I heard that back in the days, people used to just go when their work was done on the farms and there was no concept of 9-5 (these days seem 24 hours work). There used to be a lot of holidays. Is that true? If it is, then given the abundance in technology, why our work hours increased and why do we have such weird lives that we live to work?
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No, its not true.
The question you are asking ins a personality thing. Most folks work to live.
It’s just the ones who are really loud are the workaholics.
Because we’re Germans, not Italians
I am neither. I am from Asia.
OMG, Asians = Germans on steroids.
Capitalism
the biggest evil
A handy word that means so little it’s never wrong.
Bingo. Sort of. It includes a lot, to go with the massive breadth that the question entails.
You could say the same of history if you know nothing about it
That suggests the problem is people don’t have any experience with capitalism, doesn’t it? Whatever it means to the person using the word, it’s always a system live in, or somewhat live in.
The issue is the term is meaningless if it isn’t grounded in history. If it simply means “the system you live in” then it says nothing of how it came to be and what can come after.
Sure, but there’s no historical context there whatsoever, or even a present-day framing to narrow it down. The main thing it achieves, as a one-word response, is declaring a kind of tribal allegiance.
If you’ve clearly defined you mean “any market-based system” or “a system which no longer has a landed aristocracy”, among the many other possibilities, then sure, it’s not worth being a pedant about the exact word used. (Although, any conversation is more likely to be productive if you just say what you mean, instead)
Yes, using the word “capitalism” is a signifier, but I wouldn’t say it’s counterproductive. Based on a person’s response you can quickly conclude whether they have the historical context to understand the critique. Defining capitalism as “a market-based” system is ahistorical , markets existed before capitalism. It is very hard to surface the critique while also writing a wall of text that describes how capitalism came to be and how it was later moderated
No, tribal signifiers are dumb and easy to fake. Ask anyone who’s infiltrated the far right.
The people who do work don’t keep the profits of work. People who “own” stuff do.
You have a guy who “owns” a factory. He pays some dudes to make widgets, market widgets, sell widgets. They all get $10 a day. They sell $200 of widgets a day. The guy who owns the operation, who’s probably just sitting at home, keeps all those profits. Capitalism.
The workers decide they want more rights. Get paid in real money. Sick time. 8 hour days. Owner says nah. Workers go on strike. Owner gets the police or the army to break the strike with violence. Arrest any leaders they survive. Historical context of capitalism.
Also the guy who owns the factory, maybe he just got it because his grand dad was friends with the king or something. Maybe they killed some natives and the state said the land is yours now.
Are there any other systems, or point in history, where a country’s population could live without working?
Working in what context? There are native peoples all over the globe that work to live and not to enrich a single sociopath.
I don’t know whether to assume this question is in good faith or not. Can you restate what you think the OP is asking? It’s not about whether there was ever a time when no work was needed.
I’m not interested in
wasting my time against a sealiondebating capitalism.I’m not coming from a defence of capitalism. I’m just pointing out that people have had to work in some capacity to live all throughout history. People would still need to work to live under any system.
That’s true, but the point is in the current system we’re working a lot harder than necessary in order to benefit a few people at the top
I’m just pointing out that people have had to work in some capacity to live all throughout history. People would still need to work to live under any system.
Nobody said otherwise.
… the title in OP asked, “why do we live to work, rather than work to live?”
The response was “capitalism.”
So: precisely under (not-capitalism)… we could “work to live,” rather than “live to work.”
Companies need to make line go up. You could increase productivity by using more tech (computers, tools, etc), but you can also do it by working longer. So the people in charge said “why not both?!” And here we are.
I feel like some of it also is “work until you’re done” still. Hourly jobs pay per hour. But salary jobs typically pay you for work accomplishments, not time. Unfortunately I feel like a lot of tech improvements and processes have oversold their productivity improvements… example: AI will make you go code 10x as fast! So managers hear that (typically upper management, not middle/lower management who actually see it) and thus expect people to instantly do 10x the work. So you now have to bust your ass off working longer hours to meet that expectation. Good middle management will push back and reset expectations, but often the damage is done when they can half their work force with the assumption that they’re going to be so much more productive now that this new magical tool is in place.
I feel like looking at work at merely profit maximization is missing a big part of the picture.
There’s a big part of it that’s social positioning within an organization. I’ve worked more than a few jobs that could have been part time or been eliminated entirely, thereby saving the company money, but there is social value of being a manager that employs +1 people, so those jobs stayed.
There is a massive amount of weirdness going on at companies that is entirely unrelated to the balance sheet and wouldn’t be out of a place in a Byzantine Court.
The corporate culture is also quite insane and dehumanizing. This motivates me to be poor than to earn these fellows.
