The contradictions in “you need to work hard, working hard is good, so you can be rich and no longer work, working sucks” are weird once you see them.
I think a lot of upper management types believe they’re doing work, but a lot of it is bullshit.
I think a lot of upper management types believe they’re doing work, but a lot of it is bullshit.
You see that in those “day in the life of a CEO” stories, when they’re telling everybody how hard they work. “My day starts at 06:00. I then have a breakfast while checking my phone for news and mails.” Usually it’s not making their own breakfast, they’ve got staff for that. And every average Lemmy user checks their phone in the morning for messages and news. But if you’re CEO it counts as work. Then they have meetings and phone calls, just like every white collar worker everywhere, have lunch and some golf with their buddies. You would be slacking off. CEO’s are maintaining social relations so that’s very much work.
A lot of lower-upper management equates stress to work, without realizing that simply not giving a fuck (like the CEO does) produces the same amount of labor with a quarter of the stress
It depends on the industry but from my experience the c-suite and partner level positions are the “you made it” role and the one right below is the hardest job with all the real hands on work to prove they deserve the promotion.
But even that work is mainly an extreme influx of emails and ordering around subordinates
I think the problem is that when we work harder, we barely afford our bills. For those born rich, any amount of work results in an increase in their net worth.
Hard work is rewarded with more work. Productivity has gone up, and up, and up, and we’re seeing none of the benefits. Hell, we’re mostly seeing drawbacks; the world is burning, and people are working themselves to death trying to keep up.
It’s high time for productivity to cease.
A decade ago, I
boughtwas scammed into the “work harder” grind set. The CEO talked about how he works 80 hour weeks and how we all can be successful by pushing as hard as he does.His 80 hour weeks of work? They include dinner, massages, golf, ignoring his family, cheating on his wife, flying first class to another fine dining event.
Anybody working at Mcdonalds works harder than him.
The ownership class imported captured Africans to be forced to work on sugar plantations, often until they died of exhaustion or industrial injury, for no pay and minimal sustenance. And accused them of being lazy.
The working class is lazy is an old school canard like The 2020 presidential election was stolen or The reflecting pool was vandalized, it’s not meant to be plausible, rather we are supposed to pretend it is true.
Historically capitalists (and liege lords before them) have commonly put serfs, slaves and wage workers in intolerable conditions, and union action and government regulation were necessary to enforce livable working conditions, fair wages and benefits like healthcare.
Marx predicted the dismantling of the labor state by the capitalist. If we’re going to rebuild liberal society again, we’ll have to seize the assets of the ownership class by force, or expect them to coup d’etat again and again.
ETA: Now that I’m back on computer, This video (on YouTube) from How History Works aka How Business Worked talks about the phrase No one wants to work anymore, which was most recently notorious after the great resignation when companies actually had to offer competitive wages and benefits to get their workforce back up to numbers. But evidently, the phrase recurs time and time again when companies can’t find anyone to do their harsh jobs at the meager wages they offer.
Don’t have to actually imagine it.
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
