Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by em-bee 18 days ago
Nobody works by choice

not true. anybody working as a volunteer works by choice. i work by choice, because i could instead live in germany on unemployment support and welfare, because i am to old to find a job (germany has a big problem with age discrimination) and the government can't force me to work as a selfemployed freelancer. so i choose to work because i want to. not because i have to.

at least in germany i can't think of anyone being forced to work in a job that would cause them suffering. well, except working with windows, and hence from that perspective a worse kind of suffering is quite unlikely.

that aside, almost all suffering comes from how people are treated at work. the days of people suffering in coalmines or other seriously unhealthy work conditions with out any alternative are over. anyone there still suffering at work today is being actively exploited by abusive business owners. yes, the people working there may not have a choice, but we as a society do have the choice to not tolerate such working conditions, and therefore making such demands is not privileged.

1 comments

Wow. Well it's a very gracious choice of you to not mooch off the welfare system.

> at least in germany i can't think of anyone being forced to work in a job that would cause them suffering. well, except working with windows

You must be actually trolling. You'd honestly choose stocking shelves in a supermarket over being a windows sysadmin? Have you ever heard of RSI? Or actually ever worked a day of physical labor in your life?

we were talking about suffering and dignity. i see nothing undignified about stocking shelves. they don't make me angry, for one. but also suffering, the moment stocking shelves causes any sort of pain you are no longer able to do the job. noone is forced to suffer at work. at least not in germany.

physical labor? not to the point of suffering. the point is, in germany, jobs that make you suffer through physical labor do not exist, because they are illegal. grey areas exist of course, and cases that are not discovered because the victims (and in that case they are victims) don't speak up.

but this is completely besides the point because what i am talking about is what is more difficult to cover by law, and that is mental suffering.

your argument essentially appears to be that because physical suffering exists, we should ignore mental suffering, and anyone complaining about mental suffering should stop whining because others have it worse. 1st world problems or whatever.

so i should also tolerate my boss yelling at me, my coworkers bullying me, being verbally abused, how about discrimination, sexism, etc? surely any of that is more tolerable than the physical pain i'd get from stocking shelves.

just because something worse is possible that does not dismiss the stress and frustration i have to experience when working with windows, or with LLMs.