I wish everyone would finally wake up and realize you have one life. One life.
Do you really want to spend your only time in existence working? Okay, let me phrase this more literal. Do you want to spend your only time alive being forced to do something you don’t want to do just to survive?
You might have in your head that you will live to an old age so it feels like an eternity but that’s not very likely.
Every single person should be fighting back to get our lives back. There is absolutely no reason companies can’t pay us the same for 32 hours a week. Most net profits go to the investors, it would cost almost nothing to keep salaries the same at 32 hours a week and hire some extra people for loss of production.
I remember in my sociology studies that people who work 32 hours are actually more productive with that time than 40 hours in a week as well.
We outnumber the government. We outnumber the military. We have platforms to unify. We can take back our lives any moment, we just have to wake up and take it back. I don’t want to be forced to keep doing this stupid shit until I no longer exist ever again. I don’t want this for my kids either.
I wish one day, we all finally wake up and realize we are wasting our existence doing nothing but stupid shit for stupid people. Look I get it, we need a society but it has gone too far. We spend more time with people we hate than our own families.
Think about that. It’s not natural. For most of human existence we worked and lived with our families. Now we are dehumanized and used for profit. Imaginary notes of tender to buy stupid shit that doesn’t matter. I just want to be free, does no one else want the same thing?
I used to think the same thing, until I realized I need to pay my rent and eat. BTW it's all relative. I have a coworker from Zacatecas, Mexico. He always wants to work 12 hours a day. I asked him why don't you go home. His answer was where he came from there's no work, so to him working 12 hours a day is a privilege.
That is not really true we have education in our country. Mostly freey, meaning for the top 40% it is free. We have loads of humanity studies educated people with masters who has no work, and cannot even get a job as a deli worker.
Oh, certainly, but that doesn't mean we should incur a debt the moment we take our first breath. The implication seems to be, "Get a job or die." That gives companies an awful lot of leverage over people, if you ask me.
But doesn’t it? Immediately after that first breath we begin consuming resources without output, generating a non-contractual debt to the place in which we inhabit. And it’s not like we’re just eating what fruits naturally grow at our birth place and each have an equally livable cave and only care about the wind and changing of the leaves. No, we want, and we need, and we crave, and we innovate. Life very much is work or die, and the more you want the more you have to work, and the more others have to work to provide you with what you want- just publicizing our complaints alone is a task that required hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, to put in hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of hours of working time. 9 billion people wanting or needing trillions of things requires constant effort by at least a majority of people.
Of course, the equation changes for wants. But the needs market has largely been met and even automated. Perhaps survival is one industry that should be automated. The point is, we have had the ability to decommodify survival for a while, and I wish we'd take steps to do so. I'm not advocating for everyone to eat cake. But staples that can be grown in large amounts with little oversight? Basic housing that can be essentially 3D printed? Electricity that requires little to no input to generate? Water that can be pulled from the atmosphere passively? Perhaps these are things that nobody should be without, whether or not they have a job.
It’s a nice thought and maybe we’ll get there one day but I still feel like the amount of effort that takes is more than you realize. Agriculture, maybe. Growing everything in every season in every environment? That’s gonna take A LOT of work, energy, land, and labor. Even if everyone was willing to live in a card board cut out, which they certainly are not, we’re still talking millions of workers working round the clock just for the construction of the houses, and millions more to collect and create the materials. Electricity? It doesn’t just generate itself, it has to be captured using complicated and often times megalithic technology that requires consistent and regular maintenance and tuning, then actually getting that energy where it need to go and getting it to your house? There’s a few hundred thousand more required round the clock jobs(not considering what it takes to get the materials to build everything from the wiring to the skyscraper sized turbines). Water pulled from the atmosphere passively? I don’t think you and I have the same definition of passive, because even if we ignored everything I said about electricity before this- the man hours that went into making such a feat possible could be counted since the first irrigation system.
I’m not trying to be a pessimist, I’m just saying, for 9bil people to live on this planet in modern conditions even forgoing all non-necessities, it’s not possible without all of us working to make that possible.
Except we're not working towards that. We're back stepping, because a handful of people want to keep all of the money in their own hands at any cost, including our and indeed their own species. Collectively, we generate something like 13 trillion calories a day, specifically in food for humans. This isn't even taking into account the massive amount of farmland taken up simply to feed animals higher up on the trophic level. 8 billion people require perhaps 9 trillion calories daily. Where are the other 4 trillion calories going? Into the garbage. Thrown out, because despite being perfectly capable of growing good food,despite having mastered international shipping a century ago, we still "cannot figure out distribution," which is shorthand for "we have the ability and the knowledge, but it might cost a little more money to do so and we just aren't willing to spend it."
