Antiwork

It is unfortunate that this anti-work rhetoric often comes off as outrageous, when in reality it isn't. I don't know if the people doing it are intentionally trying to be controversial, or if they just are not good at communicating.

When we complain about work, this doesn't mean that we are asking for a world where we lounge all day at home, and expect that food, shelter and entertainment are magically delivered to us without any regard to how it happens. No, anti-work is not about a blind sense of entitlement. But that is how a lot of these posts come off as, even if their authors don't intend it.

Anti-work is a recognition that the working class works way too damn much; so much more than we need to to have a functioning society with everyone living happily and having their needs met. There's so much inefficiency in capitalism, with aims to drive more capital to the wealthy, and working around other stupidities of capitalism (check out the book "Bullshit jobs" for examples). The ruling class holds hostage the world's resources, and requires you to give them a large portion of your life to get even the minimum needed to sustain your living. Now that is outrageous.

Good lord this community is cringe most of the time.

"Hello, I would like to benefit from society without contributing to it"

When I say I'm tired of working for a living I don't mean that I don't want to work, I meant that I don't want to work for other people doing something I don't care about so someone I don't care about can better achieve something I don't care about just so they pay me money for it. I'm happy to work when that goes directly goes toward my own well-being and that of my family and local community. I just get so tired of doing work that I have no personal investment in beyond "it makes me money so I can then give that money to other people."

So I play Rimworld and dream of what it would be like to have a role in a small community where everyone does their part for the direct benefit of the community and it isn't all just about money.

Pretty sure in the old days, when there were fewer people, you could just fuck off into the forest and build yourself a cottage. If your feudal lord found out you’d be in trouble, but they didn’t have satellites or whatnot to track you down.

We have this weird unwritten assumption that the cost of technological advancement (esp medical) was our own domestication. That we sacrificed freedom and privacy for health and safety. I wonder if that’s really the case, or if it’s some bullshit post hoc justification

It made sense when working meant providing for families, and even in the industrial revolution where it meant making mass goods for large amounts of people to enjoy.

But what happens when we get the ability to produce more than we need with only a relatively small amount of humans to do it? If we have the resources where we can easily give everyone on the planet a cell phone, why not do it?

We are already there with some goods: for example, we currently produce enough food to feed 1.5x the world’s population. We may very well reach a point in the next 20-30 years where we can produce everything market wants with 50% or perhaps even 25% of adult humans actually working. Our solution so far is creating artificial scarcity, but that’s only going to patch the system for so long.

Already we’re eschewing traditional factory jobs for service industry jobs like meal delivery. But we’re not far off from autonomous delivery vehicles automating that away, too. With the rise of AI, we can expect a lot more jobs to be augmented or superseded by automation over time.

Capitalism rests on the premises that we can always produce more and that people’s value is tied to their labor. But in a post-scarcity, heavily automated world, these premises break down, and suddenly this system doesn’t really work anymore.

Short of a communist revolution, I think we are going to need to start trialing measures that divorce benefits from labor. Most of the world already has healthcare coverage separated from labor (USA is the glaring exception,) and the next step would likely be universal basic income.

I don't think I'm entitled to someone else's labor, no. I would like fair compensation for mine is all.

How I see this problem is that we aren't given to tools to help us decide how we want to live our lives. Work sucks and is a waste of time. Contributing to society is valuable and something I want to do.

I mean there's a lot of wilderness and open space in the US. No one is stopping you from going out there and starting from scratch. Go ahead and do it

Actually, that one's on me guys, sorry. I just said we were all okay with it and honestly thought you'd all be fine with it...? Anyway, my bad.

I mean I guess you can go all Fountainhead and just live in the woods. Of course, you'll probably die if you don't do any work, but you definitely have a choice.

Honestly, I have more of an anarchist mindset. You shouldn't have to work, at least not a job. I'd rather build my own house and grow my own food. Everything I do directly benefits me and my family, not the rich. But I need money to buy the land....

For the literal sense, yes, I do remember consenting work for livelihood. Now, that work actually is being made into servitude, I don't remember. Livable work is really scarce, servitude and selling-out isn't.

It's the way of the world. To eat, to live, work must be done. The most fair is way to divide up the work which must be done is by capacity. The fruits of those labors should be distributed first according to need, second according to whomever produced them.

This is not how things are done now, of course. Now, the neediest work hardest, and the fruits of that labor flow to those who have the least need.

The premise here is kinda blurred, but I think it does exist and goes something like that:

If you want to live and benefit from a society you must contribute to it

Is it wrong? Is it right? I think the anwser lies somewhere in between.

However one that is not established and I think it should be written down is one that my pops used to say:

Do not live to work, and if you love your job and enjoy it there more than anywhere in the world than you are already living, but even so do it with moderation else it will destroy you or turn something you love back to work.