-15 karma · joined February 15, 2022
Human nature is our species ability to transform nature. A cat, for example, is only doing hunting for immediate consumption. A pet cat is even more limited, just a furrring biological shell, he does not hunt.
So when a human is limited in all his potentials, thinking, planning, building, etc to something like a tool on the market, optimized for some task, when human relations limited to objects of consumption... this will reduce human to just one sided being.
May be this optimization was once necessary some time ago, since labor productivity was low and this high division of labor allowed optimized production, to feed everyone.
At the moment, the labor productivity is so high, that only 10-20% working on something necessary for living. But all work is still done as this optimized instrumental labor, as life depends on it. This is not required anymore.
The solution is obvious.. build more not as an optimized one sided "worker", but as an universal human being, as a free time activity.
Which politically means that the work day should be reduced.. and this is not easy to implement. But if you really want a social change, this is the way to go.
Work is something that is done to reproduce life. Programming, reading, is not work, it is life activity itself, do it as you like.
Example 2: it does make sense to optimize biologically needed production. But it does not make really sense to optimize life activity. I like cycling, I measure my performance, but I'm ok that some people cycle just for fun.
But the main problem I think is: there is no option to work less. Lets say you want to consume less, what will you do with your money, throw away? So I think that the workday should be reduced.
Something should change in what work is, how production is organized and profit is produced or I do not see how else this contradiction can be resolved.
The work can be organized by reducing work time (workday) to produce all there is necessary for biological living. Say 4 h workday (see productivity growth on why this is possible), no wage cut, at production factors, construction, food, etc. This 4 hour workday will be enough for some good level of living. And everything else can be produced somehow else, not as work. Then it will not be necessary to keep production of some object only for the sake of paying for a house, thus consumption will slightly lower but work day will lower, too.
Hm, I know some obvious contradictions. Just saying.. not interested in discussing this.