Antiwork

[state of hockey]

My grandparents, before they passed, enjoyed seeing how their hard work made things better for us. It doesn't surprise me that my grandparents and Hovey's were very different people, though.

 

[MissThundercat]

Sort of the same way your grandparents would look at your generation and think you soft and lazy.

This whole thread makes me laugh. No one is forcing any of you to work at all, let alone eight hours a day for five days a week (the horror!) You do it because you want to live in a nice house, drive a nice car, pay off that fancy degree hanging on your wall, etc...

What people really want is just to go back to when they were eight, and have someone give them free shelter, food, clothing and the opportunity to ride their bike, play video games or go fishing all day.

Good luck.

And then you went to a major retail chain and barked at an 18 year old about something wildly outside their pay grade.

I see people like you every day.

 

[Deutsche Gopher Fan]

My grandparents, before they passed, enjoyed seeing how their hard work made things better for us. It doesn't surprise me that my grandparents and Hovey's were very different people, though.

Definitely a classic hovey post and I expect no different.
example of entitlement and ignorance all wrapped up in one message, impressive

 

[Kepler]

This explains Hovey perfectly.

 

[RaceBoarder]

Sort of the same way your grandparents would look at your generation and think you soft and lazy.

This whole thread makes me laugh. No one is forcing any of you to work at all, let alone eight hours a day for five days a week (the horror!) You do it because you want to live in a nice house, drive a nice car, pay off that fancy degree hanging on your wall, etc...

What people really want is just to go back to when they were eight, and have someone give them free shelter, food, clothing and the opportunity to ride their bike, play video games or go fishing all day.

Good luck.

I mean, I kinda just want to have a roof over my head, have a minimal/managable amount of debt, and have some cash in reserve in case something goes sideways. Kinda hard to do that without working...

Not saying that I feel that I should be made CEO and paid seven/eight-figures for what I do, but I also feel that people at my level should earn a wage that allows them to do the above. Being poor is friggin expensive in our current situation and is tremendously difficult to break it's repeating cycle.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

How about simply acknowledging gains in productivity through reduced work weeks? https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57724779

Dis iz Amurica! ;-)

Why you guys expect the resident small business owner to have any other opinion is hilarious to me. I'm quite sure my retired father would say the exact same thing. They struggled to staff their non-profit group homes when times were good because fast food and retail could afford to pay a bit better, and given the choice very few people want to do direct care work for disabled adults vs. flipping burgers.

The efficiencies and productivity increases that have been achieved by the use of computers, automation, etc. and any future increases to come are offset by a reduced need for labor headcount. The 40 hour work week is going nowhere, businesses will simply hire fewer people and expect to squeeze more out of those whom they do employ. If you audited a lot of IT and HR departments, you could expect to weed out 30% of the staff by implementing the software and process changes to move to a self-service delivery model as much as possible.

 

[MichVandal]

Sort of the same way your grandparents would look at your generation and think you soft and lazy.

This whole thread makes me laugh. No one is forcing any of you to work at all, let alone eight hours a day for five days a week (the horror!) You do it because you want to live in a nice house, drive a nice car, pay off that fancy degree hanging on your wall, etc...

What people really want is just to go back to when they were eight, and have someone give them free shelter, food, clothing and the opportunity to ride their bike, play video games or go fishing all day.

Good luck.

Seems that this opinion should mean that you should not bitch about not being able to find labor to fill your needs. So far, you have not really posted anything about lack of labor- but if you can't find workers, based on this opinion- that's just the way it is.

Besides questioning laboring so much to fill the pockets of people way above them, this pandemic has also done a real job at resetting what people's realistic expectations of life really are. Tiny homes, working out of a van, living in a remote area for work, etc. Seeing the struggle to fill jobs, that adjustment seems pretty clear to me.

Which means that we should expect business owners to complain about lazy people. A lot.

 

[SJHovey]

Seems that this opinion should mean that you should not ***** about not being able to find labor to fill your needs. So far, you have not really posted anything about lack of labor- but if you can't find workers, based on this opinion- that's just the way it is.

Besides questioning laboring so much to fill the pockets of people way above them, this pandemic has also done a real job at resetting what people's realistic expectations of life really are. Tiny homes, working out of a van, living in a remote area for work, etc. Seeing the struggle to fill jobs, that adjustment seems pretty clear to me.

Which means that we should expect business owners to complain about lazy people. A lot.

I think there is a labor shortage in many areas, and certainly many industries. I don't really see that changing, for a variety of reasons, including the demographics of baby boomers retiring and a desire to keep immigrants out. I'm not sure telling everyone to just cut back their work hours to 24 a week is the way to solve that shortage, but I don't have the big brain of a lot of folks here.

