"People Don't Want To Work Anymore"... duh?
"People don't want to work anymore" is a dead horse that's been beaten to the point of glue. Usually uttered by boomer, petite-bourgeoise types who can't wrap their senile brains around why people don't want to work at their shitty Arby's franchise for $7.50/hr in an area where cost of living requires $15/hr.
People who are indignant about people not being employed have got a neoliberal brain worm eating at their frontal lobe. "People don't want to work anymore", yeah no shit dude, you just figured that out? Hell I highly doubt YOU even want to work.
This pride in a P-O-S J-O-B for the sake of having one, is a relatively new and invasive concept. For many human societies in history, work was something to avoid where possible. I came across this video from the channel "The Visual Philosopher" and while most of the video talks about how different cultures talked about a life well-spent, I want to focus on the relationship to labor for the sake of this post.
For all the masturbation shit-lipped conservatives do on the ancient Greeks, they're like the OGs in not wanting to work. Xenophon once said something along the lines of "the manual jobs are scorned and held in low esteem. They ruin the bodies of those who work in them and those who oversee them, forcing them to sit still and remain indoors. Making their bodies soft and their souls weaker". The word 'banausic' meaning mechanical came from the Greek word 'banausos', a derogatory term for laborers. Take an ancient Greek into modern society, and they'd wonder why we turned being wage slaves into a virtue in much of our culture.
There's the four aims in Hinduism, Dharma (duty), Artha (wealth), Kama (pleasure/joy), and Moksha (liberation). The 4 meant to be kept in balance, however Artha has much overtaken our society. "Stone Age Economics" by Marshall Sahlins spoke of hunter-gatherer societies and how they seemingly worked less than we do. And it would make sense, you only had to do so much to meet your basic needs, so the rest of your day can be allocated to whatever you want. It shifted once we had to start working for a wage to afford our basic needs rather than meeting them ourselves alongside our tribe.
Not everyone needs to work, hell I'd argue not everyone should work. Work is something that should be a public service because you want to fill a need in your community. People who can doing for people who can't. You work because of intrinsic motivation. The plumber isn't indignant against the people who can't/doesn't do their own plumbing. So why is the modern worker indignant against the person who doesn't work?
We look at the people who don't work like there's something wrong with them, but in all actuality, I think it's a form of jealousy. Because if you get people to say they quiet part out loud, they'd admit they'd love to not have to do piss all or be "lazy". I'd argue that "laziness" doesn't exist. What we associate with laziness is often a symptom. People aren't lazy, they're burnt out, depressed, disabled, just straight up incapable, or a mix of all of it.
You get stuck in this shitloop where you hate being unemployed because you can't afford shit, but also hate being employed because... well having a job sucks in most cases.
The problem isn't labor, people will absolutely do labor, the problem is work. The difference is labor is a natural order to obtain what one wants or to contribute to their community. People would be much happier volunteering for various humanitarian projects (mutual aid, housing, etc.) rather than working a typical desk job. While the project manager/business analyst/HR rep/or even IT professional (like myself) earn more, they contribute significantly less to society than the teacher, domestic laborer (i.e house wife/husband), or nurse who make significantly less. One educates the youth, the other is the entire economy can even function to begin with, and the latter breaks their back to save lives.
It's an interesting phenomenon that I've observed that there's almost a correlation in the more a position contributes to society the less they're paid. The jobs that pay the most don't contribute much to society or their communities, they contribute to the business that exploits it.
I think of when I was a kid and what people wanted to be when they grew up. Most kids my age wanted to be something like a doctor, a firefighter, something of that nature. How many kids want to be a data analyst when they grew up? Probably none. Hell, I wanted to be a therapist when I grew up, I only stopped because I didn't think it'd make enough money. Well, I got the job that makes enough money, and I fucking hate it. I should have listened to my younger self. Hell the more I learned about social work, the more passionate I am in it as a career/major.
I personally think wages need to be abolished altogether and things should be done on the basis of doing them. "Oh but then nothing will get done!", my brother in Christ if money was the only motivator, nobody would be a teacher or contribute to FOSS. We already know intrinsic motivation is the greater motivator than extrinsic motivation, and yet we built our entire socio-economic structure on extrinsic motivation. People would still open up overpriced burger restaurants that play 'Stomp, Clap, Hey' music ad nauseum, people would still want to fix plumbing issues in their community, society would still function. It would just operate on a basis of what people really want than what is the most profitable.
That brings the question of progress. What would a society under this model even look like? I'd hypothesize that 'progress' would be slower, but more intentional. I think of the Deadpool joke of "you'll never see a Danish flag on the moon but Goddamnit they're happy" but societally. Progress would happen to explore more and engage with life deeper. We'd build rockets not for a rich asshole dick-measuring contest, but out of genuine curiosity. There'd be less competing amongst organizations, which would mean more heads together. Think about it, if instead of 10 companies all trying to sabotage and poach each other, you had like 3 regional labor unions you'd have far more people working on one project and would probably get more done.
Anyway, I'm unmedicated for my ADHD right now and have already deleted like 6 paragraphs, so I'm gonna call it here before I go on another tangent. I wanna leave you with this question, if you lived in a moneyless society where your basic needs could be met. What would you want to do? Would you still work the job you have? Or would you do something else?
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