Coming from an environmentalist and scientist perspective, it always baffles me why we are still following the growth, "success"-driven 9-5 work model. Not only is it unsustainable, it promotes a "fast culture". There's a trend of "down-shifting" where people work part-time and spend the other time volunteering, getting involved with community, and enjoying personal time. In an ideal world we'd all do that: I mean, we have enough people. It is a rather privileged work-life balance, I recognise, but with a shorter work week, more jobs can be created, the hourly wage could increase, and people aren't exploited for labour. Because people are dependent on jobs for money, and these job take up a lot of time, lots of issues where volunteering helps massively aren't receiving the attention or help needed. I'm thinking rewilding projects, facilitating community-based projects, and engaging more with local issues. We need to encourage slower living, for our mental health, communities and to tackle the climate crisis.
I’m in the middle of reading ‘The Day the World Stopped Shopping’ which examines the effects of undoing growth to save the climate through the lens of the pandemic (where economic activity shifted abruptly), and the book discusses several models of degrowth. The only model that didn’t result in collapse was one where everybody worked less but were still employed (thereby still sharing resources), including job sharing. We could consume less, work less, and have more leisure/hobby time, AND not boil ourselves to death. Sounded great to me.
It's only a privileged work-life balance now. It doesn't need to be, if those with power had any interesting in the wellbeing of everyone else, it could be the norm
Everyone would love to 'down-shift' but only a small minority can currently find part time work that pays the bills - not anything flashy but just the bare minimum of housing, food, basic clothing and maintenance
This is the world I want, and it also addresses so many of our problems, from isolation & the mental health crisis, to the climate crisis. Would recommend 'Less Is More' by Jason Hickell , a great book about degrowth.
When my mum was 6 months into retirement she said "I don't know how I found the time to go to work". She was still busy in retirement but doing the things she choose. I was amazed.
This feels like one of those "Cross-over" episodes that two of your favorite tv shows would do back in the 90s. I love it 🥰❤ Thanks for the video Ariel and Leena. You're both brilliant! 👏
Money and work conditions are important, but I think for me what feels so unfair is the amount of hours we have to work. It's too much and we can't get our time back. Also, a lot of jobs are not interesting and very few people want to spend their lives doing that, so that becomes a problem too because those roles are needed in our society.
especially since we shifted into a "nuclear family model" where two adult people often are the sole responsible people for the children while both of them have to work a day job to make enough money for all of them to survive. meanwhile they have to look after their home and other respnsibilities. it's even harder when people are without a partner to share the work. how are we supposed to still manage to do all this stuff??
About the cave people, I've read in many places that they actually worked fewer hours a day than we do! Even medieval peasant, who had comparatively long hours, had entier seasons of the year where they worked significantly less hours than we do. There are even more modern accounts of societies where people would work for a few hours in the morning but finished all the gathering/making/shelter building by mid day and could spend all afternoon/evening on having fun (and white colonizers would call them lazy for it). I'm willing to work super hard all day for a couple weeks a year to bring in the harvest/rebuild a shelter after a storm/migrate to a better hunting ground/whatever the modern equivalent of those activies ares, but from what I've read, the day to day of our cavemen ancestors really wasn't the equivalent of a 9 to 5 with an additional 2+ hours of commuting (and the 'life admin', child care, cooking and shelter upkeep our ancestors would have had too). Maybe an 8 to 12 or something.
Yes! And indigenous/early people left behind pottery, beadwork, cave paintings, ceremonial wearables/items, danced, sang, Traded with other tribes, had pets, spent time with family, cooked, etc. They made time for important ceremonies, holidays, and gatherings. They made time for varied valued pastimes alone and with others. They understood even then quality of life.
Capitalist work life balance was only made possible by a) widely accessible electric light and b) the invention of 'clock time' (ie an agreed delineation of the day that allows people in different places to coordinate their work)
Yes! As a woman with a monthly cycle there are certain weeks I am full of energy and positivity and love working all days and then there are times where I genuinely need rest.. having the same schedule week in and week out with only two days off just doesn’t jive with that
The same exact unemployment/labor shortage Ariel was talking about is happening in Italy. Every week and a half or so a big entrepreneur will go up in arms screaming to the papers "The youths are lazy and don't want to work, I've been looking for help for aaaages and no one will come and work for me" and WITHOUT FAIL someone who has applied for said job, wanted to apply or worked for him will show up going "I wanted to work for you, but you asked for an extortionate amount of hours a week and yet offered a pay that doesn't allow me to feed myself properly nor pay rent. You're not looking for employees, you're looking for slaves" AND THEY STILL DON'T GET IT
I think my problem with work is that it takes all the energy and leave me nothing for "the fun". I really do enjoy my job, and I want to keep doing it, I just don't want to do as much of it and in as strict boundaries. Working eight hours a day plus all the time it takes around it, leaves way to few hours and to little energy to do basically anything other than resting for the next day.
Listening to you talk in this reminded me of a quote from the Talmud that a very dear Jewish friend once shared with me: "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the worlds grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."
I relate to this whole conversation so much. As a burnt out, chronically ill person who works a 9-5 desk job where I often feel disrespected, work sucks all my energy. Capitalism is the reason for my industry and we could survive as a species if my colleagues and I didn’t work 40+ hours a week. I probably wouldn’t even mind doing my job part time if all my needs were covered because it would leave me time and energy to manage my chronic illnesses and do things that bring me joy. I think most people wouldn’t mind work so much if it didn’t take so much of our time and energy while often giving us undignified pay and/or treatment.
I am SO grateful that when I got diagnosed with my condition I was financially stable, living in a big city where I could get all the appointments done without trouble, and that my employers were nice enough to encourage me to not struggle to work on a bad day and would let me work from home as needed.
I think the pandemic has totally broken the rules around ‘work’ and I’m hoping that they stay broken, well stays fluid. I think feeling valued in how we are treated and paid is a huge thing. I also think there’s so much frustration about having a ‘career’ and knowing what ‘work’ you should be doing at x age and that adds pressure and we change what we might want to do as life changes.
okay so!! I've been studying education and take this with a grain of salt but the theories I have learnt in order to get students to do work and get involved pretty much say incentives are more helpful than fear. So, people are more inclined and receptive if there isnt a fear based approach. However, we are also meant to steer away from incentives because it implies that doing the work is something out of the normal behaviours and should be rewarded. Instead, we are meant to improve the overall classroom culture so that learning isnt incentive or fear based, but the environment is safe enough and receptive enough for all students to be keen to learn and work.
“You think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
So much good stuff here! The one thing that jumps out at me is that this conversation is really centered on work in ‘developed nations’/the Global North. Sure we got a lot more tech to make manual labor more efficient and productive, but also a lot of that labor just got outsourced to ‘developing nations’/the Global South! Where does most of that food and cool stuff get made and transported from? And where does a lot of the world’s waste pile up? I think it’s difficult to ignore the weight that people and societies and environments in the Global South are shouldering. Would love to hear what people with insight on this have to say :)
* archaeologist enter the chat * ACTUALLY 😂 new research about "cave People" (paleolithic I assume) didn't work that much. We think now that they should had a 20/80% work ratio a day. 20% of the time was dedicated to hunt/foraging and 80% social activities. Edit : unrelated but kinda, a thing that we forget in our modern society is also that "way back before" the time in a day wasn't our actual time in a day. I mean, if you live in UK, or France, it's the middle of November and you live in 1432, you can't work past 5 pm. Because it's night. And you don't have electricity. Sure you have light and fire, but that's not the same as a modern lamp. You don't have an electric sewing machine, so you don't sew at the same speed. Everything was a little bit slower.
@@gwynneio in most of the article I've read on that subject (in France) data from anthropological studies on modern nomadic tribe were checked against data from studies on the animals bones found in actual archaeological survey.
I've been reading about this recently! A lot of people got busy doing small labors, easy stuff you can do with the kids underfoot, indoor, or on the go. So like later on in the neolithic and on everyone knew how to spin wool or ret fibers. All of that time has now been industrialized so now we... just work through it. Imagine the handicrafts and skills people could be doing if we got that time back!
