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Comment by notwokeno | Hacker News Reader

I'm actually not even sure that's it. What do you get with the tokens you're paid in? The ability to participate in society. There's no longer a society to participate in though as all the social institutions have been deconstructed. Marriage, land ownership, religion, tradition, real communities, family is still nominally there but there's little left of it. It's not like people are going to starve to death if they don't work (and is that something you even want?) so it's not happening.

Note that this isn't the first time in history this has happened.

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> Marriage, land ownership, religion, tradition, real communities, family is still nominally there but there's little left of it.

Curious about where you live and where you grew up? I ask because none of these rings true for me. Many of my friends have bought homes and started families, along the way, they’ve created their own traditions, and are part of communities where they know their neighbors. And this isn’t in just in one place in the country.

Obviously there are plenty of individuals where this isn't the case (and there are plenty of people working hard) but the discussion is about the movement of the group and this does appear to be where things are going on both sides.

Where exactly is this movement you're seeing? I'm seeing a lot of speculation with no actual facts or data to back it up.

Not OP, but I think the term "movement" was meant to mean the percentage of people who are starting families, keeping their religion, owning homes, etc. is moving downward. Pew Research has plenty of evidence for this movement downward.

The point is about a snowballing larger societal collapse, led by the US and UK. (But it will reach everywhere eventually.)

If you and your friends are rich and dull enough, you can ostrich-hole it for a while yet.

If you want to see the canary in the coal mine, try befriending someone who works in the service industry.

People were working harder for even less a hundred years ago and society didn't collapse.

So what are people missing today?

I’m not sure this is true anymore. The median American will never be able to afford their own home at current housing prices. Sure, we have a higher gdp per capita, but it doesn’t buy us the things we actually need like housing, health care, etc.

Perhaps what’s needed is to bring back family homesteads, but that doesn’t feel like much progress.

Do you know what life was like 100 years ago in the US?

35% of households had access to electricity.

About 20% had some sort of indoor plumbing, running hot water would be even rarer.

Most people heated their houses by shoveling coal or feeding wood fires.

Society was even more racially segregated and legally codified and brutally enforced by the government.

In warmer rural areas it wasn't uncommon for hookworm to be endemic due to shallow dug latrines.

1/12 children 10 to 15 were working instead of school.

Most adults did not graduate high school and illiteracy was not uncommon.

This whole subthread is quite strange. I'm still not sure what societal collapse GP is seeing.

We have electricity, plumbing, literacy, low hookworm rates, and rapidly declining human fellowship, companionship and participation.

Strange times indeed.

> rapidly declining human fellowship, companionship and participation

What is the evidence for this?

This just reads like the eternal conservative lament that society is going down the tubes.

The evidence is that I can't even be bothered to look up evidence for you. :-)

I'd say the difference between those times is the feeling of agency/possibility of a good life (defining good life by what that meant at the time). Objectively, material conditions were worse, but due to a variety of factors, the average person felt that society was getting better. We'll put up with a lot of shit if we think it's temporary or something that we could change.

And some people honestly liked living like that. My great-great grandparents lived until the 1980s (born in the 1870s) and refused to get indoor plumbing. People are weird and sentiment matters.

Well that notion of honesty is subjective and meaningless.

Subjective, absolutely.

Meaningless, no, because we're hairless chaos apes living in hives of other hairless chaos apes and plenty of our fellow apes live their lives based on this subjective measure which means it needs to be considered in governing and managerial decisions.

I want to add that the current feeling the country is getting worse, in my opinion, is pushed by right wing media.

One of the main themes of conservatives is that then is better than now as well as holding back change their supporters push the notion that things are getting worse (regardless if it's true or what specifics) to help them get elected

The right are open about pushing 'it's worse than it's ever been'. The left prefers to memory-hole history and combine that memory hole with thought terminating hyperbole: They like to present threats completely divorced of historical context.

(I worked in political communications and spent a couple of years getting lists of stories and headlines from all sides of the aisle fed to my email.)

One example of this is all the fear-mongering the Dems/their media arms do around things like abortion rights or queer rights/safety. (And before anybody comes for me, I'm a lesbian so I'm impacted by both.) Like apparently I'm supposed to be constantly terrified by the backsliding on both. And they do concern me but like I grew up in the 90s? I personally remember things being worse and I wasn't curled up in a ball throwing money at the Dems to Save Me. (And speaking of memory holing, as a gay millennial I remember quite clearly how long it took for the Dems to get behind gay marriage: Let's not pretend the current socially progressive planks are anything other than realizing we're a voting bloc that can be pandered to as hard as the MAGA people. I have no doubt the Dems would throw queer people under the bus tomorrow if it were a more viable electoral strategy to do so.)

Tradition, nationalism, religion etc. were much stronger a hundred years ago. IE there was a society worth working to participate in.

Finland is in the top position in the world happiness report in 2022. Followed by Denmark and Iceland in second and third place. Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Israel and New Zealand, were among the top 10 'happiest' countries in the world [1].

Except for Israel wouldn't you say though counties have some of the lowest religious participation? What about nationalism?

