[s1artibartfast]

>How do you reconcile expecting the rewards of other people's labor if you wouldn't be willing to do the same labor yourself?

I pay them directly for their labor, as simple as that. I guess I'm not sure what the confusion is. Everyone wants the best job they can get given their skills and luck. Nobody is going to be shoveling asphalt in the sun for fun if their part time astrophysicist gig covers their expenses.

[quacked]

Everyone has been tricked into believing that the best use of their time is to "get the best job", and the "job" is working at a hyper-specialized set of tasks, day-in, day-out. They claw at each other like crabs, dismayed when they lose a position, elated when they eke out a few more dollars or gain an extra few days of free time as they shuffle jobs. On HN, there's an archetypal hero's ascendency crawl where you finally find that $300k product manager job and retire at 45 with crazy stock options.

It's a slave mentality. Do you believe that we, the people in society, set up the component parts of society and thus have the right to rebuild those component parts as it suits us, or do you believe that concepts like "jobs" and "laws" are naturally occurring phenomena that we are owned by?

I am immune to the siren call of endless improvements in the amount of money I receive. I have reached a high enough standard of living that I don't need any more goods or services than I already can get, and I'm not particularly rich as far as Americans go (about 65th percentile according to a recent income distribution calculator).

My goal is to convince as many people as I can to start thinking about what quality of life they would be satisfied with, figure out what labor and materials are required of them and their community to provide that quality of life, and then cut everything else out of the picture. We don't need the rat race, we don't need our elders worrying about how they'll afford the doctor, we don't need people working 80 hour weeks at minimum wage so they can afford a crappy apartment. We just need the materials and the labor.

The more people buy into "I've got to get the best job" mentality, the more impossible realizing any sort of overall improvement in our labor-time-to-reward ratio is.

(I know I sound like a communist, but I don't believe in the labor theory of value, and most self-described communists I talk to call me a right-wing extremist.)

[s1artibartfast]

So I 100% agree with everything you said, but don't see how it connects to the points you raise above.

As you say, people should think long and hard about their life goals, and in my opinion, would probably be happier with a different work life balance where they can afford it.

However, I don't see a world in which I would work part time at a job less enjoyable with worse pay than my current one. I would rather optimize to work the minimum hours at the best compensated job I can find. (e.g. why work 50-50% at white collar job and terrible job, when I can just work 51% at the white collar job).

Sure, there are major challenges to most people doing this, but removing those barriers is a lot more realistic that introducing job swapping that people don't even want. The simple place to fix the problem is uncouple health and other benefits from employers. The current system discourages part time work because employers have fixed costs per employee. Once you break this link, more people will work part time.

[quacked]

Hm, well, I appreciate you pointing out that you agree with me, I got snippy in another response to you on a different comment chain.

I still don't think I've successfully explained this concept of changing the job-as-endless-labor to job-to-produce-specific-amount.

Have you ever gone out and built something for yourself, like a shed?

[s1artibartfast]

>Have you ever gone out and built something for yourself, like a shed?

Yes, I love building things for myself and my friends, but I wouldn't want to do it as a low paying job. In fact, doing it as a job would give me less time and money to do it for myself and friends. For me, that is just hopping off one economic hamster wheel and onto another. My job is complex and hard enough as it is, doubling the required skills and cutting the time to learn them sounds horrible. I'm fully aware that sharing jobs might be more attractive for the guy shoveling asphalt 100% of the time

> I got snippy in another response to you on a different comment chain.

No worries, at least to me it seems like you are engaging in good faith, listening to answers, and responding to what people are saying instead of talking past them. I can live with a little snippiness as long as people are coherent.