Millennials are exhausted by working more for less.
Letters: Readers respond to an article about quitting the rat race, with some saying their generation was handed an untenable position and others saying the struggle is nothing new
(water is wet and fire is hot).
Don't worry everyone, you 100% have the freedom to exploit the working class yourself. See? The system is fair. Oh, you're not exploiting the working class for passive income? Maybe you're just not smart like you think you are dummy!
/$
Nobody can convince me that passive income is real.
I mean if you're wealthy enough you can just make money on interest and dividends. You can get a 5% interest rate on $2m right now and that's insured, no real risk. That's like 75k/yr without doing any work.
But that's probably not what most people mean when they say passive income. And basic income for the wealthy is kind of backwards.
It's real in the same sense that income from illegal activities is real. You have to report it to the IRS and it requires harming others in order to acquire.
It is real, you just have to have sufficient funds already to be able to pay someone else to do the active part of the income and make sure they are earning less than their worth so that you can pick up the excess. Most effective if there are many layers in between, so that the income becomes increasingly passive as you move up the chain, so that those under you have something to strive for, because you don't want to be in charge of hiring all of those people, so you hire people to hire those people, each taking a cut of the value along the way.
But don't worry, the American Dream™ is that, as long as you keep working about 10 layers deep in value cuts, eventually you might be able to get into layer 3 or 4 and get your kid into the job early so that they can get to layer 5 or 6, and maybe they'll have enough money to get their kid to 6 or 7.
I make about $7k a year from some books and T-shirt designs I did a few years ago. I literally do nothing to maintain them (I put in the hard work making them originally) and the money just goes in my bank each month. It's certainly not enough to live on, I have a full time job, but it pays for our groceries.
Not with that attitude!
What about royalty income? Like, residuals, or…?
A few years ago I designed a bunch of clever tee shirts…and they keep selling. Not a ton, but enough for me to call it “passive income” at this point.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
—Anatole France
Sounds like they're just lazy
/s
You joke, but that has been pounded into our heads our entire life, and even me (a gen x’er) feels like it’s my own fault because the world has been beating me down for not reaching whatever arbitrary standard it’s set for us.
I'm an older millennial and I look at the younger generarions with horror. We still had some good years. They only had worst and worst times. Disasters, wars, economic craches, pandemics, more wars... fuck! Guys you need to change the world!
This just puts a huge spotlight on the thing I hate the most about my line of work. I'm sure it's not just my line of work with this problem, but there's plenty of examples of workplaces that do not have this problem.
My career is in IT support. Whether doing systems administration or networking or something else related, it's my lifeblood.
Almost every job I've ever had in this field works on the basis of tickets. A concept which, isn't in and of itself a problem, nor is it unusual. Similar systems exist in many careers; they're similar to a chit in the restaurant industry, which contains an order, which is passed to the kitchen for the cooks/chefs to complete. Same thing. And there's examples of this same idea across many careers, called all kinds of things from a requisition, to a work order, they're all variations on the same idea.
The trouble begins with how tickets are worked and completed. In other industries, you pick up a task, whether a chit or work order, you finish the task, and you mark it as complete, but in IT, it's very different in one key way. We have to not only justify and report everything we do, but also mark down exactly how long it took. It's this last point that's the problem. I am under continual scrutiny, every minute of every day to justify what I've done, and when I did it. In every job I've had, my ability to fill every second of my day with records of what I've done and how long it took to do is praised, or the lack of that ability can create some significant issues with maintaining my employment status.
There are good reasons to keep these records, to have a record of changes, and coordinate with coworkers, in the event they need to continue work I've started, or vice versa, and to note when something changed so that if issues arise, those actions can be examined as a potential cause. But this requirement has become weaponized by every employer to keep a stranglehold on productivity. If you take too long on a task that they think should have taken less time, you're suddenly found in a meeting where you have to explain why you were so inefficient. If you excel and you're able to complete your tasks quickly, that faster pace becomes the new standard, and anyone who isn't capable of keeping up gets reprimanded for dragging their heels and wasting time.
The goal posts continually move. I can't so much as take an extended shit without someone taking notice.
Meanwhile, so many jobs are simply focused on being present and looking busy. Before I went into IT, I worked at a grocery store, and short of clearly and obviously standing around doing literally nothing, no manager even took notice of you. If you were doing something, literally anything that looks even remotely productive, you were left alone. Which isn't to mention all the down time, when there isn't anything to do, and you just go and adjust the products on the shelf needlessly because it made you look busy. That same concept can be applied to a lot of different jobs, but with IT, it's not sufficient to simply look busy. Your time must be put into a ticket.
It's oppressive and the way of things in IT.
The perpetual problem in IT
BOSS to you "If everything is working fine, what do I pay you for?"
Also BOSS to you "Things are broken, what am I paying you for?"
IT support
And the mentality you've described is extra bullshit in an IT or support role, as I'm sure you're aware.