A group of about 30 middle managers pushed back on policies and processes that were killing the business, hurting employee moral and eroding customer confidence. They were told “no and that they were the problem and needed to do better”. Next meeting was, hey look at this new AI chatbot that will make everything much faster, like AI is going to fix everything.
I heard that back in the days, people used to just go when their work was done on the farms and there was no concept of 9-5 (these days seem 24 hours work).
Yup. In the ancient world, ascetics and monks would practice “having daily schedules” alongside various other harsh forms of penitence, like self-flagellation. One of the ancient Greek authors (Plato?) spoke about it unfavourably even in that context.
The flip side of that, is that if your animals or crops need something now, they need it now. There’s no maximum hours or work-life balance, either. Still, it’s fair to say most people that have experienced that much prefer it, if you put aside how uncomfortable the work itself is.
Because it’s kind of crazy, it’s also worth mentioning that people slept twice in a day, with some time spent up during the night.
There used to be a lot of holidays. Is that true?
Kind of.
Confining ourselves to Europe, there were a lot of public holidays in ancient Rome, and to a lesser extent lots of religious days and festivals in medieval Europe. The medieval holy days were more about fasting or similar than time off of work, though. And, in Rome, there were no weekends yet, so holidays basically served the same role.
Plus, most holidays were optional in both, so a deeply poor person or a slave with a tough master might work fairly continuously.
If it is, then given the abundance in technology, why our work hours increased and why do we have such weird lives that we live to work?
When industialisation came in, 12 hour days were fairly standard. Arguably, working hours have gone down.
As to why we work on schedules now, you basically just have to in a complex, highly specialised society. If you’re using tools you made and maybe a couple your friend the blacksmith made, and using them to produce food and housing from “your own” land, sure, it just all has to get done sometime. If you’re having a formal meeting or vote and show up 2 days late, like is recorded becoming a problem in medieval republics, it’s a bit disruptive.
Because we allow things to be this way.
Do we have any solution for this?
Yes, but the solutions aren’t easy.
And I don’t expect humans to follow those solutions. Humans want miserableness in their life.
I think they don’t want miserableness and that’s the problem. We’ve become slaves to our comforts and the idea of losing them even if a better outcome is possible is too big an ask for people who suck at long view thinking.
Man, I get where you’re coming from, it all seems endless and stupid.
I was just thinking about this the other day in fact, but then imagined what life was like as a hunter gatherer. The search never stops for food, there is rarely an abundance, and nothing to keep that abundance from rotting away when you have it.
Every creation we’ve ever made is to simplify our lives and/or to protect them. Building those things increase abundance and leisure time for awhile, but then the birth rate goes up and we need to build more. Building better communication (to simplify our lives) meant that more people from farther away need stuff, so we need to increase production, so more workers are required. It’s a feedback loop.
Some world events pause or reverse this loop for awhile, but it never stops. If you want these things that help around the house so you don’t have to do them, that costs money, so you work.
I’ve seen stories of people who just move out to the woods for decades, but though they are ‘independent’ from the man, they’re still struggling day to day and often end up stealing stuff that others bought so they can get by, or relying on common taxpayer services when things go awry.
I think it’s simply a part of the universe. I learned once that life isn’t the opposite of entropy, it’s a small opposing force that itself decays. Something something rage against the dying of the light. Anyway, /rantoff
There is a difference between doing what is necessary to live and performing nonsense jobs and constant microtasks. We don’t have employment, we have an unnecessary and forced means of constant torture and forced compliance with ridiculous norms. I hate every job I’ve ever had. It’s not because I’m lazy, it’s because it is forced, invisible prison bullshit and I want to be free.
I was corrected on that. Hunter-gatherers apparently had more leisure time.
Awesome insight but I think the way that I have heard people being demanding in corporates in the name of “work ethics”, the recessions, the unofficial denial in hiring new people in some companies, the toxic behavior done by managers and those on upper levels to their juniors, is not the part of the universe. It is something artificially imposed to suck the marrow out of our lives. People who are supposed to be retired are still working in some places. I think the work conditions should be better. Or if they say that AI can do our jobs, then let AI do our jobs and let us chill. (Pretty naive take I think)
Oh I definitely agree that the ethics involved are problematic, no question. And I also agree with the premise that we need strong unions for our own protection against that predatory behavior!
But working for the man is, in fact, optional. You can start your own business, be a gig worker, or just be an under-the table helping hand for cash. Having done those things myself, though, has taught me they are often feast or famine arrangements… so in the end I too am working for the man, simply because it’s steady pay.
