| I am 42. I am still coping with a question I've had since I was young and was able to get my first office job. Why am I paid so much money to basically do data organization. I'm organizing data. There are other people that build houses, grow food, prepare food. Then there are others that are simply entertainers - but that does provide societal value. I mean I guess in order to have entertainment, we have to have this giant other house of cards built upon just BILLIONS of people that just sit and think all day and talk to other people. I'm just at a huge loss why we don't all focus on growing food and building interesting structures, ponds, waterfalls, arenas. No, instead our society has billions of organizers of data. Eh, it's late and I'm tired right now maybe I'll feel more useful tomorrow. |
> "He's a parasite. He mimics the workers here. He runs around with data desks, he sleeps in their dormitory rooms, he eats their food. It's a common pattern in communities like this. The genuine clerks are busy with their own tasks -- and here, you aren't supposed to ask questions anyhow. So Tek gets away with it. He's just like a genuine clerk. Except that you don't do anything useful, do you, Tek?"
This is from an SF book from Baxter, characters went to a community of humans to gather information about something. The excerpt stayed on my mind because it relates to other questions (alienation, at what point is work still work if it's so far removed from the first objective (yak shaving), is someone creating its own useless workload a parasite, etc.).