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Comment by brendoelfrendo | Hacker News Reader

I always think that I would hate to work into my old age, but it's different for some. I can't speak to what Anna's financial situation is like, but the way she talks about her work as part of the community and a way to stay active and independent makes me think that she's content, and that's great. She certainly seems like she's doing well for 101!

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I have an uncle that is extremely old and until a year and a half ago he was still working. But he needed a car for his job and he decided that he's going to get rid of the car before he ends someone else's life and so he had to give up his job too. He's a super nice character, has a great sense of humor and in general is probably one of the most fun and optimistic people that I know. He'd be working still if not for the car and I know that the loss of the job and a chunk of his independence is hard for him. But he does not let it get him down for long, just finds new things to do (he's currently studying bridge like his life depends on it).

Working for a larger soul sucking corporation that long would be spiritually crushing.

But serving your community coffee every day seems like a great way to stay involved in your community doing something useful.

It's the same reason you see barbers working well into their 70s.

After a lifetime offering a service to your neighbourhood, cutting hair and having a chat, why would you even retire? Just to stare at a wall, useless and lonely?

My barber is 75+ and he says that he has no intention of ever retiring, until he is forced to by health reasons.

There was a barber down the street from my former work place, and I had no idea what his hours were. He seemed to just show up and work when he felt like it. Clearly was semi-retired.

Was a great story teller and joke teller. That was worth the price of a haircut by itself.

I can’t imagine I’d ever stop programming as long as I’m mentally and physically capable of it. That doesn’t mean I’d work until I drop, because I can always do hobby projects for myself instead. Being a hobby barista probably doesn’t work quite the same way.

For most people, it proves very disorienting to not be doing something constructive for others, and in a capitalist world, where everything easily becomes transactional and people get a little isolated from deeper community and family, it's kind of organic for that drive to be fulfilled by continuing to work in old age. Lots of people do it by choice.

If you feel like you might be on that road, the smart trick is to start thinking early about what kind of work you might want to take up during that stage and plant the seeds for it early.

Some people don't have a lot of choice to prepare, and just end up falling into being barista because the job is there and they find they enjoy it. But the other barista at that same cafe might be the owner who bought it as their own "retirement", filling shifts when they want to, while giving the neighborhood a place to gather.

>and in a capitalist world, where everything easily becomes transactional and people get a little isolated from deeper community and family,

What does this have to do with capitalism?

Huh?

Not every culture or community is built so centrally around atomization and transactionality as the prevailing one is. But those things represent the essence of what capitalism is, and are central to what it aspires to acheive. It works its magic when people can negotiate their relationships through currency and through accounts measured against it, and so a society that means to participate in it is one that tends to engender payment, quantified barter, and unburdened individuality over alternatives like filial concern or community enrichment.

It's not really a controversial thing to suggest, and wasn't there to be accusatory or something. It's the world we live in.

Not only is not controversial but one of the bases of Marxist critique of capitalism is the concept of alienation, which not even the staunchest defenders of capitalism deny.

Compared to what? AFAICT, all other systems alienate more, not less.

If the pensions in Italy are anything like in Spain, she’s making more money off it than young people are making working. Plus she’s probably defrauding the pension system by both collecting her pension and working.

Is it defrauding it if you contributed to it all your working life?

Yes. You can’t work and collect a pension.

You are saying that very matter-of-factly, while that is not how it works here in the Netherlands, and probably also in other places in Europe. The reasoning being, the pension isn't an unemployment benefit, pension is a fund you spent your career investing into.

A defined benefit pension (or any other retiree benefit such as healthcare) is a claim on future productivity.

“Contributing” cash to it may not be enough, if the cash didn’t convert into sufficient automation to offset declines in humans due to declining birthrates.

So the question gets more interesting if it’s “Was contributing whatever amount calculated (using tenuous assumptions) many decades ago enough, especially if you chose not to have well raised kids who in turn could provide society with the retiree benefits?”

And then that opens up a can of worms about who was and was not expected to have well raised kids, and it gets messy very quickly, yet at the same time, we see a clear macro problem of taking more and more from a smaller young population and giving it to a bigger and bigger old population.

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