After reading this article on the New York Times about The Brutal Life of Sanitation Workers and watching Top 10 Most Disgusting Jobs, it got me thinking about why workers who have such gross jobs get such little respect. Whether in their pay, the amount of social recognition and maybe even pride they take in…
I. I’ve commented on Elizabeth S. Anderson’s views before with a mix of praise and criticism. This time around I’m more on her side than against it, but that’s because the hosts of Free Thoughts (a libertarian podcast) have some fairly banal positions when it comes to issues current working conditions. In that vein, some…
The New York Times has an article from last year on The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews but I figured, why stop there? The uselessness of interviews isn’t a bug, it’s a feature within an economy that generally speaking makes a much bigger deal out of small and irrelevant things. The problems with job interviews that this…
A book that recognizes that at its heart work is a kind of violence (spiritual, emotional, physical or otherwise) is a book destined to highlight that reality. It’s a book that is almost guaranteed to show the harsher aspects of an already harsh topic for many people. Working is a book that promises to do…
After some delays, here it is, the last two chapters of Autopilot. And gosh if they aren’t disappointing. Let’s start from the top. Chapter 8: Six Stigma as Seizure I don’t even have any notes on this chapter besides, “Still not really on topic and the analogy is largely vacuous and suspect in general.” but…
You might be asking yourself, “But Nick! How many times are you going to keep bashing liberal and reformist takes on anti-work theory? Can’t you just be happy that anti-work is becoming more popular?” And I would ask you…where you came from and how you got into the house I’m in right now. It’s a…
The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) isn’t a website I follow very much. But then again, I don’t really follow many websites or blogs very religiously. I get almost all of my news from Facebook (my friends list to be more exact) and it’s generally a pretty reliable way to get the news without using…
Nick’s Notes: The following is a letter I sent in an email to the New York Times piece, found here. The question is fundamentally mistaken from the get-go. I don’t think we should be focusing on what can make us employed but rather what provides value for ourselves and our communities. The question of jobs…
I’ve been critical of the Silicon Valley startups off and on when I write for this site. Part of the reasoning for that is because I have many friends who are nerds and really dig (to one extent or another) what’s going on in the tech industry these days. Some of them are less optimistic…
No one likes working with people who are “different” from them. If I had to work with someone who thought it was okay to harass people based on their clothing for example, then I probably wouldn’t want to work with them. If someone had very different life experiences as me I wouldn’t refuse to work…