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quanticle comments on On not getting a job as an option - Less Wrong
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It depends on what you mean by "job". It seems like you're saying that not having a job is equivalent to not working. I'd argue otherwise. You still do a lot of work. It's just that the work that you're doing doesn't fit into the traditional capitalist view of working for an employer, so you don't see it as a "job".
You bring up a number of examples: the Argentinian who left graduate economics to travel the world. Puneet Sahani. The Uruguayan couple. They don't have jobs in the traditional American sense of working for an employer for money. But I'd argue that their lifestyle is no less arduous than someone who does have a job. They still have to make arrangements for food, clothing, shelter and travel, and presumably they're doing something of value to earn those resources. That's work, even if it isn't a job, as traditionally defined.
Moreover, such a lifestyle requires a certain type of personality. It requires a personality that is willing to accept extreme levels of uncertainty, in some cases to the point of not knowing where one is going to sleep the next night. For that reason, I'd argue that getting a job is the rational decision for most people. It makes sense to trade a certain amount of freedom for the certainty of knowing that when you go home, you'll have a home to go to, with food in the fridge and clothes in the closet. The fact that some people are able to be happy without having that certainty doesn't mean that everyone will be happy in such a lifestyle, or even that you will be happy in such a lifestyle.
This is true, but the uncertainty around those other chains of causation is considerably higher than the chains of causation that do involve having a job. Sure, I can scrape by without a job, hitchhiking my way along to where-ever I'm trying to go. Or I can travel with relative certainty in a train or a jetliner with tickets that I purchased with money from my job. Which route you choose depends on your tolerance for uncertainty and risk. I, for one, am glad for my job. It provides me the resources by which I carve out a tiny bubble of relative certainty in an uncertain world.
I disagree with "presumably they're doing something of value to earn those resources". All that we know is that they are acquiring the resources somehow. They could be doing so in various clearly-unethical ways, like theft, con artistry, or what have you.
Of course, the more likely scenario is that these people simply are good at convincing people to hand them things basically for free, or in any case in exchange for substantially less value than they're receiving. There are some people who have this talent.
As far as the lifestyles being arduous, well, I'll let the author of this Leftover Soup comic handle that one:
(emphasis mine)
In other words: their lifestyle is arduous? So what? That doesn't ethically entitle them to a damn thing.
Wholeheartedly agreed.
Actually, one gets paychecks for the perception of the provision of value.
The boss (whether business, government, or non-profit) may be wrong about who's providing what, even though there are some pressures on bosses to get things right.
Also, the organization may be going under even if some of the people in it are providing value.