Meh. I’ve seen a lot of these short essays about how after the pandemic we either should not or simply will not return to the status quo. It doesn’t really do anything to say “the economy doesn’t work” in 5 paragraphs and then say nothing else.
Yes, lots of poor people are getting screwed. Some jobs don’t pay well despite the higher moral standing of directly assisting others. The environment looks pretty bad. But you can’t just say “rich people bad. New economy plz”.
Did you expect a new country wise economic model to be purposed in this article? I believe the author was trying to say, "Poor people are getting screwed, some jobs dont pay well, the environment is bad, lets do something and not forget it."
It is a solution? No. I don't think it is trying to be though. It's just trying to be a reminder that letting everything go back to the way it was is the easiest route forward and the quickly route to getting back on the shitty path the country has been on for the past 20 years.
At the very least we need Federally mandated sick days. My mother caught COVID at the beginning of March of 2020 from a coworker who knew her husband had it but continued to come into work out of fear of losing her job. It's crazy that it would happen again during the next pandemic.
Meanwhile 20 years after 9/11 we're still taking off our shoes to get on airplanes.
I agree. He writes about how we lived in a dream but for me what he writes is also a dream of some sort.
Just stop doing our dream-work.. and then? What do I do to provide for my family? Should we all get a patch of land and grow food for ourselves? This idea does not seem realistic or scalable.
But maybe I am just misunderstanding the essay or my thoughts are just not deep enough.
The current system created artificial scarcity which kept many people poor and a few people rich. We didn't actually need to consume until the planet was ruined, but we did. Now we are all screwed because real scarcity is returning and we still don't know how to share.
The one on debt or on bullshit jobs? From what I know, the book on debt is indeed quite influential in financial circles, although I find that a third of its content are entertaining passages on tribal societies.
And the bullshit jobs book is a reiteration of the earlier essay. While the essay is concise and straight to the point, the book has dubious assumptions and generalisations that are there for attention-grabbing.
David Graeber would have been the greatest mind of our era if he adopted the writing style of @pg: straight to the point essays that form a cult following.
As much anti-estabilshment as he was, he was trying too much to fit his brilliant mind into XX century academia writing standards.
> This is what happened after the 2008 financial crash. There was a brief moment of questioning. (What is “finance,” anyway? Isn’t it just other people’s debts? What is money? Is it just debt, too? What’s debt? Isn’t it just a promise? If money and debt are just a collection of promises we make to each other, then couldn’t we just as easily make different ones?) The window was almost instantly shut by those insisting we shut up, stop thinking, and get back to work, or at least start looking for it.
yeah, sure, just completely ignore the $2T cryptocurrency industry that’s objectively a response to govt’s handling of 2008 (read Satoshi’s genesis block)?
i’m not really sure what the author’s trying to push for though: that we all don’t go back to working for rich people? well sure, but the valuable part is showing us how to do that…
I'm not sure the $2T cryptocurrency industry is a response to govt's handling of 2008. I think Satoshi cared very deeply about it: I'm not sure all of the $2T worth of participation in the current economy does, nor am I certain that the current crypto industry addresses many of the problems that existed in 2008.
But otherwise I generally agree. The authors paragraph seems to remember occupy Wall Street but forget that most people don’t care at all about finance if/when things return to normal.
The people shouting loudest about how bad everything is are the people who benefit most from things not getting better. So it is hardly surprising that some governments (e.g. US) jump from crisis to crisis.
Except few engage in this sort of work. If left to their own devices, most people would simply consume content produced by the 10-20% of people who would actually do anything useful.
This is my observation. People are so weirded out when I tell them all the stuff I want to do. Most people just laze if left to their own devices and provided food. People have this image of hunter gatherer tribes doing interesting things in their free time, but the data show that, unless they're hunting, gathering, cooking, or doing other biological imperatives, most of their time is spent lazing.
That's fine, but if your argument about not working is that humans are going to engage in 'dream work'... well I think that's just silly.