This is paraphrased in the "Doom talk" I had to have with my boss back when I was working in systems maintenance. As in, he'd come into my office and complain, "Every time I come in here you're just playing Doom. You need to justify your salary or otherwise maybe we don't need to pay you."
What MBA's and PHB's don't realize is that IT and systems maintenance is not a production-oriented operation. You're not making widgets. The metric is not how many tickets do we generate and how fast are they solved. The metric is, how can we have as few tickets as possible? Because by and large what you're doing in support and IT is fixing stuff that's broken. The ideal state for the business to be in is not to have anything that's broken at all, on a minute-to-minute basis.
Boss, you want to see me in my office playing Doom. Because that means none of your millions and millions of dollars of mission critical infrastructure which your engineers rely upon to generate billable hours is on fire. If any of it catches fire today, I am on site to put it out. If anyone has a problem or a question, I am on call to solve it. If there is maintenance to be performed or new equipment to be rolled out, I'll be doing that. But otherwise I'm not going to invent busywork just to placate middle management which, as a whole, can't reliably remember which of the two mouse buttons to click.
Yep. I'm in the midst of that. We're in a "busy" season for my clients (mostly finance/accounting people), and I've reduced my output hours per day to a lower amount because I want to be more available for more time so that I can jump on critical issues as they arise. For the most part, you want to jump on critical things regardless of the situation, but right now it's more critical because of the busy season, so minor gripes get sidelined, all of my maintenance and other duties, like projects, scripting, etc, are all on hold, favoring time to resolution over almost everything else. So if I can be free more than normal so that I have the bandwidth to take care of things when they arise, so much the better. I don't want to be distracted writing a script when a critical ticket drops and I miss it by a few hours while the customers are unable to work because I was debugging a PowerShell function.
So my logged hours are down because I refuse to pick up dormant unimportant tasks while I'm idle. I use the time to review all tickets and just patrol the service tickets for critical issues. I have absolutely no reservations about doing it.
I agree, the goal should always be to play doom. Not because you ignore your work, but because there's nothing to do since everything works. IT support isn't here to justify their existence by staying busy. We're here so that when you need help, we can help. If there's nothing to do, then we're standing ready, and if we play doom, or Halo, or literally any other game/distraction/whatever, while we wait, as long as it doesn't impact our ability to respond when needed, then that's fine. That's what everyone should want. If the hardware is so unreliable that you're constantly having to work on it to keep it running, then, as IT, you fucked up.
I'll also mention that there's a paradox in IT: we're expected to do so much and if you just do all the work by hand, you'll be busy all the time. If you leverage scripts and scheduled tasks, you can significantly cut down on your workload. The paradox is that when you don't have those scripts and scheduled tasks, and you're doing everything by hand, you don't have enough time to create the scripts to reduce your workload.
I'll give an example. At a previous workplace, the bossman was very much in favor of doing things by hand, the original business model was T&M. He later moved to a more MSP model, where people are paying regardless of how much time was spent, so my focus shifted to automate everything and drop the ticket load as much as possible. In one such case, we kept getting issues related to a service failing. I don't recall what the issue was, nor what problem it created, but I remember that simply restarting the service fixed the problem. So instead of fielding dozens of tickets a year to restart the stupid service, I added a scheduled task to run a script that would restart the service automatically every week at (some godawful hour) AM, on a Sunday or something. Once that script was scheduled for weekly runs, we stopped getting those tickets.
I have dozens of other examples along the same lines. One of my most proud moments was a script to fix a service where, if another service was running before it, the service wouldn't load properly. The program service just wouldn't start if a system service was running. It was a non-critical system service, but both had to be running after boot time. I had already tried every combination of delayed start, and every time, the program service would fall because the system service ended up running too quickly. So I made a script to shut down the system service, start the program service, and then restart the system service, and scheduled it to run 15 minutes after boot, anytime the system restarted (usually overnight for patching). Once that was in place, complaints of (program) not working after patch day, went away.
I hate repeating process because nobody thought to actually fix the problem, they just patched it back together manually. When faced with a reoccurring problem, I look at how I can stop it from happening; of course I fix it in the short term but as soon as I'm done I'm working on a script that can do it for me, then figuring out the best way to trigger the script so that I don't have to be involved.
No matter how busy you are, finding a way to get rid of problems like that, by any means necessary, is essential; otherwise, you'll be drowning in tasks to fix stuff that shouldn't be broken.
Yeah, firefighter mentalities are terrible.
That said, as someone in software development, wouldn't there be some optimization work you could do? Keeping up with the technology? Preparing training material? Figuring out the next steps for the next improvements to be done to the system? Looking at solutions to better monitor what is going on? Scripts to automate tasks?
I find it hard to believe that things are so static.
I feel you fellow IT brother/sister!
The IT world is chock-full of this garbage, and all it really forces people to do is A. Provide lesser service so that it "takes longer", inflating their time metrics, and B. Causes people to make shit up, or submit their own BS tickets to make it look like they're doing stuff to justify their existence.
