What If We Just...Stopped Working? - Second Thought

Comments

• danielquinn@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I normally like his stuff, but I think he missed a key point this time.

  Bullshit jobs aren’t about the uselessness of that work. Most of the useless work we do is critical… for the furtherance of capitalism.

  Whole swaths of the planet work 8+ hours a day making products worse than they should be, finding ways to squeeze in advertising, tracking, or schemes to manipulate customers into “upgrading”. We even burn through skilled psychologists, passing them to design advertising that compels children to badger their parents.

  This is the sort of work that only needs to exist because capitalism requires it, and that has a huge effect on people’s morale.

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• mateomaui@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Homelessness would skyrocket because landlords don’t give a fuck.

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  • metaStatic@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    who would do the work of removing squatters?

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    • mateomaui@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s still homelessness. Sheltered, but homeless.

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• the_q@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  If every employee of McDonald’s just didn’t show up to work for like a day the whole economy would collapse.

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  • Cl1nk@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It wouldn’t, it already happened during covid and everything was fine.

    There are more essential jobs than fast food. Any jobs related to keeping the power grid working, hospitals, and other emergency and transportation for food would have a frater impact.

    Imagine a city with no power and no food, chaos would ensure in less than a week.

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    • Nemo@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Of course I didn’t watch it, it’s a fucking video. Text summary or GTFO.

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• Coreidan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  If everyone stopped working the entire system would collapse.

  Thing is people need to eat so that will never happen

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• snownyte@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Okay, I wish some people would stop going with the hyperbole that the moment people did something like this, it'd equal instant chaos. Not to say it wouldn't happen, but the fact that people always project it as immediately happening, is getting old.

  That turned me off from the video. It's about as bad as a video I once watched, that toyed with the matter of what would life be without the government. And in that video, it went totally batshit with how there would be no water, schools would be poorly maintained and everywhere else would be post-apocalyptic. Like, what the fuck kind of scenario does that have to do without a government? There's more variables at play with that kind of scenario than being without a government. I digress.

  But for the subject at hand, I've thought often about this sort of thing. I think if we stopped working, things would just be majorly inconvenient. I can realistically see stores being shoplifted because after a while, people see no point in waiting and getting off because there would be no one monitoring the cameras because everyone staffed at the store wouldn't be there anymore.

  I just find it hard to imagine officers, nurses, doctors .etc just giving up working because those are civic essentials we can't really go without. A doctor midway during surgery just throwing their arms up and saying "fuck it"? No, I find it a little unrealistic. They'd be a murderer by negligence and I think that's something they can't live with.

  I can mostly see lots of retail workers, lots of fast food workers, lots of office workers, lots of construction workers .etc abandoning their jobs more that'll affect those industries and making an impact. It'll just make things incredibly inconvenient and frustrating.

  Now, what I'd want to see is people completely stop paying taxes every year. Millions of people, no longer paying taxes. Does it dare the government to arrest everyone or what? That'd be an entertaining thought.

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