I’m moderately pro work, but a honest day’s work deserves and needs to be paid a honest days wage
Also people do want to work but the Epstein class refuses to pay a fair wage. It’s that rich and powerful refuse to pay their workers a fair wage
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2026
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Remember that capitalism is designed to force you to work under threat of death by starvation. You never had freedom to choose what to do with your lives it was chosen for you.
I guess that's just life, isn't it? I mean people in stone age also lived under the threat of starvation if they just hang out in their caves. Of course, capitalism is the industrialized professional version of this, but I don't think this is inherently capitalistic.
The difference is that we have all the tools and resources to not live like caveman nowadays. We could feed everyone if we wanted to, but the government would rather fire another barrage of missiles at impoverished people
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Hunter/gatherer and early farming societies typically had a lot more leisure time than we do today. Some researchers estimated they only 'worked' 15-30 hours a week, and a lot of that was dependent on seasons. In addition, their egalitarian structure and lack of pursuit for excess material goods meant no pressure for long work hours.
Hunter/gatherer and early farming societies typically had a lot more leisure time than we do today. Some researchers estimated they only ‘worked’ 15-30 hours a week
That figure is both not a consensus, and it's a number of hours that's referring to time spent on food procurement only, nothing else of what's needed to live/survive.
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As opposed to nature where you are forced to hunt for food under threat of starvation.
Most species have better social safety nets than capitalism does, though.
Plenty of other economic systems also made people to work under threat of starvation.
Unless the Romans and Greeks were capitalists, too.
Not like capitalism. It has a marketing scheme where it gives you the illusion of free will and choices.
that’s cool. we live under none of those systems. focus on the one we are beholden to and don’t distract as if there is some sort of contest.
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Unless the Romans and Greeks were capitalists, too.
Nope, just slavers, not wage slavers. The dynamics of power are eternal, merely the forms change. One hopes at some point we evolve.
“Nooo!! We need hierarchy!!! If there’s no one to tell me what to do I won’t know what to do!” - everybody every time I bring up hierarchy as the cause of many of humanity’s problems
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What we've been trained to identify as "work" under this power hierarchy is more definitively "toil". The definition has been overridden so that we cannot differentiate the bait and switch.
Work is labor that benefits the person doing it, is self-actualizing, is voluntary, and is an overall positive experience.
Toil is labor without clear benefit. It is not fun. It is repetitive and draining. It is often involuntary or coerced.
For most who labor under capitalism, the labor they perform is not actually work, but toil.
Yeah, this unfortunately. Truth nuke, a person who does a honest day’s work deserves to be paid a honest day’s wage
/the ghost of Ammon Hennacy grins
I picked up the idea through Bookchin but I have no doubt he got it from other libsocs like Hennacy.
ITT: tons of people defending capitalism by forswearing the last 200,000 years of social progress.
To quote Bernie, who might have been quoting someone else: poverty isn't an inevitability. It's a policy choice.
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Honest work is just fine. What I don’t like is high pay for bullshit work and bullshit pay for honest work.
Yeah, same here honestly. It’s that the Epstein class refuses to pay the workers for their labor and refuses to pay the workers a living wage and refuses to pay them and refuses to give them a raise
When I was like 13, 14 when my parents were really pushing me to get a job, I already didn't want to work. Decades later, I still don't want to work, and I like what I do. There's a reason I play the lotto, it's the only way I'm getting out of this shit-cycle. I'd like to spend more time hanging out with my nieces and nephews, who are growing up so fast. My grandparents only have a few years left at best, I've already missed out on spending the best years I could with them. Saw my dad last year, probably the first in nearly a decade in of itself. I want to spend time just sitting at a beach watching the waves come in. Or seeing a mountain for the first time.
I don't want to work. I've never wanted to work. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't do nothing, I don't want to be lazy. Like, my ideal "job" is working in engineering on the Enterprise with Geordi. But that can't happen. So really I just want enough money so if I do work, I have enough money to tell upper management their plans "aka shit they saw on LinkedIn" is fucking stupid. What you going to do fire me, I'd be rich, that's not a threat! Eat shit you overpaid worthless peices of shit... (I might have some things to work on...,)
More like society has some things to work on.
I have several hobbies that could make bank if I wanted to put in time and effort.
That requires treating executive dysfunction, which can't happen unless I have money. In order to get money I have to work jobs I absolutely hate, and that suck all energy and will to live out of me, and I don't want to do anything with my hobbies.
If I didn't have to worry about food, housing, and whether I have electricity or not, I could sell a handful of things a month and be just fine on utilities and a luxury purchase every so often.
If we wanted to perform labor, we wouldn't have invented machines or fantasize about robot butlers.
I just want the freedom to eat cheese in foreign places, without the need to pay thugs at borders to get to the next place with cheese.
is also a dream of mine, though I don't much like cheese :)
Reading an article in the FT yesterday, an 80 yr old woman who was ardently opposed to Magyar and pro Orban because he'll let in swathes of immigrants and help Ukraine in the war, leading to an unbearable and unlivable Hungary.
Just when I think Australia is the only country with truly horrible people, it's "nice" to see other nation states are also burdened with them.
They said, I just wish Australia would join the EU. I worked just go live in Hungary :)
am unemployed and volunteer my time to help the community, have never been so busy. will have more time to rest once I get a job
People do want to work! Loads of people build all sorts of things for the joy and satisfaction of the craft. Plenty of people volunteer to help people - literally the definition of doing something you don't have to do! Anyone that says that isn't work is delusional.
We need a new word for what we call "work". No one wants to be exploited for their effort, but most people have always had the desire to do some sort of work.
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People want to be useful. What people don't want is to have the surplus value of their labor stolen from them. People are cool with working and helping out others as long as they actually get to reap what they sow and not have it stolen from them.
Does my desire to rot mean nothing to you, ma’am? (Rest is different than that, for those who don’t understand and are haters)
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