You just need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps.
You just need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps.
156 comments
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Well, it is true. Most people don’t want to work. I certainly wouldn’t if I could help it.
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And that should be the goal of a society. Currently we work because as individuals we're forced to. As humanity we're already past the forced need. Enabling people to choose would be more beneficial and we have the innate quality of finding meaningful ways to spend our time.
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The problem is that we suck at allocating productivity. For example, we produce enough food for everyone but don't distribute it half as well as we should, so people still starve while food rots somewhere else. We waste resources propping up a whole host of parasites that add no value to society, such as famous-for-being-famous celebrities, advertisers, speculators and redundant managers, while underpaying the people who actually produce wealth. And we want a brand new iPhone every year, a brand new car every two years, etc, and by and large don't recycle. We're wasteful.
Most of the actually important and time-consuming work is automated already. If we were smart about what work we do, an 8-hour work week for everyone would be more than possible. But we are so inefficient with our productivity due to warped priorities that most of us barely scrape by as it is.
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Can't say I've been missing it, Bob!
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I wouldn’t work if I could, but I’d end up doing the same shit all day anyway, but for fun.
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This just in: humans do not enjoy any degree of enslavement.
Check back next year to see if we've managed to break the spirit of the human race.
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In other news, water has been confirmed to be wet.
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This is true. It's because we evolved over many hundreds of thousands of years as egalitarian hunter-gatherers and only relatively recently invented things like agriculture, big stratified societies, the bulk accumulation of wealth and property and work.
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This reminds me of a recent meme pushing back against the "greed is human nature" narrative. Was something like:
"If you see a bear riding a bicycle at the circus, do you assume it is the nature of bears to ride bicycles?"
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no one has ever wanted to work, you're supposed to pay them enough that they're willing to work anyway
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In case anyone is interested in the sauces https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nobody-wants-to-work-anymore/
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True hero right here
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Was just about to go diving for them, thank you!
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I absolutely love this: "The Miami Herald published an article in 1981 about an 89-year-old man named Sammy James. James had worked for decades as a crate nailer and said his fast moves earned him the nickname, "The Nailer.""
His job title was a crate nailer, but he got the nickname from his fast moves. That's like being so good at operating the cash register you earn the nickname "The Cashier"
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There's a reason why it's called "work" and "free time." Most prefer free time to do whatever they actually want to do.
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Truly shocking
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Here's the thing - I want to work. I love it - I create solutions to problems. It's who I am, and when I have nothing else to do I wander around turning scraps into something useful. I became a programmer because I could create without worries about wasting materials.
What I hate is being exploited like a resource - 40 hours a week is a lot. It's enough I use every free moment just getting my energy back. I have no time to work on my own projects or properly socialize - I just get worn down until I burn out and can't wake up in the morning.
I'm also very aware of the impact of my actions, and nearly every possible job involves draining the world of something to make money for someone who has plenty.
I don't care if other people get to coast because of my work, I just want to solve hard problems in a way that adds to the world.
I do care when I'm used as a pawn in the game of capitalism - But meet my basic and I'd spend my time creating
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Cause 40hrs a week is a schedule for workers on a production line with machine tools doing monotonous work. It's hard, but it doesn't require you to think much. Thinking, changing contexts is hard.
Ah, also you really are a resource, only your employer is a resource for you too, to get money which you then use for your own purposes. You are mutually resources for each other, that's the point.
Well, also it seems that in the olden days, when we didn't have internet etc, it was a bit more normal to do your own hobbies etc at work, unofficial tea breaks, and in general many things other than work. Though I'm from Russia, and the Soviet joke says "they imitate pay, we imitate work".
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I'm an audio technician who works at a news studio and this statement resonates with me strongly. I'm trying to learn game audio so I can spend more time doing something that I personally feel is productive towards society, hopefully I can make a better living doing that then what I currently do for money.
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I do workforce planning/management. No one wants to work by default. It is up to the organisation to do enough for their employees to compensate their employees so that they don't mind having to work. Whether culture, financial, work-life balance, etc.
Employers need workers but employees just need money. It is up to the employer to make a convincing argument that what they offer in exchange for finite portions of a person's life is reasonable, especially if they want to reduce costs with retention.
