Protestant work ethics ruins life's.
I think there's nuances here, I imagine we can all agree that the Victorian workhouse is not an institution anybody ought to revive for example while also appreciating that not all hard work has to be exploitative.
Often the toil is the point. I’m stuck in one of those jobs presently and am aggressively interviewing.
And the work ethic is rarely Protestant, but really a stress reaction for a certain percentage of the population. One that is very hard to get out of once it starts.
Sure, the value is just distributed the opposite of the way most people would like it to be. The vast majority of the benefits accrue to a practically random individual, some goes to the worker, and a tiny bit trickles to the community.
I would wager most people are far more interested in situations where the worker and community benefit greatly, and a tiny bit trickles to whoever owns the business.
Besides that, if you wanted to benefit your community there are much better and easier than ways than grinding away at work and being proud of the income tax you pay, I guess?
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.
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The vast majority are not doctors, nurses or public defenders. The vast majority work for private companies whose direct value to the local community is much less obvious, with the exception of paying people who (might?) live close by to the business.
Plus I did actually include a refutation, which you've then ignored to make this complaint.
In the spirit of being kind and avoiding snark, that'l be the end of this chain :)
Shitty companies exist and you must always be prepared to protect yourself against abuse, but it's ridiculous to look down on those who want what they do 8+ hours a day to have value.
These places thrive on people forgoing any personal life in order to line someone else's pockets.
Be careful what you wish for.
You could make the argument that working hard at your job is setting an example for your family (kids) and community (through leadership/running a successful business/employing people of the community/etc).
For the second thing, you could make that argument. Are you? Because I'm old, and our fathers mostly considered "good parenting" to be work as hard as possible outside the home to aspire to wealth and model hard work. And I don't know any of my generational peers that aim to emulate them in this, because it makes you a distant and uninvolved member of your family.
So if you're going to make this argument for yourself you certainly can. I've experienced first hand what "setting a good example" through labor does for your children.
It's also made me realize that yes, I want to be there for my kids more than my dad did, but I also have personal goals related to work that I want to accomplish in my life, more macro-level goals. It's also made me more involved in my community because I want more ownership in what's going on around me. It's definitely a balance and you need the self-awareness and time management to finese it.
The fact that your tiny view of humanity doesn’t include those people doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
if someone is taking your passion and making money so that they can be a useless lump - that's really fine. its sad if they ruin your work because they don't care or know better. and of course its ultimately critical to cultivate relationship and build families - so its not _everything_.
life without work is pretty empty
There are monks living in mountain monasteries who spend their whole lives in quiet reflection, doing basic chores and making basic meals, and they believe they live the richest lives possible.
I'm not saying we should all be monks, but this idea that work is the only way to live a fulfilling life is very narrow, and very much cultural.
That's all work is. A state of: I can do something for you, and you can do something for me, and we see ourselves as both being better off for it. Sometimes practical constraints means something cannot be delivered immediately, so a party may promise to deliver it later. That is all money and accounting is – a record of the promises made.
We're social creatures. I expect most do truly do see life as being empty if they cannot grow with other people. Protestantism may have taken notice of that, but it didn't invent it.
I don't think this is particularly cultural. Most people who survived history did so through work so their children lived, or through raising children to be survivors. That's worth considering, instead of just blaming culture.
Again, the monks believe they live rich lives without being "useful" by North American standards, that's certainly a cultural thing.
In North America our culture strongly believes a person's value is linked to their usefulness.
That's not up for debate really. I mean you can try to argue it's not, but honestly look around. Look at what value we place on people who are homeless, addicts, crippled, blind, deaf, or hell, even someone who is just unemployed.
We look down on them heavily. We judge them as having lower value because they are less useful.
Even look at the original comment and the disdain for "useless lumps"
This attitude doesn't exist everywhere. Don't try and say it's not cultural.
It's interesting to look at the social and political divisions that have been growing in Israel over the role of the Haredi (ultra-orthodox). The men are exempt from conscription and mostly don't work for wages. Instead they focus on religious study and survive on welfare and donations. More secular Israelis tend to resent the Haredi as useless lumps who don't do their fair share of work.
That's begging the question.
Historically, nearly all societies valued work because work was necessary; they valued being "useful".
Historically, nearly all societies also specialized, moving some folks away from directly producing/ harvesting food and to other jobs like building tools; they also produced art, philosophy, religion, and other things which don't appear to be "useful" but _empirically are_.
> Look at what value we place on people who are homeless, addicts, crippled, blind, deaf, or hell, even someone who is just unemployed.
> We look down on them heavily. We judge them as having lower value because they are less useful.
No. WTF, no.
Most people who are "unemployed" _were_ employed and _will soon be_ employed. Most people who are homeless had a home and will soon have a home. These are usually short term circumstances.
The folks who are long-term unemployed or long-term homeless are a completely different category: lots of substance abuse, mental issues they refuse to treat, refusal to adhere to basic societal norms, etc.
But if someone improves themselves, wow, do folks love a comeback story. I think that's almost universal across societies, but I'm happy to see evidence otherwise.
As for physically handicapped folks, plenty of them work for money. Some of them can't _but they want to_. And they find other ways to be useful to their families, their community, their society. I don't see disdain for that.
But that one is definitely cultural. Historically, most societies would "put them out of their misery". Still true in Canada.
> Even look at the original comment and the disdain for "useless lumps"
> This attitude doesn't exist everywhere.
Generally, yes, it does. See everything above.
You seem to have only one counterexample: monks. Why would you assume that their highly unusual replacement of this by devotion to God is the less cultural option?
Do you need me to go and list all of the ways every culture on the planet has different views on the value of an individual?
I don't have that kind of time.
Very different from modern corporate work culture, where you must appear to be working all the time, even if there's no work of value to do at a given time, and even if you worked day and night last month on a crunch project.
Very much cultural.
They also just did more. They didn't work to earn money to employ someone to work on their house; they went home and worked on their house. That might look to a simple observer as them working less, but I doubt the serf would see it that way.
The existence of something bad happening doesn't refute the point being made.
hint: it's your language.
Life prior to the industrial revolution sucked. It took a lot of backbreaking labour to produce basic necessities of life.
But grinding away for a manager ain't it either.
Unfortunately, the generation of politicians after Lincoln allowed the capitalists who took advantage of Lincoln's "free labor" system to pull the ladder up behind them then the next generation (the "Progressives") decided big business was "inevitable" and just needed to be regulated so it didn't become a monopoly that cheated consumers. The generation after that allowed the workers to form unions which could bargain for something resembling what they were worth which worked fairly well for a generation until it was dismantled as the "solution" to an inflation crisis caused by US foreign policy and US environmental policy (I'm referring to the 1970s inflation crisis, not the current one that has the same causes).
Tech is one of the few places in the American economy where the true American Dream of financial independence and self employment is still accessible even if you weren't born a millionaire and you don't win a Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot. But there is a fair question of how much longer it will be until FAANG and/or government regulation to "rein in Big Tech" pulls that ladder up like all of the previous ladders have been pulled up by big business and/or its allies in big government who pretend to be its enemies.
Trade happens because it's mutually beneficial.
That is a very interesting way of describing that process. Lives were lost in that battle.