A reminder: the people in the past who went through these things and strived for something more (like the above commenter) are a big part of the reason we have it so easy today.
Agreed. Advancements happen because someone somewhere was dissatisfied with the status quo. It's a prerequisite.
Well, because someone was dissatisfied with the status quo and did something about it. Just complaining doesn't count.
Sorry but your ancestors were regularly getting eaten alive by wild animals a few generations back (heck it's still an existential threat to some people). People had to resort to canibalism to survive famines. Plague, TB, polio. Just a hundred years ago there was ~1 in 100 chance a woman would die during childbirth. >40% of kids would not live to age of 5 in 1800s
The only reason you were brought into this world is because your ancestors went through shit you can't even imagine, had children, some of which survived to eventually have you.
I've done this thought exercise many times, traveled extensively, and continue trying different types of work. The truth is that most of us (HN users) have pretty comfortable lives and would be making huge quality of life sacrifices to live the dream of the romanticized past.
There is definitely something to sort out around "what does the high paid knowledge worker do when they no longer have hardship defining their life for them" but I don't know if artificially handicapping yourself and LARPing struggle is the answer.
If you do find the answer then please let me know.
If you aren't happy in your current position you have two choices. You either choose to solve the problem and start taking steps, or you choose to be distracted from the problem.
I know the best times of my life is when I got outside of my comfort zone.
Fear is a cage. The only way out, is through.
Can you articulate the attitude you're reacting against? Because you don't appear to be addressing the OP, who never made a claim about their ancestors having a tough go of it.
> I was not brought into this world to work for 60 years in a job [...] It’s a shame so much of us are forced to spend the best parts of our lives chained to a desk.
Our ancestors would kill for the ability to replace their existence by a desk job.
Likely many of them did kill for the ability to make sure their children had a better life than they did.
But also, why would we need to be sensitive of their feelings?
Man of our ancestors didn't survive the winter, or the plague, or slavery...that doesn't mean I want or necessarily need to wear my self out for someone else's portfolio.
I've had years where I was only present the last 5 minutes before passing out each night. the other 23:55 of the day spent in a mad rush, eat/sleep/work/repeat.
That's nothing to be proud of, especially if you don't have to.
I have to admit that's a new one when it comes to defending the status quo of our work culture
Stating that life should be hard now because your ancestors had it worse is completely missing the point. They all strived to make life better for their progeny. We need to be doing the same. That means refusing to accept things being worse than necessary.
I have nothing against wanting to improve your condition or striving for better - but expecting something just because you were born or a human - really needs some reality checking.
Also your notion that human condition constantly improves through history is not a given - things can very much regress and humanity can disappear.
It's very probable that your highest contribution to society is 9-5 and supporting >2 kids - but it's not very popular to say that I guess.
Everyone is entitled to fight for better conditions
>things can very much regress
That was gp's point
Which life is better on the whole? That of an apex predator in its natural environment or that of livestock?
There is a case to be made that modern humans have been progressively turned into domesticated livestock, abstracted from their ancestral, natural habitat since the neolithic revolution.
It is unclear that cell phones and modern medicine increase net happiness when many work soul sucking, unhealthy sedentary jobs and suffer a long gray existence in nursing homes and hospitals.
Justify wasting your life however you want but calling those who don't agree with your cope "delusional" is rich.
However, the basic human "I don't want more then this" was present in all of them.
It is nit like everyone in history was simultaneously subject of famine, tuberculosis and then died in childbirth.
I'm not sure how this counters the idea that we should not dedicate our lives to menial jobs. It seems kind of unrelated.
> That attitude is so delusional it's hilarious.
I wish we turned down the snark a little bit at HN.
The existential angst you feel is the price society pays so a few can reap clear benefits while many keep pace with the hedonic hampster wheel.
I mean clearly it is a price worth paying so we can watch people do silly dances on tiktok or summon an uber at 2 am to take us home from the bar.
We are here because the human race improved itself, its conditions, to lessen and adapt to environmental limitations and even our own political issues. Not because we worked 50 hour weeks in dead end jobs.
No one's forcing you to do anything. Do all that "so much more".
The problem is then you might want food and shelter and goods and medicine - the results of other's labor. To get that you will have to provide them things of value, i.e., the result of your labor in some form.
If you can do "so much more" then do it and trade for the other things you cannot make.
The reality is that to produce things others want so you can trade for things you want takes work, and that work is not simply having all the fun you feel like every moment.
You sure sound like one, by the level of entitlement ;)
So I take it you provide your own food, build your own home, and do your own healthcare; or find volunteers who love their jobs to do them for you? I hear farming wheat, putting up drywall and examining rashes are jobs that people "only tolerate", it's not generally a calling.
> I am a human being and I am capable of so much more than I can even imagine
Do you happen to be capable of anything useful to other people, as defined by other people themselves? If yes, is it as part of a job you only tolerate, or as part of "so much more"?
The universe doesn't owe you a life of leasure and following your passions and lofty ideals. It doesn't even owe you a life free of starvation and debiliating sickness, yet that is what you and far, far more people today have, compared to pretty much any time in the past.
