I got downvoted a bit, so I should probably add some context to my point:
I moved furniture for 3 years in the early 2000s after getting my computer engineering degree so that I could make rent while writing shareware games, to hopefully win the internet lottery and be able to work on AI someday (which never happened - I'll explain below). It was backbreaking work and I came up with a new invention almost every day that would make the job easier. Some low-hanging fruit would be to require sun awnings over ever door on the trailer and require that truck drivers to carry at least 2 hand trucks (dollies). Beyond that, any number of Roomba-like devices would largely eliminate the human element of packing/loading/driving/unloading/unpacking.
Except that nobody wanted to innovate anything. I came to realize that one of the attachments that people form is to their own suffering. Being a lumper (furniture mover) becomes an identity like coal miner, with its own lingo and culture. We spent most of our days laughing at the clueless yuppies who could never do our job, and the poor rich people who had learned nothing from life because they didn't tip. It's like being in boot camp every day and then being asked to carry water for someone because they don't like to hold things.
Anything else than what we were doing would be an easier gig, if it weren't for the current gig preventing our escape.
---
Anyway, I was lucky to never get seriously injured on that job, but I came away from it forever changed. In many ways the futility of it destroyed my will to work. Not because I was lazy, but because after paying my dues I realized that all labor represents ineficiency. It occurs when the boss isn't creative enough to find the technology that avoids the need for the labor in the first place. Extending that thought to its logical conclusion, money itself represents inefficiency, because if people have the knowledge and resources to support themselves, then they don't need money to pay for things.
This is what I meant above by a win never happening for me. I saw through the matrix too young, which made concepts like investing anethma to me, because I saw that all profit comes from skimming productivity from workers. I independently derived what Karl Marx was saying, before I even knew what socialism really was. And nobody wants to hear about any of that stuff in hypercapitalist USA.
The reality I came from was a patriotic/patriarchial construct where the best we can do is suck it up and work harder tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. Like the opening scene of Avatar, where the suck (a term borrowed from Jarhead) and unobtainium were more compelling than a tropical paradise. Shows like Yellowstone touch on this - that the hardest workers are paid the least, and that bosses are locked into political games of the status quo beyond their control that they themselves may not even agree with. Wealth inequality triggers our projections, so that the wealthy think they work the hardest, and workers think they are paid well.
Today we're seeing that dissilusionment with the workaday world in all facets of life. Starbucks workers know their jobs could be automated, but then they wouldn't get paid. Uber drivers know that self-driving AI will get them caught in a race to the bottom for pay. Amazon workers know (at least at a subconscious level) that their pay is locked to wages in China. We're all pinned down by our current gigs to the point that they have consumed our imaginations, so that all we seemingly do now is fight amongst ourselves in a zero-sum game.
So, if you've followed this far, the solutions are obvious and apparent:
* Stop equating merit with financial success
* Give labor a 50% seat at the table on every corporate board (like Germany)
* Encourage automation over "hard" (pointless) work
* Prioritize labor-saving innovation over profits
* Stop skimming the profits of labor for building skyscrapers and pork barrel projects
* Legally require that bosses and workers swap roles for at least 2 weeks out of the year (controversial, I know)
* Run doctor's orders by nurses (in all supervisor-assistant relationships in all jobs)
* Prioritize equal pay and do the "real work" of reforming the workplace in every way needed to make that possible
* Have tech companies listen to their engineers again instead of just their designers/partners/investors
* Most importantly - transition to automated robot labor and UBI
Now, these are the first 10 things I thought of. There are hundreds/thousands of similar insights from feminism and labor relations (see Martin Luther King Jr). It's not so much about learning what to do, as identifying injustices in the system and reforming them. This is what progressivism and wokeism are about.
I understand that half the people on HN may not identify with what I am saying. They may say that these ideas might hold back the "job creators" propelling innovation forward. But I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Happier healthier workers are more productive. And wealth inequality is so high that adjusting tax brackets for UBI would cause a reduction in taxes for anyone making under the US GDP per capita of $75,000. Note that the median income is around half that, so most of us are already having half of our productivity or more skimmed via low wages and taxes.
