While I agree that the discussion could better be furthered by tabooing slavery, I think there is a much stronger analogy here than there is between, say, slavery and paying taxes.
For example, in theory, taxes constitute a high level social agreement to pursue certain goals which benefit all people, executed by an entity that fairly represents the collective interest. (obviously in practice this is a bit different.) In a perfect world, I envision myself willingly paying taxes to a law-enforcing singleton. This seems decidedly unlike “slavery.”
However most people’s day to day jobs are:
Not chosen by them
Required for their economic well-being
Take up the vast majority of their time
Have no autonomy in the work
Basically all of the wealth they create is transferred to their employer
Slavery in the historic sense essentially had these characteristics, although in the sense of slavery in the historic USA it was often coupled with things like physical abuse and an intense loss of legal standing; and while desk jobs are harmful to one’s health and the rich certainly have a different legal standing than the working poor I don’t think that this makes for a good comparison.
Since when do people not choose their jobs or spend the vast majority of their time at work? Even the classic “nine-to-five grind” uses only a third of the day (discounting travel time), and none of the day on weekends.
Rather than saying something from memory, I am going to go through my facebook friends list and tally all of the people that I know that are at jobs simply because they were the only job the person could find. I will also tally people who, due to overtime, strange shifts or stress from work, spend most of their waking time at work, preparing for work, or recovering from work. I will exclude persons that I do now know well enough to know all of this information about, and persons that I know to be on gap years or otherwise temporarily-unemployed-by-choice.
Of 75 persons whose employment status I was familiar with and was not temporary, 17 have jobs that they are in because it is the only job they can get. Five have jobs that, due to odd scheduling or stress, take up the majority of their waking hours. A further 49 I met in college, probably over 40 of these I met in graduate school. Because only about a third of developed world citizens have a college degree and less than 10% of US citizens have advanced degrees (I pulled these figures off wikipedia without looking into them too heavily).
So if I normalize my experience for demographics:
~40 graduate degrees, 2 people with jobs without a choice
~9 more I met at college; 4 people have jobs where they had no choice, 1 has a job which takes the majority of his waking time
25 which I did not meet in college (some do have degrees), among whom 11 have jobs which they did not choose and 4 have jobs which use the majority of their waking time.
-> general population: ~65% no college, 44% of these do not choose their jobs, and 16% take up the majority of their time (not with working hours but because of scheduling, etc.)
25% college population: 44% did not choose their jobs, 11% have their time hogged
10% graduate population: 5% did not choose jobs
This would leave me with 40% of the general population being in a job because it was the only job available to them, as well as ~13% of the population having a job that controls the majority of their time.
I will note that as someone with an opinion, my figures are probably slightly biased. Biases may come from things like remembering where people work only if they have complained about it, or forgetting recent changes in employment status. I would still expect that I have undervalued college degrees after adjusting for them, but I could be wrong.
These figures are definitely different from what I expected; I expected more than 40% to be in jobs with no real choice and I guess I’m pleasantly surprised that so many people are choosing what they do. 40% is still quite significant though.
I also grant that my statement about most people having jobs that take up the vast majority of their time was unfounded, though I believe it to be supported by such things as the introduction to “Living on 24 Hours a Day” and others’ discussions of working lives in this thread.
168 hours a week, minus 56 hours sleeping, leaves us with 112 waking hours. If we spend 11.2 hours per workday dealing with work, lunch, and commutes (say, an hour commute each way, an hour lunch, and an 8 hour shift) then it’s actually entirely possible for work to have managed to eat half our waking hours.
Even for a regular 30 minute commute and 30 minute lunch, you’re still looking at 9.5 hours of work time vs 6.5 hours of personal time during your waking hours.
Work really does consume a huge fraction of our time and energy.
Good points here—I hadn’t considered commute, as I am blessed with a few solid jobs that let me work from home. This post definitely made me think about the whole conventional work schedule and how it can affect people’s lives.
