The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXIV

[Borachio]

What?

Twas a simple joke.

Max Weber was the guy who came up with this idea to describe something that supposedly already existed. He claimed - in a much more drawn-out argument - that capitalistic societies and, correlatively, strong economies grew up in places where Protestantism was a strong element of the local culture: Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, the United States. He then went on to explain this phenomenon by an analysis of a work ethic that was supposedly unique to Protestant societies.

The problem is that capitalistic societies and strong economies were actually not all that strongly associated with Protestantism even in the early stages of the industrial revolution. Belgium, one of the most industrialized states on Earth, was notably very Catholic, and the motor of industry in Germany was the strongly-papist Rhineland. France, of course, was a heavily industrialized society early on as well. Industrialization in America didn't necessarily have anything to do with Protestantism; most of the big industrial cities had strong Catholic populations as well, like New York, Chicago, and Boston. Northern Italy is also a strong counterexample, as is the general lack of industrialization in some places that were very strongly Protestant at the time Weber published, such as Denmark.

Weber hypothesized a Protestant work ethic to explain a phenomenon that did not, in fact, exist, even when he wrote about it.

Yes, indeed. I'd say that's all largely true.

The question remains, though, and I've not seen it answered (probably because by the time it had occurred to me to ask, I'd lost all interest in sociology), is why Weber came up with the idea. I do believe he'd heard of Belgium, France and Italy.

 

[Farm Boy]

Dunno TF. Maybe it's a Midwestern farm work ethic then. Maybe it's more unique to my experience than I thought. It just seems blindingly obvious that the work one does impacts those around them, those that share the spoils and those that share the work either side by side with you or downstream. Maybe it's the lack of, for want of a better word, cooperation that grinds me so raw in the indifference and callousness of urbanites. Less grounding and willingness to lift for the communal good without the check of "what am I getting out of this?"

 

[Traitorfish]

This is a phenomenon that has been observed for over a century, and across the industrial world. Chalking up to a bad attitude seems a wee bitty over-simplistic.

 

[Farm Boy]

Nah, I'll chalk it up to socialization. Or a failure thereof.

 

[Traitorfish]

Never crossed your mind that, at least to some extent, some of the time, the fault may lie in the jobs themselves?

 

[Farm Boy]

It has! And I don't think they're a non-factor. But if your complaint is the rise of repetitive, boring, and poorly compensated work that benefits another more than yourself as the thing that changed in the last 100 years and now causes a decrease in the relative ethical value of hard work then I'm confused. How novel, exciting, and well-compensated do you think work has historically been since the rise of agriculture? Good lord man, given the standard of living achieved and the free time available and the difficulty of the work itself a modern gig in retail is orgasmicly wonderful compared to a successful sharecropper in charge of his own petty entrepreneurship and walking behind a horse in the 1800s. Your employer might be onto something with that sign!

 

[Mise]

I daresay this is a question worth its own thread...

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I pretty much agree with Farm Boy here.

Question: What question gave rise to this back and forth?
edit: , 'd by the ever-observant Mise

 

[Mise]

:bow:

Quackers asked why work is a virtue IIRC.

 

[Traitorfish]

It has! And I don't think they're a non-factor. But if your complaint is the rise of repetitive, boring, and poorly compensated work that benefits another more than yourself as the thing that changed in the last 100 years and now causes a decrease in the relative ethical value of hard work then I'm confused. How novel, exciting, and well-compensated do you think work has historically been since the rise of agriculture? Good lord man, given the standard of living achieved and the free time available and the difficulty of the work itself a modern gig in retail is orgasmicly wonderful compared to a successful sharecropper in charge of his own petty entrepreneurship and walking behind a horse in the 1800s. Your employer might be onto something with that sign!

When did I say that this was a matter of free time and wage-levels? If anything, the issue is precisely the opposite, that shorter hours and higher wages are necessary to make this sort of work barely tolerable. Classic example here is the Ford Motor Company, who began paying higher wages not out of patrician benevolence or capitalistic shrewdness, as later mythologies proclaimed, but because workers reacted so badly to the assembly line format that it was the only way they could keep turnover at a manageable level. The issue is that so much of modern work has been progressively stripped of all creative and intellectual content, and left the worker as nothing more than a machine that happens to constituted of flesh and bone. To expect people to invest themselves in such work for the sake of the work itself is simply preposterous, and my argument is that this has been tacitly admitted by the increasing emphasis by employers and the culture at large not on the improving effects of toil, but on those few opportunists for creativity, sociality, intellectual- in a word, humanity, that our work still permits us.

Tedious, soul-destroying modes of work are not made enjoyable because workers have the time and means for leisure outside of the workplace. They merely becomes possible.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Work isn't a virtue. Sloth is.

Haters gonna hate.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Question: When biting humans, do mosquitoes tend to gravitate towards people of a particular blood type than to people of other blood types?

 

[Farm Boy]

Spoilered because I certainly don't want to ignore Mise and Hobbs but I really don't like generating threads.

