• robinnn [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    64·
    1 month ago

    To him, therefore, every luxury of the worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the most abstract need – be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a manifestation of activity – seems to him a luxury. Political economy, this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of renunciation, of want, of saving and it actually reaches the point where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise. This science of marvelous industry is simultaneously the science of asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the ascetic but productive slave. Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part of his wages to the savings-bank, and it has even found ready-made a servile art which embodies this pet idea: it has been presented, bathed in sentimentality, on the stage. Thus political economy – despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance – is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theater, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theater; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice

    — Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

  • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
    57·
    1 month ago

    How do people use his fitness brand without the time afforded by work life balance? Snake eating its own tail

    • sub_ubi@lemmy.mlEnglish
      37·
      1 month ago

      I recall reading that c-suite types think of exercise as part of their work day.

      • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        42·
        1 month ago

        Every so often one of them will post a detailed breakdown of their “work day” and it’s usually 90% stuff like that. Hell, if the average worker had the schedule of a c-suite no one would complain about work-life balance. But liver failures might increase drastically.

      • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        1 month ago

        God I wish. If I could count it in my work day like they do then I’d be benching 315

  • batsforpeace [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    31·
    1 month ago

    this writer has some other fun headlines:

    The tidal wave of AI-augmented work is coming sooner than you think, consultancy CEO says: ‘Not even in the next five years, in the next year or two’

    Gen Zers could swipe millennials’ jobs if they have AI skills, LinkedIn and Microsoft data shows

    Google just dropped millions of dollars to teach more people how to use AI—and an exec says it could ‘create a reinvigoration of the American middle class’

    Want a four-day workweek? Head to Singapore

    • peeonyou [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      19·
      1 month ago

      a guy I worked with at a startup a few years back just became a target of discussion on Blind because he shaved the company’s logo on his head and posted it on linked in

      he was the biggest kool aid drinker i’d ever met - bought everything on the “company store” there was… socks, shirts, hoodies, hat, magnets, etc

      but… shaving the logo into your hair… 3 years into the job? what. the. fuck?

      the number of people laughing that this isn’t going to prevent him from being laid off is hilariously high

  • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    24·
    1 month ago

    I kind of get giving up work-life balance if you’re like working in tech and they give equity or working in finance and there’s massive bonuses or you’re early in an academic career and want tenure. Why the fuck would anyone want to spend 60 hours a week giving out towels? What’s the point of being fully committed to that?