The problem with this type of critique, and one I was once very much in favor of, is the valorization of production and/or productive work. A book that really helped me to understand this issue is Martin Hagglund's "This Life" (side note I'd love to see Freddie review this book). The main take away that I had is that all we have in life …
The problem with this type of critique, and one I was once very much in favor of, is the valorization of production and/or productive work. A book that really helped me to understand this issue is Martin Hagglund's "This Life" (side note I'd love to see Freddie review this book). The main take away that I had is that all we have in life is our actual time. In a capitalist society, or in whatever society that you appear to desire, your time is valued entirely in terms of your productive capacity. Therefore, working is basically the only way for you to have value. I think underlying your critique is that unstated belief that in order to have value to society you must work. I know for myself I've heavily internalized that value and I work 50+ hours a week at the expense of my free time because I actually enjoy my IT job. However, as Freddie shows in the Cult of Smart there will be likely a majority of people who are not going to want to work overtime cleaning toilets. For those people work is just a means to an end.
So if we have so much abundance why do we still only valorize people who are productive? Additionally, what about all the valuable things people can do but are not valued by capitalism? Child care, elder care, etc.
People should be allowed to pursue their own desires without having to be productive in order to be truly free.
"will be likely a majority of people who are not going to want to work overtime cleaning toilets. "
Tell that to immigrants that come here and want all the OT they can get to save money to buy a house, start a business, etc.
I am a CEO of two companies. A one percenter. I worked as a janitor for a year while attending college. It was a perfect job for that as I worked at night. I did so well that the owner of the company gave me a crew and additional locations. I learned a great number of things that are part of my knowledge and skills climb that enable me to handle the job of corporate CEO.
Yes there are some people that will be stuck cleaning toilets because they lack the language skills or other innate capabilities to advance. But for most people their failure to advance is explained by their "not wanting to work" mindset.
Certainly there is a problem with single mothers and the challenges of child care. There is a solution for that problem but it starts with a simple lesson in self control in unprotected sexual activity. Other than that there is no reason that anyone should not be working, and if low wage, working to gain skills and experience that allow them to advance to a higher paying job.
I think it's great that you have risen to the 1% but you realize everything you are discussing about your story is an example of survivorship bias? The 1% exists because of the 99% who helped you get there. Not everyone can be you.
I think that not wanting to work is definitely not going to be a key to success in our current society. However, I'd like to see a society where you didn't have to work in the sense that you didn't have to spend your time being productive in the current definition of the term.
Lol. You do realize that attributing the 99% as being responsible for my success is the epitome of the mindset of a collectivist looter. It is this biggest crock of shit dished out by the over educated under producing social and economic malcontents.. that not only did not help, are consumed with resentful energy to block, check, stall and destroy those that do succeed by their own efforts because that demonstration is inconvenient to the victim narrative and makes the malcontents feel even worse about their whiney miserable lives.
"in whatever society that you appear to desire, your time is valued entirely in terms of your productive capacity. Therefore, working is basically the only way for you to have value... / So if we have so much abundance why do we still only valorize people who are productive? Additionally, what about all the valuable things people can do but are not valued by capitalism? Child care, elder care, etc."
I've been giving our "Social Misfit" a hard time, but my impression is that he, and others such as Tom Grey, do sincerely cherish a notion of productivity-as-virtue that isn't measured by pay alone, and includes unpaid labor like child and elder care.
Having done both unpaid elder and childcare myself now, as in-kind payment for moral debts I owed to others, I get the impression that nostalgia for a simpler time, when notions of Christian virtue (and division of labor by sex) were more widely shared, can blind traditionalists who sincerely cherish productivity-as-virtue to how contradictory social expectations respecting unpaid labor can be, including the expectations of traditionalists themselves!
On the on hand, "work is prayer", and any piously-undertaken occupation that's not actively vicious could be virtuous. Grow a garden. Write a motet. Mind your children. On the other hand, gardening and artistic pursuits are also seen as "only recreation" unless you're one of the few making bank on them, and so, in that sense, a frivolous waste of time, compared to whatever more "useful", remunerative ways bystanders judge you could be using your time instead. Caregiving can also be belittled as frivolous unless it's "done right".
Even cleaning toilets, which virtuously sacrifices your own pleasure for the hygiene and enjoyment of others, can be belittled as "menial", as the sort of occupation proving your unworth if you're never promoted to something "better". That, too, diminishes the rewards of toilet-cleaning, and people's motivation to work overtime doing it.
Jordan Peterson covers a lot of ground in his work to explain the human dominance hierarchy (the lobster thing). When I first heard him talk about that it resonated and connected the dots for almost everything we experience in human behavior in advanced society. It explains why immigrants will do work that citizens will not do. The immigrant sees the work as advancing their perceived social status. The citizen sees the work as below their perceived social status.
However, the citizen that perceives the work as below their perceived social status is correct only if social status is provided for demonstrated social hierarchy value other than productive returns. And this is what we have done with generations that have a college degree, no useful job skills and a bucket of student debt. They FEEL that their degree has advanced their social status and refuse work beneath that social status. But what the fail to understand is that their social status compared to someone without a college degree who is working their way to greater prosperity is actually lower and will continue to decline unless they get their ass in gear and focus on working and a career.