Ultimately, from what I've seen, people with this mentality, often end up becoming quite well off. Those who want to engage in 'dream work' often have the self-motivating spirit that almost inevitably leads to material success.
that whole the great reset and how life will be different after the pandemic was not serious, those of us who know that knew that back when it was said. maybe it sounds negative, but come on, the system did not change for those who were on the front lines. it was a pat on the back for the working man or woman who was risking their lives, and getting nothing in return.
a lot of people who have worked terrible jobs during the pandemic didn't have an opportunity to retrain and rethink about things, they were still working, the whole things are gonna change crowd were those who had the privilege to wait things out from the safety of their computers, they could order doordash or amazon groceries and drink their home made espresso while shopping for a cute new mask to show everyone how much they cared about being safe. the people who made the mask, worked in the food supply chain, delivered your groceries and doordash food kept their 60-70 hour a week job of hopelessness, had zero opportunity to shift away from that. while people were talking about how things are different now, many americans were dealing with the same, except they were now in an extremely dangerous situation (according to the experts) but, in many cases did not receive anything other than "thanks", and maybe a dollar or two more in tips, if they didn't forget anything.
what the pandemic has taught me is that we are not some civilized, future minded society, we are a bunch of naked apes with pitchforks who like to hoard for profit and fight over which candidate sweet talks better but offers zero solutions other than creating race/freedom/whatever division you can think of... culture war. do we have a chance to make things better? yes, when we stop looking at the world through a political lens, and start looking at it from a humanity lens.
It's good to have savings for when times get bad. Then you can afford to buy things like door dash to get through the bad times. Investing in your education is also good, so that you have valuable skills even when money gets devalued.
That some people can not save up for various reasons does not imply the people who did save for hard times are to blame.
If it angers you, don't work for door dash. Odds are, the people who worked for door dash were actually happy they had a job during the pandemic.
Of course a quite short post. But indeed spinns of a couple of questions about our current reality. Going to remote work as one point. Of course this does not help the nurse in your local hospital. But i do hope, that it will have a major impact on our social lives regarding carework for your family. A shame that i found out about the death of graeber through this post…
> just a way of tabulating the aggregate desires of rich people, most of whom are at least slightly pathological,
He lost me here. Guy is just a communist hoping for another Bolshevik Revolution.
Maybe it is true of the uber rich, but the majority of millionaires are just normal people who saved, started a business, and just invested.
If I was to judge someone character strictly off their economic status, you’re likely to find on average that the average rich man is a more moral productive member of society than the average poor one.
If he was talking about the bureaucrats way of getting rich by accepting bribes and funneling taxes to their pockets he might have had me. As it is his ideas would just make it worse.
Graeber is an anarchist, so definitely not hoping for a Bolshevik Revolution, something he always opposed.
> If I was to judge someone character strictly off their economic status, you’re likely to find on average that the average rich man is a more moral productive member of society than the average poor one.
You didn't give an argument as to why you would believe that. Graeber presumably believes the opposite because the poor suffer needing while the rich refrain from helping despite being able to. It can be considered allowing harm[1], introductory trolley problem stuff. Of course I can't speak for him but based on what he's written elsewhere I think he would agree that it's not possible to be rich and moral while people go starving because he believes people have an obligation to help those in need when they can (i.e. when it is not too harmful to themselves.) If you don't agree with that, then it's likely you differ in the assumptions you have rather than the logic here.
I see this recurring theme in things I read from places like Jacobin and other socialist leaning places, they seem to completely ignore the middle and upper-middle class.
In every argument, there seems to be only two groups of people. The "slaves" working their 9-5 jobs making minimum wage and barely getting by, and the uber-rich like Bezos, Gates, etc.
What they never say is there are tons of millionaires, they didn't have spectacular jobs, they drive regular cars and live in regular houses. They just saved for years and years and now they have a nest egg that's worth 7 figures.
I get why no one talks about them, when you talk about the "millionaires and billionaires", you immediately think of a Bezos type, vacationing on their yacht. You don't think about the husband and wife that both drive Camry's and live in a nice suburban home with a net worth of close to $5M because they invested and saved their whole life.