Hi, hello. Industrial / Organizational psychologist here (well.. almost. I'm a PhD candidate currently). My entire field is focused on studying human behavior at work, and around work as a concept, and I have a lot of thoughts on this video. (For reference, I'm in the US, so my perspective and thoughts come from that lens... can't necessarily speak to other countries, but I have a feeling that some of this would still apply). My IMMEDIATE question when the question was posed was what is meant by work? Because yes, there is absolutely a difference between a job, vs a career, and whether someone identifies as having a "job" vs. having a "career" can influence the strain people feel at work. People who identify as having a "career" tend to find more meaning in their work, and the extent to which people find their work meaningful has a well-documented relationship to how satisfied people are at work, how motivated they are to work, and their performance overall (what performance "is", and how it's compensated is a completely different and messy discussion altogether). But the main thing that I wanted to just mention has to do with perceptions of organizational justice, which is overall about perceptions of fairness at work. There are 3 main types that y'all touched on - distributive justice (perceived fairness of the allocation of compensation... am I paid enough for the work that I do?), procedural justice (perceived fairness of the way in which compensation is decided... is the process that is used to determine how I'm paid fair?), and interactional justice (am I treated fairly and with respect?). Org justice can apply to other things like performance ratings or bonuses, but for simplicity I'm just going to speak about it in terms of compensation. As it pertains to the great recession... I think distributive and procedural justice are by far the biggest issues that employers have here. People don't feel like they're paid adequately for the work that they put in, and the process used to determine those wages is unfair (e.g., perhaps because those wages aren't enough to live in the area where that job is, for example), so it's a poor value proposition. As far as what to *do* about this.... I mean, I feel like the answer is obvious but the neoliberal hellscape that characterizes certainly the US, but likely other countries as well, is unlikely to let that change. This is where you have a discussion about the labor market and economics, but that's beyond my scope of competence. The other thing is that yes, there is 100% research to suggest that humans respond better to positive incentives rather than punishment. When you incentivize employees with things like recognition, monetary rewards, or even something as simple as positive feedback, they will be more satisfied with their work (and their supervisor), and will feel more motivation to put forth effort into their work. When we feel good, we work better. When you punish employees by writing them up, or disciplining them, or whatever else it is that is punishing them, that doesn't make employees *less* likely to do the thing that got them punished in the first place. It makes them more likely to get better at hiding those behaviors - a better thing to do would be to get to the bottom of *why* people are needing to be punished and addressing the core issue. Are they stealing office supplies because they feel like they're not compensated well enough? Are they mistreating other workers because they're overloaded in their own role? Etc, etc. Last thing is that the concept that was discussed regarding feeling stressed out by riding the tube, etc, when they're not paid fairly, that's a concept called "scarcity mindset", and it's all about how when people are scarce on either time or monetary resources, it poses additional stressors on them that make it much more difficult to go about life. This concept is super new to my field specifically (it's discussed more in behavioral economics), but my colleague is writing her doctoral dissertation on it.
Fantastic video and I'm also the same as Ariel - at 18 I was more like "why must I do these things" but at 25 I'm now like "honestly, if I didn't have things I Had To Do every day my mental health would be in the sewer"; it's fascinating to see how your perspective shifts with age and experience. But also something to add to your conversation: I agree with Ariel that society without people doing things would... completely break down. Because on a very basic level, the argument of 'I just want to live and experience stories and art' (which I do! that's important to me!) completely falls apart when you realise THAT REQUIRES PEOPLE TO BE MAKING THOSE THINGS AND THEREFORE DOING THINGS. When you read a book, or watch a film or TV show, that didn't just magically appear. So many people were involved on so many different levels (as you know Leena, from working in publishing!) doing shit to get that out into the world. A society where people Do Not Do Shit is not only a society which would fall apart, but it quite literally could not exist properly, and would be entirely empty of all of the things we enjoy consuming in our down time; because those things require people working on them to be produced.
I love that you raised the point about women fighting for the right to work. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that on my darkest working days I do think unfavourably of those women just a tiny bit for giving me the privilege of being able to have my 9-5, but my usual self is very grateful for the opportunities that my right to work affords me that those women didn’t have.
That point Ariel was getting at, asking people what they are passionate about rather than what they do for work, is something I’ve been mindfully doing for years, and it’s much more interesting!
For anyone interested in exploring this topic in more detail, I would highly recommend the book What We Really Do All Day: Insights from the Centre for Time Use Research. It is a sociological study which compares how people spend their time from 2005 vs 1971. One of the topics explored in it is the difference between paid work and unpaid work (which includes domestic responsibilities, as well as unpaid care). It breaks down gender differences, but also talks about the effect of how much work we do has on our downtime.
Something that was recently brought to my attention is that most jobs are structured for men. As people with uteruses, our bodies are very cyclical and don't really fit well into the 8 hour 5 day work schedule. I always thought about how unfair it felt that I was expected to go to work, and perform as much as my male colleagues while in intense pain and nausea from menstrual cramps. And this happens a couple days every month! I always wished that employers offered more flexibility in work hours so that I can work when my body is at it's best and rest when it's not.
Leena: Can someone who is paid 100 times more than someone else actually do 100 times the work? Ariel: No. They probably have 100 people working for them... Me: Is capitalism an MLM scheme?!?
I was just telling my partner about how Ariel mentioned you in one of her recent videos! I love the idea of my internet friends being real life friends. 💜 Keep making fabulous and thoughtful art, ya'll. It's so refreshing to watch your videos.
Also loved what was said about the “work” problem as being unsolvable but still needs attention and fixing. Don’t know why it was so mind blowing to realize that problems don’t always have a solution but need work. (Pun not intended. 😂) As a recovering perfectionist, having that reminder really struck a chord with me. Really loved the video! ❤️ Love from Texas.
Quit my job 2 days ago... this couldn't have come at a better time. More labour content please while I figure out what the hell I'm doing with my life 😭
As someone who resigned during the pandemic I truly feel this. And there have been a lot of young people joining the "great resignation". I think the idea of joyment and happiness in exchange for money is also important. Sometimes the reason for happiness at work can be colleagues, the task, or the people you interact with. And often having one of those that really doesn't work, potentially actively shits on your parade means you should leave that job, if you can. Because it goes beyond grinding you down in a work situation to grinding you dont generally
So fun and interesting listening to you both discuss the ins and outs of this unsolvable issue. My instant reaction was to think of that Melville story Bartley , the Scrivner where the worker continuously says to his boss “I’d prefer not to.” And what that challenge does to a system that relies on compliance.
I know that the unemployment issue in Canada described here anecdotally is true. I think there’s more to it, so I’ll throw in my two cents. You see a tonne of retirees not going back to jobs post-vaccine, and I suspect in areas with older populations you’d see significantly worse labour shortages. Also, lots of folks had pandemic babies, so some younger workforce may also be choosing to stay home for parental-leave. Third, there’s likely some folks that decided ‘hey instead of working two plus jobs I’m going to take this labour shortage opportunity to negotiate a better wage with one employer’. So yes, I really hope people are sticking up for themselves in job negotiations, but I also believe the issue probably won’t entirely be solved by raising wages. Many of these jobs don’t even have applicants that could turn down a wage in the first place.
As someone that has always wanted to do different creative things the question “how do I do this so it’s my job” has been a thing. It’s nice to have these conversations with creatives and be reminded it doesn’t always have to monetised!
Loved the video, ironically watching it while working from home checking boxes in excel. Ariel seems like such a smart woman, both of you have a great dynamic and I can't wait do check out her channel!
Love this video, it's a question I ask myself every day. It eats me up a bit because I chose to be an unpaid carer for my family. You lose dignity, you lose wages, you lose the ability to define yourself as your career. But the gains are so important it feels unfair to be put in such a low position in society. I think it stems from women traditionally taking on caring roles. Universal basic income would fix this, I feel.
I think it's a myth that we all have to work. Think about all the people you know, and now think about how many of them do jobs that are critical to the replication of society - not many for those of us in the global North right? A lot of people have what anthropologist David Graeber terms "bullshit jobs" (he has a fantastic book on the subject) that are both unfulfilling and unproductive. We've progressed to the stage now that most people don't have to work in critical roles, and what we could do is have everyone work significantly less, sharing the essential roles at maybe a day or two a week and work towards using automation to eliminate jobs no one wants to do. The future will be automated whether we like it or not - the question is who owns the technology. If we all hold it in common ownership we're heading for an amazing future, if it continues to be in private ownership it will be a dystopia where human labour isn't valued.
