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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   26091 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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But I think those things, while correlated with their work culture, are also potentially separable from their work culture.

I'm not so sure.

The (East) Asian work culture is in part a model for economic labor: overall, it seems to be best suited for transitioning away from a low productivity regime to a high one, after which point it manages to stumble through okay but not exceptionally.

But it's also a social model. You hear about crazy hours etc., but those are in large part inflated, with large spans of doing nothing. What the hours do is bind the worker to a larger collective. Even aside from idle hands and all that, the social connections formed working act as a kind of behavioral safety net, particularly for men who would otherwise end up doing antisocial things. You have authority figures you have to answer to. You face shame for not meeting some minimal standards. You have to be presentable, and you have to develop the executive capability to at least physically turn up somewhere at a specific time. A large part of your limited social budget is forced to be spent with a more diverse group than total fuckups.

In America, those same people vulnerable to behavioral dysfunction put in their time doing marginal work before going home to (at best) isolated electronic activities or (worse) go out with people who will exacerbate their worst instincts. Or, increasingly likely, they won't work at all.

It's a kind of socialism that redistributes good behavior. In a world where behavioral norms are hurt far worse by the bottom 25% than helped by the top 25%, that's a massive win. (A variation of this argument applies to education as well.)

Is the social aspect separable? I don't know of a place where you can get the social benefits while moving to a better work model, though I'm all ears if you have an example in mind.

But it's also a social model … What the hours do is bind the worker to a larger collective. Even aside from idle hands and all that, the social connections formed working act as a kind of behavioral safety net

This is an intriguing take, and one which I had never thought of before, but it makes a lot of intuitive sense! This blog post by an American who purports to have spent extensive time working for Japanese organizations, gestures at a similar idea. Do give it a read, if you haven’t already.

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