Ultimately holding people to a metric-based system like this leads to worse service, and make people hate their jobs.
The job I had before my current one, I was site lead for Field Services. Luckily we were sort of a start up/experimental program, so the technician metrics weren't tracked at all. MAN it was nice. Nobody felt stressed out needing to justify every second of their day, they wound up doing the work in an appropriate amount of time because it didn't matter how long an individual took (be that long, or short). We only had an SLA to meet for the customer, which was easily hit.
I even took it a step further and didn't really pay much heed to the corporate timekeeping rules... If someone needed to run an errand or "telework" for a day; fine by me. The company didn't give anyone sick time, or enough time in general, OR a big enough salary, so they can eat my whole ass. Lo and behold, our section had the lowest MTTR, and highest amount of tickets closed, all with 100% SLA met. Crazy what you can achieve when you treat people like adults and actual human beings instead of soulless automatons.
Agreed. The time wasted just marking down what you did and how long it took you is incredible. If I get too busy, I look like a fucking slacker because the first thing I just cannot do when I'm too busy is to mark down exactly how busy I am. It just doesn't happen. I'm moving from one task to the next so fast that I barely have time to take a drink, nevermind write a short story about how I did a thing and figure out exactly when I started working on something.
Compounding this, when it's that busy, I'm often flip flopping between tasks, while I wait for a program to install or a file to copy or something, I'm off trying to chip away at something else. When it's slow, I can take a minute while thing copy/load/whatever, and update my notes. My tasks occur sequentially, so it's easy to see, I started on this at 9:30 and working on this and only this until 10:45. Meanwhile when it's busy, I did X from 9:30 to 9:48, then Y from 9:48 to 9:56, then X again from 9:56 to 10:10, then Y from 10:10 until 10:18, then I finish X from 10:10 to 10:45, and finished Y from 10:45 to 11:05.... Yeah, I'm not entering all that time... At best I'm going to guess, at worst I'm just going to not enter anything. Closed/resolved. Worked for unknown time, text entry: "fixed problem" done.
The task of entering time takes more time to do. If I'm too busy trying to put out fires, I don't care what the time sheet says, I care that the fires were put out as quickly as possible. So I look like I did nothing, but I damn near lost my mind trying to get it all done.
This was a major problem at my last job. Not only would I be so busy, jumping from one foot to the other trying to put it fires, but people would continually walk over to my desk and bug me about unrelated crap. 90% of the time they were managers or senior staff whom I couldn't just ignore, or tell them to go away. So now I'm not putting out a fire instead I'm taking to Sally, who is the daughter of the owner, about her stupid Excel issue that she can, has, and could continue to work around, but she wants it to work in a different way that she never learned how to do from the cut rate community college during the business course she took.
I dunno Sally, why don't you fucking Google it? I'm not your personal chat GPT of problem solving shit that's not broken. I'm currently trying to solve a problem that affects hundreds of people, and this issue barely affects one. Can you go away and stop distracting me? But nooooo. If I tell Sally to go away, daddy bossman will hear about it and I'll get pulled into yet another pointless meeting about my "attitude" towards staff, that will only put me further behind on fixing contoso corp's file server, which is preventing them from doing millions of dollars in business today alone. Apparently Sally's feelings are more important until contoso corp changes IT providers because we couldn't meet our SLA with them, which will also be my fault because I'm lead technician on that account.
Fuck.
That sounds like hell.
Then there's the IT support team I have to design systems for in my org that are COMPLETELY useless. They can't be bothered to do their job, and escalate tickets randomly to Tier 3 without any triage, documentation, or careI wish their management would put even a semblance of accountability on them.
I think a middle ground would be fantastic for everyone.
They can't be bothered to do their job, and escalate tickets randomly to Tier 3 without any triage
Level 1 support teams are universally useless. I think I've ever worked with one that's actually effective.
Can you imagine that in a hospital? "Oh this guy came in with a broken finger, I'd better call the lead surgeon." Now of course the lead surgeon can fix it, of course they can, everyone can fix it, but you can't send the patient back down to accident and emergency because then you get complaints about why you're passing this poor guy around.
Mechanics at your local car dealer likely get paid on flat rate. That means they get paid a set amount of hours based on the time estimate for the job, regardless of how long it takes. Also, manufacturers set lower times for warranty repairs than you would get paid if the customer had to pay. Also, if there is no book time, you have to guess ahead of time. If the vehicle comes back, you have to work on it for free. You also get service writers and managers breathing down your neck while you're trying to troubleshoot and not understanding how long things take and also pressuring you to upsell unnecessary services and repairs. Anyway, I don't work on cars anymore.
I write software for car dealerships so have been aware of all of what you said by proxy for some time simply by virtue of having to write time tracking code which handles all that.
It's insane.
I understand why. I have had a bit of insight into how all of that works and short of being a prodigy, you can't really get ahead.
This is why I do a lot of my routine maintenance on my own car. If all I need is a wrench, some materials and a few hours, I'll do it myself. I've become quite skilled with mechanics over the years; I'm sure it's nothing compared to what an actual mechanic knows, but brakes, tire changes/rotations, battery replacements, even coolant changes and thermostat replacements, totally do-able. I could go on with minor repair crap I've learned but you get the picture.
I did a brake job on my SIL's car and discovered that the last person in there didn't lube anything up, I had to beat it with a hammer to get the damn brake pads out. I put the right lubrication in the right places and put everything back together better than I found it. I even did the slide bolts, which I had to break out the torch to get loose. New pads, rotors, slide bolts, slide bolt boots, the whole nine yards. Pretty much everything short of doing the calipers and brake fluid.
I suspect the last few techs that touched her vehicle were trying to move so fast that they didn't bother doing anything to the side bolts even though they would have been obviously in need of maintenance/replacement.
The thing that bothered me is that she sold the car a few months after I spent 10+ hours fixing the stupid brakes. So next time I have to go look at her vehicle, it'll be a surprise for what things were not done, or were not done right.
grumbles
Opposite scenario in my dept. The boss wants to improve our time tracking so he can justify asking for more staff.
"Yes the rest of the org needs 500 new starters a week but you guys can manage, right?"
Yeah, they say that.
When you're too busy to actually get your time in and you look like a damn slacker, they'll use it as evidence to say that you don't need any additional help. I've been through this song and dance several times.
The problem is your boss. I work with tickets and just have a maximum for the average amount of time to be under for the quarter. It's very relaxing.
You need to explain to your boss that different tasks take different amounts of time. Explain that you may be able to do things faster at the risk of larger issues taking up more time later. Then when they tell you to work faster, reiterate that it will cause bigger issues.
Literally give them what they want: fast solutions at the expense of quality. Then don't worry about it when things eventually break.
Literally give them what they want: fast solutions at the expense of quality. Then don’t worry about it when things eventually break.
You're not wrong, but the problem with this is that the worker will be blamed for the bad quality, not the manager.
In fact, it'll be the manager rating the worker poorly because of the quality at review time, and they just won't care or won't connect the fact that the worker is not being given enough time to have a level of quality that would be acceptable to the manager.
Literally every boss I've had has been like this. I don't think there's a whole lot of IT jobs that aren't at this point. I've worked several and if they're not call centers (a few have been - where call time is factored in), this has been the primary time system, required by all employees.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I think the issues that you mentioned are becoming increasingly prevalent in other lines of work as well. I do not work in IT, but really resonated with what you mentioned about documentation/reporting requirements being weaponized by upper management to increase "productivity" regardless of the cost (namely, quality of the work performed). I wholeheartedly agree that this environment is toxic, oppressive, and unsustainable.
There are times I've worried about not having kids, but comments like this help me feel good about my decision. Why would I want to put someone I love through this? (Or anyone, for that matter)
i'm often sorry i had kids - not for myself, because i love them, but for them.
i'm glad they're not interested in having their own kids, and i hope they are able to stick with it. and hopefully none of them/their partners ever needs an abortion.
This is exactly why I'm opposed to bringing kids into the world.... I mean, have you looked at the world? It sucks. Why would I want to condemn another individual, whom I'm sure I will love wholeheartedly, to suffer through all of this for their entire life?
I didn't have any say in being born and if I had even an impression of what I was in for, I probably would have said no thanks.
The only thing I'm thankful for from my parents is that they took care of me for so long. I'm not thankful that I'm alive and I'm not thankful for being born. That said, I'm also doing my damnedest to be a force for good in the world. I'm not making a significant impact, because I'm just one guy working a menial job, but I'm going my best. If I must continue to be alive, I might as well try to make everything suck a little less.
you’re suddenly found in a meeting where you have to explain why you were so inefficient.
probably an account of the being in meetings questioning me about my efficiency, which proceed to then lower my efficiency, which then proceeds to spawn more meetings, and then proceeds to lower my efficiency even more.
Seems rather obvious to me.
I am still in my first job as a B2B tech and thought this was something only my workplace did, was scrutinise ticket time.
I continue to find it hard there because I legitimately don't slack but gaps end up between my time records (its hard to continuously work 4 hours at a time with zero downtime) and the boss comes down saying his KPI of ticket time / worked time teamwide keeps going down, and like you say the goalposts keep shifting.
I even went to the trouble of making my own time tracker that gave me even more information about my time entries and what was left for the day and how much I was out, way more info than what PSA gives you, but then got scared of continuing to work on it as the goalposts shifted again to billable time entries / worked time, and doing a time tracker isn't billable to a client.
My advice: fib.
Not really, but yes. Fib. Lie. Put down what you think is appropriate. Don't exaggerate, don't over bill, just adjust for what fits.
For me, I refuse to track my time down to the minute. I realized that if I put in 5 minutes for sending an email, I would get credit for 0.08 of an hour, but, 5 minutes is actually 0.083333... of an hour. So I started putting in 6 minutes instead (0.10 of an hour). Rather than be irrationally docked the 20 seconds or so, I'm getting a whole ass extra 0.02h (or rather 0.1666.... of an hour).