While I agree that the discussion could better be furthered by tabooing slavery, I think there is a much stronger analogy here than there is between, say, slavery and paying taxes.
For example, in theory, taxes constitute a high level social agreement to pursue certain goals which benefit all people, executed by an entity that fairly represents the collective interest. (obviously in practice this is a bit different.) In a perfect world, I envision myself willingly paying taxes to a law-enforcing singleton. This seems decidedly unlike “slavery.”
However most people’s day to day jobs are:
Not chosen by them
Required for their economic well-being
Take up the vast majority of their time
Have no autonomy in the work
Basically all of the wealth they create is transferred to their employer
Slavery in the historic sense essentially had these characteristics, although in the sense of slavery in the historic USA it was often coupled with things like physical abuse and an intense loss of legal standing; and while desk jobs are harmful to one’s health and the rich certainly have a different legal standing than the working poor I don’t think that this makes for a good comparison.
Since when do people not choose their jobs or spend the vast majority of their time at work? Even the classic “nine-to-five grind” uses only a third of the day (discounting travel time), and none of the day on weekends.
Rather than saying something from memory, I am going to go through my facebook friends list and tally all of the people that I know that are at jobs simply because they were the only job the person could find. I will also tally people who, due to overtime, strange shifts or stress from work, spend most of their waking time at work, preparing for work, or recovering from work. I will exclude persons that I do now know well enough to know all of this information about, and persons that I know to be on gap years or otherwise temporarily-unemployed-by-choice.
Of 75 persons whose employment status I was familiar with and was not temporary, 17 have jobs that they are in because it is the only job they can get. Five have jobs that, due to odd scheduling or stress, take up the majority of their waking hours. A further 49 I met in college, probably over 40 of these I met in graduate school. Because only about a third of developed world citizens have a college degree and less than 10% of US citizens have advanced degrees (I pulled these figures off wikipedia without looking into them too heavily).
So if I normalize my experience for demographics: ~40 graduate degrees, 2 people with jobs without a choice ~9 more I met at college; 4 people have jobs where they had no choice, 1 has a job which takes the majority of his waking time 25 which I did not meet in college (some do have degrees), among whom 11 have jobs which they did not choose and 4 have jobs which use the majority of their waking time.
-> general population: ~65% no college, 44% of these do not choose their jobs, and 16% take up the majority of their time (not with working hours but because of scheduling, etc.) 25% college population: 44% did not choose their jobs, 11% have their time hogged 10% graduate population: 5% did not choose jobs
This would leave me with 40% of the general population being in a job because it was the only job available to them, as well as ~13% of the population having a job that controls the majority of their time.
I will note that as someone with an opinion, my figures are probably slightly biased. Biases may come from things like remembering where people work only if they have complained about it, or forgetting recent changes in employment status. I would still expect that I have undervalued college degrees after adjusting for them, but I could be wrong.
These figures are definitely different from what I expected; I expected more than 40% to be in jobs with no real choice and I guess I’m pleasantly surprised that so many people are choosing what they do. 40% is still quite significant though.
I also grant that my statement about most people having jobs that take up the vast majority of their time was unfounded, though I believe it to be supported by such things as the introduction to “Living on 24 Hours a Day” and others’ discussions of working lives in this thread.
168 hours a week, minus 56 hours sleeping, leaves us with 112 waking hours. If we spend 11.2 hours per workday dealing with work, lunch, and commutes (say, an hour commute each way, an hour lunch, and an 8 hour shift) then it’s actually entirely possible for work to have managed to eat half our waking hours.
Even for a regular 30 minute commute and 30 minute lunch, you’re still looking at 9.5 hours of work time vs 6.5 hours of personal time during your waking hours.
Work really does consume a huge fraction of our time and energy.
Good points here—I hadn’t considered commute, as I am blessed with a few solid jobs that let me work from home. This post definitely made me think about the whole conventional work schedule and how it can affect people’s lives.