But it's all just work, all the ways down.

What you are describing is working for someone else, but the alternative, working for yourself, is definitely not the dreamy image all the people working for someone else thinks it is. Working for yourself is work + risk, albeit you get to chose (read: try to correctly identify) the work.

So no matter what, unless you want blob on the states dime, you are going to spend most of your life doing work.

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ElevenLathe 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think what we've shed are more things like chairing a committee for the VFW, selling snacks at little league games, or being active in a lowers voice, looks over shoulder union. These are things that would traditionally take up the social slack left by not punching a clock every day, and we've eliminated them systematically to make room for more marketized activities. Today's retirees are "richer" than their parents were, so they can take cruises, travel, pursue expensive hobbies, etc. but they largely don't have a social context to make those things satisfying, and there are fewer grandkids to take care of than ever.

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hallole 3 hours ago | parent [-]

In what way have we "eliminated them systematically"? Maybe I haven't paid close enough attention, but it feels like those activities have (unfortunately) disappeared largely naturally.

	▲	Moomoomoo309 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Take this question a step further and ask _why_ those activities disappeared. What are those people who would previously have been doing that, now doing instead? Usually, the answer is working. For the unions, decades of policy have systematically eliminated them, but for the other points, it's more of a "between the lines" thing.

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strifey 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They're not describing working for yourself? At least in terms of financial compensation. A job and some form of communal/familial uncompensated labor are extremely different in this context. Calling them both "work" in this context is muddying the waters.

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wholinator2 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I emphatically disagree. Baking treats is working for yourself? Taking care of the neighbors kids in turns is working for yourself? Are you saying that spending time having hobbies and participating in the local community is "work" and thus must also be as soul crushing as a 9-5 pushing pointless word documents?

None of this is "working for yourself", it's called having a life with friends and hobbies.

	▲	WarmWash 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm saying the community you envision in your head doesn't exist without the "crushing" 9-5. Every society ever has been people doing "crushing" work (albeit with some brief pockets of living comfortably on societal stockpile). Our comforts are the fruits of others "crushing" 9-5. And sure, you can find a group of like minded people and go fully off grid, and live that life of "leisure". But your idea of leisure better be farming all day, being hungry with bland food all winter, and a gash on your toe being life threatening. Usually when people conceptualize stuff like this, they do it on a personal level without consideration for what society on a whole would look like if everyone did it. If you keep digging, you find that 99% of people actually just want benefits of others work without working themselves. What a revelation!

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AlecSchueler 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> But it's all just work, all the ways down.

> What you are describing is working for someone else

That's completely true and important to remember, especially because it's historically been easy to force especially women into that kind of work.

But I think the salient thing here is that that particular kind of work of facilitating personal relationships has been lost, and that's as worrying--indeed more worrying--as if we suddenly started losing all the train drivers or all the surgeons or all the grain harvesters.