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I work in permitting and I get to see a lot of businesses in a lot of industry types. Everything from small mom and pop places to places that have hundreds of employees, small contract jobs shops all the way up to massive chemical manufacturers. One common question I ask is about staffing, typically if a business doesn't have enough staff to run the business appropriately it's a good indicator of whether they will be able to meet their permit requirements.
By and large the only businesses who say, "Nobody wants to work anymore," are places that don't pay enough. Every single time it's a pay issue, maybe rarely it's a personality problem. I had one new business (that's particularly dirty and hard to hire for) come in and they wanted to start up fast, rather than hiring and training new employees they literally went to their 3 competitors in town and hired their staff directly. An extra $2.5 an hour, 17 people left which nearly crippled the competition, and they had fully trained staff that were more than happy to work in that type of business.
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By and large the only businesses who say, “Nobody wants to work anymore,” are places that don’t pay enough.
Yep, pretty much. Funny, you don't hear about this being a problem for jobs paying $100,000+. Weird, that.
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My employer struggled to hire a meat guy for three years, as they only wanted to offer minimum wage without benefits. They'd score the occasional hire, but that hire would inevitably quit after a few weeks when they realized it wasn't worth the pay. Both the store owner and the meat manager would continue to grumble about how "Nobody wants to work anymore", rather than facing the reality that nobody wants to work for shit pay and no benefits, as evident by the multiple hires who said "Fuck this job" and took their services elsewhere. Eventually they coughed up more and wound up landing a certified meat cutter with experience. Crazy how nature do that.
I don't know what the nobody wants to work crowd thinks the average non-contributer is doing to afford food and shelter. It's as though they imagine these people just declare that they don't want to work and receive government subsidies via the "I don't want to work anymore" check-box.
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As a previous boss of mine said, "The reason that I pay you is that otherwise nobody would want to be here"
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According to a new survey ... 1 in 5 executive leaders agree with this statement: "No one wants to work".
So, 4 in 5 executive leaders DO NOT agree with this statement, yet the message in the media is that "dammit, no one wants to work!".
Peak journalism.
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I wrote a blog article about this a while back with references to what this meme is actually quoting.
https://netmonkey.net/2023/06/03/nobody-wants-to-work-anymore/
Also, the point isn’t whether people want to work or not, but rather that the moral panic keeps coming up.
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I fucking hate capitalists
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Some people want to work. They usually have no hobbies, family, or interests.
Or they have a job they love. I have heard legends of such things existing.
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I have a job I love 99% of the time. And I have hobbies. I worked really fucking hard to get to where I am. 80+ hour weeks for months at a time for years.
We also have other younger guys come in, and some of them want to learn, and they go right on up the chain. Then, we have people that want things handed to them, don't wanna do anything, and wonder why they're not getting promotions. I've even given them incentives, raises, and tried to coach them on what they should do to meet a goal we both set. Some just want to point fingers and blame everyone else, and never take responsibility for their actions
But we have more success stories than "failures." It's good company to work for.
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I see you in the OP’s pic
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This is also exactly my situation. I worked hard for my dream job and now it doesn't feel like work but a fun game instead. I know that's not the case for most, and I'm grateful for it.
I do hire people for my department, and want to give them the same opportunity to be happy. It's really hard to find someone who is as excited as me for what I do. It's not so much they don't want to work, but they don't want to work HERE.
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Perhaps there's a company out there where there's an exception, but an 80+ hr work week means this company desperately needed to hire, or if you were salaried and especially not earning overtime, it was exploiting your value to get paid without sharing that compensation with you.
If it was under the promise of future compensation, then it's a case of I'd gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today--still scummy.
Internal promotion is pretty rare these days in my field. Usually, you have to jump ship and you learn quickly not to get too attached to a company.
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Programmer here. The hobby became my job and it's pretty great when there isn't a layer of corporate bullshit on top and I can just be creative to satisfy that itch.
Works out most of the time but I'm also able to contribute to open source when in at work so that helps.
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I love my work. What I do for work is also one of my bigger hobbies. Software engineering is fun!
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That's me but they are underpaying me and are very nitpicky and pedantic in return and have no respect for the time I put into their stupid enterprise.
As a result the can soon do the shit themselves.
Their efforts of finding people with an iq over 100 have been mixed in the last few years. I am wishing them all the best.
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I want to Do. I like Doing. I like getting good at Doing.
I don’t like work. I only work so I can Do what I want.
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Amen
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If no one wants to work then who the fuck are all these people on the highway at rush hour?