A 5 day work week of 40 hours desk work is very light compared to what people 100 or 200 years ago had. Labor unions fought very hard for it. There's memes about medieval peasants working only 150 days a year, but those are bullshit (that is the work they had to do for someone else before they could start to make their own food and necessities). Allegedly, hunter-gatherer societies really did a lot less of what could be called work, but often had to compete violently for hunting grounds or face starvation, and didn't have all that much opportunity to test their creative capabilities either.
If you want to show that you're capable of so much more, go ahead and find a way to do it. I can pretty much promise you that it will involve working more, not less.
Or if you want to fix inequality so that everyone has to work less to make a living, fine, very commendable, I totally agree that is a desirable outcome. But I can also guarantee that people will still have work, and not that much less than now.
so please stop whining like a spoiled child.
Btw, that 5 day work week was fought for by people who were ALSO likely called spoiled children at the time.
If you want a better life, find a specific and achievable way in which it can be better, and work towards that. Quite possibly involving a labor union.
But don't moan poetically about how it's such a shame having to work for your living.
3) if all billionaires in the US liquidated absolutely all personal wealth and evenly distributed it, what would happen?
720 billionaires * 10B average wealth / 300M US population = 24k USD per person 1 time payment
Covid stimulus was like, 9k ish depending on your bracketing? So just imagine 2 or 3 covid payments. The conclusion should be that it's not going to change the fabric of how life in America functions. It's certainly not gonna grant GP commenter the ability to chill and paint for the rest of their lives.
"It is this way, has been this way, and you will like it or leave." With that said, it should come as no shock when various rejections of this idea take hold. How could one rationalize not attempting to critically re-evaluate the situation? What is all this progress for?
I can't imagine why the birth rate is falling in certain places so precipitously. /s We tell parents they should have expensive kids for the good of society. We tell kids they have to grow up and support themselves over a lifetime because that's the deal.
You can critically re-evaluate until the cows come home. Won't materially change anything.
I miss old school labor, or at least how they're described in the history books. Forcefully changing things for the better. Now we have a bunch of people critically evaluating everything on social media, expecting things to change as if they asked to speak with society's manager, expecting them to fix it.
However, that's a wildly simplistic view of things.
You can't just say this without realizing that there are severe drawbacks to this. We can't just all work 4h instead of 8h and expect to maintain our standards of living, all the benefits of our times, maintain scientific progress, maintain national security and many, many others.
The ultimate goal should maybe be productivity, and if 4h is better than 8h for whatever reason, then let's do that. But it's definitely not so simple.
Do you really think we are using our resources and technology efficiently? Because that’s the implication here. I think that’s frankly absurd.
Maybe the global maxima is not the standard 9-5 work day, that’s almost a given, but to claim that working dramatically less will yield better results is absurd.
> There was not time in which a common person did not have to do drudgery to get on with life.
Is hunting drudgery? Are epic food-gathering missions? Creating new towns and villages?
I mean - hunter gatherer societies usually had all their food gathering and chores done in just a few hours a day. Spending the rest of their time doing all those things humans like to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer#Social_and_eco...
We could probably figure out how to remove inefficiencies from the markets and have 20 hour workweeks, if enough of us wanted to.
Want to do so much more? Go do it!
This kind of “work” wasn’t done with a primary goal of getting money. Dare I say, it was a “hobby”.
If you hate your job, think about upgrading your job skills to get a job that you would like.
But we also have to acknowledge that simply is not true for a sizeable portion of the population.
The point (for me) is its the moment you make it a job, it becomes drudgery. so the "job" part is what I would need to avoid.
B) My point was that it wasn't really work, hence the quotes. The leisure/aristocracy of the past did need to turn it into work. They simply did it because they liked it.
Of course now that their value has been used up, they have no outlet and just sit around.
Everyone ages differently, and if you're not spry and productive as you age you'll be pushed out regardless of if you can retire.
You know, that’s perhaps because they retired when they simply could not continue working. Perhaps they might have retired before dropping dead if that was an option.
Odd how that magically coincides with turning 65.
Perhaps we can raise people to create their own paths.
False dichotomy. Not working 60 hours a week != leading a life of indolence and sloth.
The hermits going to Alaska with an axe, a saw, and a dream to build a small cabin and live off the land and watch the bears catch salmon, those are certainly ready to make that trade. But your average Western academic talking about work-life-balance? I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility, but it'd be a first.
Yes, the adjunct professor, famous for their work-life-balance.
One solid income used to buy an entire house. Why can't I want to work less and still have a large apartment? And that's without even considering productivity gains.
People can budget for entertainment without long work weeks.
I don't demand much in terms of restaurants and travel and hotels, shrug.
Websites are not expensive to run, and the cost of social media if directly paid for would be single digit dollars a month. Negligible in terms of someone's entire budget.
Just to start, you’re assuming we are using our resources and human labor efficiently.
Which is understandable, and that choice should be theirs to make -- if they accept that it has a direct impact on everything they get, and don't rely on others working more to compensate for them working less.
Surely you have more imagination than that.