 

[The Sicatoka]

I'm not sure telling everyone to just cut back their work hours to 24 a week is the way to solve that shortage, ...

Sure it is:
- cut jobs back to 24 hours per week
- everyone has time now for two jobs
- more open jobs filled!

Presto! Viola! Badabing!

 

[dxmnkd316]

Spoken like a Lochner conservative arguing against the 40-hour work week.

Your argument carries no weight because of the tremendous inequality of the distribution of the proceeds of our system. If we were all in it together then you might have a point, but the people who do the work are carrying parasites who accrue all the wealth. That invalidates everything in your statement.

Exactly. Here's the problem I have. I bust my ass for my company to the point that I'm beyond exhausted at the end of the workday. Meanwhile, the corporation and shareholders take by far the lion's share. My company had about 750M in payroll while shareholders received $4.8 billion of the $5.3 billion in net income.

Fuck that "you don't have to work" argument to the moon forever.

 

[Kepler]

Dis iz Amurica! ;-)

Why you guys expect the resident small business owner to have any other opinion is hilarious to me. I'm quite sure my retired father would say the exact same thing. They struggled to staff their non-profit group homes when times were good because fast food and retail could afford to pay a bit better, and given the choice very few people want to do direct care work for disabled adults vs. flipping burgers.

The thing I find most irritating about guys like Hovey is that they analogize their experience with the ruling class. They really have busted their caboose. I cannot imagine the amount of sweat equity Hovey has put into his business. I know I could never make those sacrifices to build wealth. I really, really, really admire him for his drive and his obvious strength of resolve.

But Hovey should be the very first person to turn on the billionaires and demand they be striped in the public square, all their property expropriated, and they be consigned to minimum wage labor befitting their complete lack of any moral value. He thinks they are like him, but they are the OPPOSITE of Hovey. He is labor -- just a particularly situated labor where the work is to coordinate other labor. The rich are a inheritance rentier class. They are a useless and burdensome aristocracy with exactly the opposite of his drive and ability.

But instead he has been redirected to hate the government. All of the energy and anger he should feel against the real oppressors and hammock-swingers in our system he has been programmed to direct against the only institutions we have to protect ourselves from the dim-witted power of sheer capitol accretion that grinds all of us down.

Hovey's not an idiot. He probably has some weird psychological wiring issues but (1) don't we all and (2) unlike Tucker Carlson and the Dumps he's actually worked for a living. He should know. All of our small business creators should be frothing socialists, demanding that the superwealthy be sliced up and redistributed so that the people who do the actual work -- he and his employees -- have a chance to prosper.

 

[SJHovey]

The thing I find most irritating about guys like Hovey is that they analogize their experience with the ruling class. They really have busted their caboose. I cannot imagine the amount of sweat equity Hovey has put into his business. I know I could never make those sacrifices to build wealth. I really, really, really admire him for his drive and his obvious strength of resolve.

But Hovey should be the very first person to turn on the billionaires and demand they be striped in the public square, all their property expropriated, and they be consigned to minimum wage labor befitting their complete lack of any moral value. He thinks they are like him, but they are the OPPOSITE of Hovey. He is labor -- just a particularly situated labor where the work is to coordinate other labor. The rich are a inheritance rentier class. They are a useless and burdensome aristocracy with exactly the opposite of his drive and ability.

But instead he has been redirected to hate the government. All of the energy and anger he should feel against the real oppressors and hammock-swingers in our system he has been programmed to direct against the only institutions we have to protect ourselves from the dim-witted power of sheer capitol accretion that grinds all of us down.

Hovey's not an idiot. He probably has some weird psychological wiring issues but (1) don't we all and (2) unlike Tucker Carlson and the Dumps he's actually worked for a living. He should know. All of our small business creators should be frothing socialists, demanding that the superwealthy be sliced up and redistributed so that the people who do the actual work -- he and his employees -- have a chance to prosper.

Here is the thing.

First, I don't hate government. I have, in fact, actually worked with or for government at one time. I think government very much has a proper role, and included in that, is a regulatory role. I just tend to lean more towards the "less regulation" end of the spectrum than others on this board.

With respect to billionaires or the super wealthy, I neither envy nor loathe them. I simply don't think about them. I don't care which one of them gets to a $100 billion first, or whether they give their money to a foundation or their kids, or spend it on hookers and blow. I really don't care.

They way I look at it, nothing prevented me from being the founder of Microsoft or Amazon or Berkshire Hathaway. I just wasn't. Those weren't my interests, nor were they where my meager talents or skills lie. I don't think that's a crime against humanity, or a bad break, or something that I should feel mad or bad about.