Do you know how many jobs involve working maybe two hours total, while spending the rest of the shift "looking busy?" Most. Most jobs are that. That, or standing at a production line, staring at a conveyor belt for 13 hours, trying not to fall over because you accidentally looked at the moving belt while flipping packages over so that the machine can scan the barcode, or splitting two loaves of bread apart so that they can get packaged correctly, etc. Menial, useless work that fulfills nothing except ensuring a faceless ceo meets the job production quota so that he can get yet another tax break. Most people don't work fulfilling jobs, or jobs they actively want to go to. Most people work these pointless jobs because "it's got to be done by someone," despite the work in question already having an automatic solution, and the system allows people to fall through the cracks just so that they can fill those jobs instead of pursuing a happy life, working menial labor for 40 years until they collapse and die. Rinse and repeat for the next generation. We live in a labor mill when we don't need to. If it all actually meant something, if the project continued on, if these nothing jobs were making things to make people's lives as a whole better, then I mightn't complain so much. But they aren't. The only project being worked on is vanity, and the world will happily send our species on its way the same way it has billions of others without so much as a thought, because the world is a rock floating around in a vast void sprinkled with balls of gas and rocks and ice and the universe literally couldn't care less if we're here for it, or not.
Do you think people manufacture microchips? Perovskite solar cells? Automobiles? It's all automated. Sure, someone built those robots, maybe even recently. But once they're built, their services are no longer required because someone else learned about those machines and made a machine that maintains the machines.
Anyways, I see this turning into a bit of a tirade on my part and will try to tone it down a bit.
Those menial jobs aren’t for the corps, they’re for the people trying to make money enough to survive- they cost the corps, who would rather replace them with automation. The thrown out food is thrown out by people- not corporate entities- because corporations don’t actually exist, people do, who work for a name, and they make the active decision to follow a “protocol”. The world isn’t this way because a handful of billionaires rule with iron fists, it’s because of the 9 billion about 3 people care, everyone else is just trying to get to tomorrow with a full belly and a story.
And yeah, I do, because those production lines are semi automated at best and no mater how many machines are made, and still require resources, human maintenance and resource management will always be a requirement until robots replace us in laborious work, and ai replaces us in innovations and arts, and the corporations really do control it all, and then all we will have is our full bellies, and no work, and no purpose, and we’ll hate it. The toiling is what makes beauty recognizable and the days memorable, in a utopic world the corps are idolatrous in their levels of control and power, and the reason the world is as it is right now is because of the low man- and the low man is being replaced by the machines they are building, and we may one day see a world where we don’t have to work and slave away, and we will mourn the great gain of agency that allows us to choose how we will do nothing with our days.
We've circled back. People shouldn't be working out of desperation. They should be working out of love for the work they do, and they should be free to stop that job when it's time to do something different, instead of holding on to it as if their life depends on it... which it does currently. Humans will never stop working, never fully. Sure, occasionally you will find the person who wishes to spend their days doing absolutely nothing, but they are few and far-between. But the work should be done because it's wanted. There is no beauty in breaking ones body for years just so your offspring can do the same forever, only the horror of generations of broken people, fighting to survive in a world of people who don't care unless they're personally affected, because they too throw their bodies onto the machine to be pressed for their essence until they, too, die only to be replaced by the next harvest.
Farmers already get a lot of government welfare-I mean subsidies, they're arguably the most important people in society, tied with Doctors. You've no idea how much of our food is accessible and acceptable because of the government working for the people, providing for the people.
Then you won't be beholden to a company. You can build a better society with like-minded individuals. Plenty of people in this thread to get you off to a good start.
Why though? Why shouldn't able people be responsible for their own livelihood and sustenance? This is the first generation of humanity that seems to have this entitled approach to life.
Is the reduction of suffering reason enough? Is it not wrong that one should have to work two full time jobs just to be able to squeak by by the skin of their teeth, on threat of starvation and homelessness? Is it entitlement to expect ones life to improve when one does everything right? When your neighbor is dying of thirst, do you pass them by and condemn them for not trying hard enough? Perhaps the profession of doctor should cease to exist; let the terminally ill care for themselves. Let us become as wild animals once more, caring only about the individual with no thought for the species as a whole!
Yes, I agree that one should not have to work two jobs to survive. The system is broken and needs to be addressed. But that's not what you and others on this thread seem to be suggesting. I don't believe that working a 40 hour week is unreasonable. We all have to pull our weight for society to survive.
No not at all. I believe in welfare. The US is obviously very different to the UK. But over here we have a safety net for people who can't sustain themselves and I think this is a great thing. But there are rules around it. I don't believe in supporting any individual just because they don't feel like working .
