Comment by keyle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by keyle | Hacker News Reader

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When people started to coin the term "silent quitting", it was a tell-tale sign of what was to come: a screwed up economy with positive unemployment rate.

The measurements and metrics of the Keynesian economy need to evolve, they're about the same nonsense for the last 50 years. They have no consideration for the modern days, open economies, globalisation, remote work, isolation, depressive open offices and meaningless work.

Meanwhile we're still looking at the same job figures as a primary indicator of doom and gloom.

There is no measurement for innovation, happiness, self-worth or satisfaction; if they had one, it would show that it plummeted to never seen levels of despair. Job figures don't show how the economy relies on how much we can screw people over with things they can't get away from ("moats"), while being stuck in jobs they never wanted to do in their right minds ("career").

It all started with mortgages if you ask me. It never became about how much you could afford a house, but how much a third-party thought they could get out of you to afford a house - they inflated the prices of. The idea that we buy these extremely expensive "permit to live here", paying for the rest of your life is mental.

Not sure what silent quitting had to do with the unemployment rate increase?

This is mostly a result of utter incompetence and irresponsible spending during the pandemic. Economy got pumped with cheap money and there was always going to be a day when the gravy ends. Doesn’t help that tech over hired and poured funding in just about anything.

I’m calling it right now, AI will see the same crash within a few years.

I wrote "positive unemployment rate". I meant that it's overall positive numbers even though it's complete doom and gloom on the market.

see the 5Y chart https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment-rate

Quiet quitting was a way to blame worsening economy on younger generations, or just to take a swipe at them, that's the extent of the relationship AFAICT.

With you on the AI crash.

Eh, I took it as a buzzword to represent the mindset of ‘I pretend to work, they pretend to pay me’.

All of this is representative of, IMO, late stage - and nearly population wide - burnout due to an incredibly long ‘up and to the right’ period of economic growth coupled with high stress (from COVID) when it would otherwise be slowing down, and extreme emotional manipulation by those too afraid to look down and have it end. Which isn’t just from ‘the rich’, BTW. I’ve seen that manipulation from a portion of all segments of the population.

> Eh, I took it as a buzzword to represent the mindset of ‘I pretend to work, they pretend to pay me’.

That's the blame shifting GP was referring to. It actually means "doing only what you're paid to do" instead of the "work is family" unpaid overtime trend that had been becoming common.

Eh, many many times it’s ’doing only the work someone will fire you for if they notice you’re not doing it - and no one is paying attention’, which is often very different from doing the work one is nominally paid to do.

It’s a wide spectrum.

But yeah, folks stopped busting their ass to do stuff that wasn’t even in the job description - the horror.

I think that’s how a lot of workers took it, but it eventually morphed into a talking point by the wealthy too that left off the second part. I hate to say it but some of my family members were talking to quiet quitters with disgust. Zero mention of unfair pay. It echoed what I saw on CNBC and other media at the time.

"Nobody wants to work anymore" (for $12/hr when rent is $1800/month)

I like being unemployed.

But on the other hand, I cannot socialize without a job.

I have embraced the antiwork mentality, but it needs to be said that it doesn't solve everything.

I still want to get a job just so I can get up in the morning and have a routine and see people and feel included.

I would say antiwork is the expression of mental illness through politics or vice versa. It's not going to get solved soon.

I'm very curious, why can you not socialise without a job ?

For me it is quite the opposite, my entire social life is very separated from work, and I tend to compartmentalise and not hang out with colleagues after work.

I think it's just something about flipping the page in the middle of the day, letting go and relaxing.

It's nice to rest, but having no routine or activity is very bad for mental health, you become complacent and bored and you feel useless.

Sedentary lifestyle is no good either.

The problem is finding people to see and connect with. I find very few, but not enough.

You should try to not work to see how it goes for you.

Also, I have some past of slight depression that I treat.

Generally, staying at home is depressing and you lose energy very quickly, your body goes hibernating but you don't want to.

Thank you for sharing. I have tried not working for extensive periods of time, and I love it.

I have the time to work on various projects to not feel bored and useless, plus working out and going out. I do not gauge my worth based on "value" of my output, as it is very clear that the perceived value in our society makes no sense whatsoever. So I still feel productive doing random things I love.

It wasn't always like that for me though. Things improved a lot when I started fasting, took care of my diet and started working out.

Hope things work out for you, work or no work :)

mental health is obviously a factor for me, so when my mental health gets worse, I became less able to find a job

Your last point about mortgages is interesting. It's probably highly dependent on the type of society you want? On one hand, why should I not be able to use my land as a financial instrument, it's my land, if I want to bet the land price will go up for whatever reason, and someone wants to offer a tool to enable that, some folks would say that should be just fine. On the other land, once a relative level of systemic sophistication has been reached, that system in that appreciated land will become inaccessible to certain groups of people. Some folks will find this unfair. (just some thought, not really opinions)

Extend this and you get benefits of capitalism vs downsides of unchecked capitalism.

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