I am hopeful there will be a technological inflection at which adequate nutritious food, clean water, and shelter will be freely self-sustaining for all people. I am not talking about a point at which these things are provided or paid for, but rather a point at which the appropriate technologies are plentiful and self-sustaining, much like plants are today.
It's strange to see this upvoted on HN of all places. Some marxist inspired ramblings with no clear conclusion. Fact is that the free enterprise system works very well when you let it work and this is backed by a lot of empirical data.
Common misconception, examples are the 40hr work week and banning of payment in scrip in the 1800s.
Another example is that monopolies require legislation or they have the effect of “seizing up” the dynamics of a functioning marketplace and turning toxic.
Semiconductor patents being made public and telecom copper being made open to use by other companies are both pretty well understood examples of legislation that helped bring about the computer era we live in now. Not free market in a pure ideological sense, but a kind of curated open market dynamic.
Markets are created by governments and don’t just spring from anywhere whole cloth. Markets are useful for many many things but need to be gardened, in effect.
In our current world labor “markets” are really not that at all— if a participant does not have the ability to withdraw their offer of labor then price signaling doesn’t work.
I’ve been reading the book Freedom From the Market, it’s well-researched and a literature review of sorts. Would recommend.
When you make it work. They aren't free by magic; if the freedom isn't enforced and maintained, they rapidly become unfree, and that's what appears to be happening (or has already happened).
Wasn’t this guys book on bullshit jobs completely debunked? I mean yeah, filing TPS sheets might seem pointless on their own but in the grand scheme of things someone needs to checkboxes. It might be unglamorous work but it necessary for the whole system to function.
We talk about productivity gains and why we still work 40 hour weeks and my answer is always this - you’re free to trade those productivity gains for free time. Go and find a plot of land 1890 homesteaders would normally claim, grow some food, build a sod house and eschew modern society in all its flavors - technology, healthcare, engineering, etc. i don’t mean to sound like a dick, but that’s why we still work 40+ hour work weeks despite the efficiency gains - because a modern lifestyle costs a hell of a lot more than basic subsistence.
People do this! Ted Kazinsky did it. It is possible. But of course everyone wants their mRNA vaccine technology and 10 hours weeks as well.
I think that's an oversimplification, while I'd agree that modern life costs more to sustain in terms of required input from many different people and industries. There's also issues like the productivity/wage gap, general inertia in cultural change, the glorification of overwork, increasing accumulation of wealth by the already incredibly wealthy, how automation is introduced/managed, etc. that means we shouldn't just assume that people must work 40+ hour weeks or everything crumbles.
While some of the potential solutions I've read on this seem incredibly idealistic, I also believe there is probably a path forward where working time could be reduced significantly without the negative effects on technological, scientific or economic advancements that are presumed
The idea is that many jobs do not contribute to "technology,healthcare,engineering, etc.", rather, salaries and work assignments are regulated to simply force people to spend most of their lives doing meaningless activities as a form of social control.
Even Ted Kaczynski talked about "surrogate activities".
soared|4 years ago
Yes, lots of poor people are getting screwed. Some jobs don’t pay well despite the higher moral standing of directly assisting others. The environment looks pretty bad. But you can’t just say “rich people bad. New economy plz”.
This essay is basically r/im14andthisisdeep
AlwaysRock|4 years ago
It is a solution? No. I don't think it is trying to be though. It's just trying to be a reminder that letting everything go back to the way it was is the easiest route forward and the quickly route to getting back on the shitty path the country has been on for the past 20 years.
wefarrell|4 years ago
Meanwhile 20 years after 9/11 we're still taking off our shoes to get on airplanes.
fileeditview|4 years ago
Just stop doing our dream-work.. and then? What do I do to provide for my family? Should we all get a patch of land and grow food for ourselves? This idea does not seem realistic or scalable.
