In this essay, I will try to "un-abstract" the notion of work (or "toil", "labor"). Work is not the same thing as making money—evidently, there are many people in this world who have a lot of money through no application of effort on their own part—e.g. getting money through inheritance, winning the lottery, or having profited from some form of speculation or investment. ¹

The issue of the nature of "work" is an important question to answer because if work is something beneficial to us that we should be doing most days of the year, it is good to know what this means so that we can do this.

In modern times, many of us have been quite detached from understanding the nature of our work, who we are working for, and to what ends we are doing work. Oftentimes "debates" about work are cast in terms of false dialectics—e.g. being pro or anti technology. We need to move beyond that level of discussion—the presence of certain technologies is a fact of reality. That being said, in the areas we do have a say in what is going on, we can seek to be wise in determining where and when to introduce new technologies versus where the latest fancy thing doesn't add any improvement and may undermine the most important aspects of our business—how it brings together people in mutually beneficial ways.

I am writing this essay to think through what it means for me to use my time in a prudent way and also to share whatever insight I might have so that you my readers too may use your time better. The hope is that we better understand how to work together in this respect. By more clearly characterizing what it means to work I aim to be able to better able to apply my own efforts to get things done in the world and establish meaningful connections with those around me—whether in my physical vicinity or through the Internet.

Let's get started!

Types of Work

Below I'll describe some types of work people do as well as providing some commentary on the modern manifestations of these roles.

Workers

The most obviously work-like type of work is "manual" or "physical" labor. You can recognize this sort of work without much difficulty; often it will involve a lot of repetition. Raking leaves, laying bricks, and transporting items all fall under this category.

Even people who mainly do "intellectual labors" (which I'll discuss further on below) can benefit greatly from doing physical work. I think this is one reason why you get a lot of people who are professionals in white collar fields taking up a "hobby" like carpentry or gardening—there is something that cannot be replaced in directly working with materials using our hands and simple tools.

In the current age, most people have the idea that it is good to "get exercise"—do physically exerting movements to become stronger, maintain fitness, etc. We've kinda cleaved work between the actions of sitting at a desk for many hours a day and then getting ourselves to "work out". While "working out" is built into physical labor like chopping firewood, the modern person must choose to seek out physical exertion, otherwise weakness sets in. This takes discipline. Insofar as the above actions contribute to making a healthy body/mind, I would call working out a kind of manual labor or training. Training a healthy body lends to an effective, alert mind. This being said, it is important for the white collar office worker to view physical fitness as something essential to work—arranging pencils and paperclips on a desk all day isn't work (it is idling); the least you can do is be a physically fit.

I also include being a messenger in various capacities under this sort of manual work. You can think of how in older times, you might literally have a runner who carries a tablet from one location to another in order to share some important information. Nowadays, we likewise often have to do the work of relaying messages—this could mean sharing links, posting on a bulletin board, etc. Note, this is not to suggest that that going on Reddit or Discord counts as "working hard"—rather I am making the point that it does take effort/application of will to decide to be the vehicle by which messages travel. Naturally, you should ask yourself whose messages you are sending and for what purpose...

Managers

The job of a manager is to organize workers. If a manager understands the nature of the work of the workers this is better because then the manager won't try to make useless/impossible/etc demands. Lots of programers will complain about project managers who tell them to do things which are very difficult to implement (and hence time consuming and expensive)—a skilled manager understands the nature of demands placed upon workers and can allocate time and resources appropriately.

Challenges managers face include

• Logistics—having the right stuff in the right place at the right time
• Resolving disputes with or among workers
• Hiring workers and ensuring they get paid
• Scheduling

Nowadays, this general "manager" type might be called by many names. We have layers of management in larger organizations—a company may have a CEO above middle managers who in turn supervise workers, for instance. "Human Resources" (HR) people might be called managers who specialize in the hiring/paying of workers.

On a day to day basis, we all have to do a little "self-management". That is, a properly managed person has a plan for what they need to do and when they need to do it. It more traditional societies, this management was often done for people, but in our more "free societies" where there isn't much of a default routine given to many people, it is necessary for us to manage our time and resources to make sure the things we want to get done do get done.

Subtypes of managers include property managers, estate managers, and (software) project managers. The essential feature uniting all of these groups is that they organizing how work is to be done though they might not be directly involved in the "actual" work the of putting the hammer to the nail. That being said, managers and managing isn't bad/evil—without the oversight of managers, the scope of complexity of projects is severely limited. Good management means that larger scale projects can happen.

Note that in modern times, when machines can replace a lot of the sorts of work people may have done (e.g. software relays a message where a person may have previously done this), each of us takes on more responsibilities as a manager.

Merchants

Merchants buy and sell stuff. They're important for liquidity of assets—that is, being able to exchange things for money, the generic medium of exchange. Merchants can support themselves if they are skilled at buying at lower prices and selling at higher prices as well as by employment under managers, who may use merchants to buy and sell stuff for them.

Traders are kinds of merchants, but they often go between businesses rather than being directly "customer facing". Shopkeepers are kinds of merchants and may have to deal with many issues like,

• theft, fraud, security, etc
• managing inventory
• dealing with different weights, measures, and media of exchange

Artisans/Craftsmen

Merchants often sell items created by artisans/craftsmen. Artists and craftsmen are similar to workers, but might be called more skilled in that their crafts can't just be done by any able-bodied person—time and dedication must be put into study and learning. I consider jobs like video editing, computer programing, and traditional crafts like painting, woodworking, tailoring and so forth to fall under this category.

