From Hunter-Gatherer to Influencer: The Evolution of the Dignity of Work

Maybe it’s me but the idea that people can be paid for looking pretty in photos of themselves at luxury vacations blows my mind.

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  • The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), by Thorstein Veblen

    “Veblen asserts that the contemporary lords of the manor, the businessmen who own the means of production, have employed themselves in the economically unproductive practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure, which are useless activities that contribute neither to the economy nor to the material production of the useful goods and services required for the functioning of society…”

    The leisure class of 120 years ago are the influencers of today.

    So much for progress.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class

  • Maybe it’s me but the idea that people can be paid for looking pretty in photos of themselves at luxury vacations blows my mind.

    7.7 thousand million selfies ?…

    Henri

  • alex_the_tired
    May 11, 2019 11:16 AM

    Dignity? Although it is still possible to gain some small sense of personal accomplishment from working, for the most part, dignity stopped sometime around the end of the factory job as a successful path into the middle class.
    What you have now isn’t dignity, it’s controlled terror. A job is something that exists only as long as no one decides it’s economically advantageous to lay you off. There is no way to assert dignity from such a position. And the perp walk when you’re let go? Where security guards follow you to the conference room where you’re forced to sign an NDA or a non-criticism contract to get your severance pay? And then you aren’t allowed to go back to your desk to get your things but someone has to collect them for you?
    In a strange way, there’s more “dignity” in being a YouTube influencer. People come trotting up to you, handing you things, begging you to like them. At least until you pull a Jared Knabenbauer.

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