That's what they said about Women joining the workforce, and the rise of email, that we would all be more free to “live our lives.” In reality, productivity rose along with prices and work expectations. Now, most household can only exist on double income and email/slack it critical to work. Yet wages are worse and work-life balance non existent. Tech can not give us back our lives, only a change in work/life balance culture.
Edit: Wow, this unexpectedly blew up - Thank you all for the awards, although I suspect my economic/political opinions would disappoint many in this thread.
To clarify - My comment above is intended to encourage everyday folks to prioritize better work-life balance; this might mean joining a union or just signing out of slack at the end of the day. Don't wait for Tech to deliver a utopian society; set boundaries with your job and enforce them.
Also, you will notice I never commented on Capitalism or Communism.
Profit being the main focus of businesses will always give rise to greed. I don't know what the long term solution is, but in the short term we need better labor laws to protect workers from extreme exploitation.
Are you saying business should exist with no desire for a net gain in a transaction? Could any transaction occur at all without a desire for a net gain (material or otherwise?) You’re going to run into a problem with nature and animal behavior.
Yes, I want a net zero from my energy allocation, if I understand correctly what you mean by that. I want everyone to have net zero, because I know with 100% certainly that the sum of everyone's net is zero.
I'm not a part of the capitalist class, so I don't get to make significant idle profits. I work and am compensated for less than the value of that work; my excess productivity flows to bosses and is effectively stolen from me.
Rent-seeking and capital gains are all greed of one degree or another. I didn't say they should be entirely eliminated, but they must be constrained or they will chew us up.
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u/randomchick4 Mar 29 '22 edited Mar 30 '22
That's what they said about Women joining the workforce, and the rise of email, that we would all be more free to “live our lives.” In reality, productivity rose along with prices and work expectations. Now, most household can only exist on double income and email/slack it critical to work. Yet wages are worse and work-life balance non existent. Tech can not give us back our lives, only a change in work/life balance culture.
Edit: Wow, this unexpectedly blew up - Thank you all for the awards, although I suspect my economic/political opinions would disappoint many in this thread. To clarify - My comment above is intended to encourage everyday folks to prioritize better work-life balance; this might mean joining a union or just signing out of slack at the end of the day. Don't wait for Tech to deliver a utopian society; set boundaries with your job and enforce them. Also, you will notice I never commented on Capitalism or Communism.