Spoiler :

When did I say that this was a matter of free time and wage-levels? If anything, the issue is precisely the opposite, that shorter hours and higher wages are necessary to make this sort of work barely tolerable. Classic example here is the Ford Motor Company, who began paying higher wages not out of patrician benevolence or capitalistic shrewdness, as later mythologies proclaimed, but because workers reacted so badly to the assembly line format that it was the only way they could keep turnover at a manageable level. The issue is that so much of modern work has been progressively stripped of all creative and intellectual content, and left the worker as nothing more than a machine that happens to constituted of flesh and bone. To expect people to invest themselves in such work for the sake of the work itself is simply preposterous, and my argument is that this has been tacitly admitted by the increasing emphasis by employers and the culture at large not on the improving effects of toil, but on those few opportunists for creativity, sociality, intellectual- in a word, humanity, that our work still permits us.

Tedious, soul-destroying modes of work are not made enjoyable because workers have the time and means for leisure outside of the workplace. They merely becomes possible.

Couple things. If you think assembly line or industrialized labor(while it is indeed frubbing boring) is significantly different in its menial and "soul-destroying" tedium than large parts of agricultural labor then I think you need to go hoe a couple bean fields and milk some cows. Every day for hours on end the same thing day in and day out. Not everyone before the industrial revolution was a cobbler or a smith or scribe or something skilled and interesting. A lot, if not most, people just toiled. Over and over again in supremely repetitive tasks. Hoeing fields all day isn't fun and "stimulating to the soul." Spinning thread all day isn't fun and stimulating to the soul. The idyllic pastoral dream is a lie dreamed up by some stoned donkeyhole.

Having 6-8 waking hours where you are not required to work the same continuous task is freaking huge man. It's a pivotal difference, not some random side effect. Demands by unions regarding the length of the working week are not trivial or selfish, they are not petty little complaints about how being bored is "destroying their souls" as if that would be novel anyways - they are key demands regarding work life balance.

I hear what you are saying. I agree that work can be boring and not very conducive to whatever form of self-actualization an individual employee would find desirable(I'm still looking for a position as a judge at fellatio contests <cough cough>). The things you are saying are true. But they aren't even 100 years new. The fact that we can seriously quibble about them at all is a product of how good things have gotten compared to before.

The main concession I would be willing to make here is related to that video of the monkeys getting rewarded unequally for performing the same task. They both pushed a button or something and one got a cucumber, which was something desirable in most situations, while the other one got highly prized grapes. The one pushing the button for the cucumbers was no longer amused. I'm going to tie this back in with my rural/urban comparison you seemed to enjoy. Farm family work ethic - I'm 8 and I want to be playing, but the entire family is working and a task I find hideously boring is falling to me. If I put in my effort and do I good job I can see the boon to my family. We all share in the rewards. We all get free time when the work is done. Maybe we all get to go out for ice cream because we're fat Midwesterners and we like malts. Maybe I just get something extra done in a specific day so that my sister can go do something she wants instead. In this equation we can see those around us being positively impacted by our efforts. Their lives are made easier and we all eventually get grapes or cucumbers depending how the time goes. Now you slam a bunch of people into a concrete rat maze packed with people you either don't know or don't particularly care about. You do your work but the recipients or "customers" of the products you directly produce(like that meaningless spreadsheet or the next person that receives your part on the assembly line or the nameless customer you drone "thank you" at) are people you don't value much. To compound this, you are surrounded by strangers and mere acquaintances both in your place of employment and your cute little city that are compensated on wildly different schemes. You might be an average monkey getting a cucumber, but once you see that fellow drive by in his car sewn together from 10,000 grapes the fact that you are well fed, well entertained, well sheltered, and well tended doesn't seem like such a good deal. You aren't getting your car made of grapes, it's not equitable, it's not fair, so why should you care much at all? Eh?

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Question: When biting humans, do mosquitoes tend to gravitate towards people of a particular blood type than to people of other blood types?

I dunno but I do know that people with juicy, bulging veins cop it the worst. Notice how your ankles and hands often are the first to get bitten?

 

[Traitorfish]

@Farm Boy,

I don't know what you're arguing. I don't know what you think I'm arguing. I don't know what more I can say that wouldn't just be a rephrasing of what I've already said.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

:bow:

Quackers asked why work is a virtue IIRC.

Since when has a query from Quackers warranted a thread? Last time there was six pages of that bloody bust.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Other than Rogue Spear, are there any other games that feature or even mention desalination plants?

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Other than Rogue Spear, are there any other games that feature or even mention desalination plants?

SimCity 2000?

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

There's a distinction between fresh and salt water there? Interesting.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

There's a distinction between fresh and salt water there? Interesting.

Yep. It's not visible on the map unless you look at the difference in underground mode, between a water pump placed next to the ocean, and one next to an isolated lake or river, IIRC. My memory's a bit hazy, so that may or may not be totally accurate.