The Effort Myth: Studying Hard Only to Sweep Streets

The Effort Myth: From Studying to Being Called Lazy

There is a scene that captures the malaise of a generation: a man on his way to work sees a woman sweeping the street early in the morning and feels envy. Not for the job itself, but for her peace. The core idea is that the education system works as a massive scam: years of effort within an artificial reward circuit disconnected from the real world. Upon graduation, the market does not reward effort and often despises those who spent their lives studying.

The most repeated diagnosis is that it has never been easier to tame the population. With two simple levers—salary as positive reinforcement and fines or prison as punishment—the majority accepts a routine they did not choose. The workday is learned in school; useful things are not.

Why doesn't the education system teach anything useful?

The most common argument is that school does not educate, it trains. One spends a lifetime studying English only to be unable to hold a conversation with a four-year-old. The same applies to other subjects. The real goal, proponents argue, is to accustom students to waking up early and spending the day bored, which is exactly what awaits them later.

The harshest version of this thesis points to origins: the current education system draws inspiration from the Prussian model, designed to manufacture obedience and discourage critical thinking. Hence, all ideologies and religions share one obsession: they cannot tolerate lazy people. They antiestéticar those who do nothing because they cannot indoctrinate them.

The mirage of a golden retirement

Another piece of the mechanism is the promise of the future. A comfortable retirement with a high salary is sold much like eternal heaven was once sold to those breaking their backs in fields or factories. The mechanism is identical: enduring a perversos life in exchange for a deferred reward that never fully arrives.

The circulating comparison involves horses. When needed to pull carts, they were bred by the millions and tamed. When cars and trucks arrived, a global conflict was exploited to liquidate them. The parallel with today's worker is unkind but holds weight: the system is designed to prevent those who row from getting rich.

From slave to employee: the same collar

Until a few centuries ago, only slaves and serfs worked for others. The only change is the name: where 'servant' was used, 'employee' is now used. The economic result is the same: providing food and housing without paying a salary equates to paying a salary that hits zero at month-end after covering food and housing costs.

Some even see an advantage for employers in the current model. A slave cost the equivalent of around 50,000 euros and had to yield returns for life; when sick or old, disposing of them was a problem. The wage-earner, however, can be replaced at no cost.

The case of the street sweeper everyone knew

Against general disdain, one experience nuances the portrait. A neighborhood street sweeper, now retired, had his assigned zone. He started at seven, brought his transistor radio to listen to news and then music, and took coffee and a cigarette with the neighbor on duty mid-morning. Everyone knew and liked him. By two in the afternoon he was home: lunch, nap, and free time.

The contrast with the life of a university graduate is what hurts. The first had a defined, recognized trade with fixed hours. The second accumulates degrees, meetings, and colleagues willing to stab him in the back for a position. Envy, in this context, is not directed at sweeping: it is directed at the absence of anxiety.

Work that isn't shared and families that aren't formed

In the roughest part of the issue, demographics appear. It is argued that there are too few mothers and too many women occupying jobs, and that inducing women to behave like men sterilizes both: they lose maternal instinct, and millions of men cannot support a family because the position that would belong to them is occupied by someone else. This is a harsh thesis, lacking supporting data, and should be read as what it is: just another opinion within the malaise.

Alongside it coexists the opposite reading, also present: the massive entry of women into the labor market did not liberate them, it pushed them into the worst jobs. Some see women of childbearing age cleaning streets on Sundays and interpret it as the scam of liberation: there are no good jobs for everyone, and those available are poorly paid trash that destroys people.

Getting off the wheel: is it possible?

The practical question is whether one can step off the treadmill. Some have done so: at 42, during the 2008 crisis, they stopped rowing. Others warn that exiting has a price. If someone supports you, you live in limbo and payments don't last. If you become a incivil, you must be very tough or end badly, always in uncertainty. Most do not escape.

Others recall that the issue is not binary. There is a middle ground between burning out through study and working, and being a parasite letting days pass. The problem, others counter, is that nobody cares about effort: the market rewards results. If you generate value, you receive it. If not, don't come crying over something you haven't earned.

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The analysis stalls at the same point where it began. The scene of the woman sweeping remains there, early, before the heat. What is unclear is whether the envy was directed at her job or at the increasingly remote possibility of having a life that fits within a schedule.