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Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

We have easier and safer jobs than anyone in history, and the highest quality of material life.

If you wanted to live the quality of life of a regularl worker in 1900 you can probably do it driving Uber 2 hours a day. We work more hours because we want the improving lifestyle

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The world is full of bullshit jobs and bullshit tasks that are unproductive. The next button sending that email for you will balloon the growing pile of bullshit, but look like productivity to passive analysis. So yes our lifestyles have improved, but our work on bullshit is not responsible for those improvements.

Now I'm just picturing AI generating and sending emails so another AI can craft and send a response back.

I keep hearing this but I never had a bs job, don't know anyone who's hired for one (also it doesn't make sense.)

What is your job that you do?

You should read the book on this if you’re really interested but here’s a review. https://www.mudamasters.com/en/personal-growth/bullshit-jobs...

I work in consulting so a large part of my job is acting as a box ticker or task master to use Graeber’s definition.

I recently worked for a company that I ultimately realized by the time I was leaving that the whole thing was a BS job. I was doing real, good work, but the entire org was so dysfunctional that the project was doomed to failure. And I'm not entirely sure that ultimately this wasn't known somehow from the top; idk, I really feel like the CIO who was running it had some significant problems, she did a lot of magical thinking/was delusional.

Wow, this exactly describes my work in a dysfunctional startup. We set impossible time goals and don't make them. We are making progress on our software project. The goal of this is a faster something, but our only demonstrated and tested scenarios were extremely optimized by us. I don't see us actually being useful in general cases. In such a situation, I am just trying to hang on until my options vest and then move on.

Ah. Well, if its that dysfunctional, will the options be worth anything?

I have thought about that. It's hard to estimate the value of unlikely to succeed company options. The answer of course is do your own startup, so you can be the one making foolish decisions and causing chaotic development, instead of someone else.

Where can you rent on ~$50 a day, and still have money left over for food and car payments (necessary for that job), let alone things that a regular worker could afford in 1900?

Pretty much most of northern England, outside London a lot of people get by on 18k a year salaries

You may be heavily overestimating lifestyles in 1900.

Here's a very interesting book written in the early 1900s looking at families with a father in solid employment, ~~renting for~~ (edit - living on) about 1 pound a week in London. They're poor, but not the poorest - not in the workhouses.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58691/pg58691-images.ht...

Regardless of precise lines, I recommend reading this as an actual look (mixture of descriptive prose and figures & stats) at life for people of the time.

I also recommend Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier for a report on workers in northern England in the 1930s and their living conditions (and the second part on why Socialism isn't being embraced in the UK, but that's a different topic). I'm pretty sure that's also easy to achieve today.

A regular worker hasn't seen a car in 1900 and lived in a tenament with 4 generations crammed into a room. You can afford that on 50 a day if you wanted to live that way. That's my point, we don't want to live that way so we work more.

You literally said "work as an Uber driver," which is why I said car payments. They're necessary for the job.

If you want to keep it in 1900's-speak, I could say "afford the payments on the overalls you need at the factory," but the idea would be ridiculous because the factory would provide the overalls.

Oh gotcha lol ok. Change that to "drive THREE hours Uber using someone else's car and give them a third of the pay for the use of the car" if that helps you connect to the idea better

1900 is not the era I would choose. It's peak wealth disparity. How about the 15th century?

Ok lol 15th century it is...

What was the typical job? What was life expectancy? How warm was a typical home in the winter? How many books did an average person see (much less, read) in the lives? What was travel like?

Also wealth disparity is a stupid metric. If you and I are homeless under the bridge, it does me no good that we are equal. If I have a house and you have an even nicer house, I am fine. (though I'd rather have the nicer house)

Wealth disparity is important, because it also means power disparity.

I hear people who are pro-capitalism say “the poorest people in the US have it better than kings did 500 years ago”, which is only true if you’re considering the stuff those people have. If you’re considering the ability to self-actualize it’s not at all true.

I don’t think things are worse now than ever before, but that doesn’t excuse the concentration of power we have today.

// If you’re considering the ability to self-actualize it’s not at all true.

What does that mean? 500 years ago, did one have ability to speak to like-minded people globally? Could they travel as they wish? Could they pick their religion? Could they choose where to live? Could they pick a wife from another culture? Could they read about any topic they want? Did they have a shot at starting a business and having it grow into real wealth?

If you think you are more powerless than a serf 500 years ago because Bezos has more money then you, then you are the one who gave away your power for no reason

> If you think you are more powerless than a serf 500 years ago because Bezos has more money then you, then you are the one who gave away your power for no reason

That's not at all what GP was saying - I quote, with emphasis added:

> I hear people who are pro-capitalism say “the poorest people in the US have it better than kings did 500 years ago”, which is only true if you’re considering the stuff those people have. If you’re considering the ability to self-actualize it’s not at all true.

What is self actualization, aside from the part of my comment didn't quote?

> 500 years ago, did one have ability to speak to like-minded people globally? Could they travel as they wish? Could they pick their religion? Could they choose where to live? Could they pick a wife from another culture? Could they read about any topic they want? Did they have a shot at starting a business and having it grow into real wealth?

This is hindsight bias. Did they even care about these things? Or did they aspire to have the opposites?

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