits are unnatural and not necessarily something that maintains its own homeostasis with humanity. There's no guarantee that we'll be able sustain this lifestyle, on either a personal or social scale.

>This is not to justify wage slavery or underpaid workforces [...]

I grant this is not your intent, but it is nonetheless exactly the effect of the line of thought.

For me, the core of the burnout problem is non-cooperative ownership of the means of production, aka capitalism.

The working persons who create all the value in an enterprise are not the persons who make the governance decisions nor the persons who realize full profit from that work. These conflicts of interest are what lie at the root of burnout at least to my eyes.

I'd argue that the working people make the ultimate governance decision. Whether or not to come in tomorrow.

They are the means of production.

Witness the comedy of the failing business where 10 middle managers have endless meetings about what the last remaining builder should build.

When you've got a family to feed, limited savings, and are unable to form a union due to union-busting policies & at-will employment, workers can't gain the leverage needed to do this. And in a global economy where jobs can be shipped anywhere, businesses can't allow this kind of behavior. A board of directors exists to maximize profits, not build a stable society. What should happen is that the government should step in to force companies to both create profits and create an equal society, but the problem in the US is that our government has been bought out.

And this is where I turn right around and advocate a UBI. The problem is that labor is not a free enough market.

A giant clot of tiny worker friendly regs is one answer. I think a UBI and something reasonable for health care is better. Losing all your best workers because you create a place no one wants to work at is the best possible outcome for corporate doucheyness.

I'd also argue that protectionism would work as well. In the 50s and 60s before jobs were shipped overseas, unions were powerful enough to make a large, powerful middle class that led to a very strong economy. These unions were able to persist because the demand for labor was high enough. With globalization(and illegal immigration, but it's mostly globalization), the demand for labor has tanked, giving the worker very little leverage.

I agree that socialism would be the better way to do this, but I'm not sure if our political system would ever allow it to happen.

Unions tend to create their own distortions. The first thing they do when they achieve power is go right about manipulating the political environment to ensure that no one is able to work in their field without joining and paying the union.

Empowering the individual is the answer. Not trading one master for another. Even if the new master double-pinky-swears he's gonna be better than the old one.

A UBI makes the government itself that master. Everyone will be dependent on the payouts, and it will create a new baseline which will be consumed immediately. Pricing is relative. This will move the goal posts without making anyone functionally wealthier (except the fund's administrators, same as the union bosses always find ways to enrich themselves).

Individuals must be empowered by keeping the markets not only open, but gaping. The government's actions should always open up competition.

A great way to get started effecting this would be a liberalization of intellectual property law (trim the lifetime of copyrights to 5 years and patents to 7 years, for example, while also seriously weakening the extent of the monopolies they grant).

Another way would be a modernization of the courts, to ensure that little people can have their concerns addressed speedily and at minimal cost.

Cartels and monopolies should be aggressively disrupted (ideally through indirect action, though direct is not out of the realm of possibility), and market distorters like health insurers should be excised quickly.

Your argument against UBI is similar to the argument against raising minimum wage, saying that any gains will instantly lost due to inflation. The problem with this is that it is false[1]. Also, inflation adjusted, minimum wage was actually higher in the 60s, meaning the lower class had greater purchasing power. I see no reason why this would differ with UBI.

[1] https://medium.com/@discomfiting/debunking-if-you-raise-the-...

It's true. The UBI will move prices. But something interesting happens. If I have $1 and you have $1m, a UBI of $32k given to both of us will make me much richer in comparison even though we got the same handout.

The UBI is like gravity pulling inequality towards the middle. A force that counteracts the "rich get richer" force that dominates today's economy.

>I'd argue that the working people make the ultimate governance decision. Whether or not to come in tomorrow.

Only if they can organize, and don't have debts, mortgages, kids, limited job options and other such issues...

Which means for most of people it's a "gun in the head" kind of situation more than a decision. At best they can get off of one deal and into another, but they can't stall very much or be too picky and still feed themselves.

>I'd argue that the working people make the ultimate governance decision. Whether or not to come in tomorrow.

But that's not governance of an enterprise, that's quitting -- a commitment that also very likely mars one's own work record, especially in this business-run society.

>They are the means of production.

Unless the employees govern the company, the first person to disagree with your statement is going to be the boss.

>Witness the comedy of the failing business where 10 middle managers have endless meetings about what the last remaining builder should build.

I'd say the above is not limited whatsoever to failing businesses. The bigger the business/institution, the more likely this over-administrated, top- and middle-heavy shitshow is to be standard operating procedure.

Only a union can actually coalesce all that agency into an actual decision that affects production though. Otherwise the individuals who opt out are just statistical noise on the spreadsheet.

I would disagree hugely, as the working people still need to buy food and pay rent.

Burnout is about how the time is spent, not about how it's rewarded. You can get paid whatever you want, but if you're miserable for 50%+ of your waking time, you're going to burn out.

Rewards can only sweeten the deal. They can't turn a bad working situation non-toxic (at least not until they cross the threshold of allowing one to escape from the bad situation entirely).

People can only put up with that frustration for so long. When they can't put up with it anymore, that's burnout. It's not about who's getting the profit (though the discouragement from feeling that you're not being treated fairly can definitely be a significant contributor to the stress). Indeed, burnout is very high among business owners.

I'm strongly pro-capitalist, but I agree that we need to adjust structures to ensure that companies are obliged to share a fair portion of their profit with employees. However, I believe this only tangentially relates to the problem of burnout, which is fundamentally about the psychic impact of daily exposure to the same significant stressors.

>You can get paid whatever you want, but if you're miserable for 50%+ of your waking time, you're going to burn out.

I can see what you're saying - the money may be secondary. But I think it's a big mistake to even momentarily indulge the idea (even as a hypothetical) that one can get paid "whatever one wants" when that decision is structurally not theirs to make.