I'll do 6 minutes, or anything in 15 minute increments. If it took 7 minutes, that's 15m. If it took 20, that's 30m on the record. If I'm looking for a ticket, or closing a ticket (after my time is entered), or even if I go to take a shit while working on a ticket, that goes in the time entry. I might be in the bathroom, but my brain is working on the problem. I'm not exactly taking a break from working the issue, I'm just trying to brain storm while I'm away from my keyboard.
Every second from the time I start looking for a ticket to work, to the time I've closed it, should be on the books. I didn't work from 9:35 to 9:56 on anything, I spent 9:30 to 9:35 finding, and opening the ticket prior to my time entry being started. I spent 9:56 to 10:00 closing the ticket and mentally preparing myself for the next task. Minute by minute tracking is unreasonable, and bluntly, you shouldn't do it. You'll lose more time from what I call "grey time" (doing all the things you need to do in order to account for your time), than you account for actually doing your job. Reading email, looking at documents and keeping up to date on technology issues.... All of that is grey time.
I've put in time for internal meetings, "ticket review"s, even "reading email". None of which has every been questioned. You need that time to simply keep yourself organized. Don't hesitate to mark it down and bill it to your own employer. I know they don't want you to do that, it "artificially inflates" your worked time, but bluntly, if they're going to require that you account for so much of your day that you can't have grey time anywhere in there, you're doing yourself a disservice by not adding some kind of entry to account for it.
The only thing I strictly do not do, is mark down my time for lunch and breaks. That's not acceptable to me. Everything else, sure. But I'm going to pad it to account for my grey time. When I spend too much time doing stuff that I consider grey time, I'll put in an internal entry for it, and bill my employer. I try to keep these to a minimum, but it's an easy entry when you get called into a meeting or something.
Once you start seeing all the losses from grey time adding up, you'll be able to account for 6-7 hours of your day easily. Plus 30 minutes for lunch, and 2x15 minute breaks, and you're missing an hour of your day at most.
Grey time. Log it.
Gen X and I’m not making much more now than I did in 2008.
Thank goodness the dollar is going so much further than it did back then.... I've made myself sad on Friday...
Millennial and I'm making over twice at much as I was in 2012. 🤷♀️
So am I. My rent however is three times as much (for a worse apartment), food is 2-6x as expensive, gas is... shockingly about the same but it was killer in 2012 too. Utilities are up, insurance is at 250%, medical aid remains unaffordable even with insurance, and I'm older will more medical problems, less energy, and it's harder to learn new things. Oh and I'm in much more debt due to all the previously mentioned things, so I don't even have space on credit cards for emergency purchases.
And 9/10 people I talk to are in the same situation.
Millennial and I’m making over twice at much as I was in 2012. 🤷♀️
And able to afford a third as much..
Not sure how this is millennial-specific. Everyone has been doing this for a long time. One of the few good things to come out of Covid was work from home being integrated into scheduling. Of course big business is trying to rob people of that again.
Sorry but for those of us not in industries where WFH is even an option, it ruined things for us.
I have to quit my job eventually and move to a completely different state because once WFH took off and everyone that could move out of the areas their jobs were in did so the housing market exploded.
I had just reached a point where I was financially healthy enough to consider buying a house and then pretty much immediately had the rug pulled out from under me.... Now between greedflation and everything else, the raises I had been fighting for are equal in purchasing power as my income was like 4 years ago...
Yeah screw those people being able to be happy and move to an area that doesn't bend them over almost definitely worse than you. What assholes! They should have to stay in the downtown centers and pay $15 million to live in an old phone booth with a sink.
This has the same energy of people being pissed off with student loan forgiveness or something. "If I had to deal with it, so should you! I can't be happy so you can't either blah blah"
I don't think WFH is completely to blame for that. A significant contributor to the explosion in housing prices was historically low mortgage rates (<2%) as part of the covid era stimulus plans. This triggered a wave of home buying, which in turn led to a lot of panic from people that were afraid they would be priced out of the market and fueled further home buying.
😮💨 I understand too well. "Average" single family homes in my area were like $400,000, now it's $820,000. Rents for single bedroom apartments went from about $800-900 month to $1,600+ per month. I live in a town of about 65,000 in the Rockies, middle of nowhere, like minimum 5 hour drive to a city with more than a million people, yet somehow, people are still flocking here from all across the country.
I hate the housing market too but it’s been going bonkers way before covid and WFH.
Sure WFH added fuel to the fire, but that fire has been growing and would have grown without WFH.
Pretty sure that's what op meant about water being wet....
Yeah like. I’m sympathetic to this arguement, but anyone thinking the average American today works “harder” and more strenuously to the average American in like 1920 is off their gourd.
