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Comment by jokoon | Hacker News Reader

Beyond those arguments, it's also important to remind that we should work between 20 or 30 hours per week, not more.

It's about health, being able to rest, do leisure, physical activity, see friends, date, etc.

There are things to learn about the antiwork mentality. Not saying everyone should quit their job, but still, it would be nice if everyone could be able to negotiate with their employees.

I have often been called a parasite, and honestly, it comforts me in realizing that I should not compete with people who turn work into a competition. Those people will generate enough taxes and labor for lazy people like me, and it's okay.

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While I'll likely continue working my whole life, one thing I would like is some time off to think about my relationship with work and where I should be focusing my energy. Some kind of UBI or other anti-work outcome seems like it could actually provide space for that. I haven't had more than a 2 week lapse in work for 2 decades... and if I did I'd probably be extremely anxious the whole time.

When health insurance and housing rely so heavily on work (speaking from the perspective of an American), not working feels terrifying.

> When health insurance and housing rely so heavily on work (speaking from the perspective of an American), not working feels terrifying.

It seems as though the American system is intentionally setup so that we feel this way. We go through some cycles where capital is in greater control (the Gilded Age, and our current age from about the 80s till Covid)) and then the pendulum swings the other direction for a while and labor gets more of an upper hand - The Progressive era in the early 20th Century, During the Great Depression, COVID (referring to the Great Resignation and the rise in wages that has accompanied it). Let's hope we can continue with labor having a seat at the table again, but given our electoral college system and how our Senate work (Wyoming's less than 1 million population gets the same representation as CAs 39 million + filibuster) I'm not optimistic that this will last long.

If you can find space for it then I recommend it. It let me restructure my relationship with work internally, and it doesn't necessarily matter what my job is now, I have a healthier outlook on how I should approach it.

That's particularly helpful in the times where you don't like your job, but want to be happy anyway. Unfortunately I think that's a personal journey, so I can't really offer any advice on how that could work for you except to say, you need the time to figure it out.

> Those people will generate enough taxes and labor for lazy people like me, and it's okay.

Feels odd to me to make a statement like this. Is it in jest?

In my view everyone should pull the same minimum. Not have some people work more to offset other people working less.

Do you think everyone pulling the same minimum will ever happen? I don't, and it might be important to come to terms with that concept... otherwise I imagine you'd harbor some malice towards people who don't.

> Do you think everyone pulling the same minimum will ever happen? I don't, and it might be important to come to terms with that concept...

Well i read the parent comment as if it was referring to a hypothetical "less work" society. With better work-life balance. Of which i agree with.

What i don't agree with, is balancing this society on the fact that some are required to work more than others. Ie just because some people are addicted, or even healthily-like to work more, that they would be required to work 40h/w where as perhaps the parent comment would only be required to work 20h/w.

"Required" in this context would be for society to stay afloat due to taxes or whatever hypothetical reason. It's pretty loose, i'm inferring a lot from the parent comment of "Those people will generate enough taxes and labor for lazy people like me, and it's okay".

Do you think we should have some cap on wages as well, to keep things fare on the other side of the equation?

If you are pretty good at your work that minimum might only take 20 hours?

Well i'm not talking hours, to be clear. Just some idea that we're all equal.

Ie, if a hypothetical society depends on addicts working more than "lazy people" (in the parents words) then it feels to me we're set up for failure.

If you're after parasites, lazy software developers aren't the low hanging fruit. People who pull in multiple thousands a month plus from dividends, bonds, rental and stock portfolios are where the real fat is.

Weirdly American culture has twisted these people into paragons of success while the people who do all the really tough and necessary work are paid poor wages, made to feel like shit about it at the same time and tricked and cheated when they try to unionize.

> People who pull in multiple thousands a month plus from dividends, bonds, rental and stock portfolios are where the real fat is.

those people risked capital to obtain that income. There's this idea that capital is "lazy" and people who risk it doesn't deserve the rewards that come with such risks.

