Hard Work Fallacy

The reason why still so many people simply accept that billionaires even exist, is because they believe that billionaires are exceptional in one way or another. They must work harder, be smarter, or both, than the average Joe. This is not true.

The notion that hard work yields greater wealth may be the single most damaging belief in modern society. And it's wrong. It's strange and counter-intuitive to aspire to working harder, when automation should have the exact opposite effect. The fact that more work can be delegated to A.I. and machines should result in more free time, right? Then why is it that with increasing automation we've seen regular people work more? Families used to have a single breadwinner, usually the father, but now everyone must work in order to make ends meet; even the children have to find jobs to pay for their advanced education.

This is nonsensical, or it would be in any other system than capitalism. Within capitalism this makes perfect sense, for growth and profits can never be large enough. Our society is built on the idea that if everyone strives for their own personal wealth, somehow we'll all get what we deserve. Within the confines of this severely mistaken ideology the existence of billionaires makes sense, and it makes it easier to believe that they actually did work harder or they are a lot smarter than the rest of us.

This isn't to say that billionaires don't work hard: they usually do. In fact, most of them can't get enough of the work they do, they're regular workaholics. This also gives them a sense of entitlement of their extreme wealth and power, and they expect everyone who works for them to have that same unhealthy attitude towards work. Have you ever heard the phrase "I guess we're not built the same"? That's what's said often when a successful workaholic has a friendly conversation with a not so successful worker with a regular 9 to 5 job. Thereby implying that he or she really is special; if you can't put in the 16 hours per day, you're just not built right.

This has put us all in a situation where working hard has become the norm. If you want to keep your job, it's expected that you put in that extra mile. Working harder, taking on more tasks than what's agreed upon in the contract has become a condition for workers to be able to keep their jobs. And workers more often than not have no choice but to accept this. It's funny that the political ideology that subscribes to this development, is the same ideology that puts great importance on the institution of the family. They blame progressives for destroying the family because of their support for LGBTQ+ rights and the fact that there are a lot of atheists among them. Well, I've got news for ya: it's the fact that every family member has to work, and work hard, with all the stress and uncertainty that comes with it, that's destroying the family. Given the choice between working a few hours extra and spending more time with your children or partner, the former is winning, out of the necessity placed upon us by this ridiculous system.

It's time to go back to the principle that we work to live, not live to work. There's no reason whatsoever, other than the ill conceived incentives at the heart of capitalism, to work harder. We already overproduce just about everything which brings with it the added bonus that we're destroying the environment mush faster and much harder than is necessary. There are more empty buildings than there are homeless people, there's more food than there are mouths to feed, there are millions of unsold cars each year and there's an alarming number of mountains of perfectly good computers and mobile phones, which are being picked apart by starving children so that the gold and other rare metals can be recycled by the same businesses that overproduced the damn things in the first place. This is not how a healthy, rational society should be organized. It's dumb, it's creating stress and misery with no reason at all. Time to wake up, and a good place to start is to realize that billionaires shouldn't exist when there's so much poverty and modern mental afflictions, and that billionaires aren't special or extraordinary enough to justify their positions of wealth and power. Here's a video by a wealthy person, although not a billionaire, who understands the idiocy of it all.

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