Would recommend Four Thousand Weeks, it's a surprisingly comforting book- basically deals with how us having limited time is actually liberating if we approach it the right way
i don't know a whole lot about this concept but this discussion is just making me think of the marxist analysis of 'alienation from labour' - ie. not getting to see or gain the value from your labour directly, which makes ppl feel alienated from their work. and also on the point of constantly and slowly trying to make work better, unions! that's why unions are so important and need more support/resources! join a union, see what campaigns are happening in ur industry, become an activist within unions to push them into the campaigning u think is needed, all that good organising stuff :)
I completely agree with you. In my opinion we must work, simply to stay healty, physically and mentally. Working is more than gaining money, humans want to belong somewhere. These social groups are essential, but not for everybody in the same way. The extension „Why must we work in this way“ is a question, I really want to be discussed by our politicians. Juliet Rhys-Williams had the idea of a negative income tax and even Milton Friedman, the guy who was hating welfare, made his own version of it in the 60s. Safety nets are great, but we don‘t need a net, we need a carpet to stand on. Nobody should fall through a net. In Germany there is a very good net, but sometimes your personal situation is so unique, that there is no way other than working in a shitty job you are not healty enough to do just to pay for food and shelter. A basic income would change how employers and employees interact on the jobmarket. Negotiation on eye level would be possible, career changes would be easier, starting your own business… caring for people… enjoying art in every way… Humans could be more human again, to themselfs, to each other. I genuinely believe, cases of anxiety, depression etc. would drop drastically in the long run, because life wouldn‘t be full of pressure. Yes, we must work, and the jobs nobody wants to do have to be done. But there will be people doing them if you pay them properly. And a lot of these jobs will be automatized anyway. But this time I don‘t think that there will be new jobs. We should change the society now to prevent a desaster (I recommend the book Qualityland). This means establishing negative income tax (or any other form of basic income), no private infrastructure (hospitals, streets, water,…), appreciation for care givers, no full time jobs as a must and for God‘s sake tax the rich properly. I think this would be a good starting point. Our society will never be perfect, but that‘s okay. We as individuals have to work, but we as a society can make the circumstances better.
Organized labor could, I think, fix a lot of things that are broken with the way people are treated at work. Even more important than organized labor, I think we really need to focus on shifting the conversation to unpaid work being equally (if not often MORE) valuable compared to a lot of work that is currently paid. The U.S. economy (the example that I know best as a citizen) is propped up in a massive way by a workforce of 100% unpaid caregivers in the form of stay at home parents and people caring for ill and/or disabled family and friends. Additionally, people who are unable to do paid work for a variety of reasons, including people with disabilities, are treated as socially less useful or even a burden to society. These are some major issues that wouldn’t even be touched by just moving money into more hands, because they are essentially beliefs about productivity that I think are more related to fear and scarcity than just tangible resources. Rich people and poor people in our society often believe that care work should be unpaid and that relying on social assistance is shameful or something to get over, so the amount of money you have doesn’t necessarily correlate with a belief in a more equitable society.
it's interesting that the concept of being a concert pianist came up because it is an incredibly competitive and gruelling industry, in most cases horribly underpaid and there is a complete lack of job security. I know it was just a passing comment but I just wanted to add this to the conversation. :) PS would love a podcast with Leena and Ariel!
I think the real question should be, why is paid work valued over all other work? For me the answer is, because it's the type of work most men do. People have this idea that if you're not employed and being paid for a job then you just do nothing all day, you're not fulfilling your potential. Completely forgetting all the work done by home keepers, stay at home parents, volunteers and unpaid carers. This type of work is mostly done by women and disabled people and is severely undervalued.
As someone who is currently on week 6 of mandatory ot for what should be a laid back office job, I felt this. Also, I'm so glad Ariel mentioned that video of how many books we're capable of reading in a lifetime because it's been living rent free in my brain for years
OK, I'm only a couple minutes in, BUT I think both of you would really enjoy The Refusal of Work by David Frayne! One of my favourite books that I read this year.
With this video and the Books Unbound episode with Leena, I am really loving these collabs! I'm so glad that you got to spend some time together while Ariel was in the UK. Love to you both. ❤️
I think this is where universal basic income could really play a role. As people we don’t want to do nothing, so even if we were paid enough to live we would still choose to do something, to find something meaningful to work on.
You guys unlocked the memories of Ariel’s content back when she was in school and I absolutely loved commiserating with her while I was also suffering through higher education 📚😠
(My main point is that when we talk about why we have to work? we do not mean we do not mean that we want do nothing all our life, but more about restrictions put on our activities dictated by our need in money, envoirement, etc. ) I think there are few more reasons why we are dreaming about not working: 1) we often are limited and controled in terms of when can we stop take a breake etc (it's expanding on the point about working past capasities) 2) we kinda are limited regarding what we do for work. In theory you can find ways to earn money by doing anythin, but in reality we are limited by our circumstances, time, economy, demand, finances etc. 3) most (all) jobs include parts we do not like doing (maybe its taxes, calling people, dealing with exels etc) and in reality its not little amount and they seems to be anavoidable. 4) when we talk about do not wanting to wwork we usually mean labour for money - we still have projects outside of our work, we have errands etc - and it's work as well - there are people paid to do that - but we have to do it on top of jobs/ 5) do not know hos to formulate it, but e.g. you can be artist - but you can't just paint beautiful pictures? you have to think about audience, advertidement, selling staf, (even if you outsurce most of it you still have to think about people who will pay for it)
Personally work starts feeling like a job when the balance of money and fulfilment are off. I left a really well paying job where I walked out almost every day feeling like there was no point in me being there to do something that makes me feel productive and purposeful but means I struggle a bit financially. Everyone is so different but I feel like people should either be able to work in a capacity that brings them joy or be making enough to spend a decent amount of time doing things that make them happy. And everyone should be able to be able to afford to live; because if a child was able to survive a broken leg when we as a species that were still fighting bears on the daily, surely by now kids shouldn’t be dying cos their parents can’t pay to take them to a hospital for the same reason.
I've seen that video that they referenced about if you read x many books a year then you have y many books left in your lifetime and I find it really interesting that Ariel found it anxiety-inducing because I found it motivating. The guy in the video only read one book a year on average and his friend said 'ok if you live to be eighty you only have fifty books left' (or something like that). But he followed it up by timing his reading speed and calculating how many books he would read in his life if he read half an hour every day. It was over 1,000. The thesis of that video is that the difference between a 50 book lifetime and a 1,000 book lifetime is 30 minutes a day.
I think however, it is better to integrate a level of passion into work, no matter how little. It makes up far too many hours of life for it to be something I hate or have no feelings for. And its not just time it takes up too , physically and mentally it drains you. So even if the work conditions like pay, are relatively great and nothing is particularly wrong with it, just the fact that from the moment I open my eyes till the sun sets I am doing something I dislike albeit not vehemently, is still far too long. And the hobbies, which I wish l could be doing for most of the day, end up sort being done in a half baked way, when I am not in my best condition. Sort of frustrated at the moment where I feel stuck because this job I have is supposed to be something fantastic due to its work conditions but I still feel like I don't want the next day to come.
I absolutely LOVED every second of this conversation!! both of you are just one of those youtubers that I never miss a video from so I loved this collab
Having worked in the service industry and now currently working a factory job.... I don't blame people for not wanting to go back to working in the service industry. I don't love the job I'm in now, but goddamn I wanted to die every single day working in food service. I'm not exaggerating. Legit, non stop suicidal ideation for the majority of the waking hours of the day. And it's not as if my experience was outside of the norm, I genuinely belive that most people in those jobs are suffering because of them
This is such a great video. It gives me a lot to think about. Sometimes I feel like maybe I'm not passionate enough about my job, but I try to remind myself that it's okay if I go through waves of passionateness for it, because my job is not my all. I have other hobbies like TH-cam and violin that I get you out of ❤
Leena's point that someone cannot do a 100x more work than someone else is so important and it comes back to value. People that think others have the right to earn more believe in meritocracy, in which some people (or in this case occupations) have more merit than others but there are so many flaws with this. 1. Who determines worth ? Lawyers, CEO, bankers, etc. Make a ton of money but in reality it is the lowest (or uncompensated) labour done mainly by women and BIPOC people that is the most important. Reproductive labour's, farming, care workers, life doesn't work without them and yet they make virtually nothing. Also, companies cannot operate without 1. A healthy society, 2. A labour's force, 3. Infrastructure. The wealth then that CEO's amass is thus contingent on millions of other people so again, it is a communal effort and they are the only ones reaping the rewards. The climate also has to come into the conversation because the richest companies are also the biggest climate producers. They are being paid the destroy the climate. So again, a reorientation of the labour's force on the concept of worth and value has to happen and it can't while neoliberal individualism reigns.
