<story><title>Alexis Ohanian speaks out against “always-on” work culture</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/always-on-work-culture-creating-broken-people-says-reddit-co-founder-11558464608</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>walrus01</author><text>When I was a teenager, old people told me that my political views would grow more conservative as I got older. If anything, as I&amp;#x27;ve watched growing income inequality and the further concentration of wealth among the one percent, I can better appreciate the point Karl Marx was trying to get across to people.</text></item><item><author>McWobbleston</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s the most efficient way to extract value from us</text></item><item><author>Sharlin</author><text>Conveniently, consuming shiny things and lowest-common-denominator mass media is what the Western society very much encourages us to do. Work, consume, repeat.</text></item><item><author>SolaceQuantum</author><text>I find the effects of overwork to be quite interesting- a lack of space for self makes it impossible to perform actually life enriching behaviors such as retreats, meditations, socialization, and hobbies. This means there&amp;#x27;s simply no room for any other entertainment or enrichment beyond the most shallow&amp;#x2F;fast&amp;#x2F;addictive stuff - social media, twitter wars, the thrill of buying nice things.&lt;p&gt;(EDIT: I should emphasize why it&amp;#x27;s so interesting to me because people often overwork with the justification for life enrichment, but the actual act of overworking reduces space&amp;#x2F;time for life enrichment!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crankylinuxuser</author><text>Indeed. Same here.&lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter how nice a system of fluid economics the Wealth of Nations was on paper. The problem is that people will exploit them. And exploitation of rules leads to exploitation of people.&lt;p&gt;And where are we now? &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;middle-class-americans-increasingly-rely-on-the-safety-net&amp;#x2F;?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&amp;amp;linkId=56511256&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;middle-class-americans-increasi...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In 2014, the middle 60 percent of Americans accounted for 46.8 percent of federal aid offered to people who qualify for such help, Brookings found.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Any one of us can &amp;#x27;fall&amp;#x27;, and not able to be self-sufficient to &amp;#x27;pull up by ones bootstraps&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ve given capitalism a good 300 year run. And we know its pathologies. Communism isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily the best, but it provides a converse theory to start the discussion.</text></comment>
<story><title>Alexis Ohanian speaks out against “always-on” work culture</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/always-on-work-culture-creating-broken-people-says-reddit-co-founder-11558464608</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>walrus01</author><text>When I was a teenager, old people told me that my political views would grow more conservative as I got older. If anything, as I&amp;#x27;ve watched growing income inequality and the further concentration of wealth among the one percent, I can better appreciate the point Karl Marx was trying to get across to people.</text></item><item><author>McWobbleston</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s the most efficient way to extract value from us</text></item><item><author>Sharlin</author><text>Conveniently, consuming shiny things and lowest-common-denominator mass media is what the Western society very much encourages us to do. Work, consume, repeat.</text></item><item><author>SolaceQuantum</author><text>I find the effects of overwork to be quite interesting- a lack of space for self makes it impossible to perform actually life enriching behaviors such as retreats, meditations, socialization, and hobbies. This means there&amp;#x27;s simply no room for any other entertainment or enrichment beyond the most shallow&amp;#x2F;fast&amp;#x2F;addictive stuff - social media, twitter wars, the thrill of buying nice things.&lt;p&gt;(EDIT: I should emphasize why it&amp;#x27;s so interesting to me because people often overwork with the justification for life enrichment, but the actual act of overworking reduces space&amp;#x2F;time for life enrichment!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sjg007</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve heard this too. I think it is that people fear change intrinsically.  Also they want to avoid anything that could kill property values.  Plus there it is just competition in general that people view incorrectly as zero sum.</text></comment>