No one is forcing you to work

266 comments

The main problem is that people who feel trapped don't have the financial stability to go without income for any period of time, which greatly limits the ability to find a new job.
- It's also why voter turnout is so low, at least here in the US.
  
  As intended, of course.
- Not to mention healthcare.
  
  Healthcare is free.
- Why would finding a new job cause a lapse in income?
  
  Because you never know what's going to happen at the new job. You might be given circumstances you cannot adhere to or deal with people you simply can't put up with.
  Starting a new job is always a gamble and can fail easily
  
  A lot of places will walk you out the moment you turn in notice.
  If you planned a two week notice and the other job won't be ready for you until then...you're kind of SOL.
  That's why it's important to pay close attention to how your job treats others who have left, and plan accordingly.
  But beyond that, you've also got payroll conflicts. If you get paid every other week at your current job, and your new job is off cycle or does bimonthly, or pays on set days, that can result in some short term gaps in income. If those happen to hit when bills are due and you are paycheck to paycheck, you'll either have to get a loan or hope there's an adequate grace period.
  
  If you quit because of bad conditions, like unsafe conditions.
  If you get a new job and put in two weeks, your first job might immediately fire you. Teo weeks without pay is a crisis for a lot of people.
  If you need to spend time applying and interviewing you might not be able to work your crappy job during that time.
  These are US issues for low income earners who are afraid of getting a new job.

Some assholes think that it's very easy for every human being to just go out and find a new job. Just like that.
- Not every human, just the ones with economic value.
  We should seriously discuss how our society should treat the rest.
  
  That's easy. According to most people "die" is good enough. Oh they won't say it out loud but their actions speak loud as fuck.
- It's always been hard for me to find a job
  
  :( I know the feeling
- If an economy's working correctly, it certainly should be. The demand for goods/services and willingness to work for them is one of the few things that's basically fundamental to human nature. Of course we have all kinds of problems that make that inaccessible in an economy, or that artificially skew the ratio of one to the other (for better or for worse, depending on the person). First and foremost, that across the public/private spheres, a few people at the top have the entire economy by the throat.
- It's definitely intentionally made difficult. It's not to say you can't just move around at jobs and stuff, but it definitely requires some tough measures and occasional high risks.
- Yes, it's that easy.
  
  Maybe make a little more effort with your comments if you actually have something you want to add.

I like "just start your own business!" I had a small business that did well enough that I was able to run it for 10 years and only stopped out of choice. I now have a relatively low-paying job with someone else and I am more financially secure now than I was during any of those 10 years.
- depends on what bussiness, and what country, in developing countries the salary for white collar and blue collar jobs are insanely low that it is basically slavery and you will earn like triple or more income if you have even the smallest bussiness like selling street food or door dash kind of job
  
  I don't know where is that, but unless you don't play by the rules usually being a business owner is worse. Usually developing countries have a myriad of taxes and labour laws that make having a business very difficult. So for you to have a business you either don't go by the law (which is how successful "business owners" usually get there, by knowing someone or by cutting corners), you have to work an insane amount of hours (my dad used to work Monday to Monday, 10 hrs a day on a median), or you accept that you might need to declare bankruptcy in any given time.
- Nobody said it's easy to be independent. Stability is definitely not guaranteed when you have a small business
  
  When "just start your own business" is presented as a real viable alternative to a job with someone else, they are saying it's easy. There's nothing easy about it. And they don't tell you very important things like the tax penalty you have to pay if you don't file quarterly.
- But the same people that think we can simple jack up no-skill job wages to $15, 20, 30/hr think that all business owners are bazillionaires who can easily afford the more expensive wages.
  That was also the running theme in subs (on Reddit) when it came to landlords - they were all evil billionaires just looking to screw over their tenants.
  
  Nope. I am one of those people. If you can't afford to pay employees a livable wage, you shouldn't be running a business. I had no employees, in part because I couldn't afford to pay an assistant a wage I felt they deserved. People don't deserve to suffer just so you can get The Burger Hole off the ground.
  
