The Grind

[Reginald Ret]

A year ago I would have gladly accepted less money in exchange for less hours.
Now I live in a stupidly expensive house and I can't even afford it with my current income.
I would still like to work less, but now it is more a theoretical desire that would first require some other changes to happen.
I just want to live on Walden Two as written by B.F. Skinner.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A lot of people seem to have as their goal the desire to live in ever-nicer and ever-larger houses. Like your house has to reflect your income.

Fuck that. To me, security is a paid-off house, a pantry full of food, and plenty of free time.

[Salty]

The House is very much a part of this problem, I think. Not the largely unregulated, unchained housing industry, but the idea, woven into the fabric of many of our stupid minds, The House.

I want nothing more than to build my house  for under $50k. Well under. For $50k I ought to have a god damned palace.

I'm really fascinated by alternative housing, anything but that awful pre-fab horrorshow. I should do a photo tour of what houses do to Alaska.

Dirtbag house or GTFO.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Two things come to mind. One of them is this:

http://basicincome2013.eu/

I've signed, and if you are a citizen of the EU, so should you. Cyprus and Switzerland (predictably, but still) have legislated to introduce it (as far as I know) beginning next year.

The other one is that while I agree with Nigel that employment is de facto in most cases a form of exploitation, I'm not sure to what extent it is an essential feature. To my mind, the essentials of employment are as follows: some projects are not single person projects, and all projects carry risk: when I cooperate with others on the basis that I (voluntarily) take most or all of the risk involved (generally by providing most or all of the resources required) for the project, I can be said to be employing those others to work for me. It is also fair, in that setup, for me to get a larger share of the value generated by the project (if it is a success) than the others do. The question of whether I am exploiting them or not is a different question, which depends, largely, on the working conditions I provide (using the resources I have), the share they get of the value we generate together, and, in the wider context, of the extent to which they are forced to accept unfair offers by the economic landscape.

I realise that this may sound entitled and that I am in a privileged situation, but still, it seems to me the best way to work towards shifting the behemoth just a little bit is to stay away from exploitative relationships. And while I am fully aware that the great majority have little choice in the matter, when I look around in my hood, I see quite a few people who complain at having to work too many hours under a bad boss, but would not dream of accepting a reduction of monetary income in return for more time and better work relationships. Which is sad.

This is all very pie-in-the-sky, as far as I can interpret it. First,

when I cooperate with others on the basis that I (voluntarily) take most or all of the risk involved (generally by providing most or all of the resources required) for the project, I can be said to be employing those others to work for me. It is also fair, in that setup, for me to get a larger share of the value generated by the project (if it is a success) than the others do.

This sounds reasonable on the surface, but only because you are operating under the assumption that the resources you invested (i.e. money) are the only resources worth considering when the returns are made. Nevermind that very likely your "employees" provided many times your investment in the form of time, dedication, attention to detail, and overall work. And in any business venture the idea is to transform work into wealth, right? Capitalism seems like a system that turns work into wealth until you really examine it, and find out that that it is actually a system that turns wealth into more wealth -- at the EXPENSE of those who do the work.

The first problem faced by Capitalism is that as a first step it reduces the sum value of all contributing factors to a venture -- except monetary investment -- to zero. Next, it evaluates the venture as if the money is the only thing that ever went into it, and does the same for its earnings. So you put in $100, some stuff happened, and you received $1,000 in return. The actual work that goes into the venture is accounted for only as an afterthought, when part of the venture's proceeds must be spent to maintain and expand the work force as necessary -- and only to the bare minimum extent that the workers must be kept on the job.

What you end up with is a system that completely ignores workers because they are viewed as secondary (at best) to the work they perform. The Investors are the only important people, regardless of how little actual work they do.

My own position is that it is the money that is secondary to a business venture, because the earnings of a business in terms of dollars could just as easily be payed in the form of reciprocal goods and services, and rendered directly to the venture's employees based on some factor/s other than how much cash they put up in the beginning.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Also,

I realise that this may sound entitled and that I am in a privileged situation, but still, it seems to me the best way to work towards shifting the behemoth just a little bit is to stay away from exploitative relationships. And while I am fully aware that the great majority have little choice in the matter, when I look around in my hood, I see quite a few people who complain at having to work too many hours under a bad boss, but would not dream of accepting a reduction of monetary income in return for more time and better work relationships. Which is sad.

It isn't that simple. In the first place, most people who "would not dream of accepting a reduction of monetary income" refuse to do so because they already make too little to live what they consider a comfortable, secure life. It's true in general that many people have awful priorities and even worse perspective when it comes to their own wealth compared to 95% of the rest of the planet. But that is a question of social conditioning and rampant consumerism, which are themselves symptoms of (among other things) Capitalism.

The people I know who hate their jobs and waste their lives doing them anyway are in that position because they have somehow managed to land what they consider a reasonably well-payed position doing something that "isn't as bad" as what they assume they would be doing without those jobs. I know, because I was one of those people for a long time. I could barely feed myself, let alone my family (note: the 'why isn't your wife working' discussion doesn't belong here), but I didn't just up and quit, because it was the best I could do at that moment.

But honestly, what changes a person's situation in that respect has less to do with how much they are paid doing what they hate, than their lack of access to be payed something reasonable doing something they love.

[Dildo Argentino]

V3X, I fully agree with you. Firstly, about the fact that capitalism is first and foremost a mindset, or a way of thinking, and also about the fact that one of capitalism's worst features is that it denies the great majority access to un-alienated, meaningful, enjoyable ways to make a living.

But I wasn't talking about the essential features of capitalism, but wondering whether exploitation is an essential feature of employment. I do agree that exploitative employment is an essential feature of capitalism! It's bloody obvious. What I had in mind is a sort of anarcho-syndicalistic model of employment. And of course I would prefer the sort of enterprise, where resources are pooled and results are shared in a tribalistic manner (see Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization), and of course even if the contribution of resources is unequal in a particular case, that doesn't in any way give the person contributing the large part power over the others.

I was simply trying to make the point that capitalism is such an infectious mind-set, that while the majority clearly have no access to meaningful, enjoyable forms of making a living, even many of the minority who in fact do (or at least have opportunities to make major improvements in that direction) are convinced that they are trapped in a crap job.

As for the house thing, I'm with Alty. Dirtbag houses, adobe wall houses, low-cost, labour-intensive housing... until I feel confident enough to make a go of that, we remain renters.

[Reginald Ret]

I rent as well. Livingspace is stupidly expensive here, The Netherlands is tiny and full. It would be easier if we would just pour concrete over every green patch we have, but I'd prefer it if that didn't happen.