| There are plenty of jobs which are meaningful yet worthless from a capitalistic respect. I've turned down plenty of jobs in the past that would provide much more benefit to the world at large because they couldn't pay me enough to save up comfortably for retirement. So instead I've just worn these golden handcuffs for the past few years while working in marketing tech (which if anything is a net detractor from society). I'm a fantastic teacher and enjoy getting the opportunity any chance I can, but I could never do that for a living because the wages wouldn't leave me with enough to be financially secure in this nation. It's amazing how much of privilege there is attached to volunteer work. So much of it can make a significant difference in other people's lives. Yet such time commitments either require that you've made money elsewhere (normally through means not super productive to society) in your "real job" making business widgets/yet another spreadsheet, or that you also willfully give up on your own financial security. Even if a significant portion of the population were to become couch potatoes I posit that society would be no worse off in the long run. Such people are not the people currently making the next cure for cancer, or rescuing people from burning buildings. Such people are those barely getting through the day as is, not giving a crap about their boring job, just going through the motions to make money for someone else. Sure the companies that currently pay an unfairly low rate for those people's limited time will suffer... GOOD, such predatory behaviors should not be supported, propped up, an even enforced as they currently are by our government. By providing people with an alternative to meaningless work we not only free up those who would want to do truly beneficial work to do so, we also provide much greater market power to those who simply want something minimally productive during the day. So many people make minimum wage or less for amazingly demanding and unsafe work. Currently that is the only option for so many people, so those employers who are unscrupulous can wield so much power and demand so much while providing so little in return. Even if a significant percentage of the population ends up just spending their time out hiking, watching tv, or generally spending more time with their friends family (horrible outcome right?!?), if the rest of us get to benefit from either of the two previous scenarios then the only humans who wouldn't be better off would either be 1) those who think they deserve all the riches of the world even if they must bury the rest of us, or 2) those who use insecurity to force people into laying down their lives to fight their battles for them because they can keep those "lowly" people from having anything of meaning in this life. |