I actually enjoy my work, most of the time, sue me.
I guess getting an education in what you like and are good at while it's in demand by the market is kinda lucky though.
Yeah, this exactly. I actually really love my job, most of the time, and it pays pretty well, with a strong union and an excellent work/life balance. But I look out at the market, and it doesn't take a genius to realize, boy was that a miracle. I'm not so blinded by my own anecdotal evidence to not realize things drastically need reform, and that everyone deserves a job as fulfilling as mine.
Depends on what we call work. Food in nature is free in the economic sense, but spending time and effort gathering it can be considered work as well, and maybe isn't as joyful as we can expect, especially when doing it for the 3427th time, and when it hasn't regrown since last time we collected, so we need to go further of find alternate sources.
I like to put a clear distinction on what is work in the broader sense, and what is capitalist work. We don't need capitalist work to live, and we would be better without it, but some form of daily struggle to maintain ourselves, we will probably always have, unfortunately.
Getting rid of capitalist work would be great. We can mostly leave things as they are, except git rid corporate ownership of anything, and corporate personhood.
You sign a contract with a real, living person. If you must sign with a company, you sign a contract that binds every officer of that company personally. If a company does something illegal, well, it didn't. A person in that company did something illegal and the highest ranking person on that contract needs to take personal responsibility for it and go to prison for murder, tax evasion, or whatnot.
Also regulate the stock market until it's almost completely gone. It's not a good place for retirement accounts, and that's the only good thing that the stock market has going for it.
Then add in a few fix actions in general, like limit home and land ownership to what a person actually uses. No squatting on homes to rent them out.
Also full medical and dental for everyone, no private ownership of either practice. As a doctor, dentist, or nurse, you are suddenly a government employee, with government certification and training programs that are open to anyone who applies. Most people wouldn't make it through the program (and background check) but anyone could try.
Add in some more social safety nets, and life could be good.
That's why he distinguished work from effort though. But I think the concept we're looking for here is called alienation.
This person is just describing the psychological factors underpinning self-determination theory as it applies to work but without the language to convey it: https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2017_DeciOlafsenRyan_annurev-orgpsych.pdf
Ain't it funny how that can happen? How someone can "stumble across" some academic theory or whatnot without knowing it. This isn't at all to say academia isn't necessary, this is just an observation.
Academia is just very strict standards of thinking and talking about thinking. This makes it difficult but reliable.
Oh, I personally love to see it. It's how we bridge the gap of academia and the real world. There are many things that people feel or experience but don't have the language to discuss, but once they do it can be very empowering. If you're familiar with urban planning discours online then you've maybe heard of the word "stroad" describing the horrible 6 lane + type roads in much of the US filled with stripmalls. Being on one you can get this feeling of alienation and artificiality, like something isn't right. However once you have a name for it, you can now discuss and advocate to change the "stroad".
People for the last twelve thousand years: "Hunting and gathering cannot support the needs of a growing population. We should create a system where crops can be grown efficiently and in high quantities, and animals can be bred and raised. It will be labour-intensive and require specialized knowledge, skills, and equipment, it will lead to the economic stratification of society, but it's the best way to not have most of our people starve to death."
One guy who recently read the Communist Manifesto (abridged version): "But food is literally free!"
I mean, yes, food is not literally free. But there are certainly ways to organize an agricultural society that don’t automatically lead to social hierarchies, and that would be vastly preferable, imo. The enclosure of the commons has been a disaster
Food production is at an all time high and yet food prices and food waste is insane. It is 100% price gouging. They would rather waste massive amounts of food and ruin topsoil and insist on shrinkflation instead of sacrificing a few dollars.
Transportation cost.
I live in a city that makes a specific brand of granola bars. If I go buy a box off the shelf at the store, that box has traveled a minimum of 400km before I touch it (ignoring converters and whatnot in the production facility.)
Centralization has really fucked up the cost of things.
I think a big reason why work feels bad is because in many jobs the surplus value of your labor is being stolen by the executives. When you put in effort to personal projects that feels good because you are actually getting to reap the rewards of your labor.
People like doing stuff that's useful, not just for ourselves but for others as well. What we don't like is being exploited.
Yeah the myth that people don't want to work is crazy to me. How do all these insane open source projects exist then? Why did I spend extra effort to contribute to a project when I already got it working for myself? Most people just inherently like working on things they think will help other people.
/c/im14andthisisdeep
Yeah. There's not enough naturally occurring forage to support everyone, hence why argiculture is a fucking thing that existed before explicit monetary systems.
You also have the inherent issue of greed. Not everyone out there collecting the forage wants to share. I guess that's an abstracted version of "building fences".
You can't find a solution to things if you're going to ignore the path and reasons why things ended up like this in the first place. That reason is that some humans suck, and selflessness has not always been a virtue over time. There is purpose and survival value to selfishness in certain scenarios, so even if we could magically erase it, it might not be the best idea in all situations.
"Put on your own mask before helping others." "Don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm."
Like a lot of things, moderation is key.
This is also why so much of so many cultures, society, and even religions are attempts to create external motivations to look out for your fellow man.
"The world would be so much bettee if people weren't, you know, people." is not a particularly groundbreaking thought, lol.
Also, "No one can explain why effort feels good but work doesn't." Because you don't enjoy your job, which is fairly normal, unfortunate, and not a guarantee. More often than not I get all those warm fuzzies of stretching myself, solving a difficult problem, and accomplishment from what I do for a living. It's one of the big reasons I haven't fucked off into the woods. Not every day is enjoyable, but more are than aren't.
The way I see it, if I enjoyed it too much they wouldn't pay me to do it.
We've extended our population far beyond what "remove the fences and weapons and let everyone scavenge" could support.
Personally I think people who didn't contribute to that problem should get to scavenge whatever they want, though.
food is literally free until someone builds a fence around it and guards it with weapons
This is the violence inherent in the system.
Yep. And not just our system - it's inherent to life itself. After all, other animals hoard food, too. If we just "let nature run its course" things will never change - we need to be proactive in building systems that work differently.
Housing is basically free as well. Have you seen caves!?
Unfortunately we would have a cave housing crisis on our hands very soon. Although our numbers might dwindle in the bear wars.
Lol without agriculture you would literally end up eating shit and dying.
Not true. Other ways to cultivate plentiful food that are not 'agriculture'; adjacent practices
No there aren't. Not at the scale that humanity currently exists. We would literally die even if we just couldn't make fertilizer. There would be no way to produce enough food for this many people.
Your mom isn't at the scale humanity currently exists!
This person has never heard of the tragedy of the commons
and you have never heard of the book "governing the commons" by Elinor Ostrom, which is a book explaining in great detail and with the use of real examples how the tragedy of the commons can be avoided
Work does feel good and I dont even like.my job that much. When i put in a good day at work or finish a project or something i feel good. If you dont thats a personal perspective issue. If you are so mad about other people preventing you from stealing food off their land you can get land for less than a bag of chips. There is so much rural land available where you can "work" till your hearts content.
First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.
-- Marx
There isn't enough food in nature to support the population. We need agriculture so people are going to have to work to provide food. That's not free.
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