r/antiwork is a terrible forum. The legitimate criticisms of western working culture are mixed in with people who just don't think they need to contribute to society in order to benefit from it. There's too many highschoolers complaining about their first job to take it seriously.
I mean, isn't that just working for free? If the only means towards contributing to society were through things like open-source, you would essentially be saying that society should be run off of volunteerism.
You can contribute in any way that people who have worked to create food, shelter, useful energy, clothing, and other items that you want are willing to exchange for those contributions.
Call it work, call it art, call it whatever you want, but those people aren’t likely to bust their ass so you can enjoy the fruits of their labor while returning nothing.
I’m in favor of people contributing to society and I find meaningful work to be necessary to my own well-being but the idea that people need to make something productive in order to compensate others who do is laughable in a world where capital gains are so superior to wages.
Why? Labor with capital is incredibly more useful and productive than labor alone. We aren't any smarter today than people a couple hundred years ago, the main difference that makes our lives much easier is we've built up various forms of capital over the years.
We built machinery, processes, IP, etc using saved and invested capital. That machinery wouldn't be built without the capital. And thus labor would be nearly valueless. The machines and processes also stop functioning when the ownership structure is destroyed as we have recently seen in the Venezuelan oil wells. With capital its very much the virtual (ownership) driving the creation, maintainance and operation of the real (machines, processes, etc).
It is, and I think it’s a general problem that deserves a lot more attention than it gets. A lot of people, and I should be clear that I include myself, are consuming an endless stream of fake stories that validate their preconceptions and biases. It’s not healthy and very possibly dangerous.
Considering the efforts troll farms put in during the previous election cycles on reddit, I wonder if what we're seeing in places like /r/antiwork is more or less the same. Subversion by nation-state troll farms fomenting intergenerational strife.
I’m amazed at how people see themselves as stuck or forced into their job, especially the younger ones and especially people without kids. For people in that position there are almost endless possibilities for ways to make a living. I’m concerned that many of the people in these communities are depressed and suffering from anhedonia and a self reinforcing cycle of hopelessness.
The anti-work philosophy is not anti-labor. I think anyone of sense can acknowledge that energy needs to be put into the system in order to produce the necessities of life. Rather, the ideology is about allowing people to focus on the kinds of labor which brings value and meaning the community and the ones doing it. It's about eliminating 'bullshit' work, work which does not generate anything other than inane products, stock values and tools to do more of the same. Much of the work around the software industry focuses on this kind of 'bullshit' work.
Possibilities: Inexperienced young people are made to commit hard and fast to a career path. Once locked in, this choice (in the US at least) often comes with a large financial burden and time. Support is not there to pivot. Immediately after you leave (trade, academic institutions), the culture sets to weighing you down with more debt. By the time you extract yourself from that, it's still hard to pivot because now you're dealing with Ageism and sunk cost (will you recover this productivity and still put enough away to retire?). Even if you decide to bridge that gap, society provides you with absolutely no safety net. The punishment from making the wrong choice as a young dumb kid are harsh.
The "Endless possibilities" is part of the depressing trap. They're _there_, but they're so far out of reach and dangerous that unless you happen to live a charmed life with a deep-pocketed safety net, the risk-reward just doesn't make sense. This is why many in the US want tax-sponsored education and single-payer healthcare, so they can make these pivots and find happiness without having to retire at 80.
On being forced: There is really no sane way to disengage with exchanging labor. Say that I want to drop out and entirely disconnect myself. Say I fully agree to reject the products of society, be alone even unto death, and be self-sufficient. I can't buy a piece of land and sit on it. Eventually the Tax Man will come for me, and if I don't pay, he will take my land, with violence if need be. I cannot go hide in the woods. That land is the property of another or of the government - I will be chased by law enforcement and federal agents. I can't even just ghost through cities who are growing increasingly hostile to homeless populations. The system is powered by violence and coercion, and your only choice is to exchange labor for money. This could be a fair exchange if it lived up to promises. There is a rate where exchanging freedoms for perks makes sense. but a lot of people play entirely by the rules, do everything right, and still end up miserable, trapped and broken.