> There's this idea that capital is "lazy" and people who risk it doesn't deserve the rewards that come with such risks.

No, you are confusing capital with work: you can tell by looking at which of the two is subjected to much higher taxation, which is the concrete evidence that society judges the people doing it as less deserving of retaining the rewards that come with it than the less-taxed activity.

In my opinion people should only be able to earn money through work. After all, if everyone stopped working and started living off their investments, there wouldn't be any capital gains.

The problem isn't that capital is lazy, it's that the interest rate can't actually reach 0% and the capital market can't actually reach an equilibrium so it is stuck at some low interest rate floor instead of going all the way to 0%.

The idea that your net worth should grow based on how much you own is absurd. You should instead be paid more for your work and then get to increase your net worth that way. That's better for everyone involved except for those who don't want to work at all.

I'm not after parasites.

I'm after not building our ideal utopia of work-life balance on the backs of others who, for whatever reason, don't get to have a work-life balance.

Seems a pretty slippery slope.

How does one avoid the inequality, though? One could be working 60 hours a week at fast food joints and not make anywhere close to a part time software developer. As a result, the “lazy” developer is generating more tax revenue. There are too many possibilities to make it “fair”, unless we get rid of the income tax. Even if everyone paid the same amount, it wouldn’t be fair, unless everyone made the same amount of money. Which also doesn’t seem fair.

It's not a complete avoidance. Rather, i'm just advocating that we don't build the idea of less work on the shoulders of people who work more. That seems to me to almost codify the need for some people working more, and that seems a slippery slope for _some_ people getting good work-life balances and others not.

My argument is that we _all_ should qualify for a work-life balance. Not depend on some people not getting a good work-life balance.

I agree that the original commenter's last paragraph was a bit unnecessary, but let's not kid ourselves either: if everyone put in a solid 2 hours a day doing good, essential work all good, essential work would be done in 6 months. Most of our time at work is spent doing things which are either pointless or downright damaging.

I can .. somewhat agree with that.

Not to disagree with your general direction though, but i don't honestly think i could boil what i do down into 2 hours. On paper? possibly. In practice i spend far more time thinking about problems, taking breaks from problems, etc - than i do actually writing the solutions. But i'm not claiming i'm any good heh, just that it often takes me hours and hours.

Your assertion is generally correct i think in efficiency sake. Ie when i put in 14h days, i'm exponentially paying a higher tax on my efficiency by putting in extra hours - i'm over worked and tired, i'm far from my best. But i still think i can more work done in those 14h than i do in 8, or especially 4/etc.

Moreso I'd say your hours might be very good and productive but you are counterbalanced by 10 other people doing absolute shit jobs.

How many people work as prison guards watching over people on harmless drug offenses in the US? How many soldiers are stationed or fighting in pointless wars? How many loggers work in the Amazon, or how many poachers? I'd much prefer they take some of your work instead.

Unless there is an universal income, and unless entry jobs can be better paid with 20 hours, that's how it is going to be.

Employers have this mentality of workers either work 40 hours or are not hired, it's all-or-nothing.

So if workers CONSENT to do all the work and get all the money, it's only fair that a fraction of that money is sent to those who have no work and no money.

Workers have a better chance of negotiating their work time than the unemployed. And if they can't because they will be replaced by somebody else who will work 40 hours, then it's a political problem that needs fixing.

But meanwhile, I'd rather get welfare than suffer at work. It's not like capitalist society has a sense of "community", so I don't feel like there is a need to participate.

In that case, you're probably not living off of welfare.

Others will always excel or do more because they feel that's valuable, so though I agree with you, I don't think it could ever work that way.

Some people work harder because they want to see their team succeed, some people do it because it's a status game to them, some people do it because they've got nothing better to do.

“Should”? Based on what? This phrasing implies some law of nature like diffraction of light or the nitrogen cycle, but it’s just an opinion that you don’t even bother to try to justify. It’s feel-good nonsense with no basis in reality, or for that matter, history.

