[spencerflem]

The ‘little incentive’ that it you don’t do it you starve to death.

There’s tons of work being done because it feels meaningful, later today I’m cooking a meal for a potluck, etc. but if you want your Job to be meaningful that comes at a huge premium.

[csallen]

Good on you for cooking for the potluck! I think that's meaningful.

I don't think having a meaningful job comes at a huge premium, though:

1. I don't think it's true that if you don't work, you'll starve to death. At least, not in the west. You won't have the high quality things compared to your peers, but the state will provide you with housing, food, and resources, so long as you're psychologically capable of using them.

2. But even so, is there any other creature on earth that doesn't have to do some sort of work so it won't starve to death? Even hunter gatherers had to hunt, forage, raise kids, make tools, or otherwise contribute to their tribes, in an endless grind, just to get enough calories to survive.

3. And that doesn't seem… wrong? Many of us enjoy an incredible abundance of options for food, shelter, safety, entertainment, etc., produced by our peers in our tribes and communities. Why shouldn't we have to contribute as well if we want to partake?

4. The idea that "meaning" comes at a premium is the story I want to contradict. It's just that: a story. I know someone who delivers the mail. He loves delivering mail. He feels a ton of meaning. He says, "Yeah there's a lot of junk, but without me, people wouldn't get their wedding invitations. And they wouldn't get their bills paid." Most jobs contribute something, and contribution is meaning. The sad thing to me is we have so many voices telling everyone, "Your job is meaningless!" that people are starting to believe it, and they're ignoring the lives that their work touches.

[spencerflem]

Delivering mail is meaningful for sure! So is teaching, people want to do these things and sometimes it lines up that there’s a market for it too.

The premium is that stuff like my job where I’m fiddling on Azure is to the benefit of no one and making four times as much.

If you want something meaningful you have to accept worse conditions because all the wonderful lovely people of the world who care and want to make a difference want to work there and not somewhere else.

And it’s interesting you picked mail as an example, when at least in the USA it’s run by the state ;p

I don’t really think it’s horrible that it’s not possible to mooch off your community and give back nothing forever but I don’t think ‘a little incentive’ is the right way of putting it, especially for all the people that hate their jobs for reasonable reasons but stay at it because of the alternative.