  The whole role of a business owner is based on appropriating the positive and negative fruits of others' labor. This is a violation of the moral foundation of property rights (getting the fruits of your labor). The workers should get the positive and negative fruits of their labor without any employers and run their company as a worker cooperative.
  Landlords are privatizing the products of nature which everyone has an equal claim to. Thus, landlords similarly inherently violate rights

Yet when the writer's guild and sag aftra went on strike they all decided to wait until people started losing their homes.
Ghouls. All of them
- Except half the workers are scabbing pieces of shit who are undermining the strike.

I kind of feel like both are true.
The threat of starvation and homelessness is a pretty strong coercion to keep working at all...
...but nobody's really stopping you from job-hunting if you really hate this particular job rather than the concept of having a job at all.
I'm not going to sit here and be like "just go back to school, get certifications, blah blah blah" because seriously fuck that. You and whose fuckin' Time Turner?
That said, even looking for a less-awful workplace doing the same thing you're already doing could be an improvement in your overall mental health and life situation. A small step, maybe, but I know from myself and people around me that it can be a step.
- You need to be very certain though. What if the new job doesn't work out and they decide 6 months later they don't need you after all? Having a job, as shitty as it might be, is stability. Changing a system always comes with risks.
  (Never mind that a different job needs to even be available without moving your whole life elsewhere)
  
  Your current shitty job could do the same thing.
  You should always be casually interviewing. Your current employer should be passively fighting to keep you (with the conditions and comp and growth your are experiencing there). If another job offers more, off you should go.
  
  Stagnation also comes with risks.
- That feels like a musical chairs approach to this issue, where people who find a good job are lucky and sit in that and the rest shuffle between the shitty job leftovers. I recently found a decent job and it‘s only cause the guy retired after 30 years. Now I can only hope they will keep me on, or else I get to participate in that awful game again. Or maybe it will turn shitty for some other reason, like how there is no raises and my rent keeps going up anyway.
  We even got unions in my country, and still we ended up like this where a lot of people switch jobs every few years to try and keep up with inflation. I’m not saying don’t take that step though. Sorry, I got no point I think? Just a rant your comment inspired in me.
  
  Sometimes you need a good rant; no harm done.
- but nobody’s really stopping you from job-hunting if you really hate this particular job
  Yes and no. It might be extremely difficult to get an interview due to the hours you're currently working.
- I agree with you to an extent. From my personal experience, working at a string of shitty companies, some industries don't provide better opportunities. In service jobs for example you usually can only choose between being treated like "a piece of shit" or "a human who is also a piece of shit".
  Additionally, working 8 hours as a punching bag, plus 1 hour unpaid overtime, plus 2 hour commute doesn't leave much energy to write applications.
  I also managed to get out of it eventually, but I've always been overqualified for the service industry and always had problems with authority, which made it easier for me to question the way I was treated. Still it was way harder than it had to be.
- Nobodys stopping you but having a miserable job can take its toll and can affect your job hunt. At least it did for me. After years of failed job hunts and a difficult battle with MDD and alcoholism my Dr signed me off sick until I got a new job. In a short period I had 3 job offers.
  3months off with full pay. Spent a couple days a week job hunting. Rest of the time went walking in the national parks with my dog. At the end I had a 60% better paying job, no more commute, no more being voluntold to drive around the country to tasks I had zero training for and much better colleagues. One of my best times of my life.

Come live in France.
You get a little bit of welfare, enough for rent and food. Highly recommended.
- I read that to the tune of Mambo No 5
  
  You get a bit of welfare, 'nuf for rent 🎵 A little bit of food, I recommend 🎶 A little bit of health care, for your life 🎵 And a little bit of family time, for your wife 🎶
- Go on...
  
  And the bi-annual mass protest!

"If the pickings are slim, they'll appreciate what little they get."