You may have heard a self-styled communist talk about seizing the "means of production". For craftsmen, this means being able to own the tools to do work. Companies like Adobe exploit starving artists by requiring these artists to rent products like Photoshop through a subscription type model. Thus, the digital artist can't own/control their tools. Sometimes, artists work for large companies that have corporate licenses such that away from their company, artisans/craftsmen cannot even use the tools they work with for their own purposes!

Judges, Lawyers, and Regulators

Finally, there is the category of the judges, lawyers, and regulators—these people establish and enforce the rules by which all the other groups operate. Included here, one might put politicians, lobbyists, and other occupations that involve talking/writing to order society.

These roles don't provide "goods" or "services" in the sense that everybody is under their jurisdiction, so they don't need to appeal to customers. But examining evidence, making decisions, and so forth can take a lot of time and energy, so I think these occupations do count as "work" in sofar as evidence is being examined, good decisions are sought...

Knowledge/Study

In order to do certain sorts of work, it is necessary to learn/study to know how certain systems are put together or to know some set of steps to take. When getting started doing something like cooking, for instance, a cookbook or instructional video/article "teaches" you in that it enumerates what steps need to be taken to succeed in an job.

Different sorts of jobs will have different requirements. Engineering fields, for instance, require a lot of specialized training—you can't just read a recipe and successfully troubleshoot an engineering problem. However, complex systems are often designed to be compartmentalized—there are some services you can do to "fix" your car (e.g. pump up tires) for which you don't really need any specialized knowledge for.

There are more general things to learn—I think you might call this wisdom. Then there are the specifics of how things in the world work, which I will call knowledge. Wisdom is the same from age to age, though specific knowledge, models, and tools will differ from industry to industry. It follows that wisdom is helpful to possess in any situation—this can then be used to discern what sorts of knowledge is useful/profitable in a given situation.

Computers and Work

Above, I discussed a bunch of different types of work as well as what it means to learn/study, which is often a prerequisite for doing work. I will now move into discussing what exactly computers are, what all of this "Aritifical Intelligence" buzz is about, and why we should(n't) be afraid of "being replaced by machines".

Nowadays, we have people attempting to use computer systems to replace both managers and workers. Robots/mechanical machines are the "lowest" level here with "Artificial Intelligence" decision making at the "top". "Platforms" take the place of storefronts as e-commerce blooms.

I think that one of the main effects of the development of IT infrastructue is the centralization or consolidation of a lot of control as well as the "atomization" of individuals and the tighter of institutional coupling—you are more reliant on a central system (i.e. the Internet) to do stuff.

People wouldn't change over to this system if there weren't any enticing offerings. The Internet does make many sorts of actions easier. Perhaps what is most tricky to deal with, I think, is this general problem of filtering or ranking that we have to deal with.

As explored in other blog posts, people outsource lots of their thinking and decision making to search engines. Large corporations like Google therefore get to decide what sorts of things we see first, what we take as mainstream/normal, and so on and so forth.

What we call "Artificial Intelligence" is often nothing more than handing over decision making to non-personal parties. Now, we're seeing the "driverless car revolution"—this means turning over transportation/traveling to big corporations like many people have decided to put our trust in "fact checkers" to interpret the sea of information on the Internet.

Really, lots of these new technologies don't solve new problems; even the automobile didn't "solve" a problem that horse/buggies didn't already do—rather, we saw a transformation of the types of work people were doing to be more tightly coupled to an industrial system—in the case of automobiles, the roads and highways and the cities that rely on them.

The analysis I offer in this essay can be used to clarify how exactly AI technologies are being used to replace human participation in the world—as I see it, this is mainly in the field of "decision making". But this is only possible to do after the road is paved through standardization and subsequently setting up things to be more mechanical and less human.

Contrasts

Given the definitions of what work is and some forms it can take, we can look at what is not work.

Consider the state of being a "couch potato"—this usually means reclining on a couch and passively watching TV/movies/etc. Reclining rather than being upright is associated with not working. Often this is done with snacking or inattentive eating of some sort. The couch potato indulges various passions and does so passively; rather than actively laboring to improve, the couch potato does what is easiest. This sort of (lack of) activity doesn't even involve reaching out, engaging other people, and opening up oneself to rejection, verbal abuse, etc. The couch potato chooses the path of least resistance—doing that which pretty much has no chance of "failure". The plan is to fail.

"Idle talk" is not work. While it takes discipline, care, and attention to speak succinctly in a forthright matter, to talk just for the sake of talking or distracting oneself or others is not working and can get you in trouble. I'm guilty of lots of speculation and writing just to write, even here in this blog.

Notes for 2021 and Conclusions

As we enter a new year, we see how work continues to be affected by the ongoing COVID stuff. Many, many people are under or unemployed. What is to be done?

It is important to understand that there is a difference between how many dollars a person has and how much/hard they work. In some areas, such as developing physical fitness or manual labor, there is a more direct correlation between care/effort put in and results—even still work eventually is "undone" through aging and eventually death. Likewise, we don't take money down to the grave. That being said, work can be a very good and helpful thing to us all for building disciplined, keeping focused, and avoiding idle hands which may lead us to bad places. Conversely, many people who landed comfy jobs, inherited money, bought bitcoin at the right time, or otherwise don't have to work in order to "get by"—it is is important for those in this camp to not waste time idling.

We should likewise be "frugal" (not miserly) in the sense that we aim to be efficient rather than wasteful. Do you eat to live or live to eat? Nothing wrong with enjoying nice food when you have it, but working an extra 20 hours a week to blow on (unnecessary) alcohol/drugs/luxuries might not be the most prudent use of time—especially if these things aren't consumed in a way that develops something else, such as (human) networks.

No matter where we are now in terms of location, money, status, etc. it is important to manage the resources we have available to us (especially time) and work hard.