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Probably on their way to smoke reefer
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Well they drive like they're doing meth
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Most people that say “people don’t want to work anymore” typically don’t themselves do any work
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Many of us are only working because we can't afford not to work. This bullshit world is designed in that way.
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It's me, I don't want to work anymore.
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I would love to just be a stay at home dad and keep the house clean, do chores, and cook meals for my family. Is that too much to ask?
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I love cooking and baking and would do the same.
If money were somehow not an object, i would also be free to work on my friends and families houses too, or even say a library or school in the community with the skills i have, contributing to the community that way. If i were doing it for people or something i cared about, it wouldnt feel like work.
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Works as well with "Kids these days..."
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My boss has been looking for new technicians since I joined but has had no luck. His excuse is the classic "Nobody wants to work", but then I saw what he's paying for entry level for the positions. It's so low you're better off working at McDonalds or slinging Amazon packages bad.
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Nobody wants to work... for peanuts.
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Who told you you had to work? They pay peanuts, they got monkeys.
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Change My View: Its not the business owner's fault that they can't pay enough wages to hire enough people. It is the landowners and land speculators fault for raising the rent / price of land to the point where the businessowers don't have enough money to pay.people because all their revenue is going to the landowners. I believe we need a land value tax to fix this issue.
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A very Georgist view, but a lot of companies are just scummy and want to make the most profit possible.
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Sure, but at least companies can be competed with and if they get too big, are subject to government scrutiny. On the other hand, its really hard to control a large population of landowners and speculators who have a personal incentive to do whatever they can to increase the perceived price of their owned land.
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Your tip system is cancer.
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Wdym my tip system?
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OK I hear you on redistributing weath from landlords, but how do we keep the landlords from passing that tax on to their tenants?
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About 6ft length of rope.
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If landlords don't want to hemorrhage money by not having a paying tenant on their land, they will lower their prices. The problem with land is that we can't create more of it. It is not a commodity supply can be artificially restricted to the detriment of the rest of society. If land holders constantly lost money for not having their land generate wealth, there would be no incentive to artificially reduce supply.
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Rent control
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It's the fault of capitalism. In socialist theory, a distinction is (generally, since there are always many schools of thought) made between the Bourgeoisie, basically the ultra rich at the very top like Musk and Bezos, and the Petty Bourgeoisie, which is your average restaurant owner and such. The former is what we refer to when we say things like "down with the Bourgeoisie," we're not actually dreaming of sticking the manager of the McDonald's down the street in a guillotine. The Petty Bourgeoisie are also chained into capitalism like the workers.
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Okay deleted my previous comment because this CMV is not really about socialism vs capitalism.
You are technically correct in saying that people not wanting to work because they aren't paid enough is a capitalism problem, but it doesn't really change my view on the solution of a land value tax, as it is a capitalist solution that I think only applies to a capitalist system.
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It’s actually no one’s fault per se that useful land is more expensive. After 2008 there was a major lack of investment into housing that reared its ugly head around 2019. COVID amplified the existing problems making it harder to build and get materials, and created soaring inflation.
There are things we can do now such as change zoning and make permit times faster but it’s going to take a while even in a best case scenario to move the housing stock and commercial real estate supply to where it needs to be.
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I think a land value tax would speed up the process of building more houses, and would make housing denser because owners of the land would be incentivised to build as many houses as possible to not loose money to the land value tax.
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There are some good arguments for a wealth tax (without distinguishing land from other assets, which would be easily avoided via financial arrangements):
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9l7AYl0jUE (and see his other videos)
- Gary Stevenson’s website: https://www.wealtheconomics.org
- UK Patriotic Millionares, which Gary Stevenson is part of: https://patrioticmillionaires.uk/the-problem
- Similar org, in the US: https://patrioticmillionaires.org
This is a promising idea. Ultimately, it won’t work.
Landowners raise rents and business owners keep wages low because they are controlled by imperialists. Land-holding capital is only one piece of the puzzle. As promised, I wrote something longer about this topic, here: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1052415
One solution is to tax imperialists, rather than the ‘landowners’ and ‘speculators’, but they won’t allow it unless the alternative is revolution. This is how the US got its New Deal. The organised unions, socialists, and communists and offered an ultimatum: New Deal or what the Russian’s had.
