People hate their jobs, but they get paid for it. Without the time or concentration available to develop a real hobby, or to enrich themselves with some kind of art and culture, or to connect and nurture real relationships, the questions of 'why do I work' and 'is this work worth it' are inevitable.

Retail therapy is the culmination of this. Why do I work if I am just scraping by with no way to develop myself? To make money. What good is money? To buy something. I should buy something I want or else none of this is worth it. Boom. Inevitable.

Thoughts?

  • Necco [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Two sides of the same coin. In order to optimize profit, leisure time must be commodified to ensure if the worker is not producing, they are driving the engine of demand for products. The more miserable, isolated and apathetic your work makes you, the more readily you will reach for the cheap dopamine hit of consumption.

    CW: Buisness insider quote:

    But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.

    We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.

    Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. We spend to cheer ourselves up, to reward ourselves, to celebrate, to fix problems, to elevate our status, and to alleviate boredom.

    Can you imagine what would happen if all of America stopped buying so much unnecessary fluff that doesn’t add a lot of lasting value to our lives?

    The economy would collapse and never recover.

    • Necco [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      All of America’s well-publicized problems, including obesity, depression, pollution, and corruption are what it costs to create and sustain a trillion-dollar economy. For the economy to be "healthy," America has to remain unhealthy. Healthy, happy people don’t feel like they need much they don’t already have, and that means they don’t buy a lot of junk, don’t need to be entertained as much, and they don’t end up watching a lot of commercials.

      The culture of the eight-hour workday is big business’s most powerful tool for keeping people in this same dissatisfied state where the answer to every problem is to buy something.

    • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy... It keeps them unambitious outside of work.

      Mindlessly shopping is easy and quick, fully enjoying the pursuits you enjoy is often harder and more time consuming. Which can you get up for after a long day of work?

      • Necco [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Exactly. I think its no coincidence capital has steered culture into this feedback loop, intentionally or not. It makes the line go up .