Growing up homeschooled in a farming community means I think I have a very different perspective on work than the average person. I'm also very grateful for that, because in the past three years I graduated with a dream job, got fired in a pandemic, was on unemployment, and have worked doing everything from the nastiest farming jobs to working in a high-end spa. I'm only 19. Letting go of elitism around different jobs is really liberating. I worked in a bridal shop and was treated like shit and paid minimum wage. I worked in a poultry processing plant and was paid well and treated 100x better. Maybe its easier for me because I've never been a career oriented person, I don't know. But I think most of the issues we have around work stems from how we were taught to view it growing up.
I found this video so uplifting and insightful; as someone who always struggles with the mindest that if something can't be made perfect (possibly quickly) then it's better to give up, it helped me realise that kind of attitude doesn't make sense when facing such complex problems like the need for work in our society, so thank you for putting it into words and highlighting the fact that just because you can't immediately fix something it doesn't mean it can't be incrementally made better or that you should give up on trying to make it better 😌
Loved this. Leena, I really enjoy watching you have these kinds of conversations with your friends because I like having these kinds of conversations with my friends, but of course every conversation is unique to the moment and the people having it, so it's like getting different versions of a conversation I might have, which is so interesting!! I love to see where different people's trains of thought take them and where other people land momentarily when discussed these kind of endless topics! Thanks for sharing!
I highly recommend ‘Bullshit Jobs’ by the late, great David Graeber. So much of the “work” we do under capitalism is purposeless nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, while we need money to buy access to necessities, I’m glad ppl have the means to support themselves. But the thesis asks us to take a good, hard look at some of our assumptions about work. What labor do we need to perform to sustain ourselves and provide a good standard of living for everyone?
Such an interesting video. I'm doing an industrial and organisational psychology course and there are studies that show when comparing groups that do the same work for an amount of money or for free, and those doing it for free show higher reported satisfaction for the same work, because it feels like a job. A lot of people who make a hobby or interest their job find they start to lose interest in doing it outside of when they are being paid to participate in that interest because it doesn't feel worth it, so I think the reason people ask the question "why do we have jobs" is because it feels forced or like they must do something for money to survive, even if having a job in something they were originally very enthusiastic about. Most people find other things, outside of their job to be enthusiastic about and create new hobbies, which might be part of the solution to preventing feeling apathetic in a job, alongside getting a new job or doing aspects of the job you enjoy outside of the job, for example an accountant might do calculations outside of their job.
My friends. I am currently reading Women's Work: the first 20,000 years. (History of textiles, way more interesting than it sounds.) And I feel like now that our survival is more automated, this question is more and more valid. We used to need to work to clothe ourselves and feed ourselves and literally not die. But now we're more to a point where we must work for completely different reasons which nonetheless have the same outcome. If I do not work... I do not eat. I would much rather be doing something productive and creative than working a grunt job that is of little consequence.
what an intriguing conversation. i reached a point this year where i realized how much of my identity was tied up in what i do for work and while since i'm supporting movements working towards change that's not a bad thing, i also realized i needed to prioritize myself and what brings me joy, so ofc in this capitalist society we need the monies to be able to enjoy our passions sometimes like you mentioned, what a web.
I think the thing that gets me - entering the full time work force after 12 years homeschooling my kids - is that in the US there is no paid leave. For anything. I’m currently quarantining because I caught breakthrough COVID *at my job* and cannot work for ten days. COVID benefits have expired and my job isn’t required to pay me while I’m sick. There is no dignity in that. My rate of pay is just enough to keep my mortgage and bills paid but I’m staring at this half pay check I’m going to get like - how can this be the 21st century? How can I make it as a single mom if I can’t even get sick without wrecking my entire financial security? How are we not taking better care of our people? Anyway - I know that my position isn’t permanent but that isn’t the case for so many people in the states. And it’s really no wonder nobody wants to work jobs like mine. It’s stressful out here with no safety net.
A thought regarding high unemployment and "more" jobs- perhaps there is also an increase in people who previously worked 2 or more jobs now being able to find 1 job that fills their financial needs. Indicating that much of our labor structures were dependent on a segment of workers who worked more than 40 hours a week without overtime or similar compensation.
Its so hard to find people who want to work again here in Sydney (Aus) too. I've heard of up market restaurants advertising they need a dish hand and will pay $90 (AUD) an hour for the night, and still no bites!
But, like also, I personally don't want to be forced to work at a job I hate just to pay the bills. For me, even now that I am paid more I still feel drained at the end of the day because I have no energy to do the things I am passionate about. I feel the question really asks, why are we being forced to work at jobs we don't like when we would much rather be doing something we love that may or may not be just as productive and valuable to society? I know you get into this... I'm just venting
Such an interesting discussion! Love these kinds of videos that make me think about things I might not have thought of before! also, LOVE the t-shirt Leena!!
I think the problem with work nowadays is that it no longer seems to benefit our societies/communities. Ideally, jobs would be like roles in the community - doctors, community gardeners, etc.
I really love this topic and think about it constantly because I work at a certain famous coffee chain and I don't bother to do my 40 hours a week because even if I did I would not have a livable wage I would just barely be able to pay rent. So when I go down the streets and see the now hiring signs, I'll look into them and they all would pay me the same or less of what I am getting payed now so I just stay there.
The US is seeing the same thing as Canada. And the Repub argument is that people would rather "just take gov money" than work and that this is laziness. HOWEVER, unemployment was paying better than a lot of jobs they were working. And who in their right mind would not take more money over working in fast food for 50 hours a week and being paid less? So as Ariel says, the problem is a wage shortage and NOT a labor shortage; if we could actually be bothered to pay a living wage we wouldn't have so many empty jobs right now.
I think it is important that you brought up technology (in the way we think about it now, like computers and social media, not hammers or technology in the human history sense). A point that I think is interesting is the idea that liberalism during the enlightenment purported the idea that scarcity is inherent to anything and everything. Which the enlightenment obviously brought great advancements, and some would argue that the enlightenment brought concrete realization of human rights which is why there was a shift from everyone just doing what their father did. However, on the flip side, liberalism and the enlightenment brought on the idea that scarcity is inherent and true rest can never be achieved. So, when people make technologies of any kind to solve human problems, it is believed that the technology must continue to solve problems which perpetuates cycles of creating problems in order to produce profit. Interesting that it has been so built into the system that it is hard to change industries or stop and start new businesses that people no longer can fix a societal problem through work and then move on, but then I suppose there would be less incentive to innovate the things already created. It’s all a wash.
Coming from an environmentalist and scientist perspective, it always baffles me why we are still following the growth, "success"-driven 9-5 work model. Not only is it unsustainable, it promotes a "fast culture".
There's a trend of "down-shifting" where people work part-time and spend the other time volunteering, getting involved with community, and enjoying personal time. In an ideal world we'd all do that: I mean, we have enough people. It is a rather privileged work-life balance, I recognise, but with a shorter work week, more jobs can be created, the hourly wage could increase, and people aren't exploited for labour. Because people are dependent on jobs for money, and these job take up a lot of time, lots of issues where volunteering helps massively aren't receiving the attention or help needed. I'm thinking rewilding projects, facilitating community-based projects, and engaging more with local issues. We need to encourage slower living, for our mental health, communities and to tackle the climate crisis.
I’m in the middle of reading ‘The Day the World Stopped Shopping’ which examines the effects of undoing growth to save the climate through the lens of the pandemic (where economic activity shifted abruptly), and the book discusses several models of degrowth. The only model that didn’t result in collapse was one where everybody worked less but were still employed (thereby still sharing resources), including job sharing. We could consume less, work less, and have more leisure/hobby time, AND not boil ourselves to death. Sounded great to me.
It's only a privileged work-life balance now. It doesn't need to be, if those with power had any interesting in the wellbeing of everyone else, it could be the norm
Everyone would love to 'down-shift' but only a small minority can currently find part time work that pays the bills - not anything flashy but just the bare minimum of housing, food, basic clothing and maintenance
This is the world I want, and it also addresses so many of our problems, from isolation & the mental health crisis, to the climate crisis. Would recommend 'Less Is More' by Jason Hickell , a great book about degrowth.
This. This. So much this. This and valuing arts as meaningful to society are my 2 big hills that I will die on.