The US bourgeoisie bent over backwards, increasing taxes to almost 100% above a threshold to stave off a domestic revolution. (In foreign states, they backed paramilitaries, etc, to stave off revolution). Then they spent the best part of a century rolling back those taxes and the welfare services they were spent on.
You can read about this in:
- Hayek, for a right-wing liberal perspective, called ‘conservative’ in the US today,
- Piketty, for a left-wing liberal perspective, called ‘liberal’ in the US today, or
- Richard D Wolff, for a Marxist perspective, called any number of foul names in the US today – see e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlhFMa4t28A&t=3901s from ~33:00.
The lesson is, you can argue for higher taxes on the bourgeoisie if you like, you may even get them to agree, but they will connive until you are complacent and then betray you.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=t9l7AYl0jUE
https://piped.video/watch?v=XlhFMa4t28A&t=3901s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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I understand very well that nobody wants to work anymore. The problem is, that despite all the technological advancements we still have to work. It's outrageous!
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It's because people's wants have shifted as technology progresses. If everyone was satisfied to live like a medieval peasant and all we needed to produce was clean food/water we probably could have automated most of the agricultural work and done away with the need for the majority of labor.
But people today now want on-demand deliveries, entertainment, healthcare, telecommunications, international travel, etc. and they need to pay for these things somehow, which means work. These shifting desires continuously push the boundaries of what we are capable of producing which ends up redirecting labor rather than eliminating it.
Edit: thanks for the down votes everyone. I'm not saying this is the way it should be or that people should live like peasants, just explaining the basis of consumer/labor theory from economics 101. People typically get more utility out of the things they buy using their wages than they would from not working at all. Right now that's mostly because society would let you starve to death, but even if there was UBI or something like it, there would always be some people who would want to work in order to buy more things for themselves.
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Tangentially, if we could support everybody at the medieval peasant level without work, well, why don't we? By which I mean, let's institute a Universal Basic Income. What a familiar, yet so profoundly different, world it would be if you didn't have to worry about having a safe (although Spartan) place to live, clean water to drink, basic, nutritious food to eat, and care if you get hurt or sick, no matter what. You'd still have to work for all the modern luxuries.
I guess the workers would have leverage against abusive, exploitative employers, if the cost of quitting a bad situation was simply not going to Paris this year, rather than life-or-death struggle, and we can't have that!
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How dare the peasants want more than clean food and water, those greedy little fucks
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Duh. Most people want money, the work itself is just a means to an end. And even many of the people that do enjoy their work would do something different with their life if money wasn't an issue.
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True, I don't love my job but I enjoy the work enough for the money I make. If I didn't need money there's a half a dozen other things I'd love to try.
Always wanted to learn how to work metal and MIG weld, if for no other reason than to sculpt. Though it's always a good skill to have.
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My work ethic is a dlc the boss needs to pay extra for it
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nO oNe wAnTs tO wOrK aNyMoRe
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The 1979 disgusted businessman lmao
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I like the the 2014 quote from the person as a teenager. Makes me think they and their peers worked hard, went up the ladder, and saw the people on the same rung don’t work hard OR that you see others in the hierarchy as less hardworking no matter where you are.
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If it's all for myself and not for $, I think I can work...
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The top one says one in five executives agree with the statement. The corollary to this is the cast majority of executives do not agree with that statement.
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When AI replaces us, we finally don't have to! :D
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I feel like adventure time did a better job explaining systemic oppression as a kids show than most people I've heard try.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/r2xakGZvLjI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/bNnfuvC1LlU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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There are always underlying assumptions made by people who support industrial-age work for every human being. Things like... 9 to 5 work schedule (or longer) being compatible with their genetics, year round - winter or summer. Paperwork appreciation, having to fill out job applications often with high amounts of redundancy in the questions and formats. Red tape for getting paychecks and accounting. Dress codes and even uniform requirements. Businessmen preferences for rectangle and high-rise buildings that few other animals from Earth seem to construct or use to build loyal followers.
With generic randomness alone, I suspect that 20%+ of a population on Pale Blue Dot never fit in with what their local society considers perfectly "normal" conformity and biological needs in industrialized world.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=cmQDIne3CLo
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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My work ethic is to work by myself until i can actually support an employee. Until then, this is my business & my responsibility.
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Would be great for sources of these to add context
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It's true, I don't want to work, but I have to work or I'll die of starvation, or exposure to the elements, or some preventable disease.
156 comments