So yeah, it's forced. If you can't sit back and live on generational wealth or rent on your assets, every job you've ever taken has implicit threat of force behind it. You can make bad-faith arguments about the existence of choice, but choice is an illusion unless the choices presented have a reality where taking that choice makes sense. Cake or Death - what kind of sane person chooses death over cake?
I don't think anti-work is a pit of hopelessness. It's actually far more idealistic in its view that _the pieces are there_ and there are alternatives. Whether you believe that or not is really up you. That this briefly made it on to Hackernews surprised me - Hackernews continues to largely reflect the California Ideology, something that doesn't tend to breed a lot of solidarity outside of its own professions.
It's in some ways, depending on how you look at it, it's even more extreme than Marx - at least Marx wanted to give everyone meaningful work. Even if the anti-workers get what they want, computers and robots doing everything, how are we getting there, and how do we find meaning in this post-work state? I would certainly not find meaning in watching entertainment 16 hours a day, but not even non-stop travel, hiking, leisurely conversations with our fellow liberated people (the stuff I like doing after work) could fill my void. I don't think it's stockholm syndrome to desire to fill all of our lives with some meaningful work and contribute to a society that loves you back! At least they point out the flaws of dog-eat-dog structured life, but the means to, the end-goal of, and the easiest society to pivot into that makes human life function certainly ought to be through meaningful, mutually value-adding work.
Many conservatives believe that highschoolers should be paid less for the same labor. This is a very common idea especially in the south. There is nobody to fight for that particular group except themselves. Unions just see them as competition. It is no wonder that they complain about their first job.
Australia has a "junior pay rate" where people under 21 can be paid less than minimum wage despite doing the same work. Sure you could argue they're less productive, but if you're doing minimum wage work I doubt it.
Exactly, everyone wants to oppress the juniors and use them as cheap labor. It is no wonder that they do not want the job. Seniority without real increase in productivity or merit is why unions are so unpopular.
I worked in NZ on a youth rate. It was $4.80 in the late 90s. The adult min wage was around $10. There was a team of 5 of us that would come in and clean a factory on Saturday.
It worked well for me. I loved the extra money and had no expenses of my own.
I now work in the upper tier of a similar factory. I discussed with our operations manager getting in some school aged workers to clean. It doesn't work out to be cost effective. We can just get the guys on the floor to clean up. As the guys on the floor cost the same and have already been trained and issued all the required safety equipment.
I appreciate this movement even though I personally enjoy the kind of work I do and can't really see myself ever stopping.
Let's be honest though, most people have it pretty rough… I like that people are coming together and at least venting about their situation.
We really need to think what we are doing as a society if even in the richest of countries people are miserable with their jobs and life. Life should be simpler and more pleasant for everyone.
Makes sense to me. Most jobs are just code that hasn't been written yet or simple machines that haven't been built yet. The only reason why is because there is no regulatory incentive to stop exploiting humans.
We conquered the world already. We have enough technology to replace most human labor with automation and enable people to produce entertainment, media, and innovation of their own accord. Instead people run around anxious and impoverished for basically no reason. You would never know humans are at the top of the food chain looking from the outside.
Why not get UBI done, replace the humans with robots, and then actually enjoy our lives?
The world of entertainment and media is far more cutthroat and imbalanced than any current work equivalents. I can only imagine how much worse our world would be if we had everyone pursuing clout.
I find these types of outlooks to be far too rose-tinted.
Productivity and other arguments aside. I think we still need a fair bit of advancement before this is possible.
We need to reach a point where robots can maintain themselves and all of our complex machinery. The maintenance required for a train engine or train tracks is non trivial for example.
We need advancements in energy. Solar is not enough at it's current state but I have hope it soon will be.
I do feel, we're at a point that, if we could focus a lot of resources, we can drive enough development to give everyone a very high quality of life for free.
At this point,the machinery we make the more machinery we have to maintain. And robots are not at the point where they can do this.
