André Gorz Predicted the Revolt Against Meaningless Work (2023)

> The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ’60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.

Isn't this sort of similar to 1984 Like they had ways to provide enough but they wouldn't because then they would lose the power or something similar

it’s mentioned and linked a few paragraphs in so probably related

You know that this is bullshit right? We can all, regardless of our age, differentiate between meaningful and meaningless work. The fact that we need money to fulfil our obligations to our family, the bank or whatever it might be is completely separate from that. We can do meaningless jobs if we have to at any age. This does not make them meaningful. If a person, at any age, can choose between a meaningless and meaningful job - which do you think they would take?

If they have to choose between a meaningless job and starvation?

Cool. Now grow up and do some meaningful with your time. And so should I.

What you're describing is making work useful, not meaningful. More people nowadays are rejecting work that has no meaning, connection to identity and makes no use of their intellect, even if that work is a means of some income.

    Hacker: That's not the point. Look at Latin. Hardly anybody knows that now.
    Humphrey: Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
    Hacker: What?
    Humphrey: Times change and we change with the times.
    Hacker: Precisely.
    Humphrey: Si tacuisses, philosophus manisses.
    Hacker: What does that mean?
    Humphrey: If you'd kept your mouth shut, we might have thought you were clever.
    Hacker: I beg your pardon?
    Humphrey: Not you, Prime Minister. That's the translation.

This really downplays why people fight against "meaningless" work, it's not because of any philosophical grounds.

The real problem with meaningless work is it tends to be incredibly stressful. Because the underlying work creates no value, even locally (existentially of course it's all nil, but again, this isn't about that level of abstraction). The trouble with "no value" is that you also have no way know how to or even if you are doing your job "well".

Your description sounds pleasant, but my real experience with meaningless work is that it results in long hours worked, very aggressive office politics, and consistent insecurity around the future of your job and income.

The essence of "meaningless work" is captured very well in Kafka's The Trial. While their are brief moments where one can laugh at the absurdity of the situation, most of the time it sits in exact confrontation to the idyllic view of work you are proposing.

There is some truth to this, but I think this way of thinking is overly simplistic. From a material standpoint, any job that can provide for you and your family's needs is "meaningful" since you can't really have a meaningful life without having basic needs provided for. From a spiritual standpoint, however, I think it is detrimental for someone to know that their job is largely pointless or achieves no tangible outcomes in the world. I think this same criticism applies to UBI and other "end of work" ideas, since a person with no job is likely to suffer from the same lack of purpose as someone who senses their job is BS. People are intrinsically wired to want to do work and make some kind of difference (even if that difference is just knowing that you helped manufacture 500 cars that day, dug a ditch that will be used for some useful purpose, whatever).

Attitudes like this are why the wealth gap keeps growing.

Maybe it’s an age gap thing, but I’ve come to realize this attitude is one many boomers have because they’re all doing ok. The rest of us need to course correct the mess they’ve left. The america they were born into might as well be a foreign country at this point.

You’re getting unfairly downvoted for a sensible, practical point of view. Everyone here seems to want some kind of spiritual awakening from their job. But a job is just a means to some other end: affording your life, time with family, savings, security, things that are actually meaningful.

Which is funny because the only meaningful work is the work that puts a roof over someone's head, food on someone's table or provides entertainment for so people can enjoy their friends and family to have quality time together.

Why does having yet another toaster add more value to the economy than the ad for the toaster?

Federal spending is not funded by taxes, the US Treasury will never 'dry up', and the US will never default on its debts or entitlements. It may fail to pay, however that is not a default, it is a refusal or repudiation of an obligation.

The fact that bullshit jobs add to GDP should perhaps be taken as proof that GDP is also bullshit.

Here's another point in favour: jobs only add to GDP when they're jobs. When your parent cooks dinner at home, GDP doesn't increase. But when both parents work and then spend (for the sake of argument) one of their entire salaries on buying restaurant food, GDP increases by that much, even though the whole thing is now less efficient.

Output of what?

There are two ways to make money: you can trade people with money something that they prefer to money, or you can help people with money make more money, in exchange for a share of it.

The value of "output", whatever it is, is dependent on who currently has money. A vaccine for malaria has no value if no one who has money prefers it to money. A machine that can get you to Mars has no value, unless people with money want to go to Mars.

I say people with money, but it really people times money. And a few people have almost all of it.

So when we talk about output, GDP, whatever, as long as it's measured in money remember that it's mostly rich people's preferences we're talking about.

What kind of jobs do you put into the lifestyle category? Depending on what you mean by that, I think that lifestyle jobs can have some non monetary value to society by increasing wellbeing.

Gene Roddenberry had a different perspective on the outcome.

Humans are social creatures. Part of our set of needs is having a community around us, be it family, or friends, or whatever. If we get cut off from community we tend to develop mental problems and die young.

I guess we could AI our way out of this, and create some kind of pretend AI community around ourselves, but I don't think that's workable; we'd always know it was actually AI. Like winning an FPS game against bots isn't actually satisfying.

There are lots of intentional communities (amongst other experiments) where people are trying this stuff out. There are lots of problems, but the root hypothesis; that people are happier when living together and sharing their lives, seems to be confirmed.

This is why some form of UBI seems inevitable. Thinking all these people will retrain as data scientists or whatever is deluded and if you don’t do something the fabric of society will tear itself apart so it’s in the interests of the well off to come up with a solution here

If AI can replace white collar workers than it will also cheap enough for everyone to start running their own business and join the capitalist class.

The problem is alot of people can only conceive of a life where they are handed work and a salary by someone else, when that was only ever a particular circumstance for the last few decades. Whether they can grow out of that is another question, but those who can't won't find much agency.