> "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.