When my mum was 6 months into retirement she said "I don't know how I found the time to go to work". She was still busy in retirement but doing the things she choose. I was amazed.
This feels like one of those "Cross-over" episodes that two of your favorite tv shows would do back in the 90s. I love it 🥰❤ Thanks for the video Ariel and Leena. You're both brilliant! 👏
Money and work conditions are important, but I think for me what feels so unfair is the amount of hours we have to work. It's too much and we can't get our time back. Also, a lot of jobs are not interesting and very few people want to spend their lives doing that, so that becomes a problem too because those roles are needed in our society.
same! i’m surprised they didn’t address this actually
especially since we shifted into a "nuclear family model" where two adult people often are the sole responsible people for the children while both of them have to work a day job to make enough money for all of them to survive. meanwhile they have to look after their home and other respnsibilities. it's even harder when people are without a partner to share the work. how are we supposed to still manage to do all this stuff??
@@obnitor they were about to but then got distracted, Leena mentioned it and then was reminded of the 4000 weeks book that scared her 😆
@@Hillary429 relatable honestly
About the cave people, I've read in many places that they actually worked fewer hours a day than we do! Even medieval peasant, who had comparatively long hours, had entier seasons of the year where they worked significantly less hours than we do. There are even more modern accounts of societies where people would work for a few hours in the morning but finished all the gathering/making/shelter building by mid day and could spend all afternoon/evening on having fun (and white colonizers would call them lazy for it). I'm willing to work super hard all day for a couple weeks a year to bring in the harvest/rebuild a shelter after a storm/migrate to a better hunting ground/whatever the modern equivalent of those activies ares, but from what I've read, the day to day of our cavemen ancestors really wasn't the equivalent of a 9 to 5 with an additional 2+ hours of commuting (and the 'life admin', child care, cooking and shelter upkeep our ancestors would have had too). Maybe an 8 to 12 or something.
Yes! And indigenous/early people left behind pottery, beadwork, cave paintings, ceremonial wearables/items, danced, sang, Traded with other tribes, had pets, spent time with family, cooked, etc. They made time for important ceremonies, holidays, and gatherings. They made time for varied valued pastimes alone and with others. They understood even then quality of life.
Capitalist work life balance was only made possible by a) widely accessible electric light and b) the invention of 'clock time' (ie an agreed delineation of the day that allows people in different places to coordinate their work)
Yes! As a woman with a monthly cycle there are certain weeks I am full of energy and positivity and love working all days and then there are times where I genuinely need rest.. having the same schedule week in and week out with only two days off just doesn’t jive with that
Completely! I was going to make a comment about this too !
I have read the same thing.
The same exact unemployment/labor shortage Ariel was talking about is happening in Italy. Every week and a half or so a big entrepreneur will go up in arms screaming to the papers "The youths are lazy and don't want to work, I've been looking for help for aaaages and no one will come and work for me" and WITHOUT FAIL someone who has applied for said job, wanted to apply or worked for him will show up going "I wanted to work for you, but you asked for an extortionate amount of hours a week and yet offered a pay that doesn't allow me to feed myself properly nor pay rent. You're not looking for employees, you're looking for slaves" AND THEY STILL DON'T GET IT
I think my problem with work is that it takes all the energy and leave me nothing for "the fun". I really do enjoy my job, and I want to keep doing it, I just don't want to do as much of it and in as strict boundaries. Working eight hours a day plus all the time it takes around it, leaves way to few hours and to little energy to do basically anything other than resting for the next day.
100%! I have no energy left to enjoy my hobbies or feel so drained I often can’t be social.
Listening to you talk in this reminded me of a quote from the Talmud that a very dear Jewish friend once shared with me: "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the worlds grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."
I relate to this whole conversation so much. As a burnt out, chronically ill person who works a 9-5 desk job where I often feel disrespected, work sucks all my energy. Capitalism is the reason for my industry and we could survive as a species if my colleagues and I didn’t work 40+ hours a week. I probably wouldn’t even mind doing my job part time if all my needs were covered because it would leave me time and energy to manage my chronic illnesses and do things that bring me joy. I think most people wouldn’t mind work so much if it didn’t take so much of our time and energy while often giving us undignified pay and/or treatment.
I am SO grateful that when I got diagnosed with my condition I was financially stable, living in a big city where I could get all the appointments done without trouble, and that my employers were nice enough to encourage me to not struggle to work on a bad day and would let me work from home as needed.
I think the pandemic has totally broken the rules around ‘work’ and I’m hoping that they stay broken, well stays fluid. I think feeling valued in how we are treated and paid is a huge thing. I also think there’s so much frustration about having a ‘career’ and knowing what ‘work’ you should be doing at x age and that adds pressure and we change what we might want to do as life changes.
Absolutely! #StayBroke
okay so!! I've been studying education and take this with a grain of salt but the theories I have learnt in order to get students to do work and get involved pretty much say incentives are more helpful than fear. So, people are more inclined and receptive if there isnt a fear based approach. However, we are also meant to steer away from incentives because it implies that doing the work is something out of the normal behaviours and should be rewarded. Instead, we are meant to improve the overall classroom culture so that learning isnt incentive or fear based, but the environment is safe enough and receptive enough for all students to be keen to learn and work.
“You think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
I was just thinking of this Baldwin quote when they were talking about the 15-30 year olds. Thanks for posting it!
So much good stuff here! The one thing that jumps out at me is that this conversation is really centered on work in ‘developed nations’/the Global North. Sure we got a lot more tech to make manual labor more efficient and productive, but also a lot of that labor just got outsourced to ‘developing nations’/the Global South! Where does most of that food and cool stuff get made and transported from? And where does a lot of the world’s waste pile up? I think it’s difficult to ignore the weight that people and societies and environments in the Global South are shouldering. Would love to hear what people with insight on this have to say :)
That's a very good point!!!
* archaeologist enter the chat * ACTUALLY 😂 new research about "cave People" (paleolithic I assume) didn't work that much. We think now that they should had a 20/80% work ratio a day. 20% of the time was dedicated to hunt/foraging and 80% social activities.
Edit : unrelated but kinda, a thing that we forget in our modern society is also that "way back before" the time in a day wasn't our actual time in a day. I mean, if you live in UK, or France, it's the middle of November and you live in 1432, you can't work past 5 pm. Because it's night. And you don't have electricity. Sure you have light and fire, but that's not the same as a modern lamp. You don't have an electric sewing machine, so you don't sew at the same speed. Everything was a little bit slower.
Curious-how did they figure that out?
@@gwynneio in most of the article I've read on that subject (in France) data from anthropological studies on modern nomadic tribe were checked against data from studies on the animals bones found in actual archaeological survey.
@@sallys.2707 That's cool! Thanks for replying!
I've been reading about this recently! A lot of people got busy doing small labors, easy stuff you can do with the kids underfoot, indoor, or on the go. So like later on in the neolithic and on everyone knew how to spin wool or ret fibers. All of that time has now been industrialized so now we... just work through it. Imagine the handicrafts and skills people could be doing if we got that time back!
Hi, hello. Industrial / Organizational psychologist here (well.. almost. I'm a PhD candidate currently). My entire field is focused on studying human behavior at work, and around work as a concept, and I have a lot of thoughts on this video. (For reference, I'm in the US, so my perspective and thoughts come from that lens... can't necessarily speak to other countries, but I have a feeling that some of this would still apply).
My IMMEDIATE question when the question was posed was what is meant by work? Because yes, there is absolutely a difference between a job, vs a career, and whether someone identifies as having a "job" vs. having a "career" can influence the strain people feel at work. People who identify as having a "career" tend to find more meaning in their work, and the extent to which people find their work meaningful has a well-documented relationship to how satisfied people are at work, how motivated they are to work, and their performance overall (what performance "is", and how it's compensated is a completely different and messy discussion altogether).
But the main thing that I wanted to just mention has to do with perceptions of organizational justice, which is overall about perceptions of fairness at work. There are 3 main types that y'all touched on - distributive justice (perceived fairness of the allocation of compensation... am I paid enough for the work that I do?), procedural justice (perceived fairness of the way in which compensation is decided... is the process that is used to determine how I'm paid fair?), and interactional justice (am I treated fairly and with respect?). Org justice can apply to other things like performance ratings or bonuses, but for simplicity I'm just going to speak about it in terms of compensation. As it pertains to the great recession... I think distributive and procedural justice are by far the biggest issues that employers have here. People don't feel like they're paid adequately for the work that they put in, and the process used to determine those wages is unfair (e.g., perhaps because those wages aren't enough to live in the area where that job is, for example), so it's a poor value proposition. As far as what to *do* about this.... I mean, I feel like the answer is obvious but the neoliberal hellscape that characterizes certainly the US, but likely other countries as well, is unlikely to let that change. This is where you have a discussion about the labor market and economics, but that's beyond my scope of competence.