But maybe I am just misunderstanding the essay or my thoughts are just not deep enough.
thanatos519|4 years ago
The current system created artificial scarcity which kept many people poor and a few people rich. We didn't actually need to consume until the planet was ruined, but we did. Now we are all screwed because real scarcity is returning and we still don't know how to share.
fidesomnes|4 years ago
[deleted]
drcongo|4 years ago
[deleted]
q-base|4 years ago
mellosouls|4 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28908960
His passing also discussed at the time:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24365811
sam_lowry_|4 years ago
And the bullshit jobs book is a reiteration of the earlier essay. While the essay is concise and straight to the point, the book has dubious assumptions and generalisations that are there for attention-grabbing.
David Graeber would have been the greatest mind of our era if he adopted the writing style of @pg: straight to the point essays that form a cult following.
As much anti-estabilshment as he was, he was trying too much to fit his brilliant mind into XX century academia writing standards.
sleepysysadmin|4 years ago
Which one might I ask?
Bullshit jobs is pretty big, but debt: the first 5000 years is quite good.
wallacoloo|4 years ago
yeah, sure, just completely ignore the $2T cryptocurrency industry that’s objectively a response to govt’s handling of 2008 (read Satoshi’s genesis block)?
i’m not really sure what the author’s trying to push for though: that we all don’t go back to working for rich people? well sure, but the valuable part is showing us how to do that…
matthewdgreen|4 years ago
soared|4 years ago
But otherwise I generally agree. The authors paragraph seems to remember occupy Wall Street but forget that most people don’t care at all about finance if/when things return to normal.
kf6nux|4 years ago
When people say something is a $x industry, I normally think revenue per year.
How big is the industry as measured by transaction/service fees?
smitty1e|4 years ago
Our governments seem to move from crisis to crisis, though the cart/horse roles are ambiguous here.
chasd00|4 years ago
zohch|4 years ago
mellosouls|4 years ago
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/03/david-graeber-posthumous-...
DeathArrow|4 years ago
But apart from that angriness - which I can find some simpaty for - the article does not tell us anything.
Nothing about the complicate reasons our society is in this state. Nothing about some solutions to make it better.
smitty1e|4 years ago
There is a pre-modern tendency toward muscular executive branches that bears re-thinking, though.
jeliotj|4 years ago
iammisc|4 years ago
This is my observation. People are so weirded out when I tell them all the stuff I want to do. Most people just laze if left to their own devices and provided food. People have this image of hunter gatherer tribes doing interesting things in their free time, but the data show that, unless they're hunting, gathering, cooking, or doing other biological imperatives, most of their time is spent lazing.
That's fine, but if your argument about not working is that humans are going to engage in 'dream work'... well I think that's just silly.
Ultimately, from what I've seen, people with this mentality, often end up becoming quite well off. Those who want to engage in 'dream work' often have the self-motivating spirit that almost inevitably leads to material success.
adminscoffee|4 years ago
a lot of people who have worked terrible jobs during the pandemic didn't have an opportunity to retrain and rethink about things, they were still working, the whole things are gonna change crowd were those who had the privilege to wait things out from the safety of their computers, they could order doordash or amazon groceries and drink their home made espresso while shopping for a cute new mask to show everyone how much they cared about being safe. the people who made the mask, worked in the food supply chain, delivered your groceries and doordash food kept their 60-70 hour a week job of hopelessness, had zero opportunity to shift away from that. while people were talking about how things are different now, many americans were dealing with the same, except they were now in an extremely dangerous situation (according to the experts) but, in many cases did not receive anything other than "thanks", and maybe a dollar or two more in tips, if they didn't forget anything.
what the pandemic has taught me is that we are not some civilized, future minded society, we are a bunch of naked apes with pitchforks who like to hoard for profit and fight over which candidate sweet talks better but offers zero solutions other than creating race/freedom/whatever division you can think of... culture war. do we have a chance to make things better? yes, when we stop looking at the world through a political lens, and start looking at it from a humanity lens.
kkjjkgjjgg|4 years ago
That some people can not save up for various reasons does not imply the people who did save for hard times are to blame.
If it angers you, don't work for door dash. Odds are, the people who worked for door dash were actually happy they had a job during the pandemic.
webspaceadam|4 years ago
mostertoaster|4 years ago
He lost me here. Guy is just a communist hoping for another Bolshevik Revolution.
