Is making wage for a living bad?

It seems a lot of people in history associated working for wages to be associated with everything from servitude to immorality.

Cicero called it wage slavery.
>"...vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labor, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery."

Thomas Jefferson said that some jobs are nessissary and wanted, but that industrialization is undesirable, and that factories should stay in Europe and not corrupting Americans with dependence, servility, venality, and how its destructive to virtue.
>"let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling a distaff."
learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newnation/4478

Are they right?

>picture unrelated.

“I could not affirm,” says the father of history, Herodotus, “whether the Creeks derived from the Egyptians the contempt which they have for work, because I find the same contempt established among the Thracians, the Cythians, the Persians, the Lydians; in a word, because among most barbarians, those who learn mechanical arts and even their children are regarded as the meanest of their citizens. All the Greeks have been nurtured in this principle, particularly the Lacedaemonians.”

“At Athens the citizens were veritable nobles who had to concern themselves but with the defense and the administration of the community, like the savage warriors from whom they descended. Since they must thus have all their time free to watch over the interests of the republic, with their mental and bodily strength, they laid all labor upon the slaves. Likewise at Lacedaemon, even the women were not allowed to spin or weave that they might not detract from their nobility.”

The Romans recognized but two noble and free professions, agriculture and arms. All the citizens by right lived at the expense of the treasury without being constrained to provide for their living by any of the sordid arts (thus, they designated the trades), which rightfully belonged to slaves. The elder Brutus to arouse the people, accused Tarquin, the tyrant, of the special outrage of having converted free citizens into artisans and masons.

The ancient philosophers had their disputes upon the origin of ideas but they agreed when it came to the abhorrence of work. “Nature,” said Plato in his social utopia, his model republic, “Nature has made no shoemaker nor smith. Such occupations degrade the people who exercise them. Vile mercenaries, nameless wretches, who are by their very condition excluded from political rights. As for the merchants accustomed to lying and deceiving, they will be allowed in the city only as a necessary evil. The citizen who shall have degraded himself by the commerce of the shop shall be prosecuted for this offense. If he is convicted, he shall be condemned to a year in prison; the punishment shall be doubled for each repeated offense.”

In his Economics, Xenophon writes, “The people who give themselves up to manual labor are never promoted to public offices, and with good reason. The greater part of them, condemned to be seated the whole day long, some even to endure the heat of the fire continually, cannot fail to be changed in body, and it is almost inevitable that the mind be affected.” “What honorable thing can come out of a shop?” asks Cicero. “What can commerce produce in the way of honor? Everything called shop is unworthy an honorable man. Merchants can gain no profit without lying, and what is more shameful than falsehood? Again, we must regard as something base and vile the trade of those who sell their toil and industry, for whoever gives his labor for money sells himself and puts himself in the tank of slaves.”

Plato and Aristotle wish the citizens of their ideal republics to live in the most complete leisure, for as Xenophon observed, “Work takes all the time and with it one has no leisure for the republic and his friends.” According to Plutarch, the great claim of Lycurgus, wisest of men, to the admiration of posterity, was that he had granted leisure to the citizens of Sparta by forbidding to them any trade whatever.

NEET masterrace

The Romans liked agriculture. As the poster above quoted.

There was some romanticism of the small-time roman farmer in their society. Unfortunately the latifundia rekted the small-time roman farmer pretty hard, like Walmart to the mom and pop stores.

That is almost the case, desu.

Jobless Oblige.

Depends on what you work, really.

If you're shoveling cow shit for 15 hours straight then yes it's pretty bad (which is generally the kind of wageslavery Cicero had in mind)

I get payed to sit on my ass for 7 hours and answer sporadic phone calls between browsing 4chinz. I'm not complaining.

why would be bad? work dignifies

t. Calvin