I'm not trying to prove the opposite of you view as this doesn't show causation but I think it sufficiently counters your view

> If you want to see the canary in the coal mine, try befriending someone who works in the service industry.

I have a couple of very close friends in the service industry.

They are less well off than others I know and it’s reflected in their lives (still renting, fewer vacations), but no signs of societal collapse (have families and community relationships) there either.

What am I supposed to be noticing?

How do they support a family on a service industry income? Living paycheck to paycheck just hoping nothing bad happens?

Service industry doesn’t necessarily mean poverty wages. For hotel housekeeping and similar it probably is though.

Had a friend making about $50k waiting tables depending on the year in a city you’d likely never heard of before switching to sales.

Another working in a kitchen planning to buy a home soon.

I know a couple local bartenders who do much better than I expected for a neighborhood bar.

Met a guy years ago who was a school janitor and for whatever reason I always thought they would be poor. Turns out that’s a pretty good job.

That said, none of these people work as a cashier at McDonald’s or hotel room cleaner either. The one making $50k worked at a national steakhouse chain, not a fancy one but a step up from Applebees.

Yeah, you didn't mention their families though. And regardless divorce rates are way up.

If the incentive to work is "yeah you can show up and nothing will go wrong." Great. The same thing happens if you don't leave your parent's basement/subsidized housing/your friend's couch and you won't have to put up with as much crap or pay for a car. Do you see why people aren't bothering?

Great you live in a bubble!

BEFORE the pandemic most americans couldn't afford a $400 emergency bill, people are pretty desperate in the US on average and if you don't encounter that day to day you are living in comparative luxury.

I recently transitioned from long term NEET to full time work and this is hitting me hard. I just end up sitting at home alone playing video games all weekend anyway. What's the point of working the other five days? Especially if the work isn't enjoyable.

Maybe you can explain this to me because I never understand this "why work?" sentiment. How do you pay your rent, have food, etc. without working?

Some degree of support network, and when you get paid dirt and the cost to work is high itself (buying and maintaining a car being the big one) the tiny amount of money you get for a huge mental and physical toll just isn't worth it?

You are likely still going to be entirely dependent upon that support network job or no job. Jobs that are available to most people dont generally pay a living wage anymore, is that not sinking in for you?

Nowadays, you can't make any demand if you don't work because of a choice of yours.

workers (should) have unions, the ability to go to strike, and the political position to ask better

The anger of the general public is moving on from high unemployment rates to low wage for workers.

- Have no job ? Nobody cares anymore since service industry needs a workforce (even if you're qualified in any other field)

- Have an underpaid job ? You can have a political impact nowadays.

Also, jobs allow you to have better jobs in the future. You build experience, and working in some companies, like Amazon, allows you to follow a university course, as mention in OP's article.

If you're not doing this for you, you should just have a job to be able to flip off abusive bosses.

>Jobs that are available to most people don't generally pay a living wage anymore

I don't think it can be a long lasting trend. Check out China, where ppl are protesting. And check out what happens at Amazon in the USA, where the high rate of resignation worries management https://news.yahoo.com/amazon-burns-workers-quickly-executiv...

I am trying to learn here so I am asking these questions with genuine curiosity.

When you say "support network" - I hear that as "friends and family" or some sort of community support (eg: church?) Is that what you mean?

And if so, is it "fine" to not work and thus be a bigger burden on this network? Meaning, even if a role doesn't pay a "living wage", there's a big difference between just living on your friend's couch and eat their food (or whatever) and being able to work and contribute say $2K/month towards your friend for the favor they are doing you?

It is actually quite easy to find food and be alive without money.

This “rent” thing sounds suspicious, you do you I guess.

OP's article wasn't about choosing between not working and working in hotels, it's about hotel workers who moved on to other industries after a few years of covid. They're no longer available to work in hotels, no matter how you compensate them : they move on and are happy with their new job and lives.

But in your situation, if you have the opportunity to work, you can do it to grow the GDP and make your wage. You can't just expect that others, who might also dislike their jobs, have to pay taxes to share their salary with you just because you don't want to work.

There are real issues that cause unemployment : real estate that prices out workers in cities with jobs, banks that expect you to have a job before giving you a credit, when you need to afford a license and a car before you start a job, inconsistencies between companies expectations and job seekers, injuries, depression or lack of confidence,...

But being a crybaby about working isn't a reason to piggy back on workers.

I'm not even neoliberal, I'm communist. And I think you should work both for yourself and for the sake of the others.

> There's no longer a society to participate in though as all the social institutions have been deconstructed. Marriage, land ownership, religion, tradition, real communities, family is still nominally there but there's little left of it.

What a strange statement. Could you give some evidence?

> It's not like people are going to starve to death if they don't work

Uh. They may not starve to death but most would certainly end up living in the street and die early in almost all developed country.

Even in Silicon Valley there are more churches than libraries.

If it's anything like the rest of the country most of those churches are dead and/or irrelevant. Showing up on Sunday, singing, and giving money to poor people isn't religion.

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