
It's the 21st century – why are we all working so hard? - joeyespo
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/01/why-are-we-working-so-hard
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littletimmy
Entrepreneur employ Labor 1 and Labor 2 > Technology increases productivity >
Entrepreneur greedy > Entrepreneur fire Labor 1 > Labor 2 keeps working hard,
Labor 1 becomes lesson for Labor 2.

Alternatively, Entrepreneur employ Labor 1 and Labor 2 > Clinton negotiates
trade deal > Entrepreneur shift jobs to China > Labor 1 and 2 fired, now
compete in a reduced job market > New Entrepreneur now uses Labor 1 and Labor
2 as uber fodder

Alternatively, Labor 1 lives in the United States > Labor 1 therefore judges
self-worth by his work > Labor 1 therefore works hard because it gives his
life meaning

And so on.

The summary answer to this question is that we're structurally fucked. The
only determinant of how hard labor can be pushed is labor power, and labor
power is pretty low. The capitalist will colonize every last corner of the
earth before he gives the worker any dignity, and probably not even then.

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jonnathanson
Wealth is not a fixed sum. When a machine comes along and automates 50% of our
labor, we (not we literally, but 'we' as a system) have two choices to make:
1) Accept that our jobs are now 50% easier; or 2) find twice as much work to
do. The latter is what seems to happen every time technology automates
_processes_ and _procedures_ especially. Take email's replacement of the
telephone, for instance. There are only so many calls you can place in a day,
and therefore only so much value those calls can generate. But you can send
hundreds of emails and accomplish much more work than you could with your
phone -- and also generate lots more value. When capitalism is given the
option to generate more value, capitalism tends to take that option.

As productivity grows, we choose to reinvest that productivity gain in more
work, resulting in more systemic wealth creation. This becomes a sort of
treadmill, and damned if I know how we get off of it. When we routinize and
automate something, we always seem to find a higher-order task to take on in
its place. The result is that our world is wealthier than ever (in the
economic sense of the word). The unfortunate side effect is that we seem to be
working harder than ever.

Tl;dr: Machines make our jobs easier, so we squeeze more work and more complex
tasks into the vacuum created by the automation. This process repeats itself.

~~~
orasis
A huge part of the problem is that improved productivity leads to higher
housing prices. Solve housing, or the flip side of that coin, transportation,
and you can start extracting significant quality of life improvements from
higher productivity.

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Johnythree
Because automation is increasingly used to transfer wealth from the middle-
class to the super rich (at least in America).

There have been many studies: eg
[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-
inequalit...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-
in-america-chart-graph)

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lolive
Because if we stopped working so hard, all the existing processes would fail
immediately. (automation requires constant care by humans).

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ommunist
Because we are nudged to cover costs of artificial habits.