The other thing is that yes, there is 100% research to suggest that humans respond better to positive incentives rather than punishment. When you incentivize employees with things like recognition, monetary rewards, or even something as simple as positive feedback, they will be more satisfied with their work (and their supervisor), and will feel more motivation to put forth effort into their work. When we feel good, we work better. When you punish employees by writing them up, or disciplining them, or whatever else it is that is punishing them, that doesn't make employees *less* likely to do the thing that got them punished in the first place. It makes them more likely to get better at hiding those behaviors - a better thing to do would be to get to the bottom of *why* people are needing to be punished and addressing the core issue. Are they stealing office supplies because they feel like they're not compensated well enough? Are they mistreating other workers because they're overloaded in their own role? Etc, etc.
Last thing is that the concept that was discussed regarding feeling stressed out by riding the tube, etc, when they're not paid fairly, that's a concept called "scarcity mindset", and it's all about how when people are scarce on either time or monetary resources, it poses additional stressors on them that make it much more difficult to go about life. This concept is super new to my field specifically (it's discussed more in behavioral economics), but my colleague is writing her doctoral dissertation on it.
Please do a podcast together. To pick both your brilliant and honest brains on any topic would be a privilege! Greetings from Madrid! 💖
Fantastic video and I'm also the same as Ariel - at 18 I was more like "why must I do these things" but at 25 I'm now like "honestly, if I didn't have things I Had To Do every day my mental health would be in the sewer"; it's fascinating to see how your perspective shifts with age and experience.
But also something to add to your conversation: I agree with Ariel that society without people doing things would... completely break down. Because on a very basic level, the argument of 'I just want to live and experience stories and art' (which I do! that's important to me!) completely falls apart when you realise THAT REQUIRES PEOPLE TO BE MAKING THOSE THINGS AND THEREFORE DOING THINGS. When you read a book, or watch a film or TV show, that didn't just magically appear. So many people were involved on so many different levels (as you know Leena, from working in publishing!) doing shit to get that out into the world. A society where people Do Not Do Shit is not only a society which would fall apart, but it quite literally could not exist properly, and would be entirely empty of all of the things we enjoy consuming in our down time; because those things require people working on them to be produced.
I need more Ariel and Leena content. Two queens!
I love that you raised the point about women fighting for the right to work. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that on my darkest working days I do think unfavourably of those women just a tiny bit for giving me the privilege of being able to have my 9-5, but my usual self is very grateful for the opportunities that my right to work affords me that those women didn’t have.
That point Ariel was getting at, asking people what they are passionate about rather than what they do for work, is something I’ve been mindfully doing for years, and it’s much more interesting!
Really enjoyed this - I'd be super interested in hearing both of your opinions on utopia since it was brought up 😄
Yes 👏🏻 that would be a good time.
For anyone interested in exploring this topic in more detail, I would highly recommend the book What We Really Do All Day: Insights from the Centre for Time Use Research. It is a sociological study which compares how people spend their time from 2005 vs 1971. One of the topics explored in it is the difference between paid work and unpaid work (which includes domestic responsibilities, as well as unpaid care). It breaks down gender differences, but also talks about the effect of how much work we do has on our downtime.
Something that was recently brought to my attention is that most jobs are structured for men. As people with uteruses, our bodies are very cyclical and don't really fit well into the 8 hour 5 day work schedule. I always thought about how unfair it felt that I was expected to go to work, and perform as much as my male colleagues while in intense pain and nausea from menstrual cramps. And this happens a couple days every month! I always wished that employers offered more flexibility in work hours so that I can work when my body is at it's best and rest when it's not.
Leena: Can someone who is paid 100 times more than someone else actually do 100 times the work?
Ariel: No. They probably have 100 people working for them...
Me: Is capitalism an MLM scheme?!?
DIGNITY!!!! I've been trying to work out why my job has been bothering me so much lately and THAT"S EXACLTY IT THANK YOU
I was just telling my partner about how Ariel mentioned you in one of her recent videos! I love the idea of my internet friends being real life friends. 💜 Keep making fabulous and thoughtful art, ya'll. It's so refreshing to watch your videos.
Also loved what was said about the “work” problem as being unsolvable but still needs attention and fixing. Don’t know why it was so mind blowing to realize that problems don’t always have a solution but need work. (Pun not intended. 😂) As a recovering perfectionist, having that reminder really struck a chord with me. Really loved the video! ❤️ Love from Texas.
Quit my job 2 days ago... this couldn't have come at a better time. More labour content please while I figure out what the hell I'm doing with my life 😭
Coming ;)
As someone who resigned during the pandemic I truly feel this. And there have been a lot of young people joining the "great resignation".
I think the idea of joyment and happiness in exchange for money is also important. Sometimes the reason for happiness at work can be colleagues, the task, or the people you interact with. And often having one of those that really doesn't work, potentially actively shits on your parade means you should leave that job, if you can. Because it goes beyond grinding you down in a work situation to grinding you dont generally
So fun and interesting listening to you both discuss the ins and outs of this unsolvable issue. My instant reaction was to think of that Melville story Bartley , the Scrivner where the worker continuously says to his boss “I’d prefer not to.” And what that challenge does to a system that relies on compliance.
I know that the unemployment issue in Canada described here anecdotally is true. I think there’s more to it, so I’ll throw in my two cents. You see a tonne of retirees not going back to jobs post-vaccine, and I suspect in areas with older populations you’d see significantly worse labour shortages. Also, lots of folks had pandemic babies, so some younger workforce may also be choosing to stay home for parental-leave. Third, there’s likely some folks that decided ‘hey instead of working two plus jobs I’m going to take this labour shortage opportunity to negotiate a better wage with one employer’. So yes, I really hope people are sticking up for themselves in job negotiations, but I also believe the issue probably won’t entirely be solved by raising wages. Many of these jobs don’t even have applicants that could turn down a wage in the first place.
I really can't wrap my head around why immigration is not a viable answer to the "labor shortage" problem
Plus, some working people died. 🥴
As someone that has always wanted to do different creative things the question “how do I do this so it’s my job” has been a thing. It’s nice to have these conversations with creatives and be reminded it doesn’t always have to monetised!
Loved the video, ironically watching it while working from home checking boxes in excel. Ariel seems like such a smart woman, both of you have a great dynamic and I can't wait do check out her channel!
Love this video, it's a question I ask myself every day. It eats me up a bit because I chose to be an unpaid carer for my family. You lose dignity, you lose wages, you lose the ability to define yourself as your career. But the gains are so important it feels unfair to be put in such a low position in society. I think it stems from women traditionally taking on caring roles. Universal basic income would fix this, I feel.
My two favorite TH-camrs together omg
I think it's a myth that we all have to work. Think about all the people you know, and now think about how many of them do jobs that are critical to the replication of society - not many for those of us in the global North right? A lot of people have what anthropologist David Graeber terms "bullshit jobs" (he has a fantastic book on the subject) that are both unfulfilling and unproductive. We've progressed to the stage now that most people don't have to work in critical roles, and what we could do is have everyone work significantly less, sharing the essential roles at maybe a day or two a week and work towards using automation to eliminate jobs no one wants to do. The future will be automated whether we like it or not - the question is who owns the technology. If we all hold it in common ownership we're heading for an amazing future, if it continues to be in private ownership it will be a dystopia where human labour isn't valued.
Truer words have never been spoken. We have technologically advanced so much, yet an average persons daily life in society hasn’t been less stressful.
I also think we need to rethink how we value work and what is considered as work as automation increases and AI develops
I loved this so much, if you two had a podcast, I would listen religiously!
the duo i have been waiting for!!!!