Edit to add that AI is obviously an unknown factor in this equation. It’s good at its niche tasks but terrible at others, and if you want one that actually has all the capabilities of a regular worker, it’s going to be expensive, and companies are just finding out after they fucked around. I wouldn’t count us out yet.
what is under-the table helping hand? Where I live though, we do not have individualistic values so families and society will consider it a shame if you are not working a high paying corporate job (mostly engineers), freelancer (either trading or coding or graphic designing or video editing), government job. Business is very rare and mostly it is generational. I personally think I will take a mediocre job after I graduate and once I become free (when my parents will die and my sis will be married or I don’t know if she will get financial independent), I will be a poor or maybe will try to do “that thing” with my life.
It’s doing things like handywork around other people’s houses, babysitting, errand-running, walking dogs, driving people to appointments, all paid in cash at the time of service. It’s hard to make that work steady enough to live on, but it can be done!
The funny part is how romantic it seems…all the free time you’ll have, right? Then when you start you realize that every other breathing moment is you trying to find more of that work to do because you need more money.
And sure, culture is a thing that is just as crushing as your boss. We all answer to someone, eventually.
I don’t know about you, but for me, work is the side-quest.
I did not get any work yet but yeah, my main quest is knowledge to prove myself wrong
What other choice is there?
Let all our work given to AI and we be sitting like rulers on it. When bored, make some music or skit and put it online or just watch AI cartoons. (A pretty naive take which I think many of the “tech-bros” have)
I work to live and everyone I know does. No one controls their work gig outside of finding it.
own only what is available to a farmer from the past (a piece of land and a couple of barns), desire only what is available to a farmer from the past (a hearty dinner and strong tobacco, not a new iPhone), and then you can live like a farmer from the past today.
can you tho? land/barn/… are not free
Why is that? there are places in the world where a land costs almost nothing, and you can build a barn yourself. Like… a farmer from the past. =)
By the way, there are really a lot of holidays, but do you know what a harvest is? When the wheat ripens, you can’t tell it, “Wait, wait, my shift is over.” You collect it around the clock. And if we’re talking about the present past, then you assemble it with your hands, without automation.
UPD: And then, after standing with a sickle for 9 hours, you get to the house (which you also built yourself), take care of the livestock, have a hearty dinner, smoke a pipe to ease the pain in your whole body, lie down on the bed and instantly fall asleep from fatigue. Then you sleep without dreams, wake up and return to the field. My grandfather led this way of life until his death. I’m sure you wouldn’t like it very much. But in general, as already mentioned, he really did not use the money, except in rare cases. Usually.
I still don’t understand what the cons are. Maybe there are some arguments? In my country, a hectare of fertile black soil costs $1,000. Is this an unbearable amount? I’m sure the world is full of such countries.
And yes, buildings can be built independently. If you buy absolutely everything, then you are not a farmer, but a farm owner. The same capitalsit that half of the comments are against. =)
In France it’s not legal to build anything on agricultural land, and the lands you can build on are much more expensive, and you’ll need permits and to pay taxes. So I really don’t see how one could really isolated himself like you said
I am kinda like this except that I care about my skincare and Internet. So without my sunscreen and laptop with Internet connection, I am not happy. If I have access to these things plus fruits(or any other cheap vegan alternate), water, and a room to shit and sleep, I want nothing else.
Those are true, it’s the shift to capitalism. Before excess wealth could be gained through colonization. Once that was done it became about squeezing out as much as you can from your workers. However the good businessman would have squeezed everything they could out of their workers while colonizing. (Like the US in the Middle East since WW2 or more recently Venezuela)
Because the people who own everything aren’t being slaughtered in the streets.
Are you South Asian? This extreme mentality I only found in South Asians being a South Asian myself.
Lemmy people are their own very specific kind of person.
eat the rich? I think it’s getting fame all around the world
Not that but the way you are eating rich. The slaughter thing is quite brutal and against human rights.
The daily systemic violence of capitalism and imperialism is far worse than the revolutionary means to end it.
But it will never happen cuz you know whenever a country tries to be a socialist economy, Uncle Sam buys people from that country and always make sure to not let that happen. As long as there is Uncle Sam, world can never have a socialist economy.
There are several socialist countries already. The US’s time as the unipolar hegemon are quickly fading, the US cannot even win against Iran. As the global south develops economically and gains its own footing, and the US gradually decays, we see more openings for additional socialist countries. No system is ever static, no empire lasts forever.
for example? USSR is no more China is state capitalist Scandinavian countries are welfare states?
Back then all you had was the clothes on your back an half a sack of grain at the store. There’s more free time if you don’t produce anything.
And an onion tied to your belt, which was the fashion at the time
After I hit 40 hours I’m gone. I acknowledge there is a certain amount of privlege required to do that. It took me 20 years to get to that point but Im proud of it and I wanted to brag.