>burnout, which is fundamentally about the psychic impact of daily exposure to the same significant stressors.

Do you have any sympathy for the notion that these stressors are reduced or eliminated when workers and managers cooperatively decide what to make and how?

>But I think it's a big mistake to even momentarily indulge the idea (even as a hypothetical) that one can get paid "whatever one wants" when that decision is structurally not theirs to make.

I think the key difference here is that you're approaching this as something that needs to be structured, that there should be a structure in place that allows people to select from a list what they're going to make.

The capitalist perspective is that people can make whatever they want, as long as they are able to persuade someone to give it to them (within the confines of the law). So it's not an absurd hypothetical. There are, of course, no guarantees.

But I don't want this thread to veer too far off-topic, if that ship hasn't already sailed.

>Do you have any sympathy for the notion that these stressors are reduced or eliminated when workers and managers cooperatively decide what to make and how?

Sure I do. The concerns you're listing are among everyone's core psychological needs. People need to feel that they are being treated fairly, that their input is taken seriously, and that they have a reasonable degree of autonomy over their time.

When we don't feel these things are happening for us, the appropriate and natural reaction is angst, or psychic pain, and it's intended to drive us to find a way to correct/balance these stress profiles.

After we've been exposed to these and other psychological stresses without resolution for too long, our body gives up and we enter a state of burnout.

You're suggesting that the cure for burnout is an upheaval in the structure of property ownership. I believe that if it helped at all, this would be an indirect effect at best. In any case, such drastic suggestions are out of scope for the immediate question of addressing burnout in the real world.

There are ways to improve current companies (without fundamentally restructuring their core ownership or authority systems) so that they meet these needs better. There are ways to get these needs filled at home, which, while it won't entirely reduce antipathy toward work, may help mitigate the damage.

>I think the key difference here is that you're approaching this as something that needs to be structured, that there should be a structure in place that allows people to select from a list what they're going to make.

Let me be clearer - I am not referencing a proposed structure, I am saying that under the current existing structure, employees cannot choose what to make, because that is in the end the owner's decision, not theirs. That's what I mean by "structurally not theirs to make".

Alternatively, arriving at mutually agreeable decisions about both compensation and work product is (and has been) achievable under cooperative ownership e.g., as long as the employees are categorically indistinguishable from owners and governors.

>People need to feel that they are being treated fairly, that their input is taken seriously, and that they have a reasonable degree of autonomy over their time.

I agree very much, which is why I point out that at a structural level, capitalism specifically denies all three of these to the worker. The owner alone decides how much value the owner takes from what the worker produces, not the worker. The fact that the owner decides on this foundational matter necessarily means that the input of the worker is second-rate input. And when the owner is the sole decider of what and when to make stuff, the worker's autonomy is necessarily subordinate to the owner's.

>In any case, such drastic suggestions are out of scope for the immediate question of addressing burnout in the real world.

In the real world, there are huge, cooperatively owned enterprises profitably employing tens of thousands of people each. Such companies haven't banished burnout -- no utopias anywhere, I'm afraid -- but they are not suffering the burnout crisis that capitalist organizations are. One to check out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

>The owner alone decides how much value the owner takes from what the worker produces [...] And when the owner is the sole decider of what and when to make stuff, the worker's autonomy is necessarily subordinate to the owner's.

You're assuming that the owner is operating in a vacuum. That is not the case. The worker has the ability to find another employer whose terms are more agreeable, start their own business and attempt to get people to pay them directly for a service, or even to exit the labor force entirely.

If you believe that the owners do not feel the need to compete and that the marketplace is therefore not functioning, that's a separate issue that doesn't depend on ownership structures as such.

>In the real world, there are huge, cooperatively owned enterprises profitably employing tens of thousands of people each.

Sure, but while these are typically very socially-conscious organizations, they aren't non-capitalist and they don't give everyone the level of control and autonomy that you're intimating.

>The worker has the ability to find another employer whose terms are more agreeable, start their own business and attempt to get people to pay them directly for a service, or even to exit the labor force entirely.

But that doesn't change the relationship except to not begin it, because that is quitting. There remains a structurally subordinate relationship between owner and worker that quitting does not change.

>they don't give everyone the level of control and autonomy that you're intimating.

That is false. Tens of thousands of Mondragon (for example) co-op worker-owners collectively and democratically decide how, when, where and why to work and have done so successfully for many decades. Workers there face significantly less burnout and I suggest it is specifically because of the fundamental change they made to the working relationship by making everyone more or less the same -- there is no greater than a nine times multiple difference in compensation between highest and lowest paid employee for example, and everybody must arrive with some modest capital in order to work there. This is of course unthinkable under capitalism, which is oriented toward concentrating power and capital in a stockholder and governor/owner class, not vesting these things in the people who create all the value.

Speaking of unthinkable, let me observe that as you and I have proceeded, you have edged away from the "real world" you claim to occupy and headed toward an ideological shelter world where what is possible is determined not by existing things but by your certainty that those things don't exist.

I do think that's a large part of it, but burnout of small business owners is also very common.

That's true only up to a point. Look at baseball players, they frequently outperform in the last year of their first (lower value) contract, but then underperform after getting the longer high value second contract. People are motivated by money only up to some point. The point varies by person and some people are far more motivated by other factors.

While I recognize that you're referring only to my comment about working harder to justify a raise, I agree and I think this is actually a good summary of the sentiment of my comment.

I mentioned a feeling of guilt and/or additional responsibility only as one possible reaction to increased pay resulting in additional stress, not as one that is universally felt. There are many other valid reactions, but in most cases, they also end up increasing stress.

IMO, in most cases, "give them more money" is not going to appreciably improve the problem of burnout.

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