I find today's work and workplaces to be very unhealthy. I would even call them toxic, a word I generally prefer to avoid in discourse.
I find this to hold true across various strata of economic and social classes, maybe the rich actually have it better, but given the cutthroat competition I see everyday, I highly doubt it. They too live about as much a precarious life as any other, but they most likely have a lot more secure life than others.
Today work is essential for one to survive. And note survive, not thrive. And without it one may most likely descend into endless spirals of poverty and debt.
Has our Society really Progressed?
You may feel I’m speaking as though things were better in the past. And honestly, I’ve come to feel so. In the past the distribution of resources was a far more tedious task, trade wasn't anywhere near as streamlined as it is today. Healthcare was nearly non existent or largely useless beyond a certain degree until around 200 to 300 years ago. And yet people thrived (though often at the expense of various underprivileged communities) to a considerable degree. But even with so much technological advancements and far more effectively functioning societies we're in many ways doing way worse than we used to. The old and the orphaned are left at the mercy of charities. The disabled experience abuse quite often within medical institutions itself. The poor often have to experience further abuse and exploitation from all kinds of people on top of already being vulnerable and abandoned by the government. The transpeople, other queer people, and those belonging to underprivileged classes are ostracised for simply their existence. Essentially the vulnerable often have to deal with all of this besides fending for themselves. Has our society really progressed? All those who used to be exploited continue to be, while those who had things better have it improved.
Weren't nations built for the betterment of everyone in the nation, rather just a select few who tick all the boxes?
The communities that used to be exploited in the past continue to be in novel ways and those who're disadvantaged by various circumstances or disabilities are left to fend for themselves and abandoned by society at large.
Today nearly everyone needs to work regardless of their personal limitations. Be it owing to lack of social acceptance at workplace, limitations in working capacity due to living conditions, limitations arising from being disabled in various senses such as age related, by birth, chronic illness, mental health issues.
So why is it a problem? Or is it really even a problem?
We’ll get to that in a moment. Even amidst all this, does everyone have to do work in our current society for survival? Not really right, cause there really are a few at the top who do hold so much power that their whims could create and destroy jobs and in essence lives and livelihoods.
Why? Cause a significant chunk of the world's wealth lay concentrated in their hands. For instance, the below graph compares a statistic from 2019 where the combined wealth of Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are contrasted against that of the bottom 50 % of the Americans then and the link right below is a visual representation of what Elon Musk's wealth looks like in pixels.
A Visual Representation of Elon Musk’s wealth
And if I am to understand trends correctly Disparity in Wealth Distribution has only gotten worse over the years and it’s only been worsening lately.
But how is it that wealth has remained concentrated in the hands of these few and continues to accumulate there?
And how is this supposed to be possible while most of us have to manage living paycheck to paycheck?
So coming back to the earlier question:
Is having to work so much really a problem?
I feel the answer is a solid Yes!
Cause its precisely the majority’s non stop labor that sustains the exorbitant lifestyles and the stunts that the few at the top pull.
But how did we get here?
Things weren't always like this were they, how was it possible that these few at the top were able to accumulate so much. Capitalism with a side of Neo liberal ideals. Capitalism normalised accumulation of wealth and a unhealthy degree of emphasis on growth. While Neo Liberal ideals encouraged leaving the market unregulated, resulting in those with power consolidating more of it using the power they already possessed.
But even theoretically speaking only so much growth should be possible since all resources we possess are finite. But in a way it could seem as if such infinite growth is possible, cause that could explain the massive disparity in the distribution of wealth. But then again there's the issue of the finiteness of resources and also that of the poor becoming poorer. This isn't the result of some innocuous insane growth rather the result of systematic exploitation of the poor and the underprivileged. So how really were those Ever-Fattening Profit Margins we were used to seeing sustained?
By cutting down on the laborer’s pay!
So what really is the issue with working so much?
To begin with, working like this means one barely has time to spend outside of working and resting(if privileged), or in other words having to rest even if owing to an injury could literally be the difference between life and death, especially for one living from paycheck to paycheck. Which means that we wouldn't have time to spend with our families or communities, essentially resulting in our becoming more and more isolated.
We wouldn't have time to discuss and share each other's experiences meaning that the employer could treat all the employees however they want to and no individual is going to have enough power to question the authority in any meaningful way, essentially meaning they're free to do as they please.
And in time they have.
By lobbying for policies that are unfavourable for the formation of unions.
Lobbying for policies that allow their underpaying labourers.
Paying just enough to keep people in the workforce essentially the bare minimum, while paying themselves the biggest cut of the profit.
Again, why do they do this? …Cause all the decision making power lies in their hands.
Now I would like to take the conversation in a different direction.
We’ve come across so many waves of instances where people were worried about losing their jobs and their livelihoods owing to technology making their jobs obsolete. And with each major breakthrough in technology, many jobs enter oblivion and quite a few new ones are also created simultaneously. But the way I understand things the no. of jobs created are far fewer than those that eventually became obsolete. And the ratio in my understanding with only continue to skew further in time.
