Work
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
A rather old dictionary I found at my grandmother's house some years ago defines "work" as "to expend energy painfully." I also read a column more recently in "The People's Almanac" that suggested a new verb: to "fuller," meaning to expend energy joyously. This verb was named after R Buckminster Fuller, and did not gain widespread use, since the English language already has the perfectly serviceable word "play."
In modern terms, work, as it relates to humans, involves the conversion of human effort into another highly-valued resource, such as food, shelter, currency, or baseball tickets. In fact, work is one of the most basic of all human transactions, and according to the Bible, has been with us since Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, to "till the Earth by the sweat of their brow." Today, we have John Deere tractors for this purpose, but tilling still looks about as much fun as it ever did.
As the most basic of all human transactions, the requirement for work ("Clean up your room if you want your allowance") and the avoidance of work ("I already cleaned my room") are ingrained into us from a very early age. Shortly thereafter follows the creation of work ("I told my little brother he could read my MAD Magazine collection if he cleaned my room"), and thus an economy is born, albeit one based upon a love of bizarre Don Martin sound effects and Al Jaffee Fold-Ins.
This small economy, however, is a scale model of the way in which work, well, works. Your room is a mess. Your mother, for reasons unbeknownst to you, desires a clean room. It is worth a small sum of money (your allowance) to see that the room is cleaned.
(Notice here that a VALUE has now been placed on the clean room. When I was a child, back in the 19th century, a clean room was valued at approximately fifty cents US currency. My niece, who now has a child of her own, informs me that the value is now two dollars.)
This is how wealth is created: by the movement of assets (a half buck) from lower-valued (Mom's purse) to higher-valued (your pocket) sources. You want the fifty cents more than Mom wants to clean your room.
Let's not forget the little brother. It's worth fifty cents to you to have a clean room as well, but it's not quite worth fifty cents for you to do it yourself. You time is too valuable, what with all the high-level bike-riding and dirt-clod throwing that needs to be done. So you track down your little brother (or, failing that, an idiot cousin, as I did in my case), and make an offer. Depending on the percentage of likelihood that you can whup on the little freak, you might not have to pay anything, achieving your needs through the threat of physical force. (This is how governments accomplish things, tax collection, for instance.) More likely, you will have to offer up, again, a lower-valued asset (your MAD collection) to a higher-valued source (dimwit cousin, whose parents are Funadmentalist Baptists and won't let him have MAD magazine).
Thus 50 cents goes from Mom to you, your back issues of MAD (except for the one with the really cool Star Wars parody and the two with pictures of naked girls, which are hidden under your bed) go to Dumb Kenny, and your room gets clean. In this way does the world go 'round.
The same thing happens today. You work for a company. Your employment with the company is a transaction: as long as it is cheaper to keep you than to let you go, you will have a job. Your company also has an unspoken contract with the buying public: as long as what you manufacture is a good deal and you make more money from selling it than it costs to make it, you're in. Your family and creditors are waiting for you to pay the power bill, and they won't accept old copies of a stupid juvenile humor magazine as payment.
Everything in this world is a transaction.
Everything in this world is work.
Someone PLEASE forward this to Jeff Bezos.
In modern terms, work, as it relates to humans, involves the conversion of human effort into another highly-valued resource, such as food, shelter, currency, or baseball tickets. In fact, work is one of the most basic of all human transactions, and according to the Bible, has been with us since Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, to "till the Earth by the sweat of their brow." Today, we have John Deere tractors for this purpose, but tilling still looks about as much fun as it ever did.
As the most basic of all human transactions, the requirement for work ("Clean up your room if you want your allowance") and the avoidance of work ("I already cleaned my room") are ingrained into us from a very early age. Shortly thereafter follows the creation of work ("I told my little brother he could read my MAD Magazine collection if he cleaned my room"), and thus an economy is born, albeit one based upon a love of bizarre Don Martin sound effects and Al Jaffee Fold-Ins.
This small economy, however, is a scale model of the way in which work, well, works. Your room is a mess. Your mother, for reasons unbeknownst to you, desires a clean room. It is worth a small sum of money (your allowance) to see that the room is cleaned.
(Notice here that a VALUE has now been placed on the clean room. When I was a child, back in the 19th century, a clean room was valued at approximately fifty cents US currency. My niece, who now has a child of her own, informs me that the value is now two dollars.)
This is how wealth is created: by the movement of assets (a half buck) from lower-valued (Mom's purse) to higher-valued (your pocket) sources. You want the fifty cents more than Mom wants to clean your room.
Let's not forget the little brother. It's worth fifty cents to you to have a clean room as well, but it's not quite worth fifty cents for you to do it yourself. You time is too valuable, what with all the high-level bike-riding and dirt-clod throwing that needs to be done. So you track down your little brother (or, failing that, an idiot cousin, as I did in my case), and make an offer. Depending on the percentage of likelihood that you can whup on the little freak, you might not have to pay anything, achieving your needs through the threat of physical force. (This is how governments accomplish things, tax collection, for instance.) More likely, you will have to offer up, again, a lower-valued asset (your MAD collection) to a higher-valued source (dimwit cousin, whose parents are Funadmentalist Baptists and won't let him have MAD magazine).
Thus 50 cents goes from Mom to you, your back issues of MAD (except for the one with the really cool Star Wars parody and the two with pictures of naked girls, which are hidden under your bed) go to Dumb Kenny, and your room gets clean. In this way does the world go 'round.
The same thing happens today. You work for a company. Your employment with the company is a transaction: as long as it is cheaper to keep you than to let you go, you will have a job. Your company also has an unspoken contract with the buying public: as long as what you manufacture is a good deal and you make more money from selling it than it costs to make it, you're in. Your family and creditors are waiting for you to pay the power bill, and they won't accept old copies of a stupid juvenile humor magazine as payment.
Everything in this world is a transaction.
Everything in this world is work.
Someone PLEASE forward this to Jeff Bezos.
