The privilege of the invalid

This was something Thomas Szasz went on about. I never managed to read
the whole of his book the Myth of Mental Illness. Just the first few pages.

He talks about this though. He talks about the separation between the
work-shy or those who might use the privilege of disability and those
who are disabled.

This is why some people are on Job Seekers Allowance and others
Incapacity Benefit. This is wrong though. Being unemployed carries some
of the problems of social disability. It could be easy to expand the
mental health system to cover those who dont want to work. This could be
made out to be a mental illness if anyone wanted to waste research
effort seeking biological associations. They will live shorter lives,
face exclusion and other problems. Their could be behavioural
modification techniques used to make them 'normal'.

Or their could be compassion and understanding. The compassion is
obvious. Why let another human being live in poverty?

The understanding...well that's something a little more complex. First
there is the question of what is work? The long term unemployed may
contribute to society and the collective in different ways. They may
have the time to be good friends or be part of the community.

The question of what is work is an important one to consider. Let's take
the entire investment banking industry and ask the question: what is
work? I admit I don't know a huge amount about it but I understand a
little. Successful traders are skilled gamblers. They invest money in
stuff which they reckon is going to be successful based on the risk
versus reward equation. The ones who get it right make a lot of money
for themselves and the company. However most of the work they do is
futile. The industry itself generates little value for the core purpose
of work. Primarily I guess their use is financing other work, real work,
but I wonder just how much of this important work is done and how much
valuable human work time is wasted on just making money for the sake of
making money. For example the futures market (again, my understanding is
very basic) is buying things which don't exist yet. The reason is
producers want a guaranteed price in the future for whatever they make
so the market was created but the rest of what the industry does...well
it doesn't really seem like work in the sense that it contributes to the
greater good. The traders themselves think in terms of money alone and I
think this is probably why the industry has evolved from solving a
problem for people who do real work (making useful stuff for the people)
to what is essentially very well paid gambling which, to me, isn't what
I'd call real work.