Capitalism and the ideology of laziness

A few days ago, I had an unpleasant conversation with someone over whether welfare reduces or sustains poverty. Even after showing all the statistics that prove that, the countries with highest welfare spending have some of the least poverty, he still insisted that it created a negative incentive. 

After a while, I asked him flat out whether if he personally got comfortable pay for doing nothing the rest of his life, he would not do anything to which the answer effectively was "yes." He even went further and said that the only reason people acquire skills to do any job, whether it's a lawyer, baker, plumber, mechanic, engineer etc. was to get money; and if they been provided money, people would basically lay on a couch all day for the rest of their lives.

This seems like one the fundamental underlying ideologies of capitalism, that people have to be forced to work through money or else they'll vegetate. It helps explain many of the pathologies of it, from the loathing of welfare to the idolatry of the rich and powerful (at least among themselves) but also performs the important task of making coercion look like necessity, that is, people are forced to work in the current system but that does not mean they have to be.  

The Lack of Work Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism?

First, it is worth looking into this claim empirically. The closet simulation of actually getting "paid to do nothing" was welfare in the US prior to changes in the 1990s. During this time, there were no work requirements and time limits and benefits were actually higher, essentially there was nothing preventing people from simply living on welfare for the indefinite future. According the statistics: the median months on welfare from 1969 to 1996 was about 25 months or slightly over two years. Notice this is not only less than even the lifetime limit of four years, but less than the supposed decades we were led to believe moochers lived on prior to it being "reformed."

Of course there are people who would live off the system and not do anything but overwhelmingly most would not. People are, buy and large, not pathological egotists who need to be coerced to do work, but people with a creative desires that are realized through work. Indeed, the "incentive" comes from this inner drive.

The purpose of the vegetable belief is obvious, since people are, by default, forced to work or die then it the people defending the system have to claim that this is necessary because human beings are necessarily not going to work unless forced. Of course, all systems of oppression make justifications on the basis of immutable human nature, this belief is no different.