I've tried to write this as objectively/conservative and old school as I could, in the way that one might appeal to labor in the 1950s at a republican convention. Because I think that the left is generally onboard with these measures. The difficulties aren't in principles, but communication.
I moved furniture for 3 years in the early 2000s after getting my computer engineering degree so that I could make rent while writing shareware games, to hopefully win the internet lottery and be able to work on AI someday (which never happened - I'll explain below). It was backbreaking work and I came up with a new invention almost every day that would make the job easier. Some low-hanging fruit would be to require sun awnings over ever door on the trailer and require that truck drivers to carry at least 2 hand trucks (dollies). Beyond that, any number of Roomba-like devices would largely eliminate the human element of packing/loading/driving/unloading/unpacking.
Except that nobody wanted to innovate anything. I came to realize that one of the attachments that people form is to their own suffering. Being a lumper (furniture mover) becomes an identity like coal miner, with its own lingo and culture. We spent most of our days laughing at the clueless yuppies who could never do our job, and the poor rich people who had learned nothing from life because they didn't tip. It's like being in boot camp every day and then being asked to carry water for someone because they don't like to hold things.
Anything else than what we were doing would be an easier gig, if it weren't for the current gig preventing our escape.
---
Anyway, I was lucky to never get seriously injured on that job, but I came away from it forever changed. In many ways the futility of it destroyed my will to work. Not because I was lazy, but because after paying my dues I realized that all labor represents ineficiency. It occurs when the boss isn't creative enough to find the technology that avoids the need for the labor in the first place. Extending that thought to its logical conclusion, money itself represents inefficiency, because if people have the knowledge and resources to support themselves, then they don't need money to pay for things.
This is what I meant above by a win never happening for me. I saw through the matrix too young, which made concepts like investing anethma to me, because I saw that all profit comes from skimming productivity from workers. I independently derived what Karl Marx was saying, before I even knew what socialism really was. And nobody wants to hear about any of that stuff in hypercapitalist USA.
The reality I came from was a patriotic/patriarchial construct where the best we can do is suck it up and work harder tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. Like the opening scene of Avatar, where the suck (a term borrowed from Jarhead) and unobtainium were more compelling than a tropical paradise. Shows like Yellowstone touch on this - that the hardest workers are paid the least, and that bosses are locked into political games of the status quo beyond their control that they themselves may not even agree with. Wealth inequality triggers our projections, so that the wealthy think they work the hardest, and workers think they are paid well.
Today we're seeing that dissilusionment with the workaday world in all facets of life. Starbucks workers know their jobs could be automated, but then they wouldn't get paid. Uber drivers know that self-driving AI will get them caught in a race to the bottom for pay. Amazon workers know (at least at a subconscious level) that their pay is locked to wages in China. We're all pinned down by our current gigs to the point that they have consumed our imaginations, so that all we seemingly do now is fight amongst ourselves in a zero-sum game.
So, if you've followed this far, the solutions are obvious and apparent:
Now, these are the first 10 things I thought of. There are hundreds/thousands of similar insights from feminism and labor relations (see Martin Luther King Jr). It's not so much about learning what to do, as identifying injustices in the system and reforming them. This is what progressivism and wokeism are about.I understand that half the people on HN may not identify with what I am saying. They may say that these ideas might hold back the "job creators" propelling innovation forward. But I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Happier healthier workers are more productive. And wealth inequality is so high that adjusting tax brackets for UBI would cause a reduction in taxes for anyone making under the US GDP per capita of $75,000. Note that the median income is around half that, so most of us are already having half of our productivity or more skimmed via low wages and taxes.
I've tried to write this as objectively/conservative and old school as I could, in the way that one might appeal to labor in the 1950s at a republican convention. Because I think that the left is generally onboard with these measures. The difficulties aren't in principles, but communication.