All this stuff is really hard to measure, and ultimately we just need a system where people can live decent lives and not be miserable. There’s a difference between working hard and having a happy & fruitful life out of it and working little while remaining miserable
Edit:
Only in Lemmy could you get downvoted for suggesting that maybe doing enjoyable productive work is an okay thing. Day by day I’m more convinced the average user here just wants to live in the space ship from Wall-E getting force fed milkshakes all day
Productivity has gone up, pay has remained flat or declined when adjusting for price increases. How is that not “working more for less?”
And your read on the average lemmy user is inane. Most of the people I’ve interacted with want to do meaningful work and be able to live without the constant threat of homelessness, starvation, or death from easily preventable causes.
If you do “enjoyable work” and get paid enough to have a personal life that is also fulfilling, bully for you, but the vast majority of people are fucking struggling.
the average American today works “harder” and more strenuously to the average American in like 1920 is off their gourd.
The point is that the average person's work produces more value, but that increase in value is all going to corporations. The value of wealth went up, the value of labour stagnated. That means the rich have more of the pie, and since money begets money, the poor get less and less.
If you want, say, a boat; its probably less work to build it from scratch than to 'earn' it for the overwhelming majority.
Which is wild: Even with modern tools, economies of scale, and specialized master craftspeople (or more likely; enslaved teenagers halfway across the world chained to a shop bench, similar effect here) its easier to DIY than go through 'society', unless the thing has been made deliberately difficult to DIY-which more and more things, especially repairs and retrofits, are.
It takes more work, more coordination, and orders of magnitude more time to get the government to raise your taxes to half assedly feed the hungry with food that was gonna get thrown away than it does to just find a patch of land nobody's watching and do it yourself from Fucking scratch. Every Fucking time.
All the big decisions, decisions about Commons, and decisions about the future, including habitability of the planet, are being made in what we can all agree is the dumbest fucking way possible, and regardless of our disagreements, 999/1000 random people off the street would find it difficult to make worse ones.
So, communist or individualist, insurrectionist or moderate, what kind of brain dead fucking moron would participate in this on purpose? Would follow the rules of this on purpose?
So, what the fuck is to be done?
P.S. If you say "vote" I swear I'll fucking scream.
Stand for election. Voting doesn't work unless people who aren't benefiting from the system stand for election. Join a party. Fake loyalty to that party. Fake moderate beliefs. Fake everything until you get selected to stand. Keep faking until you're elected. Once elected, wield whatever power you have for the good of all mankind. Prioritise the future, not the present.
Oh my god do you think nobody's Fucking tried this? It doesn't work. The elections are fake, my dude. Remember 2000? Remember 2016 dem primary? Remember 194...4(?)? 2020 dem primary?
And I live in California. My vote literally does not count.
Fuck your bullshit elections, I can't respect that shit
Gotta respect your choice of home Lemmy tho. I feel ashamed for not thinking to do the same.
That's one tac. More in line with the Great Man theory of history. If I had to guess I'd say we have hundreds of people in politics who are exactly like this. And it's maybe a part of making things better.
But those people will be powerless to do anything until collective and direct action gives them the political capital to point out in a room full of chuds, "look we've got to give them something."
This is just to say, don't wait for your heroes to save the day for you. Even if they're there, dormant, they need your action to do anything.
I am building a wooden boat right now, and this isn't true. I'm about $1500 in on a Bolger Cartopper, which is 10'6" with 4' beam.
Okay maybe boats were a bad example. I probably should have used something I know about, but that's all shit everyone thinks they can't do.
Still, compare the effort you put in, keep in mind you're being gouged on materials (because you're being gouged on everything), and figure out how many hours at minimum wage to buy the sameish quality.
Vote with your dollars and strike at the root.
Slightly less obnoxious, but equally ineffective; vote with your hands, your eyes, your feet. Don't let them steal your labor your attention your time your anything. You can be passive and hold a strike. You van be active and strike back. I think a mix of both would be a lot more effective than just one.
But whatever you do, if its not just useless theatrical bullshit (which isn't to say all theatrical bullshit is useless; just the useless kinds) its going to be illegal, and will face state retribution, even if its explicitly legal and protected in your local constitution.
Further, this is one case where decidedly not voting (to borrow the analogy) would have an impact.
Reminds me of the short story Enough, by William Ledbetter that I just read.
See also https://bdsmovement.net/ for a practical, targeted example.
I agree with the general sentiment but it's almost always much more work and money to build something from scratch, especially a boat.
it's more work, but you can absolutely do it for less money. You need to have a realistic scope and be able to meet your own needs, and nothing more. You probably don't need the shit that exists in a suburban home for example. So don't build one. Build something to specifically serve you.
It's a little different for boats naturally, but that was just an example.
I bought a 12 year old thinkpad laptop to be used as my daily driver laptop. It's not fast, it's not small, it's not light, but it's a fucking trooper of a machine, and i love it. It does exactly what i need a machine to do. And all in, including the screen upgrade which i got from another used machine i'm probably about 200 dollars in. And have two batteries that i managed to get from either machine. Did i get lucky? sure, unrealistically lucky? No, i was just eyeing ebay every now and then. And i have a spare parts machine.
this is genuinely my plan. Work in trades to pick up a skill (and hopefully make a decent bit of coin) buy some land, and build it out. Spend as little as possible, and enjoy it as much as possible.
