Comment by nxc18 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nxc18 | Hacker News Reader

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No one has ever had more control over their life than the privileged few enjoying the 9-5.

In contemporary society, things are nice enough that people typically trade a fraction of their time in exchange for work, income, and reduced risk exposure. This is a nice comfy abstraction over the cold reality that you need resources to live and you need to work and fight to keep living.

The alternatives to this are: a) socialism/communism type deal where the government controls your work output and resource provision; even if it works out (it usually doesn't), you have far less control than you do now. b) unspecialized agriculture-based society; every second of every day is spent producing just enough food and material goods long enough for you to raise children that take over when you die. Your options are limited; you are perilously exposed to acts of God (what happens if the crop fails?). You are not in control. c) hunter-gatherer setup; you are still not in control of your own life. You have no option than to spend the vast majority of your day seeking food (without agriculture you really do need to spend almost all of your time on that work). Ask one of these people what a 'weekend' or 'vacation' looks like.

The reality is, modern society gives you many more options than were possible even 100 years ago. International (and even local) travel is commonplace; you can choose to start a startup or work for yourself; you can choose to buy or not buy hundreds of thousands of products, many of which were not existing or even possible in the recent past; etc. You can even choose to leave it all behind and live on the land.

Don't confuse dissatisfaction with your own life choices with lack of control.

That's not true.

An average peasant in the feudalism had more free time than an average 9-5 office worker now.

In fact, the 8 hour work day is a recent feature. When capitalism arrived initially, it was much worse.

The rest of your post shows that you had an easy life, and I'm happy for you. But don't assume everybody can start a startup, travel etc. That's just not the reality out there.

> An average peasant in the feudalism had more free time than an average 9-5 office worker now.

If you want the lifestyle of a medieval peasant, you can do that now. No one is stopping you.

Working in an organization beneficial for the world while doing a job you enjoy makes it easy to work for long hours and little wages.

But if organization acts immorally and increases profit through unethical methods, it drains motivation and makes employees a lot less inclined to put effort into 9-5 jobs.

I mean, presumably, we could get "good enough" at agro-tech and then return everyone to option B, but with everyone just spending 5% of their time maintaining robots to grow themselves food and the rest doing whatever they like.

Hunter gatherers did not spend the vast majority of their time seeking food. That's a myth that greatly perpetuates this nonsense that technology/progress have benefited mankind. They haven't. Things being better than 200 years ago doesn't mean they're better than 20 000 years ago.

True, but they were in constant war with other tribes, animals, etc So, they were not better than today.

Disagree. I think tribal warfare and fighting predators are things we are built for and desire to do on a base level, hence why we have (poor) substitutes in team sports, modern hunting, and the action movie. The lack of these things is a loss not a gain.

I'd rather not-die not-doing those things, and then participate in simulations of those things, than die doing those things, personally.

Keep in mind that the fidelity of the simulations will only improve with technology (e.g. VR.)

So would I but I think it's important to avoid just using what our current selves want/would do in discussions on what would make happy humans. We're products of our environment. Modern humans would be fucked (and unhappy) if magically transported back 20 000 years myself included, as I believe humans 20 000 years ago would be if transported to now. What's more is that there's an issue of extrapolating what is best for a society as a whole from the wants of the individual even without the differing time period. I or any other person may want a billion dollars but if everyone was suddenly given a billion dollars that wouldn't be a net gain, it'd be an economic catastrophe.

I'm not even 100% on this theory and it's one of my least researched so there's plenty of room for someone to come and slay me with data but I think the discussion definitely needs to come from a place of "pre-agricultural humans living their pre-agricultural life while ignorant of modern life" compared to "modern humans living their modern lives", rather than one of "well why don't you just go live in a forrest if you like it so much!?"

... unless you are on the losing end.

Everyone dies. Savage humans at least had the benefit of a lesser ability to ponder and comprehend the permanence and inevitability of ceasing to exist.

> constant war with other tribes

AFAIK most aboriginal tribes are quite peaceful. Rivalry with other tribes around territory and food sources lead to fights that look closer sparring and rarely lead to any wounded.

That is why the whole agriculture thing never caught on.

I personally would have been dead at 16 and had a bum knee at 21 without modern medicine.

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