I used to be pro-UBI but no longer. Here's why: most people will stop working and become largely disconnected from society. They will only worry that the UBI is still coming in. A smaller percentage of people will continue working because they are internally compelled to work. These people will make all of the decisions in society. The power will be concentrated in an even smaller pool of people than today, leading to lesser freedom over time for the masses.
What you actually want in society is for as many people as possible to have the means and motivation to contribute to social progress, to keep it as fair as possible. You want more independence, not more dependence.
If universal basic income causes most people to stop working, and if the people who keep working get to amass all the power, then wouldn't everyone want UBI so they could keep working and have all the power?
In my head, universal basic income is more like tax returns, but each month instead of each year. Like a tax refund for food and shelter.
there are not a lot of jobs that are "code that hasn't been written yet" unless you include AGI... teachers, programmers, drivers, chefs, truck drivers, engineers, cashier, etc.
> Why not get UBI done, replace the humans with robots, and then actually enjoy our lives?
You still need an army. If everyone stops working then our neighbors can just organize their guns together and steal our robots. Unless of course we had a fully autonomous military (techno dystopia "stop right there criminal scum"). But who oversees the military robots? Who oversees the UBI? Somebody has to do the dirty work, and those people will have power, and as we know, people who have power will ultimately abuse it.
Why wouldn't you continue to have government officials and a standing human army with regular recruitment?
Just because there is UBI and most people don't have to enslave themselves to eat doesn't mean people won't want to do something with their lives. Soldiers and officials get UBI plus salary and they are chosen the same way they are now.
It seems that you just want to setup a straw man argument that you can then knock down.
UBI doesn't replace all human labor. It just incentivizes automation and puts people first. You'll still be able to find a job as a mechanic or robot engineer or programmer if you want. Then you can take a paycheck and UBI. But it will be of your own accord instead of forcing you into compliance with wage slavery like we do now.
I'm sure manual lathe operators in the 1960s would scoff if you told them by 2000 their job would be done by entry level labor operating robots (CNC machines). And they would have been wrong too, just like you are now.
UBI. Those people get a check in the mail just for being alive. If they decide to find work as a programmer or machine mechanic or something similar then they get UBI plus a paycheck.
UBI by itself is basically a paycheck for doing what you love. Invent a new product. Make projects on github. Write a song. Be happy. Make other people happy.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadPlenty of valuable contributions are made outside of traditional "work"
Call it work, call it art, call it whatever you want, but those people aren’t likely to bust their ass so you can enjoy the fruits of their labor while returning nothing.
Because people who owns the capital don't have to work and still hugely profit from society that's why.
Also we innovated and built machinery not capital. Don't confuse the abstraction we use to track ownership with what is actually owned.
Possibilities: Inexperienced young people are made to commit hard and fast to a career path. Once locked in, this choice (in the US at least) often comes with a large financial burden and time. Support is not there to pivot. Immediately after you leave (trade, academic institutions), the culture sets to weighing you down with more debt. By the time you extract yourself from that, it's still hard to pivot because now you're dealing with Ageism and sunk cost (will you recover this productivity and still put enough away to retire?). Even if you decide to bridge that gap, society provides you with absolutely no safety net. The punishment from making the wrong choice as a young dumb kid are harsh.
The "Endless possibilities" is part of the depressing trap. They're _there_, but they're so far out of reach and dangerous that unless you happen to live a charmed life with a deep-pocketed safety net, the risk-reward just doesn't make sense. This is why many in the US want tax-sponsored education and single-payer healthcare, so they can make these pivots and find happiness without having to retire at 80.
On being forced: There is really no sane way to disengage with exchanging labor. Say that I want to drop out and entirely disconnect myself. Say I fully agree to reject the products of society, be alone even unto death, and be self-sufficient. I can't buy a piece of land and sit on it. Eventually the Tax Man will come for me, and if I don't pay, he will take my land, with violence if need be. I cannot go hide in the woods. That land is the property of another or of the government - I will be chased by law enforcement and federal agents. I can't even just ghost through cities who are growing increasingly hostile to homeless populations. The system is powered by violence and coercion, and your only choice is to exchange labor for money. This could be a fair exchange if it lived up to promises. There is a rate where exchanging freedoms for perks makes sense. but a lot of people play entirely by the rules, do everything right, and still end up miserable, trapped and broken.