> Those people will generate enough taxes and labor for lazy people like me, and it's okay.

Sorry, but it's definitely not ok.

Actually it is, and only a very strict and damaging protestant work ethic would tell you otherwise.

Oh, you meant that those poor workaholics shouldn't exhaust themselves by overexerting over too much work? With that I can agree. But taxing those producing the most so as not to leave behind those who have received fewer gifts, inheritance or good contacts? That's how you build a civilization. If only because those producing the most are also those receiving the most from their peers upfront.

Implicit in your position is a lack of agency. The high producers only produce highly because of receiving gifts from their peers. And the low producers are those who have not received enough gifts.

You leave no room for agency, competency, motivation. OP explicitly mentions that he just wants to be lazy....

I linked elsewhere to an essay showing how 'lazy' or 'idle' aren't insults, but mere synonyms for 'efficient' and 'purposeful'.

I don't get how you deduce that there's no room for agency. You seem to confound that with the different amounts of leverage that people with widely different origins get; those coming from a more resourceful starting point will produce more, regardless of the actual effort they put in.

Why not? Everyone has to be maximally productive at all times?

No, but I should not have to subsidize your laziness. I don't care if you want to lay on the couch all day, but it is not okay to steal money from me to do so.

He says everyone should work 20-30 hours, not more. How do you equate that with laying on the couch all day?

He's taking it to the limit to illustrate that even if you are minimally productive, he wouldn't care as long as you don't ask him to support you.

He actually edited his post and the wording of his last sentence has a different meaning now.

https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

You're just making things up now. They said they want to work 20-30 hours a week, not lay on the couch all day. How would someone else working 10-20 hours less than you equate to them stealing money from you?

Eh, I think the point is that there are some who are so far gone into the "live to work" mentality that there's really no point in trying to convince them otherwise. The only option is radical acceptance and taking as a silver lining that they will probably produce higher than average output which benefits you ever so marginally.

More taxes are a result of earning more and not really from working more although they are usually related, so they still get compensated for that "extra" work.

>More taxes are a result of earning more and not really from working more although they are usually related

Even the mythical 10x engineer is not really getting paid 10x more than their same level peers so no not really.

So this even furthers the argument. Why bother having 10x the output if you only see a smidge of that productivity as increased income?

We're not talking about being more productive in the same number of hours. If you earn $2000 you pay more taxes than if you earn $1000, even if you work double the hours to earn $2000. So you still get rewarded for your extra time.

That's not how most jobs work, you get paid a salary, some people still work 60hr weeks and do not get paid more than their peers.

I refer you to my GP comment, where this is covered.

I disagree that earning more and working more are usually related. It can be related, but I don't think it's the norm. I think the norm is working more than you're getting paid for, and that pay not differing from those who are working less than you. Just look at people wringing themselves out in the hospitality and services industries, they're not getting paid more than everyone else.

The important part is earning more leads to paying more taxes. If you work the same job you'll earn more money while working 40hrs than working 20hrs. Where 40hrs is the standard, so in a general sense people working normal hours will pay more taxes than people working reduced hours.

Ah, I think we were just talking past eachother then. That makes sense to me. I was imagining the situations where the same two employees are paid 40hrs/week but one works 40 and one works 60. It sounds like you were thinking of people working part time versus people working full time, in which case definitely, the latter correlates to more income and more taxes.

It's not that uncommon for one software engineer to outearn another by 10x, assuming a little job hopping.

I agree but I think it's more relevant to compare the same levels at the same org. I would be pretty shocked to hear that there is any 10x delta in total comp across L5s at Google lets say.

The 10x delta exists. You just have to compare the L5 engineer from the lowest paying region with the L5 from the highest paying one. And for the same effort and output.

I don't think that counts as all else being equal. L5 in India vs L5 in SFBay Area isn't an interesting comparison.

A 10x difference between 2 L5 engineers in Mountain View is what I really meant.

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