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0 pointswildmusings10y ago0 comments

Here's how I look at it: it's a trade-off like any other. There are people with unsustainable work practices in every job. It could be long hours, little sleep, performance enhancing drugs, etc. If it makes them deliver better work, they'll get rewarded for it in their career, but they're most certainly suffering consequences elsewhere. Family strain, health problems, emotional drain, loneliness.

The temptation is strong to ban other people from making different trade-offs than us, because it keeps them from besting us in competition and challenging our value systems. But what right do we have to dictate what other people should value and what trade-offs they're allowed to make with their own lives? My sweat, blood, and tears are mine and mine alone to give and withhold.

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jqm10y ago

That's an interesting perspective and I hadn't really considered it like that.

But I believe there is a reasonable point at which people should not be expected to go beyond because it becomes ultimately too harmful for them (ok... maybe that's not our business) and society which has to deal with the fallout (very much our business). Its why we have labor laws. Laws on how long truck drivers can drive without sleeping. People shouldn't have to degenerate into selling their souls and risking the well being of others for short term survival. Society shouldn't degenerate to competition at this kind of level. It really shouldn't.

I do strongly believe in the individual's right to chose. But as with all ideologies, purity generally produces very sucky real world outcomes and a modicum of sense and nuance has to be applied for the thing to work. The powerful shouldn't be able to lay traps for the less informed and then stand back and say "oh well... they chose...they have to accept the consequences while I reap the benefits". That's not how civilization should work.

wildmusingsOP10y ago

You have a good point, especially for low skill jobs that people often don't have the luxury of walking away from, because they need the money to pay the rent and put food on the table. I find myself increasingly favoring a basic income (but only along with abolishing the bulk of the regulatory and welfare state), which I think would address the concerns that you raise. No one would be compelled to stay in a job by hunger, only ambition.

tamana10y ago

Because rational people know that people aren't always rational.

Are you also opposed to those medians and guardrails on highways that impinge on your freedom to drive off the road when you so choose?

chrishynes10y ago

It's not quite so cut and dried, though. As safety measures are introduced, people tend to increase risky behavior which ends up mitigating the new safety measures.

For example, since you bring up roads -- narrower lanes make safer drivers: http://www.planetizen.com/node/80229/another-study-shows-nar...

wildmusingsOP10y ago

I think that's a spurious analogy. The public has no duty to build roads such as to enable your preferred suicide technique. The public has no right to tell you how many hours you can work or not. A job is a free exchange between two parties.

vidarh10y ago

> A job is a free exchange between two parties.

That's a statement born out of extreme privilege. For substantial proportions of people, there is very little freedom involved: You take what is on offer, or you lose your house or don't eat. One side has an extreme amount of extra leverage, and some of them takes according advantage.

People died fighting for the 8 hour working day because without regulation employers simply did not give a shit if they were working people into an early grave. We have May Day labour demonstrations in large part of the world in part as a result of what is now the AFL-CIO wanting to commemorate the Chicago Haymarket massacre, and restart what was already then, in 1880's, a multiple decades long fight for human working hours.

In other instances, people burned to death because of employers that thought it ok to lock the factory doors to prevent workers from taking unauthorised breaks.

Is that an indication of a free exchange?

For a free exchange, both sides need to have reasonably equal power.

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jqm10y ago

That's an interesting perspective and I hadn't really considered it like that.

wildmusingsOP10y ago

tamana10y ago

Because rational people know that people aren't always rational.

Are you also opposed to those medians and guardrails on highways that impinge on your freedom to drive off the road when you so choose?

chrishynes10y ago

It's not quite so cut and dried, though. As safety measures are introduced, people tend to increase risky behavior which ends up mitigating the new safety measures.

For example, since you bring up roads -- narrower lanes make safer drivers: http://www.planetizen.com/node/80229/another-study-shows-nar...

wildmusingsOP10y ago

vidarh10y ago

> A job is a free exchange between two parties.

In other instances, people burned to death because of employers that thought it ok to lock the factory doors to prevent workers from taking unauthorised breaks.

Is that an indication of a free exchange?

For a free exchange, both sides need to have reasonably equal power.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse