Thank you for your comment, C Morse. This piece is (intended to be) more of a reflection on the risks associated with convincing ourselves that hard work alone entitles us to ‘get ahead in life’ than an examination of the value — inherent or incidental — associated with the discovery of complexity.

Running throughout this article is an implicit suggestion that the type of work about which I’m talking is that which is explicitly connected to the production of results. Even in the brief example you cite, i.e., the discovery of complexity, which I take to mean an enhanced grasping of the problem under consideration, the value is not the effort as such but rather that to which the effort gives rise — i.e., the enhanced understanding. After all, it’s this deeper and more nuanced appreciation of ‘exactly what we’re dealing with here’ that allows others, such as the ‘producers’ you mention, to then (begin to) develop concrete solutions.

Essentially, the point I’m making in this post is this:

• If your job is to cultivate a deeper understanding of one or more specific problems and you have, in fact, cultivated such an understanding — regardless of its practical application — then you are, indeed, entitled to expect recognition, fair compensation, and the like; however,
• If your job is to produce a workable solution to a concrete problem and you have not, in fact, produced such a solution then it’s unrealistic for you to expect the same acknowledgement and rewards that you would have received had you completed your task successfully.

As a philosopher, I’ll be the first to admit the importance and necessity of engaging in ‘impractical’ kinds of labour. But if you’re a website designer and rather than creating functional websites for your clients you spend all your time thinking and writing about the existential threat that the Internet poses to human freedom then, well, you haven’t done your job, have you?

Cheers!