Yeah I like how society so “sincerely” talks about fixing problems with therapy and exercise when the main problem in most people’s lives is the requirement that they work hard day in and day out. As a society we have no solution to this problem so we invent various ways to “fix” the problem without talking about the source. I realize people have to work, I just wish society would actually talk about the elephant in the room.
Do they really, though? As a culture, we've invented so many BS jobs and so many silly corporate culture ways of filling at least 8 hours 5 days a week almost every week a year whether it is useful to us or not out of some puritan-based pseudo-religion that tells us that "work" is good for the "soul" and anyone who doesn't "work" is evil and undeserving of god's/society's love. The 40 hour work week was chosen because it is right near the cutoff of people's exhaustion level, not that it has anything real to do with productivity or usefulness to ourselves and our society.
If we are going to talk about elephants in the room: why can't we find more time to open room for hobbies and personal/family time? Why do we have to work so much? Why are we focused so much on corporate profit and greed? What good are we really doing for ourselves and our society with our current forced work culture?
Me personally? I am concerned about dying of a preventable disease in my middle to old age and without work, there is no insurance. With no insurance, presumably I would be left to die by a harsh, uncaring society.
So I think your question might be reversed: what good is society doing for us, by forcing us to amass wealth because we are scared of being discarded to die early?
The answer, of course, is that society accomplished by way of this blackmail the ability to deliver many plastic electronic consumer goods that would not otherwise be available.
Among other things, there is that ugly presumption that health insurance has to be tied to your employer. This is an interesting and almost peculiarly American viewpoint, because that's the status quo we frogs were slowly boiled in across decades and generations until few remember there's an option to jump out, that it isn't a "day spa" and we're all likely to die of this problem. Why should this be a concern of our employer and how much they think our "work" is worth? Why have we allowed this "blackmail" to rot all around us and settle into feeling so normal? Why do people that don't "work" deserve to die of preventable diseases? What makes them so undeserving/undesirable of health? Why are health insurers for-profit companies seeking so much greed and wealth at the expense of actual public health?
Is this the society we really want to live in where we are all (yes, even Billionaires) three bad months away from homelessness and six bad months away from dying of something preventable?
I assume that "the ability to deliver many plastic electronic consumer goods that would not otherwise be available" is a joke in the face of that existential terror, but I cannot tell any more on sites like HN.
I guess the fear is if we don’t work hard, a country will regress. We certainly have many examples of countries around the world that have very low productivity and corresponding widespread hunger, sickness, violence and crime etc. It’s a hard balance to maintain, between being productive and recreation, but some European countries are able to tentatively pull it off (atleast for now when the long tail of colonialism or oil wealth is still bringing in enough money).
That sounds like a correlation/causation mixup to me. The way economists define "productivity" is in part based on the growth of wealth. Poor countries are not poor because they have low productivity: they have low productivity because they are poor.
It’s not society, it’s a capitalism problem. The harder you work, the richer and more powerful those above become, they will resist anything that goes against this cycle, such as you working less.
