Cos I can afford guns.

So to start this off I will admit "I work for a living." Most of the time I'm in an air conditioned room and occasionally I will do manual labor and sweat my ass off. Yet, after doing this for a year and a half, I am still missing how this gives me the opportunity to criticize everything from academics to food stamps. I don't see why my air conditioned, coushy chair sitting, database filling self is any bit of a virtuous self sacrificing martyr. I get paid to work after all. So could one of you conservatives (since draugnar is gone it'll probably have to be krellin) explain to me what is so fucking virtuous about your coushy middle class desk job? I'd love to hear it!

"what is so fucking virtuous about your coushy middle class desk job"

Sounds like someone is mad. You mad bro?

Nope, I'm trying to get to the bottom of this phenomena that I've experienced in here and in real life. Namely middle class males talking like they work in a salt mine when they sit in an air conditioned room all day and that their supposed miserable existence grants them a trump card over any argument.

I don't know what to say in response to your thread.

"I am still missing how this gives me the opportunity to criticize everything from academics to food stamps"

You have the opportunity to critisize those because you are a human being. It has nothing to do with your job.

In short I think the people you are attacking do not actually exist.

In short you are wrong. This is krellin and draugnar's go to argument. They use the fact that they have a 9 to 5 as a cudgel against anyone who doesn't.

Yes everyone has an opinion, the question is does having a 9 to 5 make your opinion more valid. Many think so.

Potentially. You're usually more educated which makes your opinions more valued by others. There are obviously exceptions to the rule.

<yawn....> Boring, intentional mis-interpretation of my belief by an angry liar.

There is zero virtue in having a job, per se. There is virtue in *attempting* to improve oneself, and in *attempting* to be a contributor to the society you participate in, and in performing positive activities when able.

When one does *not* try, they have no virtue, and deserve nothing from me or anyone.

If one tries and fails, the system does, and should, lift them up, for a time, until they are able to care for themselves, or cease to try, at which time they should be deemed no longer virtuous and dropped like a hot potato

You are a pathetic liar, Santa.

In Santa's world, a student that does not listen in class, does not do his/her homework, should still get a "A" because they exist.

Do or do not. There is no try.

"If one tries and fails, the system does, and should, lift them up, for a time, until they are able to care for themselves, or cease to try, at which time they should be deemed no longer virtuous and dropped like a hot potato"

This will be consistently posted in your future threads

To provide a direct answer to your question, Herr von SantaClausowitz, the reason that your job matters is because you are useful to someone. Somebody hired you to perform tasks that they consider useful and valuable. This is the reason that they are paying you.

As a useful person, one who contributes to the economy of the country that you're in, you achieve moral superiority to people who are useless. You then gain an additional stake in public policy over and above people who do not perform useful work.

Unfortunately your employer has seen fit to make you as comfortable as possible while providing labor, a fact for which you have my apology.

If you find the degree of comfort to be provided to be unacceptable, then there is some additional good news: you are of course free to volunteer for an actually dangerous job somewhere. Not only might you find this sort of work more exciting, but it will give you additional moral high ground over people who work safer and easier jobs.

Please let me know if you have any further such questions. Congratulations on achieving a better social status of people who are either lazy or other wise useless.

Thanks for your question.

Wait... cushy desk jobs? Krellin and Draugnar? Isn't one of them a goat-farmer or something?

"This will be consistently posted in your future threads "

lol Post away - It's apparently something you disagree with. So if you care to help further the correct message, be my guest, silly man.

Her von SantaCalusiwitz (heh heh...good one Al) --- And why don't you anwer my inquiry? Or are you too cowardly? Should a student who does not pay attention in class, and does not do his/her homework, still receive an "A" and all the respect and virtue of the working students?

Do not be a coward -- please answer the line of questioning that is directly parallel to the inquiry which you made of me.

Draugnar works in IT. Krellin, are you a goat farmer?

Jamie - I pedal flesh for a living. I'm a technical pimp.

@Krellin,
Goat flesh?

If you can find me a goat that write's embedded C/C++ or designs electronic hardware, I'll pedal it, yes.

I'd pay to see that.

@Krellin,
You need to break the arm of the nearest Romanesque fake statue you have and beat your co-worker about the head.

Lovin' this thread

@hecks - Arms formerly belonging to fake Romanesque statues are often useful for fending off dissatisfied goats.

#metathreading.

It's hard work getting paid to play solitaire, spam webdip, and doctor people's resumes, ala Krellin.

Good thread. For the overwhelming majority of cases, having a 9-to-5 is not exemplary of anything, and it's often just a particularly unimpressive ego stroke

Yes Santa! 100% thumbs up for you (and my friend Eden).
People's moral notions are lagging 200 years after the factual development of technology and the milieu they live in.

"Work" is immoral. Besides most often meaning the opposite of actually doing something putting your mental and physical powers to use, it is always the opposite of responsibility - it means doing something you renounce responsibility for doing.
How comes it that the populace drifted into giving prostitution this new reverenced status? Why has prostitution been so esteemed these last two hundred years?