So yeah, it's forced. If you can't sit back and live on generational wealth or rent on your assets, every job you've ever taken has implicit threat of force behind it. You can make bad-faith arguments about the existence of choice, but choice is an illusion unless the choices presented have a reality where taking that choice makes sense. Cake or Death - what kind of sane person chooses death over cake?
I don't think anti-work is a pit of hopelessness. It's actually far more idealistic in its view that _the pieces are there_ and there are alternatives. Whether you believe that or not is really up you. That this briefly made it on to Hackernews surprised me - Hackernews continues to largely reflect the California Ideology, something that doesn't tend to breed a lot of solidarity outside of its own professions.
https://www.fairwork.gov.au/pay-and-wages/minimum-wages/juni...
It worked well for me. I loved the extra money and had no expenses of my own.
I now work in the upper tier of a similar factory. I discussed with our operations manager getting in some school aged workers to clean. It doesn't work out to be cost effective. We can just get the guys on the floor to clean up. As the guys on the floor cost the same and have already been trained and issued all the required safety equipment.
We conquered the world already. We have enough technology to replace most human labor with automation and enable people to produce entertainment, media, and innovation of their own accord. Instead people run around anxious and impoverished for basically no reason. You would never know humans are at the top of the food chain looking from the outside.
Why not get UBI done, replace the humans with robots, and then actually enjoy our lives?
The same people also conflate "capitalism" with "democracy" and forget that it is actually possible to have the latter without the former.
Hollywood has 10 years or relevance and 20 years of existence as we know it.
Ask your kids who Chris Pratt is. Now ask them who Jeris Johnson is.
Productivity and other arguments aside. I think we still need a fair bit of advancement before this is possible.
We need to reach a point where robots can maintain themselves and all of our complex machinery. The maintenance required for a train engine or train tracks is non trivial for example.
We need advancements in energy. Solar is not enough at it's current state but I have hope it soon will be.
I do feel, we're at a point that, if we could focus a lot of resources, we can drive enough development to give everyone a very high quality of life for free.
At this point,the machinery we make the more machinery we have to maintain. And robots are not at the point where they can do this.
I hear what you're saying, and I agree it is very optimistic.
But is it really? You can fit an RMV into a Redbox machine. You can fit a Dunkins into a machine the size of a 15 yard dumpster.
Then you don't need the train to transport all those employees to work.
What you actually want in society is for as many people as possible to have the means and motivation to contribute to social progress, to keep it as fair as possible. You want more independence, not more dependence.
In my head, universal basic income is more like tax returns, but each month instead of each year. Like a tax refund for food and shelter.
You still need an army. If everyone stops working then our neighbors can just organize their guns together and steal our robots. Unless of course we had a fully autonomous military (techno dystopia "stop right there criminal scum"). But who oversees the military robots? Who oversees the UBI? Somebody has to do the dirty work, and those people will have power, and as we know, people who have power will ultimately abuse it.
Just because there is UBI and most people don't have to enslave themselves to eat doesn't mean people won't want to do something with their lives. Soldiers and officials get UBI plus salary and they are chosen the same way they are now.
It seems that you just want to setup a straw man argument that you can then knock down.
UBI doesn't replace all human labor. It just incentivizes automation and puts people first. You'll still be able to find a job as a mechanic or robot engineer or programmer if you want. Then you can take a paycheck and UBI. But it will be of your own accord instead of forcing you into compliance with wage slavery like we do now.
This is peak techbro arrogance. No, most jobs are not replaceable by code and "simple machines".
UBI by itself is basically a paycheck for doing what you love. Invent a new product. Make projects on github. Write a song. Be happy. Make other people happy.