Maybe it is true of the uber rich, but the majority of millionaires are just normal people who saved, started a business, and just invested.
If I was to judge someone character strictly off their economic status, you’re likely to find on average that the average rich man is a more moral productive member of society than the average poor one.
If he was talking about the bureaucrats way of getting rich by accepting bribes and funneling taxes to their pockets he might have had me. As it is his ideas would just make it worse.
guerrilla|4 years ago
> If I was to judge someone character strictly off their economic status, you’re likely to find on average that the average rich man is a more moral productive member of society than the average poor one.
You didn't give an argument as to why you would believe that. Graeber presumably believes the opposite because the poor suffer needing while the rich refrain from helping despite being able to. It can be considered allowing harm[1], introductory trolley problem stuff. Of course I can't speak for him but based on what he's written elsewhere I think he would agree that it's not possible to be rich and moral while people go starving because he believes people have an obligation to help those in need when they can (i.e. when it is not too harmful to themselves.) If you don't agree with that, then it's likely you differ in the assumptions you have rather than the logic here.
1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doing-allowing/
_fat_santa|4 years ago
In every argument, there seems to be only two groups of people. The "slaves" working their 9-5 jobs making minimum wage and barely getting by, and the uber-rich like Bezos, Gates, etc.
What they never say is there are tons of millionaires, they didn't have spectacular jobs, they drive regular cars and live in regular houses. They just saved for years and years and now they have a nest egg that's worth 7 figures.
I get why no one talks about them, when you talk about the "millionaires and billionaires", you immediately think of a Bezos type, vacationing on their yacht. You don't think about the husband and wife that both drive Camry's and live in a nice suburban home with a net worth of close to $5M because they invested and saved their whole life.
gjvc|4 years ago
That should be fifty-nine.
jb1991|4 years ago
SquibblesRedux|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
LurkingPenguin|4 years ago
bob1029|4 years ago
fuckyah|4 years ago
[deleted]
olalonde|4 years ago
c54|4 years ago
Another example is that monopolies require legislation or they have the effect of “seizing up” the dynamics of a functioning marketplace and turning toxic.
Semiconductor patents being made public and telecom copper being made open to use by other companies are both pretty well understood examples of legislation that helped bring about the computer era we live in now. Not free market in a pure ideological sense, but a kind of curated open market dynamic.
Markets are created by governments and don’t just spring from anywhere whole cloth. Markets are useful for many many things but need to be gardened, in effect.
In our current world labor “markets” are really not that at all— if a participant does not have the ability to withdraw their offer of labor then price signaling doesn’t work.
I’ve been reading the book Freedom From the Market, it’s well-researched and a literature review of sorts. Would recommend.
EliRivers|4 years ago
When you make it work. They aren't free by magic; if the freedom isn't enforced and maintained, they rapidly become unfree, and that's what appears to be happening (or has already happened).
dgan|4 years ago
lordwarnut|4 years ago
refurb|4 years ago
We talk about productivity gains and why we still work 40 hour weeks and my answer is always this - you’re free to trade those productivity gains for free time. Go and find a plot of land 1890 homesteaders would normally claim, grow some food, build a sod house and eschew modern society in all its flavors - technology, healthcare, engineering, etc. i don’t mean to sound like a dick, but that’s why we still work 40+ hour work weeks despite the efficiency gains - because a modern lifestyle costs a hell of a lot more than basic subsistence.
People do this! Ted Kazinsky did it. It is possible. But of course everyone wants their mRNA vaccine technology and 10 hours weeks as well.
mojzu|4 years ago
While some of the potential solutions I've read on this seem incredibly idealistic, I also believe there is probably a path forward where working time could be reduced significantly without the negative effects on technological, scientific or economic advancements that are presumed
jk20|4 years ago
The idea is that many jobs do not contribute to "technology,healthcare,engineering, etc.", rather, salaries and work assignments are regulated to simply force people to spend most of their lives doing meaningless activities as a form of social control.
Even Ted Kaczynski talked about "surrogate activities".