Comment by michaelchisari | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelchisari | Hacker News Reader

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Maybe there are a portion of people who are allergic to productivity. Not just work, but doing anything of import or use. No matter what social pressures there might be, they will always shirk responsibility, do the bare minimum or even less, and never have greater ambitions. The type of people who will always wait to take the garbage out until someone stands over them and doesn't leave until they've done it.

I don't agree that these people are very many. I think they're extraordinarily rare, but it makes us feel better about ourselves if we think that they are common, and we have managed to rise above the common.

But regardless, if they don't want to be doing anything worthwhile, and they're willing to accept the many social and economic consequences of that (no fun vacations, very hard time finding a partner, no gadgets or new cool stuff, no fancy dinners out), then I'd rather not force them to work side by side with people who want to be there. Give them a universal income, so they can rent a roof over their head, buy somes clothes and food, and then leave them be.

I don't think people are static objects. Even if you've come into contact with one of these "types" of people, chances are that they are living on a meager amount of energy.

When people are energy drained, they are either in poor health mentally, emotionally, socially, or physically.

They might have expended an extraordinary amount of energy into something with no compensation. They might have broken their bodies, minds, and hearts over the kind of work they do.

The human evaluation of what constitutes as value added to society is not perfect. The human evaluation of what to do is not perfect. Sometimes people just don't know what to do.

Also, social pressure shouldn't be the motivator. That's motivation that comes from fear. It is literally like living solely for the sake of dying, and all I can do is feel a tremendous amount of pain for people if they experience such a thing.

(no fun vacations, very hard time finding a partner, no gadgets or new cool stuff, no fancy dinners out).

Those are trivialities in my subjective opinion.

I took it as examples. Ways one might enjoy the fruits of their labor in the context of modern western society.

Your reply made me realize another way to think of it though. If all these things we spend money on are trivial, then that supports the notion. Money is a poor measure of one's productivity.

Having a very hard time finding a partner is a triviality in your opinion? If so, I suspect that puts you in a very small minority.

That one kind of sticks out as being rather disconnected from the rest.

I think his point is that most people don't work for fancy holidays or trinkets or whatever.

Most people work to put a roof over their head and eat. Everything else is secondary - both trivial in terms of desire (it's less important), and trivial in terms of cost (a new 24" LCD might cost 3 days rent in some areas)

I don't think that is really true. If all people were working for was a roof over their head and food, they could get by on very little.

Most people work because they want to live in an expensive neighborhood and like to have new cars, new clothes, new electronics. Otherwise they would move somewhere where house is extremely cheap and where they don't have to commute every day.

I don't know how it is in the US, but here in Germany you can have an apartment in a medium sized city and food for 500 Euro a month. You don't have to work for 40 hours a week to make that much.

> Most people work because they want to live in an expensive neighborhood

So, to put a roof over their head. Hey, no one said they had to go for the cheapest roof! :)

I don't want to live where I do because it's an expensive neighbourhood. I want to live where I do because it's where everyone I know lives. Living somewhere else would mean abandoning friends and family.

Fundamentally that's the only thing that stops me from leaving the UK this second.

You make it sound as if it's an innate desire to feel important by living in a fancy place.

>> "...innate desire to feel important by living in a fancy place."

But that desire for importance is a thing, too. How else do we explain all the transplants moving to drastically-overpriced Williamsburg/Bushwick without knowing a soul?

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