I feel like it's viable. Maybe i'm hopeful, idk. We'll see.
Vote and be engaged. Nothing else you do alone will be effective, including being upset about it.
Copy pasting:
So I’m in the united states. The second (or third) major step towards fascism… Well here’s how I remember it:
It was the year 2000, first election I was remotely politically conscious for. I, uh, didn’t vote. Had opinions tho.
So there was this fascist piece of shit-his dad was a former CIA director, his grandpa was point man for a failed fascist coup (thank you smedley butler. Not that I knew about this at the time, being a literal child), and the guy running against him was kind of a bland milquetoast wonk-but his credentials and rep were, in retrospect, pretty perfect. Conscious and cautious about global warming, knew about the internet, kind of all the right shit for the moment.
So when the fascist piece of shit took office, everyone gave my mom shit, because she voted for a third party and allowed it to happen. Nevermind that we live(d) in CA, where votes in federal elections are between like 1/5th and 1/500th of a full citizen, and the electoral votes for CA still went to the bullshit wonk. She caught shit for years. And it kind of confused me.
Because here’s the thing; the bland milquetoast wonk won the election. I don’t mean “he won the popular vote; the electoral college is bullshit” (although he did and it is) but he won in college votes too. He won by every metric.
Nobody cared. Because elections don’t count. They’re not real, and you will never win begging. It was entirely a wasted effort. The aristocracy just appointed the guy they wanted. Don’t get me started on 2008, the first one I did vote in, and how that bastard betrayed every single fucking thing he promised.
You tell me to get off my ass and do something, have you ever actually done anything in your life? I don’t mean sucking some aristocrat’s dick, so you can beg them for scraps later, that aren’t worth 1/10 of the effort you spent doing the lobbying, much less getting them their throne, but actually fixing building solving something with your own fucking hands abd organizational capacity?
Ever? Or are you so obsessesed with being in a fucked up machine you can’t even see what it’s for, what its doing, and what purpose you serve within it?
When you see someone dying on the street between five buildings, all of them with ‘(residential) for rent’ signs on them so old they’re barely legible, what’s your first thought? Do you think every politician doesn’t fucking know? Is your first thought to beg all the people who are profiting off this poor fuckers death? This isnt a hypothetical BTW, I saw this enough times this week that I straight up stopped fucking counting. So what should I have done, according to you?
Yes, don't try to fix it all alone. Organize. Change. But the systems that allowed these Fucking oligarch shit stains to ruin it so bad? The 'good' people when they do take the reins in a system where their only levers are 'taxes' and (ratcheted)'cops'? What century are we on of prison reform? 2? 10? I know it's been nonstop since before the steam engine. Still seems pretty bad.
Direct action doesn't mean 'go it alone'. Bring your friends. Collab with strangers. Make new friends. Actual democracy can actually be pretty fucking fun, but it gets a lot sweatier.
Definitely me. I just went several months interviewing and when they asked what my financial requirements were, I started saying I’d just like to be able to buy a house with my masters degree and 15 years experience.
Usually got a genuine laugh
You could just say "Millennials are exhausted" and be correct.
I'm gen X and I too am exhausted. Solidarity with my young homies.
I cannot buy healthy, tasty, food. I can work less hours, buy ingredients in the marker and make that food.
I will never be able to buy a house, never. Even saving over half my income by living in shit neighborhoods. The cost of houses goes up too fast. Even after investing, and getting good returns, on the little I managed to save, it is not enough.
So working a little less, and having healthy food it is.
After understanding the ongoing ecological collapse, I don't care much about a house anymore, rich or poor, we are all dead in less than 10 years anyway.
If you can, work less, play more. And I actually love what I do at work, but fuck that scam.
Ha less than 10 years? You wish
More like 100 years of slow burn
Every system is going down faster than expected. Food sources are already taking hits.
This will accelerate exponentially.
Unless we get unlikely, easily sacked, breakthrough energy source quickly or fucking aliens come down and save us, we are doomed.
Climate change was stoppable around 1980, the worst of it was preventable around 2000, now? We may survive if we put our resources toward adaption. Which we don't, and cannot unless some magic happens.
So unless you believe in fairies, don't bring children cus they won't grow old. If you do believe in fairies, you are too delusional to raise children.
No need to be ashamed. You’re doing a great job creating shareholder value. Just keep your head down and make doo with the scraps you’re given. You’ve realized that it’s not possible for this earth to provide 8 billion people with affluence and fulfilment. Your sacrifice is making a small percentage of people very happy. Keep up the good work.
Move
Move where? I can move to a cheaper country, buy a house and push a local down the economical ladder. Or stay and stay in contact with people I love.
Everything is measured now. That has to add to the pressure.
Sorry, but everything is already on the list of things I have worry about to survive.
