this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 22 points 5 days ago (5 children)

I think there are more people than there are meaningful jobs. Like, not everyone needs to be a product person.

Let's do universal basic income, make the essentials free, and let people live life. I have a friend that enjoys being around people, and would work at a coffee shop, but that doesn't pay enough for them to pay for food and housing. I've worked with people who are kind of a net negative at their org, but they're there because they need money to live. It's a bad system.

Maybe it made more sense in like 600CE when your little settlement would collapse if everyone didn't farm all day, but that's not today's world.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 10 points 5 days ago

I used to work at wal-mart in their tire center. That was the happiest I've ever been at a job. I was good at it, it wasn't too challenging but oddball things happened often enough to make it interesting, I got to BS with my co-workers all day and spend time outside when it was nice out. The only problem was it didn't pay.

The job I have now pays better than anything else I've found by a lot (still can't afford a house) but I hate pretty much every aspect of it. It's almost entirely playing the middle man on a bunch of different projects between users and vendors doing interpersonal shit that I hate dealing with and yet, am still somehow better at than most of my peers... It's not like it's hard work, it's just emailing and phone calls and meetings all day and most of the difficulty comes with the bean counters and c-levels changing course spontaneously without regard for what we're currently working on.

If myself and people like me didn't have to force ourselves into these positions out of desperation I think a lot of them would disappear, or at least be left to the middle management types that thrive on feeling like they're in charge of things and leave us to do the technical shit that we're made for.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

And how many want to be entrepreneurs but can't because they lose their healthcare. Sometime something entrepreneurs backbone of economy.

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 7 points 5 days ago

I think that if we had good UBI, people will naturally gravitate towards niches they are suited for. People who like the ocean, will be able to wait for a job opening to become available and slot in, rather than forcing themselves into being an indoor grocer. Those who care for children, will be able to take the training and be on a waitlist for local childcare facilities.

Without the race to earn money just to live, people can afford to wait for a place where they belong.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I think there are more people than there are meaningful jobs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

Well documented that there's a ton of make-work and very little value add to quite a bit business bureaucracy.

The most successful businesses are often those that operate as make-work mills and gatekeepers, rather than material value-adding firms.

Whether that means we have a ceiling on meaningful work, or we simply don't have anyone doing critical tasks, is an open question. But given our volume of waste and our profound lack of public services, I'm willing to bet a lot of high value labor is neglected in the race to fabricate opportunities for rent seeking.

[–] Mirshe@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

I can at least speak to one type of value-add, which is wastewater. I worked in a wastewater plant for a year as a lab tech. I even planned to get my operator license so I could stay on as an operator.

While it isn't "neglected", I would have quite literally been making $15/hr as an operator, at a time where I could have gone literally to any minimum wage job and made about that much in my area. That's not taking into account the 84-hr week you're pulling every week - 12 hrs on, 12 hrs off, 7 days (but you're on-call when you're not there). Benefits? Haha. And this was at a major metropolitan plant. I talked to a few smaller plants in the more rural exurbs and they literally were wanting to pay me $8/hr or less, with no benefits either, and they insisted that this was enough to "buy a house in the area".