A set of doctrines or beliefs that are shared by the members of a social group or that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system.
Edit: this response was part of a chain, but I posted it when lemmy.world was having issues and I think my lemmy client couldn't find the comment it was responding to, so it just posted it at the top level, here's the chain for context: https://lemmy.world/comment/1973311
Capitalism is an ideology, you have a very weird relationship with definitions, first denying what scalping is and now denying what an ideology is. I don't know why you choose to live in a world where you just make up your own definitions, but it makes it harder to communicate.
Demand outstrips supply absolutely, and yeah if we built an infinite number of houses we'd have a fine supply, but also if we didn't have 16 million vacant homes we'd also have a fine supply. We currently have more vacant housing units than homeless people (by a factor of ~30), and capitalists are purposefully restricting supply to increase cost.
I don't know why you choose to live in a world where there is only one possible solution to the housing crisis. I've already said building more would obviously help supply, I don't know why you're so ideologically motivated that you can't admit that putting literally millions of housing units on the market would also help supply. You seem to have an inability to even consider that capitalism could have any problems. That's the epitome of an ideologue.
- There's a surplus but they're restricting supply?
  
  Yup. GPU scalpers do the same thing, they buy up an entire stock, and then restrict supply by only letting a couple units go at a time, which inflates the price.
  In housing, capitalists lovingly call this practice "investing", when you buy up land or housing and don't rent it out or sell it, you just let it sit and increase in value.

My stomach forces me. So does my pride. And my wife.

I'm addicted to healthcare

I'm between billionaire CEO positions right now.

I think they mean that particular job, not just any job.

The difference is someone has to do the labor to stop you from being homeless and starving. So, either you will do labor that can compensate them- or you should do the labor to stop yourself from starving. Starvation is the natural state of humanity
- Starvation is the natural state of the individual. Society separates us from that. You will find that other things are also fairly natural, such as death, disease, and exposure.
  
  Unfortunately, for the support that manages to feed people, work must be done, and not every job can find enough people that want to do it sincerely to avoid some people hating their job.
  That doesn't mean employers should get away with being exploitative and abusive, or that reform isn't needed. But the philosophy "no one should ever have to do something they don't want to do" is unrealistic.
  
  Starvation is the natural state of the individual. Society separates us from that.
  How so? Isn't the point of this meme that you have to work in society (in general) to not starve?
  
  Morally, everyone has an equal claim to products of nature and the value they add to production. Today's economic system denies people their equal claim. If society secured people's equal right to natural resources and their value, the notion of coercion in the post would be reduced. Therefore, the economic system's structure causes this coercion not just nature
  
  Starvation is the natural state of the individual.
  Thank you for articulating this very important distinction!
- No sufficiently sophisticated political ideology is against labor (capitalist work is not synonymous with labor). On the contrary, most anti-capitalist ideologies are extremely pro-labor.
  The question isn't whether we need labor, that's reductive and (currently) we obviously do. The question is how should labor be treated. Right now labor is a commodity to be bought and sold by capitalists. If we instead setup a system that decommodified labor, outlawing renting of humans (just as we have with buying humans), then even in a market-based economy you have far better compensation for labor.
  Market-value for labor in a capitalist society is done as a commodity as I've previously said, so the goal is to reduce the price of the commodity as far as allowable for the business owners. This means a viable path towards profitability is reducing the labor force, or cutting compensation. This is why layoffs happen when companies are doing incredibly well, to increase immediate profits.
  If instead there was a democratic assembly of workers that held their interests in common, there'd be no reason to just layoff a bunch of great workers during times of good business.
  In short, we don't need two different classes with two different relationships to capital. Instead of allowing one class to rent the other, compensate them as little as possible, and pocket the surplus value, outlaw that commodification of humans and allow the market to properly compensate workers.
  This isn't an end all solution, but market socialism is a massive improvement over capitalism, and once we dismantle the parasitic owner class (capitalists, landleeches, cops, etc.) we can focus on more interesting discussions about the merits of markets in certain situations (e.g they're good at reacting to consumer desires, they're bad at accounting for externalized costs like climate change, etc.)
  
  With respect to climate change, it has more to do with the property relationships of the current economic system than the market itself. If natural resources were commonly owned and people had a recognized right to their value, polluters and other people harming the environment during production would have to pay citizens collectively proportional to the social costs. Then, prices would accurately represent the social cost of pollution involved in the production of the product

Homelessness and starvation are still not “someone”. If we’re going to have this conversation, shouldn’t it start a little more honestly than this?

