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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3000 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Your Job Is Pointless

Henry Petroski argues that necessity isn't the mother of invention; luxury is. Nobody is going to sit around inventing a fork when they're hungry. They're going to invent a fork in their off-time while sulking about the gravy stains on their cloak from that mutton slipping off their knife.

Luxury is also the prime motivator in work, not money. There's a reason even the homeless need money, and why they "go to work" sitting on a street corner to collect it, rather than relaxing at the library reading Milton. While it is possible through vanishingly specific methods to subsist off the grid with no financial interaction with the rest of the world, the fact of the matter is there aren't a lot of hunter-gatherers left in the world because it sucks.

I give you a "cabin in the wood" somewhere temperate. Let's say you've got 5 acres planted and you know how to fish. You're going to spend a lot of your time (your given time, because I've just handed you one hell of a leg up over everyone else) subsisting - tending your crops, catching your fish - but not every waking hour. Even presuming you have two spare hours a day, what are you going to do with it? Watch leaves fall? Scratch cave drawings out of charcoal?

The minute you decide you'd rather read Harry Potter, you're going to find yourself needing excess cash. And what are you going to do for it? Maybe sell some fish?

Congratulations, you have a job, fisherman.





ooli  ·  3000 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Your only argument for innovation as a luxury byproduct is a negative one: Foraging for food in a cold cave wont let you invent forks.

Living a decent life without meaningless job, might make the society more innovative. May be the innovators in a society less driven by consumption might try to build meaningful invention, not sporks, or a bigger iPhone. But that's just wishful speculation on my part.

I like when you say Luxury is what you work for.

I just tried to refute Francopoli's ironic comment about working for money. Because working, in the end, cost you most of the money you get.

But, if it is luxury you crave, I have to admit working is probably your only legal path. Investing still has a greater profitability.

thenewgreen  ·  3000 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Because working, in the end, cost you most of the money you get.
i'm not sure what kind of work you do, but this certainly is not the case for me. The only cost I can think of that is tied to my employment is my clothing. I wouldn't have as many sports coats or dress shirts/pants if I didn't have a job. -that's it. That costs me maybe, .05% of what my job provides me.
kleinbl00  ·  2999 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The only argument I made for innovation as a luxury byproduct, you mean. I did link you to a book, after all.

"Living a decent life without meaningless job" is what most of us do, by the way. There's this value judgement in the entire discussion - if all jobs are meaningless, and we all work jobs, then we're all too stupid to determine that our jobs are meaningless. Which, considering we all spend the majority of our waking hours there, implies a stunning lack of self-awareness. So on one side, we have experience and daily living. On your side, "wishful speculation."

Still, you admit "if it is luxury you crave... working is probably your only legal path." Worthy of note: luxury, for the purpose of this discussion, has been set at "flatware." And not even a full set - the evolution of the fork derived from the knife, which is most assuredly not something you're going to forage for, even if you're a practiced flint knapper.

Yet you still throw out this canard about investing. Investing what? Nuts into trees? Or money? Money which comes from an exchange of goods and services, also known as a job?

It's kind of amazing how you can embrace the philosophies of the subsistence preppers and the 1% simultaneously while casting aspersions on all the people in a middle that have somehow figured out a way to enjoy working for a living.

WanderingEng  ·  2999 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I just tried to refute Francopoli's ironic comment about working for money.

I don't see any irony in francopoli's comments. He describes money as a tool to exchange work for other things. He doesn't say anyone is working for money.