But then again this doesn’t add up when held alongside of today’s reality of endless work and barely sufficient pay. The way I see it the fact that Tech has pushed so many jobs into oblivion, alongside the fact that today we do have the Capacity, Technology and Resources to sustain nearly all of the people on the planet multiple times over as I infer from the fact that only about 10% of the world’s wealth really is available to the bottom 50% of the people in terms or wealth distribution. Which though is a speculative approximate figure, is quite representative of how things are at present. I also infer from the same that it's possible in a very realistic sense for us to be able distribute these resources in a much more accessible fashion.
By extension I feel in a very grounded manner that it's possible for each and every one of us to live and thrive comfortably, without so many of us being worked to the bone, as I see happening today.
It makes sense that we as a species has turned to work as a means to give meaning to one's lives especially with the waning hold religion has had in this regard for the past few centuries.
But even so it only makes more sense that we recreate this world from this Pseudo-Meritocracy where few live unnervingly comfortable lives while also being glorified for the same, at the expense of an evergrowing majority that lies in the throes of Poverty and Starvation, into one that’s based on equity and seeks to meet the various needs of all the people involved for we really have progressed to a point where it really is realistically feasible.
Why?
Cause in our current setup one doesn’t have a legitimate choice with regard to choosing their line of work let alone choosing to work at all. Now why is this important? Cause to begin with, under such circumstances one's work environment becomes toxic owing to not being able to leave their job at will, and given they also experience something that makes working harder like for instance : bullying at the workplace, or high travel cost, a physical injury, or an intense emotional event, they wouldn't have the option of taking a break owing to the very circumstances that resulted in their choice to work or not becoming an illusion. Which means now they’ve to manage their work alongside managing the circumstances and their fallout.
Now that was only an aspect to it, there's also the fact that such a culture(as the one today), encourages one to engage in mindless work. One where one doesn’t care or understand who their work really benefits, whom it harms; and even when they do, and may not really want to do it, it does encourage they to continue and comply.
Why is such compliance not okay?
Well, under such circumstances, one of those reasons why people comply is cause its essential to their survival. They are actively incentivised to comply and not question. Aren't these similar to the circumstances of Nazi Germany where so many were brutally killed for the sake of abiding by the puritan, fascist ideals of a few in power. It isn't simply enough to notice what they did was wrong. Its also important that we recognize what kind of systemic incentives were employed. Why? Cause in my understanding atleast a significant majority who engage in behaviour that’s harmful to themselves or those around them, do it in order to survive and thrive in the systems that they find themselves in.
Are these all the reasons for dismantling and rebuilding the current systems or are there more?
Well there actually is another major reason.
Earlier when I was talking about how things came to be how they are I had mentioned about how our obsession with growth is unsustainable and unhealthy. Now these systems that support the said growth are an essential part of our current work culture and there’s a problem with it.
Two actually:
The Earth’s temperature has been soaring quite consistently for about a century now and the past month of June had quite a few all time heat records broken the kinds that haven't been broken in the past 100 years. And if we're to continue using energy as we do today, which sustains the industries today to work the way they do. If we are not to slow down and sort how we use these resources, we may soon be literally burning up the planet before long.
We have been using fossil fuels for decades now and the usage has only been increasing exponentially too at that with each passing day, and if we're to continue using as is we would soon find ourselves forced to switch to alternatives overnight. And that too while dealing with the environmental fallout of having used it for as many years without scaling down. These are resources that literally took millions of years to make and hence this is essentially our exploitation of our planet at its finest.
Now coming back,
Since we do look at work as something that adds meaning to our life, wouldn't it make sense to create systems allow one to not have to work when they don’t want to but instead do it at one’s own pace and timing.
This would allow one to thrive in our world despite being disabled, regardless the nature of disability and thereby becoming more inclusive and hospitable to possibly everyone. Moreover this would also allow people to live with higher standards of Emotional well-being, something that’s only accessible to the higher classes today.
So is any of this really plausible?
Now this would honestly be a very reasonable question, cause eventhough a vast majority of people in the world come from communities that true to what we call them lived as “communities”, which had to be dismantled in order to pave way for the productivity and consumerism oriented world today that would literally commodify anything.
Now even given what I said now one doesn’t have a reason to think it’s plausible. But think about this, even in our current world a vast majority of us provide for atleast one other person when the corporates that literally dominate our livelihoods pay us(atleast the majority) as little as they can afford to pay us.
Now imagine the same if we do it while living in community with one another and sharing our resources.
Regardless of what you may think I really do think it’s possible.
And coming back to our original topic - work
Wouldn’t working under such a system be more liberating?
And more importantly, wouldn’t working under such a system be more meaningful?
I guess I’ll leave those to you for answering.