So make a self sustaining commune that lives up to your principles. I think you will find that to be more work than your average 9-5 however.
- It's illegal to homestead in the United States without first buying the land from whoever owns it already, even if the land is entirely unused. This means you need a massive injection of capital, the kind of capital that would mean you're in the top 10% of Americans (at least) in terms of wealth, exactly the kinds of people who aren't looking to escape society. This isn't even mentioning the kinds of building permits and other stamps of approval from the government you'd need to do this, also requiring capital and often licensing by a trained professional.
  Of course you can just find unused land and roll the dice on getting caught. A lot of communes have done this successfully, but not everyone is comfortable doing something that is technically illegal.
  A lot of people in the top 10% are still working class, and would benefit from a dismantling of capitalism, but they're not so poor that leaving society is favorable, just reforming society.
  For the people who would benefit from leaving society, they're coerced to stay via laws written by and for the powerful (enforcing private property rights for example, denying access to unused lands).
  
  These are fair counterpoints, thanks for the reply. My point was more that work is necessary in any society given today’s technology, even in one designed to be as egalitarian and non-coercive as possible
  
  You don't need a lot of personal capital if you fundraise prior to starting your commune, and have everyone pitch in the equity from sold homes/cashed out 401(k)s etc
  Also you don't have a right to someone's property simply because they aren't using it at the moment
- Very much a ‘you dislike society yet you participate in it. Curious!’ sort of a response. Additionally, OP problem was that they hated their work, not that there was too much of it. But I’d expect as much from my mortal foe.
  
  Yes, I participate in a society I don't necessarily like. Either I participate, or starve to death...
  You act like it's a choice.
  
  Having to work isn’t a societal issue, it’s the physical reality. Without food, water, and shelter, you’ll die, and someone needs to work to provide those things.
  I want a post-scarcity utopia as much as the next guy, but until then, work needs to be done.

Well, the truth is that you could just go get a tent and live in a national park if you truly wanted to. You could build a houseboat and live on that. Or fuck off to the Alaskan wilderness. There are remote places you could live without having to pay any money.
- You do realize that you still need to eat? Or going to a doctor or a dentist once in a while? Or at least buy some medication, or some shoes because the old ones are wasted? Living in the wilderness is possible, but very, very hard. Only very few people are actually able to live like that.
  
  You can get all that stuff for free in nearby towns and nothing is stopping you from hiking into town once a week for supplies. It's entirely possible to live for free if you wanted to. I've done it before, so I know the score.
  I agree with you that living up in the Alaskan wilderness would be a whole different ball game. In most of the continental U.S., though, if you're close to a national park, it is possible. People do it all the time

This same logic could be used to argue that the government forced people to get the covid vaccine.

Agree, you can't just walk away from your only income.
But even with the challenges of life, you have to carve out time to apply to better jobs, or pursue education to elevate yourself (in anything meaningful, trades included). It sucks. Life isn't fair. But the only person who can plan a better future for you, and attempt to access it, is you.

Then use that to motivate yourself to gain a skill which will let you move up in the world.
Motivation isn't a bad thing FFS.
- Every person I knew working a low-skill job that wasn't a student was working 2 or more jobs to make ends meet, and at least 60 hours a week. Not entirely sure when you expect them to "gain a skill" when they can't exactly stop working since they don't get paid enough to do so. They don't sound lazy to me, they sound exploited!
  How do you fix that without changing the system? Should they leave their families to starve? Should they stop paying rent and live in the wilderness? Should they work an additional job? Should they take out a loan they can't afford to pay for the training programs they don't have time for?
  Fucking goon.
  
  There has never been easier, faster and cheaper access to information and learning material in the entire history of humanity. But yeah, if someone loves being the victim and has no motivation to improve their life then that's on them.
  The same clowns who couldn't shut the fuck up long enough in high school to learn some ABCs or 123s are now the adult clowns that want to act like their skill-free job is worth $30/hr. Fuck off.
  It's always, always, always one excuse after another with these people. They put themselves in a shit situation after countless people along the way have tried to tell them otherwise or steer them toward a better life, but god forbid they listen to anyone. Their dumb asses supposed knew better. Ugh. Clowns.

And who threatens you with that? Yourself
Instead of dealing with the risk with the chance of being successful you just sink deeper as you drag yourself down the pit

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