First, humans are not lobsters, and while our chicken-hearted (poultry pecking orders are brutal!) drive to be top bird and peck those beneath us may be natural, it's one of those natural things that isn't good. I'm not calling for the abolition of hierarchy: hierarchy can be an efficient means of organizing information and effort. But status as an end in itself is Satanic. Your impatience with status-seeking that strikes you as obviously unworthy (that of YouTube influencer, for example) suggests you recognize this yourself in some cases.
(That said, when I was stuck in focused protection figuring out how to cut my kids' own hair, I did benefit from tutorials by YouTube influencers showing off their DIY haircut how-tos. The status-heavy attention economy they've entered may be Satanic, but their work be more useful than you'd suppose.)
Second, regarding college degree and status, you might overlook how much obligation to others, rather than vain self-importance, might motivate youth to turn down "honest work" to complete a credentialing process that they've been taught from the cradle to regard as a "success sequence".
I worked so hard temping for a landscaping crew one summer the owner offered to make me partner — provided I quit college. In some respects, the offer was tempting: I liked the work and, since I'd already accumulated some medical debt, I could use the cash. On the other hand, I felt obligated to my family and future to complete my degree, which was in a demanding subject with higher expected returns than landscaping. And, in hindsight, I would have made an unreliable landscaper anyhow, since, unbeknownst to me at the time, underlying connective-tissue disease meant I couldn't sustain my summer's pace of work year in and out, year after year.
I did not, personally, feel landscaping was "beneath" me. But I certainly faced the social expectation — including costs already sunk into a degree — that it would be!
As it happened, while the landscaper I worked for was honest, the temp company responsible for paying me was not, and would end up preferring bankruptcy over actually paying workers like me. So there I was at the end of summer, the hardworking sucker with mounting medical debt, who'd also "foolishly" turned down paying work for degree prospects — but not, I think, out of personal snobbery.
Simply put, I'd had the kind of experience that teaches that rewards for hard work cannot be counted on. There's evidence that children who "fail" the "marshmallow test" accumulate such experiences from an early age:
At any rate, people can learn through experience that hard work won't be rewarded. In the revisited marshmallow experiment, this was done by experimenters repeatedly promising children a reward and then reneging. It wasn't done by teaching the kids the hard stuff was "beneath them".
As Eve Tushnet points out, the "bloodless moralism" of conflating virtue with the success sequence has problems!:
The problem with this type of critique, and one I was once very much in favor of, is the valorization of production and/or productive work. A book that really helped me to understand this issue is Martin Hagglund's "This Life" (side note I'd love to see Freddie review this book). The main take away that I had is that all we have in life is our actual time. In a capitalist society, or in whatever society that you appear to desire, your time is valued entirely in terms of your productive capacity. Therefore, working is basically the only way for you to have value. I think underlying your critique is that unstated belief that in order to have value to society you must work. I know for myself I've heavily internalized that value and I work 50+ hours a week at the expense of my free time because I actually enjoy my IT job. However, as Freddie shows in the Cult of Smart there will be likely a majority of people who are not going to want to work overtime cleaning toilets. For those people work is just a means to an end.
So if we have so much abundance why do we still only valorize people who are productive? Additionally, what about all the valuable things people can do but are not valued by capitalism? Child care, elder care, etc.
People should be allowed to pursue their own desires without having to be productive in order to be truly free.
"will be likely a majority of people who are not going to want to work overtime cleaning toilets. "
Tell that to immigrants that come here and want all the OT they can get to save money to buy a house, start a business, etc.
I am a CEO of two companies. A one percenter. I worked as a janitor for a year while attending college. It was a perfect job for that as I worked at night. I did so well that the owner of the company gave me a crew and additional locations. I learned a great number of things that are part of my knowledge and skills climb that enable me to handle the job of corporate CEO.
Yes there are some people that will be stuck cleaning toilets because they lack the language skills or other innate capabilities to advance. But for most people their failure to advance is explained by their "not wanting to work" mindset.
Certainly there is a problem with single mothers and the challenges of child care. There is a solution for that problem but it starts with a simple lesson in self control in unprotected sexual activity. Other than that there is no reason that anyone should not be working, and if low wage, working to gain skills and experience that allow them to advance to a higher paying job.
I think it's great that you have risen to the 1% but you realize everything you are discussing about your story is an example of survivorship bias? The 1% exists because of the 99% who helped you get there. Not everyone can be you.
I think that not wanting to work is definitely not going to be a key to success in our current society. However, I'd like to see a society where you didn't have to work in the sense that you didn't have to spend your time being productive in the current definition of the term.
Lol. You do realize that attributing the 99% as being responsible for my success is the epitome of the mindset of a collectivist looter. It is this biggest crock of shit dished out by the over educated under producing social and economic malcontents.. that not only did not help, are consumed with resentful energy to block, check, stall and destroy those that do succeed by their own efforts because that demonstration is inconvenient to the victim narrative and makes the malcontents feel even worse about their whiney miserable lives.
