There absolutely is a reason that it can't be my "thing," it's because it isn't!
If it's "doing work that changes the way things are", once you've reached a point where you are able to retire and no longer need to work for money, there's plenty of options in just about every sector (I'm assuming yours is tech or tech adjacent being on HN and all that) where you can do meaningful work and which people would gladly accept the help of an expert on even if they can't pay them.
If it's some other 3rd thing that you feel differentiates jobs from non-jobs, I'd be interested to hear what you think that is.
Society is built on division of labor. I enjoy the fruits of so many people's labor in uncountable ways all day long. It's only fair that I too participate in this wonderful system and give something back.
You're right that the payment is important. Calling that "greed" is a misunderstanding of that word, aside from the attempted insult. Among several things, it does serve as a check that what you do is important. That someone is willing to pay you money, shows that the work is important to that someone!
It's interesting to me that you wrote the payment is important to you because it shows that what you are doing is important. My outlook is that the thing I am paid to do is arguably the least important activity out of any I do in the world. I'm paid to ensure that a particular set of bits are turned on and off in the appropriate way so that other people can manipulate those same bits to influence how data is represented elsewhere. In essence, I feel as though I'm the digital version of a paper-pusher, merely moving reports from one end to the other. It's not bad, as such, just not something I imagine as an important thing. But, it's what the market / society / the invisible hand has decided is deserving of almost outlandlishly wealthy levels of pay, so I do it.
On the other hand, the things I find most important are the activities I either don't get paid to do or I actively pay to do them. Volunteering at my library showing kids and older adults how to read and find information. Being a guide at the zoo, hanging out with animals and encouraging others to see them as worth conserving. Knocking on doors for my preferred candidate in local elections. These are all things that, should I deduce some way to continue to pay my usual bills without having to digitally-push-paper, I would happily do for the rest of my days and let someone else occupy my chair at work. That I don't get paid to do them is almost part of the charm, though I wish society valued the work highly enough that I could get paid to do one or more of those instead of dealing with the latest wrinkle in "site reliability engineering."
But what I am saying is that it shows what I'm doing is important to other people. It's not just something I'm doing for myself.
> it's what the market / society / the invisible hand has decided is deserving of almost outlandlishly wealthy levels of pay, so I do it.
That's true, but I prefer to deabstractify it a bit. There are real people, who have decided to spend substantial money on paying you and me to do what we do, because they think it's important. That makes it very real to me. And confirmed by an independent outside "reviewer", so to speak.
I came into this way of thinking after being a stubborn youth who hated work and dreamt about never having to do it. But I couldn't get the ethics of it all to add up. So this is how I made sense of things.
Of course, what you describe sounds like working for the benefit of others as well.
-Direct comments from people saying as much -Visible effects of your work changing things around you -People providing you with physical, yet solely sentimentally valuable tokens of their thanks
The money is one way of keeping score, but it's not the singular way of keeping score. It's only important if you feel it's important. You can volunteer at an old folks home or help maintain an important, widely used OS project, and pretty easily understand that what you're doing is valuable to your society. There are all sorts of tasks that you can perform that have an overt and direct impact but which will not provide you with any financial income. Within the context of the discussion, being retired (which we earlier defined as existing in a state in which you no longer need additional financial gain in order to support your lifestyle) you could still perform meaningful task that aren't jobs.
OP hasn't commented on what it is that makes "working jobs for money" his thing. We can only speculate what his answers would be. I'm still of the opinion that it's either avarice and a love of money as a way of keeping score of your life, or a misunderstanding of what non-work activities look like.
How do you define greed? What do you feel I'm misunderstanding about the concept? Just so we can further this discussion, I'll put down my thought: Greed is the desire for money for money's sake. Using money as a way of proving that something is important. It is the desire to posses more than one needs. The crux of our disagreement here is likely that, defining what "needs" are. I believe capitalist societies are inherently greedy and therefor flawed. I'm not singularly condemning OP, I wish a pox upon the whole enterprise.
I would add "at the expense of others" to clarify that.
Getting paid to work is making money by helping others, which to me is the opposite of "greed"!
The trade of exchanging labor for money is one of the cornerstones of civilization, and everything that's good in the world, as I see it. So we seem to have some discrepancies in our world views :)
I have no quarrel at all with your other ways of knowing your work is appreciated. They all sound good and healthy.
No quarrels though. You seem like a nice enough person.
I'm trying to figure out what OP feels provides him meaning at work. If it's the money, and he gets depressed when he doesn't make money, I'm fine calling that greedy. If it's the lack of meaningful "work" you can do the work without the money. If it's a 3rd thing, I genuinely don't understand what it could be since to me work is simply "doing a task for money".
Most people would define "retirement" as "no longer working for money, while using savings or other existing means of income to pay for living expenses"