Comment by Forgeties79 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Forgeties79 | Hacker News Reader

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As I’ve gotten older, I have been vocalizing a question to my friends and family: why is it so unreasonable of me to not want to work a job I don’t like, and instead spend my time producing documentaries and teaching audio production to kids? These are two things I’ve found I love doing. They provide value to society. Yet a sustained income from them is basically unattainable except in very specific, lucky cases, not to mention the income is minimal.

People love to consume art but don’t value the arts. People love the idea of kids - especially “at risk youth” - having technical or otherwise just interesting programming, yet in the case of audio production like I mentioned above there is just one nonprofit here busting its ass trying to make it happen as the only entity attempting it.

All of this is to say, if I didn’t have to worry about making a living and had a bunch of leisure time, I would be putting my time and energy towards these endeavors. Because I think they are valuable, they mean something to me, and I think society would benefit from it too. Unfortunately we have this ridiculous habit of tying morality to work in the US as a result of our Puritan hangover, which means I am not able to pursue the above unless someone deems it worthy of sustained funding (they won’t because virtually no ROI on documentaries or ethical kids programs) or I am sitting on a nest egg most people can’t ever achieve so I don’t have to worry about surviving.

Sorry for the semi-rant. The negative ripple effect tying work to morality has on our society is truly hard to overstate and it upsets me a lot. It’s such a cynical view of people and, unfortunately, is often tied to racial perceptions as well.

Has it occurred to you that the lack of people willing to pay for what you're trying to offer may be indicative that it's not quite as valuable as you perceive it to be?

I don't think it's work specifically that's tied to morality, but production. If someone is obviously consuming more than they're producing, then they're going to get negative attention. In 2022 it's not always clear exactly how much someone is producing, so it's generally assumed that someone with a full time job produces enough to cover their needs while the unemployed surviving off of welfare do not.

We even make allowances for people trying to reach net positive production. Students, for example, aren't typically looked down upon. It's only people who are actually lazy and not doing anything useful with their lives that are looked down upon, and rightfully so.

> Has it occurred to you that the lack of people willing to pay for what you're trying to offer may be indicative that it's not quite as valuable as you perceive it to be?

This is how we end up with no art, no music, no culture, no raising of the future generations etc. If the only metric via which we value time spent and effort spent is money earned none of these (very important) things can compare even to the most useless widget making / admin job.

Do we even know what it is to be human anymore?

Plenty of people pay for art and music. I didn't say they weren't valuable, I said what you're trying to offer specifically may not be valuable. I know you think it's some incredible service that everybody wants, but have you considered that maybe it isn't?

Are you in the arts or a field adjacent to it, by chance?

That's not relevant to the discussion, if you have something you want to say then just say it. Don't try to ask me a question you think you know the answer to and then tell me my answer precludes me from having an opinion on the subject at hand.

This is one of the most common methods I see employed by bad-faith conversationalist and it's sickening. Your point should stand on it's own merit, not on your ability to invalidate the "oppositions" side.

> That's not relevant to the discussion, if you have something you want to say then just say it.

Hey ease off throttle man. This isn’t Reddit.

That makes no sense. People do pay for those things. They buy art and concert tickets. Teaching isn't super lucrative but they earn a decent living wage in most areas.

Agreed with your comment up to this:

>but they earn a decent living wage in most areas.

Debatable and only part of the problem. Education is a terrible example for you to bring up, as evidenced by the absurdly low salaries they receive combined with the broad expectations of their job (therapy, education, tutoring, crisis intervention, nutrition, baby sitting, special needs identification, the list goes on).

Have you seen the turnover rates in education? It’s in an appalling state. No resources, garbage pay, and now they’re being asked to shoot back at school shooters as their schools are redesigned to look like prisons, all while politicians play tug of war with their curriculum as a proxy battle for social policies.

The sad fact is we don’t value educators in the US. Hell we don’t value caregivers much either.

>Has it occurred to you that the lack of people willing to pay for what you're trying to offer may be indicative that it's not quite as valuable as you perceive it to be?

Is producing cigarettes, making apps more addictives, making food superpalatable, synthetizing pernicious drugs and so on more valuable than producing documentaries, studying ancient languages and civilazations, studying exoterical physics topics?

Not everything that we're paying for is valuable and not everything valuable is being paid for.

I guess that depends on how you define value. Tobacco, while unhealthy, can have great value to the user. Those addictive apps provide a low cost leisure activity for millions of people. We all benefit from advances in food sciences every day. Many of those pernicious have a purpose and are often more helpful than they are harmful.

All the things you mentioned provide at least short term tangible benefits to the consumers. How will the average person benefit from the study of ancient languages and civilizations or esoteric physics? People already pay for documentaries they're interested in, there's a reason they're produced. Why do you think academia for academia's sake is inherently beneficial for the rest of society? I see this notion of expressed here and elsewhere that if something is academically challenging or interesting, it must therefore be good to spend time studying.

> Not everything that we're paying for is valuable and not everything valuable is being paid for.

Honestly all of these threads could be distilled into this simple point. Way more concise than what I wrote that’s for sure haha.

> It's only people who are actually lazy and not doing anything useful with their lives that are looked down upon, and rightfully so.

Your view is manifestly incorrect. There are so many groups of people that are looked down upon, what you describe is just a tiny tiny subset of these. If you are grasping to find an example, that shows a great deal about your position in life.

(If you still struggling, start with sex workers, people working in waste management, and people with physical disabilities, aka 'hookers' and 'trash people' and 'cripples'. Yeah, they definitely not looked down upon. LOL. I could literally write 10 pages of further examples.)

I obviously wasn't saying the only prejudice in the world exists against lazy people and that no other group of people were ever looked down upon. You've got to use context clues before getting all fired up like this. The was in response to how we purportedly "tie work to morality". It was obviously meant as something closer to:

> It's only people who are actually lazy and not doing anything useful with their lives that are looked down upon *for not working a typically job.*, and rightfully so

Really you should try to avoid taking things intentionally out of context and getting yourself worked up over, it's not healthy.

You’re being very rude and antagonistic.

Do you think the measure of worth in society is how much people are willing to pay for it? Is that the metric by which we should judge all contributions to society?

Also, do you think documentaries are valuable? Because the vast majority do not have investors and do not make much money. Frankly without grants we’d barely have any.

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