1y ago

How in the hell

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- Many concede as inevitable that work should be miserable.
  Yet, some even still cast shame on those who emphasize the misery it causes.
  Meanwhile, among those who describe work as miserable, it is common to assume the reason as being that work involves effort, rather than that work, at least the way it is generally imposed, requires the worker being subordinated.
  
  Why do you describe certain jobs, such as the ones you chose to mention, as being inherently miserable?
  The motive for my observation was to provoke reflection over the essential factors determining how we experience work.
  
  Unfortunately, you seem too angry and confused to participate in a meaningful conversation.
  
  As I say, you seem quite embittered.
  You are also attacking a straw man.
  Perhaps take a day or so to unwind, and then try reading my question again (including the entirety of the comment).
  
  What particularly is your grievance?
  
  You provided two different names, each representing collections of ideas and objectives that are extremely general and often nebulous or ambiguous, and you complained that someone is pursuing one to the detriment of the other.
  No more is plain from the text you wrote.
  I am asking you to offer further details over how you personally are understanding the particular terms, and perceiving the conflicts.
- It doesn't really have to be that way, though.
  
  My local sewer guy takes pride in his job. Not only does he care enough to know the entire sewer layout for every lot in town, he also cares enough about it to always provide the customer with a good offer. He just wants it done right. But it doesn't just stop there. He is also the chairman for the sewer industry in the entire country, giving advice to all the other sewer companies, municipalities and other industries.
  No, he probably doesn't particularly enjoy hosing down somebody's fatberg, but him and his guys usually seem to have fun doing it anyway. He gets paid well be too.
  If I got half the pay for having half the fun and being able to take half the pride in what I do, I'd gladly accept the job.
  
  Not you.
  My neighbors' eight-year-old son's dog walker's second cousin (once removed) says you're a liar (and always will be).
  
  He said no one. I know one. That's more than zero.
  Your acquaintance is wrong and should find a different job in the lying business.
  
  I was abducted by interdimensional aliens who told me that vows of truth are only effective in less than half of all cases.
  
  That's like 10 pinky swears or twice scouts honor. I stand corrected.
  
  You have given no explanation or argument, just an appeal to ignorance.
  
  OK troll.
  
  What did you learn from watching the video?
  What are your substantive concerns or criticisms with respect to it?
  
  Speak for yourself. This guy does!
  
  Or maybe, we can automate stuff like that, instead of starving artists.
  
  Not at the level of food service industry, cashier's and the like. Simply cuz automating gutter cleaning doesn't make capitalists any money.
  
  We, not they.
  
  The suggestion was that workers ("we") should seek to automate processes that workers prefer not to perform.
  Your objection was that if such automation were possible to achieve and to implement, then they would have already done so.
  Processes of production, and the utilization and development of machinery implicated in production, is determined by business owners, not by workers.
  Business owners are bound by the profit motive, not by a motive to improve the experience of workers.
  Any activity or objective not supported by the profit motive is simply discarded, under our current systems.
  The meaningful suggestion is that workers ("we") should seek to automate processes that workers prefer not to perform, even if business owners ("they") have no motive for doing so.
  
  Buddy if you “we” could do that “we” never would have been employees in the first place.
  Workers already are the ones who design and build machines, but our capacities are constrained by business owners, who control the resources of society, including the enterprise that conducts research and manufacturing, and who direct the labor of workers for using the resources they control.
  If you think automation is not profitable then you vastly underestimate the costs of running a business and hiring human employees.
  You are attacking a straw man.
  Some automation is profitable, at any particular time, but some automation may improve the experience of workers without being profitable.
  Various relevant factors include the availability of technologies previously developed through public investment, the degree by which private enterprise is competitive versus monopolized, the structure of the labor pool especially in its degree of stratification, and the relative profitability of other investment opportunities, such as those more overtly framed around speculation, predation, extraction, or exploitation.

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