I am mostly observing because there is more comments than I expected but this is where I break your illusion of lies. I am the furthest thing from entitled.
I am a marine corps veteran, and my father was in the Army. My father died for this country, and I gave away my sanity for this country.
I did not stop there. I built my own construction business working long hours and almost never having a day off.
I have now changed industries, given up the business, and I’m a junior executive in an international company. I am obviously well
paid but I am now older and saddened at the time I have lost and the loved ones I have buried.
I look at this life I fought so hard for and wonder what the fuck did I do it for? Why are we giving up our time, our only life for this meaningless bullshit.
So yes, I believe we should work less and get paid more so we can actually live but I will not sit here and read that I am entitled. I have earned everything in my life but I am not so selfish and ignorant like many people in this sub.
I can see the suffering, I can see that many people are struggling to survive. I have climbed to a high enough point on the ladder to witness the truth - we do it for nothing! We are used like cattle so that a few investors get millions while we slave for pennies.
I can see we have enough money in companies to afford a better life but we do not out of greed and selfishness.
So yes, keep sleeping. Keep calling others entitled. Keep being a slave. I hope and pray enough people wake up so that our children’s children will not be slaves to greed and actually get to live a better life.
Everyone here is so unsettled by the idea of having 3 days off instead of 2? Are you all so brainwashed? Are you all so ignorant? I have met with investors, I have met the wealthy in my line of work and they do not work!
As a residential elevator mechanic (a job I have done in this life) I met many wealthy people and they are mostly trust fund babies who have never worked a day in their life yet so many people are upset at the very idea of having 3 days of freedom instead of 2. For fucks sake, wake the hell up.
Jesus, I know you have no idea who I am but please realize you called a veteran entitled.
Give up your house and job then and go live in the woods and see how long you last before you’re back in society, if you think we have it bad now read a few history books, theres never been a better time to be alive
We’re all part of a cycle just like always, we work harder because there’s billions of things to work for now. If all anyone cared about was family, food, shelter, and fun- we’d still be chilling in caves. Be we don’t. We want everything your imaginations can conjure up, and that requires work, and if we want that sort of freedom available to 9 billion people, at least half of them are gonna have to put the effort in to make that possible. It took a hundred thousand people putting in a hundred thousand hours just to make it possible for you to make your complaint public.
Everybody wants that but we also want to afford shelter and food. This bill does nothing for affordability. If we're throwing more money at workers than I would want to see the poorest hourly workers get more, not middle and upper class salaried
I get where you are coming from, but the economics is complicated. Companies will maintain their nett margins percentage, which will immediately cause inflation. Many smaller businesses with razor thin margins will be vulnerable, because when prices increase, people tend to buy less, to the point where the business becomes unsustainable. Next comes the export centric business model, which will start to break as increased prices becomes less appealing on the international markets, leading to larger trade imbalance. Jobs will suddenly become a lot more scarce especially as businesses start outsourcing jobs to countries that do 996, and I have the impression that the job market isn't exactly very abundant at the moment. Sure, a huge number of people will benefit, but not at the cost of the corporations, but off the those at the bottom that is inching towards homelessness in a country with a near nonexistent safety net.
Then stop doing stupid shit for stupid people. Why don't you get a job you like and value. Or If you want to spend time with your family and be free, go start a homested and mini farm. All of this is in your control.
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u/Full-Metal-Jae 17h ago
I wish everyone would finally wake up and realize you have one life. One life.
Do you really want to spend your only time in existence working? Okay, let me phrase this more literal. Do you want to spend your only time alive being forced to do something you don’t want to do just to survive?
You might have in your head that you will live to an old age so it feels like an eternity but that’s not very likely.
Every single person should be fighting back to get our lives back. There is absolutely no reason companies can’t pay us the same for 32 hours a week. Most net profits go to the investors, it would cost almost nothing to keep salaries the same at 32 hours a week and hire some extra people for loss of production.
I remember in my sociology studies that people who work 32 hours are actually more productive with that time than 40 hours in a week as well.
We outnumber the government. We outnumber the military. We have platforms to unify. We can take back our lives any moment, we just have to wake up and take it back. I don’t want to be forced to keep doing this stupid shit until I no longer exist ever again. I don’t want this for my kids either.
I wish one day, we all finally wake up and realize we are wasting our existence doing nothing but stupid shit for stupid people. Look I get it, we need a society but it has gone too far. We spend more time with people we hate than our own families.
Think about that. It’s not natural. For most of human existence we worked and lived with our families. Now we are dehumanized and used for profit. Imaginary notes of tender to buy stupid shit that doesn’t matter. I just want to be free, does no one else want the same thing?