We're all going to end up in the same place anyway, no matter how much money we have. I'm just trying to enjoy the ride, and spending my time brooding about unfairness or inequity or whether someone is getting a better deal than me isn't that enjoyable, at least for me.

 

[Jimjamesak]

Here is the thing.

First, I don't hate government. I have, in fact, actually worked with or for government at one time. I think government very much has a proper role, and included in that, is a regulatory role. I just tend to lean more towards the "less regulation" end of the spectrum than others on this board.

With respect to billionaires or the super wealthy, I neither envy nor loathe them. I simply don't think about them. I don't care which one of them gets to a $100 billion first, or whether they give their money to a foundation or their kids, or spend it on hookers and blow. I really don't care.

They way I look at it, nothing prevented me from being the founder of Microsoft or Amazon or Berkshire Hathaway. I just wasn't. Those weren't my interests, nor were they where my meager talents or skills lie. I don't think that's a crime against humanity, or a bad break, or something that I should feel mad or bad about.

We're all going to end up in the same place anyway, no matter how much money we have. I'm just trying to enjoy the ride, and spending my time brooding about unfairness or inequity or whether someone is getting a better deal than me isn't that enjoyable, at least for me.

The only reason why you don’t care about what the wealthy do is because you have enough money and property to able to not care.

”We’re all going to end up in the same place anyway” What a selfish answer eh? Yeah, we’re all going to die, some will just get there quicker and suffer a lot more on the way.

 

[SJHovey]

Probably the weird psychology had to do with growing up in North Dakota.

I remember as a little kid watching the tv show Hawaii Five-O (the original) one night. It's probably 20 degrees below zero outside, and all I saw were beautiful beaches, beautiful girls, people walking around in swimsuits, and I asked my mother, "how come we don't live in Hawaii?"

Her response was, "if you lived in Hawaii, where would you go on vacation."

That should give you some insight. Haha.

 

[Proud2baLaker]

Did your mom serve on the board for United Way and introduce you to the CEO of IBM? Did you get a $300,000 interest free loan from your parents? Were you the son of a Congressman? No to all of those? Then yeah, there were some things preventing you from being the founder of Microsoft, Amazon, or Berkshire.

 

[Kepler]

The weird psychology thing is while you aren't concerned about billionaires you are very concerned that nobody gets over on you. Why should people who don't work get a UBI? Why should people who make minimum wage get a living wage? Why should we interfere with the market when it sets prices for labor?

This paranoia that someone somewhere is getting something for nothing is the hallmark of the Conservative Mind. Contrary to your explanation for why you don't afflict the comfortable, you are very concerned when people try to comfort the afflicted. You come across as if being selfish is the normal mode of human behavior -- it isn't, it's weird. People try to help each other. When you say "what the rich have is their business, but what the poor have is MY business," you are being the archetypical conservative.

 

[The Sicatoka]

Did your mom serve on the board for United Way and introduce you to the CEO of IBM? Did you get a $300,000 interest free loan from your parents? Were you the son of a Congressman? No to all of those? Then yeah, there were some things preventing you from being the founder of Microsoft, Amazon, or Berkshire.

But those were not guarantees of outcomes. To say otherwise is to discount the efforts of Gates, Bezos, and Buffett. (And I'm no fan of any of them lately, and I've worked for two of the three.)

 

[jerphisch]

But those were not guarantees of outcomes. To say otherwise is to discount the efforts of Gates, Bezos, and Buffett. (And I'm no fan of any of them lately, and I've worked for two of the three.)

Not guarantees, but pretty close. Mobility beyond one quintile of wealth is exceedingly rare. For the vast majority your lot is cast at birth.

 

[MichVandal]

But those were not guarantees of outcomes. To say otherwise is to discount the efforts of Gates, Bezos, and Buffett. (And I'm no fan of any of them lately, and I've worked for two of the three.)

On the other hand, if you DON'T have them, it's pretty much a guarantee of not being a CEO of the largest company on the planet.

Which does mean that it's pretty much a requirement for that level of success.

In terms of effort- when was the last time Gates of Bezos actually wrote code? That's where the actual work happens. Otherwise, their efforts are just managing other people, or manipulating the market.

 

[The Sicatoka]

But you don't have to have them to end up pretty well off if you do the work.
Two of the wealthiest North Dakotans (Forbes 400) are farm kids who came from literally the dirt.


*Gary Tharaldson (Dasey, ND; Tharaldson Hospitality), Michael Chambers (Carrington, ND; Aldevron, just sold for $9.6 billion)