I measure for a living. The concept kinda sucks.
I measure only for fun. That doesn't suck.
Twice as exhausting for us boomers. You think you're tired. 60 and 2 jobs is bullshit.
This points out why the idea that boomers (as a whole) caused many of our modern problems upsets me
I sincerely doubt you voted for the situation you're in now
This in-fighting and blaming does nothing but detract from the real issue of who's doing this to us (spoiler alert: it's the politicians and it always has been)
Generational politics are bullshit.
It’s not the politicians, they’re bought out for cheap, a low rung facilitator. A few tens of thousands is all the lobbying you need to own them.
It’s the corporations and capitalists who are to blame.
60? Doesn't that put you closer to GenX? Was there a "cusp" generation like Xennials?
It's okay. Soon AI will take over our jobs and we won't have to work anymore. But we won't have wages either. So no food. No shelter. No clothes. No future.
Win-win.
It ends so soon?! This is good news! The tornment is almost over!
Recommend watching this gem; onion future news broadcast https://youtu.be/iKC21wDarBo
Yes, of course.
But it's okay, because line go up!
Just shuffle some KPI’s around and now everything is fine!
Named generations don't exist and function as a working class divider. They're used so we squabble with each other and not those in power who force us all work more for less money. We all have to deal with their nonsense in unison.
And the moneyed and political class will continue this late stage capitalism trend by reducing any "upward mobility" opportunities.
YAY WORKING 6 DAY WEEKS AT 2ND SHIFT I LOVE NEVER BEING ABLE TO GO OUT AND DO SHIT LIKE KEEP MY FRIENDS AND BEING ABLE TO VISIT MY MOM AND DAD BUT THE COMPANY REEEEEEEEAAAAALLLLLLLY NEEDS ME TO BE THERE SO TGE CEO OF ONE OF THE KARGEST COMPANIES IN THE WORLD CAN BUY THEIR 23RD BEACH MANSION THEYLL NEVER USE I FUCKING HATE THIS WORLD
I'm gen X and working 3 jobs. We're not immune.
The older GenX are voting to destroy the economy right along with the Boomers. Everyone under 55 is fucked at this point unless you are a trust fund baby or managed to get a government job with a pension.
Okay, I can't actually get work at the moment, I've ended up in the "precariat" despite my MSc because I didn't understand what would be helpful in the labour market when I was younger. Didn't have a supportive family, to make something of an understatement. So my question is, shall I kill myself? I've worked very hard in physical jobs so it's not laziness, the labour market is just very cruel and is happy to kill me.
There will be more jobs. Or we march in the streets. Don't let the capitalists win. They want people to take the easy way out. Every time they see an article about working class suicides they smile because it means nobody will quit their jobs just for the abuse.
If I ever end up killing myself over capitalism, I’m going to take out a CEO/rich bastard with me or die trying.
At least I learned something from this article. Highfalutin is a word in the English language.
Highfalutin
highfalutin /hī″fə-loo͞t′n/
adjective Pompous or pretentious. Affectedly genteel; pretentious; haughty; snobbish. Similar: grandiosehifalutinhoity-toityla-di-da Self-important, pompous; arrogant or egotistical; tending to show off or hold oneself in unduly high regard. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition •
I've heard it but never seen it written down haha
How is this oniony?
I think cause it's just so blatantly obvious.
Don't feel as if you are alone. People in other countries are quitting the rat race too.
Give it a generation, it'll be perfectly normal.
Seriously, how quickly humans adapt. 10 generations ago wouldn't put up with 1/2 the shit we are just OK with
Are they overworking? It seems to me that this is one of those generations that said "NO MORE".
This doesn't seem like c/nottheonion material
Nah the real truth is that you just have no empathy.
This title is true, however there’s always something funny to me with so much of Lemmys user base being computer programmers who work like, maybe 3 actual hours a day (from home) going “ugh yes. No one in history has ever worked as fucking hard as I do for little pay” (they are in the top 20% of income in their country).
Honey, the fact that I am a programmer doesn't mean I have a job doing that. I am currently earning more as a technical support agent than the best offer I got, after searching for months, ever since my last programming and database management position became redundant thanks to AI.
Plus, the world where programmers work as you say "like, maybe 3 actual hours a day (from home)" has been nearly extinct for almost a decade for most of us.
Yes. That does not take away from the fact that you are not particularly oppressed by working in tech in an educated position compared to the vast swath of people.
I’m not saying you have zero problems. It’s just that people on Lemmy tend to portray their conditions as being this hellish nightmare when the average roofer or manual laborer is undoubtably working “harder”. The user base here tends to advocate strongly for white collar tech workers and lose sight of the vast amount of people who have it worse
I make decent money for a janitor but I'm Union that's why. The hours suck though
That’s good! I was a janitor for a while. One of my favorite jobs, actually. I’m a big fan of unions. I just think a lot of people on this website specifically fundamentally just don’t understand what goes into forming them, and what exact results to expect from them
