When I grow up, I want to be a professional amateur sports player. That’s what I tell my parents anyway when they ask. The issue is, I’m 23 and apparently I need a job. But why? I don’t want to sit in a grubby, little office obeying a well-ironed suit all day. That sounds like hell. I want to be outside, in a park, playing sports with my friends against other teams. Is that too much to ask for? With this in mind, I am currently in the market for a wealthy patron to support my amateur athletic endeavours because my dad has told me he no longer wants to.
I never had a choice about going to school, and I went to university without too much thought, but I have now reached a critical juncture in my life and I can’t stop thinking about my choices. I’m being told that I must work to survive but I simply don’t want to. No sane person would sign up for torture and yet every graduate scheme is over subscribed. Why aren’t more people complaining? I guess it’s probably best just to ignore the preposterous nature of the situation we find ourselves in. In the face of accepting that we are being co-opted, coerced, and exploited, perhaps ignorance is bliss. In this life, the only thing we truly have is time. Everyone has a number in line, our turn at death will come. We are being forced to exchange our only asset on a daily basis so that we may live to see another day. Commodified. I can’t be the only one to see the irony. My life shouldn’t be a means to enrich shareholders. I am not a piece of capital willing to submit to their every demand.
Talk of utopia is rare, but I do think it’s important to consider what would constitute your perfect world. One facet of mine would be the freedom from work. In my utopia, no one would have to work to survive.
One of the worst indictments of the current state of affairs is the delight people take in retiring, if they’re ever able to, free from work at last [1]. It’s wasted on the elderly. If you had the choice of when to pick your 15+ work free years of your adult life, would you pick a period in your life where you’re less mobile, more susceptible to illness, short of sight, sound, and taste, incontinent, impotent, or would you choose your twenties and thirties? I know what I would choose. Don’t give up the best years of your life for free. Know your worth and what it is you are selling.
So, why are we told that our youth is the best years of our life? Beyond being more energetic and carefree, why is school and university life the best? For me, specifically in university I was surrounded by friends, and had a level of autonomy over my day to day schedule. I was my own boss [2]. Having just graduated, it is soul destroying to think my best days are already over and that the worst is yet to come. Why are people so satisfied with being miserable? Is it some form of collective delusion? I don’t want to look back fondly on my “best years”, I want each year to be the best year.
My thoughts on the world of work have been guided by two books and a would-be politician, and a tiny, incy wincy smidge of actual experience, though sometimes it’s best to be outside the system to criticise it. The books are called The Meritocracy Trap and 80,000 Hours, and the politician is Andrew Yang. The Meritocracy Trap highlights the harm our celebration of corporate jobs is causing [3]. Andrew Yang offered tangible policies to improve the world of work [4]. 80,000 hours presents a different lens through which we can view our, currently unavoidable, lifetime commitment to work [5].
I read the Meritocracy Trap at a rather pertinent moment in my life. I was commuting 3 hrs a day for a six week internship over a university summer holiday. I was away from my accommodation for at least 11 hours each day, some days even more. The internship couldn’t end soon enough, how could I last a lifetime? Oh, why didn’t I just have fun that summer??? However, the time on the train was an ample opportunity for reading as I didn’t want to be one of those fools who spent the commute on their phones. (Admittedly, I was also on my phone during some commutes and when I actually did read I felt an unwarranted amount of smugness). I soon learned that my disillusionment wasn’t the only effect of our meritocratic corporate structure. Firstly, what is a meritocracy? It basically describes a social hierarchy in which those at the top have got there through their own hard work and talent, i.e they merit their positions. This is in contrast to, say, an aristocracy where those on top were born on top. In our world, it is the corporate professionals who are on top. The partners at law firms, accounting firms, investment bankers, consultants. The Meritocracy Trap explores the fetishisation of meritocracy in Western societies. The book outlines many ways the meritocratic order has failed us. For one, we have become seemingly willing to accept income inequality because those at the top have quote unquote “earned it”. Secondly, those on top are actually having to work longer and longer to maintain their status which is in stark contrast to the aristocrats of old. The working hours of the professional class have grown in the face of Keynes’ prediction that technological advancement would free us from work, not burden us further. Like any locked-in system, meritocracy is hard to change. Why should those at the top who currently benefit from this meritocratic, workaholic system want to change it? They derive their money, power, status, and sense of fulfilment from the perpetuation of the status quo. But are they happy living at work? And this is without even getting started on the hollowed out working and middle classes who have seen no substantial benefit from the system they are forced to be a part of to survive.