"in whatever society that you appear to desire, your time is valued entirely in terms of your productive capacity. Therefore, working is basically the only way for you to have value... / So if we have so much abundance why do we still only valorize people who are productive? Additionally, what about all the valuable things people can do but are not valued by capitalism? Child care, elder care, etc."
I've been giving our "Social Misfit" a hard time, but my impression is that he, and others such as Tom Grey, do sincerely cherish a notion of productivity-as-virtue that isn't measured by pay alone, and includes unpaid labor like child and elder care.
Having done both unpaid elder and childcare myself now, as in-kind payment for moral debts I owed to others, I get the impression that nostalgia for a simpler time, when notions of Christian virtue (and division of labor by sex) were more widely shared, can blind traditionalists who sincerely cherish productivity-as-virtue to how contradictory social expectations respecting unpaid labor can be, including the expectations of traditionalists themselves!
On the on hand, "work is prayer", and any piously-undertaken occupation that's not actively vicious could be virtuous. Grow a garden. Write a motet. Mind your children. On the other hand, gardening and artistic pursuits are also seen as "only recreation" unless you're one of the few making bank on them, and so, in that sense, a frivolous waste of time, compared to whatever more "useful", remunerative ways bystanders judge you could be using your time instead. Caregiving can also be belittled as frivolous unless it's "done right".
Even cleaning toilets, which virtuously sacrifices your own pleasure for the hygiene and enjoyment of others, can be belittled as "menial", as the sort of occupation proving your unworth if you're never promoted to something "better". That, too, diminishes the rewards of toilet-cleaning, and people's motivation to work overtime doing it.
Jordan Peterson covers a lot of ground in his work to explain the human dominance hierarchy (the lobster thing). When I first heard him talk about that it resonated and connected the dots for almost everything we experience in human behavior in advanced society. It explains why immigrants will do work that citizens will not do. The immigrant sees the work as advancing their perceived social status. The citizen sees the work as below their perceived social status.
However, the citizen that perceives the work as below their perceived social status is correct only if social status is provided for demonstrated social hierarchy value other than productive returns. And this is what we have done with generations that have a college degree, no useful job skills and a bucket of student debt. They FEEL that their degree has advanced their social status and refuse work beneath that social status. But what the fail to understand is that their social status compared to someone without a college degree who is working their way to greater prosperity is actually lower and will continue to decline unless they get their ass in gear and focus on working and a career.
Two things:
First, humans are not lobsters, and while our chicken-hearted (poultry pecking orders are brutal!) drive to be top bird and peck those beneath us may be natural, it's one of those natural things that isn't good. I'm not calling for the abolition of hierarchy: hierarchy can be an efficient means of organizing information and effort. But status as an end in itself is Satanic. Your impatience with status-seeking that strikes you as obviously unworthy (that of YouTube influencer, for example) suggests you recognize this yourself in some cases.
(That said, when I was stuck in focused protection figuring out how to cut my kids' own hair, I did benefit from tutorials by YouTube influencers showing off their DIY haircut how-tos. The status-heavy attention economy they've entered may be Satanic, but their work be more useful than you'd suppose.)
Second, regarding college degree and status, you might overlook how much obligation to others, rather than vain self-importance, might motivate youth to turn down "honest work" to complete a credentialing process that they've been taught from the cradle to regard as a "success sequence".
I worked so hard temping for a landscaping crew one summer the owner offered to make me partner — provided I quit college. In some respects, the offer was tempting: I liked the work and, since I'd already accumulated some medical debt, I could use the cash. On the other hand, I felt obligated to my family and future to complete my degree, which was in a demanding subject with higher expected returns than landscaping. And, in hindsight, I would have made an unreliable landscaper anyhow, since, unbeknownst to me at the time, underlying connective-tissue disease meant I couldn't sustain my summer's pace of work year in and out, year after year.
I did not, personally, feel landscaping was "beneath" me. But I certainly faced the social expectation — including costs already sunk into a degree — that it would be!
As it happened, while the landscaper I worked for was honest, the temp company responsible for paying me was not, and would end up preferring bankruptcy over actually paying workers like me. So there I was at the end of summer, the hardworking sucker with mounting medical debt, who'd also "foolishly" turned down paying work for degree prospects — but not, I think, out of personal snobbery.
Simply put, I'd had the kind of experience that teaches that rewards for hard work cannot be counted on. There's evidence that children who "fail" the "marshmallow test" accumulate such experiences from an early age:
https://ricochet.com/228454/archives/un-teaching-grit-the-marshmallow-test-revisited/
At any rate, people can learn through experience that hard work won't be rewarded. In the revisited marshmallow experiment, this was done by experimenters repeatedly promising children a reward and then reneging. It wasn't done by teaching the kids the hard stuff was "beneath them".
As Eve Tushnet points out, the "bloodless moralism" of conflating virtue with the success sequence has problems!:
https://ifstudies.org/blog/whats-wrong-with-the-success-sequence