When the industrial mode of production was introduced around 1800 - degrading responsibly working people into units of *workforce* - its claim for popular justification was that it would save and ease *work*. With technological development the necessary hours on the work would be gradually reduced.
Now as general productivity is something like a 100-fold times multiplied, what's the problem now? People are just more desperate to find "work", to *create* "work", to tell each other how hard they work and keep a vigilance lest they find people being "lazy", not "working".
Make sure you always look like you are "working".
In the end all the work that will be done will be work done for to create work.

In the meanwhile, let's visit an ordinary car factory:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9X6mTy8kyU
Drallin and Kreugnar can be seen from about 3:00 putting in their heroic efforts that pay for your food stamps.

Frankly I don't know if it is them we see in this clip - we can just call them "Al".

'"Work" is immoral.'

Well this explains a lot.

""Work" is immoral. Besides most often meaning the opposite of actually doing something putting your mental and physical powers to use, it is always the opposite of responsibility - it means doing something you renounce responsibility for doing."

http://img.pandawhale.com/post-10781-Bert-looks-up-from-book-while-2yZH.gif

"It's hard work getting paid to play solitaire, spam webdip, and doctor people's resumes, ala Krellin. "

I *hate* solitaire. It's a game for mental midgets that despise work. But yes, putting my creative genius to work to pawn off illiterate shmucks as genius level software engineers and getting paid stupid fat cash to do so...<kicks back, throws feet on to desk while drinking a non-alcoholic martini...> this is the life....

Because nothing screams "the life" harder than working with genius level software engineers and taking a non-alcoholic martini.

Well, on Tuesday I also fill out a subscription to another gay porn magazine and have it sent to Putin's house. That's kind of fun, too.

That'll teach him.

Hey Pal, who the fuck you think you dissin. I work eight jobs, chump!

*Ameri-dick grows one inch*

I wonder if Putin is enjoying his new magazine collection? Sadly...I'll never know.

Mwaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha...blissful silence. But I feel his rage on the ether...

Here's the thing about "working for a living," and those who lay claim to this status: They're dupes. Suckers. Victims of class warfare, and it's doubly hilarious because they are the ones who think they've won the war.

Now the middle class can feel justified at looking down on poor people, while the happy rich tralala all the way to the bank to cash in on the work they do. But be content in your middle class lifestyle, you can scrape by, now can't you? You work for a living, after all...

Yellowjacket -- who are these people you are talking about that are "looking down on the poor people"? I'm truly curious to know who they are?

I've a guess who you think they are...I've another guess about the real attitude of people that think that other people are the ones that think the way that you think they do...

spit it out, chum, because I don't care to guess about your guess.

To answer your question though, the "people I'm talking about" is any asshole who says, "I work for a living."

Hmmmm....do you work for a living?

Only by the loosest definition :)

Really though, I mean the above in the spirit with which OP intended it... you know, the guy who says, " *scoff* I don't agree to that, I WORK for a living," as if that mere fact alone somehow absolves a person of all civic obligation.

salt mines get crappy to be in very fast its true, but you can pull down 45K with few qualifications and work a 10 day week that gives you plenty of free time. All in all ive seen plenty of office jobs that are tougher than that. Maybe thats why.....

Ahh....well, in all honesty, my objective is to work as little as possible for a living - I'm out the door at the top of the hour, I perfect efficiency where possible, etc. I pity the fool that sits across the way who stays here until 9 o'clock (or so he claims) and misses all his kid's sports and plays and concerts...kind of pathetic, really. But this isn't what you are talking about in your comments, I get it.

<waiting for the trolls to attack....you know, those liberal trolls who "work for a living"....>

But what is "civic obligation"? What does that mean to you?

civic: of or relating to a city or town, esp. its administration; municipal.

My "civic obligation" is that I pay my taxes and follow the traffic laws and don't murder my asshole neighbor. Beyond that...what?

sirKristof - does time warp in the mines? I've never met a 10 day week....or is this some ancient calendar the mine-dwellers still use, as they haven't seen the light of day an many a millennium?

I don't know how anyone working 10 days a week could be said to have plenty of free time...

Maybe he's Q...part of the Continuum?

He meant 10-hour week. sigh

Especially happy I am to get occasion for to give the grand hearty pat on the back to YJ.

Many further comments could be made on this theme. I'll pick one.

In any culture that uses money but has not /yet/ entered into the Industrial Revolution
to get paid in money - whether a chore is done in return or no - is considered as an instance of beggary.
It is a status of vagrancy, of having no proper means for subsistence, being dependent on the benevolence of strangers.

Such people would NOT be accounted as politically sovereign agents, "subjects" in the grammatical sense, politically they could only be considered as tools.

Now, as YJ perfectly expresses it here, the multitude has made the renouncement of responsibility by selling their time on the labour market into their very civic obligation.

Industrialism has made the beggar extremely wealthy, well-fed and clean in comparison with his forefathers, but he's still a beggar
-receiving big quanta of outputs for consumption
but
-having less than ever responsibility and influence over his own inputs to society,
a mere tool
"and it's doubly hilarious because [the suckers] are the ones who think they've won the war"
Perhaps they did...
Perhaps most people remain little irresponsible babies all their lives... More milk is what a sucker demands of life...?