[sago]

Work will set you free!

First define success in a way that isn't just "happy" (because then you're defining anti-work, as the OP was). Then take the set of all successful people, based on that criteria, and the set of all hard working people, and tell me how big the overlap is.

I suspect that many successful people are hard-working. But the other direction that hard work is the foundation of success will be transparently nonsense.

You're using the classic fallacy of affirming the consequent here.

This is exactly the point made in this article and others. We've uncritically accepted the myth that hard work leads to success.

The prime beneficiaries of this are the successful people who control masses of capital and are thus able to anti-work (i.e. they do what they enjoy, building their business, creating new products, competing). The prime losers are those who do hard work for them for squeezed wages.

[EdSharkey]

So, it is a good thing to enjoy one's "anti-work". Which is to say, it's a personal and societal good to enjoy what you do for a living. Um, is this some new existentialism thing? Yes, attention attention: it would be best for everyone to like what they do, especially when what they do is hard. If you can't dazzle them with data, baffle them with bullsh*t, am I right?

Here's a fun what-if. What if in the next 10-20 years, robots and software begin automating away huge swaths of the non-creative drudgery jobs, doing the work safer and better than humans ever could. And, right around the same time, we develop life extending vitamins to give humans 500+ year lifespans at the physical age of 30. The vitamins soon become cheap to make, anyone can get them. Millions of people, suddenly vigorous and youthful, who used to have [bad/fake] labor jobs will now be priced out of the market. Grumble, grumble, they say. Life was better when I at least HAD a crummy job, grumble! Thank God, the anti-work problem is solved: the crappy jobs have been purged. Except now we've got a huge new powderkeg of a problem to deal with.

My question is, will we plan our future society ahead of time and peacefully enter this new era of plenty and health? Or, will we have wars and endless class strife between the have-jobs and not-have-jobs? Can we have a public debate about this before it actually happens?

When I read the OP and your message, I hear a negative view. Both of you posit negative thoughts about the current work scene that could lead a reader to doubt and resent their own job and position/status. You're simply stirring up trouble and unhappiness when you fail to also bring solutions to the table.

[sago]

> If you can't dazzle them with data, baffle them with bullsh*t, am I right?

Given that your reply contained no data, you tell me.

> Life was better when I at least HAD a crummy job, grumble!

That very much depends on what they do instead.

Plenty of people enjoy gardening who don't get paid to do it now. Plenty of people enjoy making things, craft, art, writing, furniture making, these are largely leisure activities now. Forms of education for themselves and others going to the library, or the park, reading. Working on yourself physically. Cooking. Consumption of media. Volunteering.

The idea that someone would rather do busywork than those things is silly, I think. But if, in that future, we still base our judgement of people's moral worth, by whether they have a crummy job, then I think the lack of crummy jobs becomes an issue.

The future you outline is coming, in some form or another (at least the work part, the 500yr lifespan less certainly). The question is, in that world, do we want to keep tying people's worth to their ability to find drudgery work? Do we want to keep going with a society that would concentrate even more wealth in the hands of those who control the capital, with no meaningful ability for anyone else to raise themselves out of their 'lower-class' status. It is hard to see how a plutocratic capitalism is going to work then. So I think we need more of this debate now, not less.

The solution being brought to the table, a small step in the grand scheme, but a necessary one, is to stop the rhetoric that work of any kind is inherently virtuous, and to stop the rhetoric that work is the way to gain one's success.

[fernly]

I want to think you made that reference -- arbeit macht frei -- knowingly, and if so, nice sting!

[wooyi]

v. late reply. Was busy working:-) There is a lot of empirical research that attribute grit, perseverance, practice to success. The best and most "successful" creatives, are also the ones that started the earliest, are the most productive (worked the hardest),.. http://pmarchive.com/age_and_the_entrepreneur.html

More anecdotal research like the 10000 hour "rule" for mastering a skill,... also state the same thing.

Sure you can be born rich and this doesn't apply to you.

But most people aren't born rich, so, what is available to them is hard work.

Ok, I'm going back to work now. Thanks for listening

[TeMPOraL]

The examples and research you provided relate to people basically doing what they like/want, not working somewhere only because they need to earn their bread. Those are two different kinds of "work" and this article was against the second, and for the first kind.