Would recommend Four Thousand Weeks, it's a surprisingly comforting book- basically deals with how us having limited time is actually liberating if we approach it the right way
i don't know a whole lot about this concept but this discussion is just making me think of the marxist analysis of 'alienation from labour' - ie. not getting to see or gain the value from your labour directly, which makes ppl feel alienated from their work. and also on the point of constantly and slowly trying to make work better, unions! that's why unions are so important and need more support/resources! join a union, see what campaigns are happening in ur industry, become an activist within unions to push them into the campaigning u think is needed, all that good organising stuff :)
I completely agree with you. In my opinion we must work, simply to stay healty, physically and mentally. Working is more than gaining money, humans want to belong somewhere. These social groups are essential, but not for everybody in the same way. The extension „Why must we work in this way“ is a question, I really want to be discussed by our politicians. Juliet Rhys-Williams had the idea of a negative income tax and even Milton Friedman, the guy who was hating welfare, made his own version of it in the 60s. Safety nets are great, but we don‘t need a net, we need a carpet to stand on. Nobody should fall through a net. In Germany there is a very good net, but sometimes your personal situation is so unique, that there is no way other than working in a shitty job you are not healty enough to do just to pay for food and shelter. A basic income would change how employers and employees interact on the jobmarket. Negotiation on eye level would be possible, career changes would be easier, starting your own business… caring for people… enjoying art in every way… Humans could be more human again, to themselfs, to each other. I genuinely believe, cases of anxiety, depression etc. would drop drastically in the long run, because life wouldn‘t be full of pressure. Yes, we must work, and the jobs nobody wants to do have to be done. But there will be people doing them if you pay them properly. And a lot of these jobs will be automatized anyway. But this time I don‘t think that there will be new jobs. We should change the society now to prevent a desaster (I recommend the book Qualityland). This means establishing negative income tax (or any other form of basic income), no private infrastructure (hospitals, streets, water,…), appreciation for care givers, no full time jobs as a must and for God‘s sake tax the rich properly. I think this would be a good starting point. Our society will never be perfect, but that‘s okay. We as individuals have to work, but we as a society can make the circumstances better.
Organized labor could, I think, fix a lot of things that are broken with the way people are treated at work. Even more important than organized labor, I think we really need to focus on shifting the conversation to unpaid work being equally (if not often MORE) valuable compared to a lot of work that is currently paid. The U.S. economy (the example that I know best as a citizen) is propped up in a massive way by a workforce of 100% unpaid caregivers in the form of stay at home parents and people caring for ill and/or disabled family and friends. Additionally, people who are unable to do paid work for a variety of reasons, including people with disabilities, are treated as socially less useful or even a burden to society. These are some major issues that wouldn’t even be touched by just moving money into more hands, because they are essentially beliefs about productivity that I think are more related to fear and scarcity than just tangible resources. Rich people and poor people in our society often believe that care work should be unpaid and that relying on social assistance is shameful or something to get over, so the amount of money you have doesn’t necessarily correlate with a belief in a more equitable society.
it's interesting that the concept of being a concert pianist came up because it is an incredibly competitive and gruelling industry, in most cases horribly underpaid and there is a complete lack of job security. I know it was just a passing comment but I just wanted to add this to the conversation. :) PS would love a podcast with Leena and Ariel!
The problems in the world are problems for a reasons. Very important to understand
I think the real question should be, why is paid work valued over all other work?
For me the answer is, because it's the type of work most men do.
People have this idea that if you're not employed and being paid for a job then you just do nothing all day, you're not fulfilling your potential. Completely forgetting all the work done by home keepers, stay at home parents, volunteers and unpaid carers. This type of work is mostly done by women and disabled people and is severely undervalued.
Yes yes yes
As someone who is currently on week 6 of mandatory ot for what should be a laid back office job, I felt this.
Also, I'm so glad Ariel mentioned that video of how many books we're capable of reading in a lifetime because it's been living rent free in my brain for years
OK, I'm only a couple minutes in, BUT I think both of you would really enjoy The Refusal of Work by David Frayne! One of my favourite books that I read this year.
Oh, and Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bergman!
With this video and the Books Unbound episode with Leena, I am really loving these collabs! I'm so glad that you got to spend some time together while Ariel was in the UK. Love to you both. ❤️
I think this is where universal basic income could really play a role. As people we don’t want to do nothing, so even if we were paid enough to live we would still choose to do something, to find something meaningful to work on.
Watching this video felt like hanging out with friends or reading that book that finally makes you feel like you're not alone. Thank you! 💜
You guys unlocked the memories of Ariel’s content back when she was in school and I absolutely loved commiserating with her while I was also suffering through higher education 📚😠
And we will never solve the problem of work because work will constantly be changing.
Loved this
(My main point is that when we talk about why we have to work? we do not mean we do not mean that we want do nothing all our life, but more about restrictions put on our activities dictated by our need in money, envoirement, etc. )
I think there are few more reasons why we are dreaming about not working:
1) we often are limited and controled in terms of when can we stop take a breake etc (it's expanding on the point about working past capasities)
2) we kinda are limited regarding what we do for work. In theory you can find ways to earn money by doing anythin, but in reality we are limited by our circumstances, time, economy, demand, finances etc.
3) most (all) jobs include parts we do not like doing (maybe its taxes, calling people, dealing with exels etc) and in reality its not little amount and they seems to be anavoidable.
4) when we talk about do not wanting to wwork we usually mean labour for money - we still have projects outside of our work, we have errands etc - and it's work as well - there are people paid to do that - but we have to do it on top of jobs/
5) do not know hos to formulate it, but e.g. you can be artist - but you can't just paint beautiful pictures? you have to think about audience, advertidement, selling staf, (even if you outsurce most of it you still have to think about people who will pay for it)
Just popping in to say hello to Ariel from a fellow Maritimer ! Wasnt expecting that when I clicked on this video
Leena you're such a good listener! This was so lovely to watch
Personally work starts feeling like a job when the balance of money and fulfilment are off. I left a really well paying job where I walked out almost every day feeling like there was no point in me being there to do something that makes me feel productive and purposeful but means I struggle a bit financially. Everyone is so different but I feel like people should either be able to work in a capacity that brings them joy or be making enough to spend a decent amount of time doing things that make them happy. And everyone should be able to be able to afford to live; because if a child was able to survive a broken leg when we as a species that were still fighting bears on the daily, surely by now kids shouldn’t be dying cos their parents can’t pay to take them to a hospital for the same reason.
I've seen that video that they referenced about if you read x many books a year then you have y many books left in your lifetime and I find it really interesting that Ariel found it anxiety-inducing because I found it motivating. The guy in the video only read one book a year on average and his friend said 'ok if you live to be eighty you only have fifty books left' (or something like that). But he followed it up by timing his reading speed and calculating how many books he would read in his life if he read half an hour every day. It was over 1,000. The thesis of that video is that the difference between a 50 book lifetime and a 1,000 book lifetime is 30 minutes a day.
I think however, it is better to integrate a level of passion into work, no matter how little. It makes up far too many hours of life for it to be something I hate or have no feelings for. And its not just time it takes up too , physically and mentally it drains you. So even if the work conditions like pay, are relatively great and nothing is particularly wrong with it, just the fact that from the moment I open my eyes till the sun sets I am doing something I dislike albeit not vehemently, is still far too long. And the hobbies, which I wish l could be doing for most of the day, end up sort being done in a half baked way, when I am not in my best condition. Sort of frustrated at the moment where I feel stuck because this job I have is supposed to be something fantastic due to its work conditions but I still feel like I don't want the next day to come.
two of my favourites together
I saw this quote today (on a sticker stuck to a rubbish bin lol) that said: capitalism is the privatisation of profit and the socialization of cost.
I absolutely LOVED every second of this conversation!! both of you are just one of those youtubers that I never miss a video from so
I loved this collab
OMG….my two favourite TH-camrs are together! My life is complete xx
Having worked in the service industry and now currently working a factory job.... I don't blame people for not wanting to go back to working in the service industry.
I don't love the job I'm in now, but goddamn I wanted to die every single day working in food service. I'm not exaggerating. Legit, non stop suicidal ideation for the majority of the waking hours of the day. And it's not as if my experience was outside of the norm, I genuinely belive that most people in those jobs are suffering because of them
I CAN’T WAIT FOR THIS!!!!! And a question I desperately want answering!!!