During his campaign to be the Democrat candidate for US presidency in 2020, Andrew Yang often referred to the problem of meritocracy, but didn’t openly discuss it. Out of his graduate class from an Ivy League university, he said that many went on to corporate jobs in finance and law in NYC including Yang himself. He quickly became disillusioned, and instead turned to entrepreneurship. I won’t repeat his stump speech word for word, go watch it if you want to. His flagship policy was UBI, universal basic income. UBI is when all citizens of a country receive an income from the government irrespective of whether they work. UBI would free us from being forced to sell ourselves to stay alive, enabling me to pursue my true purpose in life, becoming a decorated amateur sports player. After his unsuccessful campaign, Yang began, like many others, to promote the introduction of a 4 day work week. It’s quite a simple concept really, rather than work Monday to Friday, i.e 5 days a week, you would only work four days each week. Both UBI and 4 day work weeks are evidently good for the health and happiness of workers [6]. Who wouldn’t want either? Yet, rather than being exclusively framed with the health and happiness of ordinary citizens in mind, many attempt to talk about them in terms of productivity and efficiency benefits. Studies have shown that 4 day work weeks don’t necessarily hurt profits of companies due to the increases seen in the productivity of employees [6].
That’s all well and good, but these policies could be implemented even if they do hurt profits. What matters more: people or profits?
Is work fun? Do you work hard to play hard? Why? Why work? Why do you work? Why don’t you support policies like UBI and a four day work week that free you from work as much as possible? Are we all masochists enjoying the toil of work with its associated pain and suffering? It’s not necessarily productive to nihilistically shit on the world of work without offering a solution. Mind you, it is rather fun! Is there a better way? If we must work, which I contest isn’t and shouldn’t be the case, we should at least be clear why it is we are working. So what is the best approach to the rest of your life? The most promising answer I have ever found was from 80,000 Hours. Its premise is relatively simple: you work for roughly 80,000 hours over your lifetime so you might as well use that time wisely doing something worthwhile. This isn’t groundbreaking, it’s a rather common idea. However, it is their definition of worthwhile that sets them apart. In their eyes, worthwhile work is doing the most good possible. You should choose a career path that maximises your total impact on the world. For some, this may mean buying into the meritocratic order so that they can earn a sizeable income from which they donate a small fortune to “effective” charities. For others, it is a lifetime of research in niche fields that are, as of yet, unexplored and offer lots of low hanging fruit. I’m not here to summarise the book and website, but rather to inform you of its existence! Go read it if you’re interested, you can get it for free by signing up on their website. I’m just here to tell you that alternatives exist. 80,000 Hours did inspire me to undertake this series.
However, it should be stated that 80,000 Hours and Effective Altruism more generally are bounded by the system they have developed in and cannot transcend it, i.e they play by the rules of capitalism and do little to change or redress the systemic inequalities found within it. This critique has been explored fully by Amia Srinivasan in a review of MacAskill’s earlier work [7]. 80,000 Hours encourages its audience to be as productive and efficient as possible, eerily similar to the core neo-liberal meritocratic tenant of ultimate dedication to work. The idea of not submitting oneself to the pursuit of productivity and instead enjoying life is raised by Byung-Chul Han in Pyschopolitics [8]. If we embrace 80,000 Hours too whole heartedly we quickly forget where we started; thinking about how I become a professional amateur sports person.
In sum there is no easy answer. Why work? We work because we have to. Because we can’t afford not to. 80,000 Hours is a solution for those of us best placed to win in this meritocratic world. But what about the rest of us? What hope does it provide? So I ask again, do you want to work more or less? Why not support policies that reduce our time at work? And before diving in head first to work, really consider what you are landing in, because if it’s a pile of shit, it’s going to take a while for the smell to come out.
[1] “Axios/Ipsos Retirement Survey”, Ipsos, 2023
Specifically, when asked the question, “How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements? – The point of working hard your adult life is to be able to have a nice retirement”, 80% of respondents agreed (35% strongly agreed, 45% somewhat agreed)
[2] There is lots of research that backs up the claim that autonomy leads to satisfaction and happiness. It makes sense from a logical perspective, no one likes being told what to do.
See
and
Autonomy in the Workplace study
for more information
[3] “The Meritocracy Trap”, Daniel Markovits, https://www.themeritocracytrap.com/
[4] Yang 2020, https://2020.yang2020.com/
[5] 80,000 Hours, https://80000hours.org/
[6] Lots of research has been done on the 4 day work week by 4 Day Work Week https://www.4dayweek.com/ . The results of their trials are overwhelmingly positive. Interestingly, between writing and publishing calls for a 4 day work week have strengthened, see Guardian article on 4 day work week.
[7] “Stop the Robot Apocalypse”, Amia Srivinasan, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n18/amia-srinivasan/stop-the-robot-apocalypse
[8] “Pyschopolitcs”, Byung-Chul Han, https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/226-psychopolitics Arguably, not the easiest of reads, at least that’s how I felt, but worthwhile nonetheless.
The Angry Generation 
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