Why nobody wants to work anymore, and why that's always been true


Something that you'll hear over and over in history is that people don't want to work anymore. It's similar to "children don't respect their elders anymore", and it's as true now as it's ever been. So if someone says that nobody wants to work anymore, or that children don't respect their elders anymore, it really true - the "anymore" seems to imply that it's something new, but it's not.

Anyone who has ever had a job knows that it has to be paid. Of course there are people who volunteer, and help others of their own volition, but most people need money in order to buy food, pay rent, etc., and so that attitude is a secondary motivation to get out there and work. And to understand this, you have to understand motivation. And it's the same motivation that teaches kids to show some respect for their elders, there's a reward.

I'm an old marketing guy, and I learned a long time ago that it's important to look at what people want, not what you're trying to sell. That is, when people go into a hardware store, they really don't want a drill, they want holes in the wall. If you can wrap your head around this concept, you're understanding point of view motivation.

Speaking for myself, I liked the idea of making my own way. Getting a job and moving away from home gave me the kind of independence that I'd always dreamed of. I had a very strong motivation to get away, because I grew up in Minneapolis, which had a climate that I hated, and moved to Phoenix when I was nineteen. And believe me, I was strongly motivated not to go back!

All of my life I've met people who don't want to work - most people in fact. These people dream of a day when they can retire, or they play the lottery in hopes of being able to quit their job. I was fortunate in that I enjoyed the work that I did, which was graphic design, and still do, but I gotta admit that the sound of the alarm in the morning wasn't pleasant - nor was driving in rush hour traffic. There was a popular song that said, "I don't wanna work, I just want to bang on these drums all day!" and I would have been happy to just go play golf, or something else other than driving downtown over and over again.

I've always had a fascination about how the world works, what makes people do what they do. In my teens and twenties I read up on capitalism, how money works, what it's all about. I gotta admit that I'm still working on figuring it out! I'm ultimately interested in history, because that's where the stories are, and of course I read from extreme to extreme, trying to puzzle it out. My reading list has included everything from Ayn Rand to Karl Marx, and I will continue my studies for as long as I can (and there's a library right nearby where I live, which is handy!).


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