This is such a great video. It gives me a lot to think about. Sometimes I feel like maybe I'm not passionate enough about my job, but I try to remind myself that it's okay if I go through waves of passionateness for it, because my job is not my all. I have other hobbies like TH-cam and violin that I get you out of ❤
Leena's point that someone cannot do a 100x more work than someone else is so important and it comes back to value. People that think others have the right to earn more believe in meritocracy, in which some people (or in this case occupations) have more merit than others but there are so many flaws with this. 1. Who determines worth ? Lawyers, CEO, bankers, etc. Make a ton of money but in reality it is the lowest (or uncompensated) labour done mainly by women and BIPOC people that is the most important. Reproductive labour's, farming, care workers, life doesn't work without them and yet they make virtually nothing. Also, companies cannot operate without 1. A healthy society, 2. A labour's force, 3. Infrastructure. The wealth then that CEO's amass is thus contingent on millions of other people so again, it is a communal effort and they are the only ones reaping the rewards. The climate also has to come into the conversation because the richest companies are also the biggest climate producers. They are being paid the destroy the climate. So again, a reorientation of the labour's force on the concept of worth and value has to happen and it can't while neoliberal individualism reigns.
this is the youtube crossover I never knew I needed but now don't know how to life without
My two favourite ladies!!!🥰🥰
Growing up homeschooled in a farming community means I think I have a very different perspective on work than the average person. I'm also very grateful for that, because in the past three years I graduated with a dream job, got fired in a pandemic, was on unemployment, and have worked doing everything from the nastiest farming jobs to working in a high-end spa. I'm only 19.
Letting go of elitism around different jobs is really liberating. I worked in a bridal shop and was treated like shit and paid minimum wage. I worked in a poultry processing plant and was paid well and treated 100x better. Maybe its easier for me because I've never been a career oriented person, I don't know. But I think most of the issues we have around work stems from how we were taught to view it growing up.
I found this video so uplifting and insightful; as someone who always struggles with the mindest that if something can't be made perfect (possibly quickly) then it's better to give up, it helped me realise that kind of attitude doesn't make sense when facing such complex problems like the need for work in our society, so thank you for putting it into words and highlighting the fact that just because you can't immediately fix something it doesn't mean it can't be incrementally made better or that you should give up on trying to make it better 😌
Loved this. Leena, I really enjoy watching you have these kinds of conversations with your friends because I like having these kinds of conversations with my friends, but of course every conversation is unique to the moment and the people having it, so it's like getting different versions of a conversation I might have, which is so interesting!! I love to see where different people's trains of thought take them and where other people land momentarily when discussed these kind of endless topics! Thanks for sharing!
I highly recommend ‘Bullshit Jobs’ by the late, great David Graeber. So much of the “work” we do under capitalism is purposeless nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, while we need money to buy access to necessities, I’m glad ppl have the means to support themselves. But the thesis asks us to take a good, hard look at some of our assumptions about work. What labor do we need to perform to sustain ourselves and provide a good standard of living for everyone?
Such an interesting video. I'm doing an industrial and organisational psychology course and there are studies that show when comparing groups that do the same work for an amount of money or for free, and those doing it for free show higher reported satisfaction for the same work, because it feels like a job. A lot of people who make a hobby or interest their job find they start to lose interest in doing it outside of when they are being paid to participate in that interest because it doesn't feel worth it, so I think the reason people ask the question "why do we have jobs" is because it feels forced or like they must do something for money to survive, even if having a job in something they were originally very enthusiastic about. Most people find other things, outside of their job to be enthusiastic about and create new hobbies, which might be part of the solution to preventing feeling apathetic in a job, alongside getting a new job or doing aspects of the job you enjoy outside of the job, for example an accountant might do calculations outside of their job.
My friends. I am currently reading Women's Work: the first 20,000 years. (History of textiles, way more interesting than it sounds.) And I feel like now that our survival is more automated, this question is more and more valid. We used to need to work to clothe ourselves and feed ourselves and literally not die. But now we're more to a point where we must work for completely different reasons which nonetheless have the same outcome. If I do not work... I do not eat. I would much rather be doing something productive and creative than working a grunt job that is of little consequence.
Constantly teaching myself I dont have to monetise my hobbies! Loved this video ♡♡
I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS OMG TWO OF MY FAV CREATORS
what an intriguing conversation. i reached a point this year where i realized how much of my identity was tied up in what i do for work and while since i'm supporting movements working towards change that's not a bad thing, i also realized i needed to prioritize myself and what brings me joy, so ofc in this capitalist society we need the monies to be able to enjoy our passions sometimes like you mentioned, what a web.
🎆pay People more🎆 YES
I think the thing that gets me - entering the full time work force after 12 years homeschooling my kids - is that in the US there is no paid leave. For anything. I’m currently quarantining because I caught breakthrough COVID *at my job* and cannot work for ten days. COVID benefits have expired and my job isn’t required to pay me while I’m sick.
There is no dignity in that. My rate of pay is just enough to keep my mortgage and bills paid but I’m staring at this half pay check I’m going to get like - how can this be the 21st century? How can I make it as a single mom if I can’t even get sick without wrecking my entire financial security? How are we not taking better care of our people?
Anyway - I know that my position isn’t permanent but that isn’t the case for so many people in the states. And it’s really no wonder nobody wants to work jobs like mine. It’s stressful out here with no safety net.
this is an excellent point, and i'm glad someone made it.
I now know for certain that I need a podcast. There is no way around
This whole video reminds me of the poems 'Toads' and 'Toads Revisited' by Philip Larkin - two of my favourite poems that I think about all the time!
my two favorite youtubers together !
Sometimes ur vids come along at literally the perfect time and answer exactly what I'm struggling w, it's mad
A thought regarding high unemployment and "more" jobs- perhaps there is also an increase in people who previously worked 2 or more jobs now being able to find 1 job that fills their financial needs. Indicating that much of our labor structures were dependent on a segment of workers who worked more than 40 hours a week without overtime or similar compensation.
I loved this discussion!
Its so hard to find people who want to work again here in Sydney (Aus) too. I've heard of up market restaurants advertising they need a dish hand and will pay $90 (AUD) an hour for the night, and still no bites!
But, like also, I personally don't want to be forced to work at a job I hate just to pay the bills. For me, even now that I am paid more I still feel drained at the end of the day because I have no energy to do the things I am passionate about. I feel the question really asks, why are we being forced to work at jobs we don't like when we would much rather be doing something we love that may or may not be just as productive and valuable to society? I know you get into this... I'm just venting
Thank you for the video! Love the energy and the points you made!
Such an interesting discussion! Love these kinds of videos that make me think about things I might not have thought of before!
also, LOVE the t-shirt Leena!!
Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) it was super useful for so many.
I think the problem with work nowadays is that it no longer seems to benefit our societies/communities. Ideally, jobs would be like roles in the community - doctors, community gardeners, etc.
I really love this topic and think about it constantly because I work at a certain famous coffee chain and I don't bother to do my 40 hours a week because even if I did I would not have a livable wage I would just barely be able to pay rent.
So when I go down the streets and see the now hiring signs, I'll look into them and they all would pay me the same or less of what I am getting payed now so I just stay there.
Collab of dreams
Ahh I missed the premiere for this! Been waiting like 4 years for your next collab together... totally worth the wait.
The US is seeing the same thing as Canada. And the Repub argument is that people would rather "just take gov money" than work and that this is laziness. HOWEVER, unemployment was paying better than a lot of jobs they were working. And who in their right mind would not take more money over working in fast food for 50 hours a week and being paid less? So as Ariel says, the problem is a wage shortage and NOT a labor shortage; if we could actually be bothered to pay a living wage we wouldn't have so many empty jobs right now.
This is a great question to apply to disability!
i absolutely loved this video! the conversation was so interesting and it flowed so well ♥️ please make more videos together 🙏🏻😍
I think a lot of those questions could be answered with Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber - and I enjoyed this conversation !
I think it is important that you brought up technology (in the way we think about it now, like computers and social media, not hammers or technology in the human history sense). A point that I think is interesting is the idea that liberalism during the enlightenment purported the idea that scarcity is inherent to anything and everything. Which the enlightenment obviously brought great advancements, and some would argue that the enlightenment brought concrete realization of human rights which is why there was a shift from everyone just doing what their father did. However, on the flip side, liberalism and the enlightenment brought on the idea that scarcity is inherent and true rest can never be achieved. So, when people make technologies of any kind to solve human problems, it is believed that the technology must continue to solve problems which perpetuates cycles of creating problems in order to produce profit. Interesting that it has been so built into the system that it is hard to change industries or stop and start new businesses that people no longer can fix a societal problem through work and then move on, but then I suppose there would be less incentive to innovate the things already created. It’s all a wash.