If you reject the PWE then very different possibilities emerge and in particular "full employment" stops looking like a good public policy goal and start looking like you're just trying to waste as much of people's time as possible.
I hear the PWE invoked (usually with a sneer), and reflect that it seems to be referring to exactly how my parents have operated throughout their adult lives, and that if everyone behaved the way my parents have done (to the extent that they are capable, of course), society would function far more effectively and harmoniously.
And then I wonder what I'm missing.
My mother spent her career working in hospitals helping to rehabilitate seriously injured and ill people. In her non-work time she cared for her ageing parents until they passed away. Now she helps raise her grandkids.
My father helped design and build telecommunications networks then ran a company making electronic gadgets that helped school kids learn about science, and environmental researchers gather data.
Both of them have spent much of their non-work time volunteering in the community - at kindergarten, school, church, and more. And they have maintained a healthy social life and done plenty of travel.
They've always been busy, but never burnt out or exhausted. Always occupied and fulfilled, never resentful.
I don't see how any of their work or volunteering is surplus to society's requirements.
I do see that society would be better off if more people were doing the kind of work and volunteering that my parents have always done.
What am I missing here?
Probably the religious connection helps illuminate the problem more than it is hiding anything.
The reason this is called a Protestant work ethic is that some Christian sects don't think deeds matter, for them working isn't important, what matters is believing. So a sincere believer who rapes and murders is good, whereas an atheist who is kind and generous is evil. This quickly goes down a No True Scotsman rabbit hole with real Christians, but that's the summary. So the belief that what you do even _matters_ is fundamental to the PWE.
But it turns out that "what you do is what's important" is almost as flawed as "what you believe is what's important". In both cases these rely on a personal God keeping a running tally, they just disagree on what He's counting. But the real world has no personal God keeping that tally, it doesn't exist.
Your parents lives are consequential in their _effects_ not in terms of how much labour they put in to achieve those effects. The PWE quite intentionally doesn't care about those effects, what possible effect could you have next to the will of God anyway?
> "The PWE quite intentionally doesn't care about those effects, what possible effect could you have next to the will of God anyway?"
Can you provide any links to material that back up that claim? It's not how it's described in the Wikipedia page, for what it's worth.
I'll grant you there may be some people who think the kind of things you describe, but does it really have any kind of dominant influence in the world? I see no evidence for that, and I can't see how society could ever have functioned or progressed if it did.
What I see is that well-functioning people in well-functioning societies take care to do things that have positive consequences for themselves, their families and their societies, and try to go about them industriously so as to maximise those positive effects.
And people generally pay close attention to what others are doing, to gauge who is making a positive contribution and who isn't (both on an individual level, and at a corporate/government level). Then we encourage and reward those who make a good contribution, and critique/penalise those who don't (and ideally, help/support those who can't).
Sure, it's not "God" keeping tally, but it's society at large, by making direct observations and sharing their observations through word of mouth and (more recently) through the media.
I'd suggest that society's progress may be faltering because too many people - including many highly-paid and highly-powerful people - are not making a sufficiently positive contribution to society, whilst many people who make a strong contribution don't get adequately rewarded.
But to me that seems more due to an abandonment of the principles of said work ethic, rather than being too heavily beholden to it.
I guess we seem to be talking about different things, so at this stage I don't seem to be missing anything :)
I think my objection to the use of the term "Protestant Work Ethic" as a pejorative is that it can evoke bigotry on multiple fronts.
Most simply, it can be bigoted towards practicing/identifying Protestants.
More broadly, it can be bigoted towards "ordinary hard-working people" like my parents (who, I must point out, are in no sense conservative/right-wing in their politics or social values).
But it can be equally bigoted towards non-Protestants and/or people other than white Europeans/Westerners, by implying that a solid work ethic is uniquely identifiable with Protestants and white Europeans/Westerners, which of course is demonstrably untrue and insulting to people of other cultures/backgrounds.
I now understand that the root commenter was invoking the term as a byword for pointless busywork, as distinct from work that has meaningful outcomes.
But as I said in my parent comment, I'm not convinced that this is an accurate characterisation. At least I'm yet to see evidence for that.
I'm also curious about what people have in mind when they suggest that it shouldn't be considered necessary or important for most people to be working productively (i.e., for the actual betterment of society), in a world that seems to have limitless problems to be solved.
But I guess that's the beginning of a discussion about how we gauge the usefulness of the work people do.