this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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Antiwork
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- The Abolition of Work by Bob Black (1985) | listen
- On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (2013) | listen
- In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) | listen
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How do things become common sense Bob? Someone needs to teach it to them. You're relying on people being taught not only financial information, but also how to problem solve. In case you haven't noticed, schools do a shit job at teaching problem solving and critical thinking as well, especially because it often isn't an explicit part of the curriculum.
That isn't the main issue though. Going back to something you said earlier
Ignoring the fact that A.I. might actually be able to actually do that soon, you have the classic attitude of personal responsibility being necessary for someone's life. Your life is your responsibility. While this may be true to an extent, in practicality people get screwed over by forces outside their control far too often for it to automatically be what one should assume.
This point of view is called an internal locus of control, and it is very useful in motivating people to keep trying to help themselves despite the odds. The insidious thing about our culture is how it is used to keep people from fully interrogating our unfair system. It's a foundational belief that is inaccurate on a few levels.
First, people are not in control of ourselves to a larger extent than we'd like to believe. Even Freud could tell that certain desires and impulses control our behavior more than our conscious mind. On one hand, things like fear and hunger can override our consciousness to make us act illogical. On the other, societal training and preconceived notions can cloud our perception and make us conform to societal notions we don't even support. Things like gut bacteria and environmental factors can totally change the way we think or what we want.
Bigger still, we are all biologically and neurologically different. Some people are born with a diminished capacity for controlling their impulses, understanding certain concepts, or thinking in certain ways. Some people just won't get financial management until the 100th time it's explained to them. Some people will have trouble getting themselves to do things they don't enjoy, even if they want to and hate themselves for not being able to. Some people are born dyslexic, have exceptional trouble doing basic math, or have other disabilities. There are way more of these people than you think, and without the proper resources, have trouble doing the things you seem to assume are within everyone's capabilities.
The thing is, most people with disabilities can be productive members of society, some even more productive than average. There's a fine line between disability and advantage. Some people are born unlucky, having a net lack of merit in a meritocracy. Under the current system only disabled people with a wealthy enough family can become high enough functioning to not fucking die from how they were born. Some people will always need help, that they currently only get if their family can support them.
When you were talking about small business owners struggling, you were missing my point. I wasn't talking about 95% of business owners. I was talking about the 1% of business owners who have the majority of the wealth. They may have capital, but they have more in common with the working class than the people lucky enough to win Monopoly. That is what we're playing with the free market capitalism, a game of Monopoly where eventually one person owns everything. Even people with the same start as the eventual winner can end up with nothing based on pure luck. The game was made by a socialist to demonstrate this truth, true fact.
The ultimate lesson is that luck defines most things, from your merit to your ability to even make choices. This doesn't mean we stop trying, it means we need to make a society where people without "merit" don't die for being cosmicaly unlucky. Where we use modern technology from teaching ideas to surgeries and drugs to make sure no one is left behind. We need to ultimately force the lucky to not let people needlessly suffer. This means redistribution. Fuck who earns it, no one fully earns so much power.
If someone can’t do basic problem solving they’re going to fucked no matter what they do. I’m obviously not talking about people with severe mental disabilities in all this, so I’m not sure why we needed to go down they road of excuses.
At the end you say don’t stop trying, but nearly everything you said leading up to that read as…. You can’t win, don’t try, just let the world punch you in the face over and over again until you die. I don’t know how’d I’d wake up in the morning with that kind of outlook on life. I’m not the most positive person in the world, I’m pretty damn negative, but I at least try and maintain the belief that I can improve. Without that I’d quit my job and drink myself to death within 6 months.
Sure, there is a certain amount of luck in everything, but you can do things to make yourself more lucky. What’s the old saying… “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” If you chalk everything up to luck, you basically set yourself up for failure and prove yourself right, because you’re never prepared for the opportunists and aren’t putting yourself in positions to make those opportunities more likely to happen.
On the topic of “fuck who earns it,” ummm… no. I sacrificed the last 20 years of my life to get my paycheck. I’m not the 1%, but I’m almost getting to the point where I feel like I can breath. I recently discovered all this stuff I’ve felt my whole life was really bad anxiety, and a lot of it is around money, which is why I’ve busted my ass, as it’s the only think I can think of that might calm my mind down (it probably won’t, but I have to try). Why should I have what I sacrificed for stolen from me by someone who wasn’t willing to make those sacrifices? That’s not fair either. What did I do it all for if that’s the end result… I might as well go back to drinking myself to death. At least with the current setup I can try and I can get better, and I can build a life. What I’m reading from you is that to matter how hard I try it doesn’t matter, because if you deem I have too much it will be taken from me, because I was just lucky. Why would anyone do anything in a system like that? The only thing to do in that environment is drugs.
Oh, so common mental disorders that make it harder for someone to do everything needed for success are just excuses. Of course they need to work hard, but that doesn't mean they'll ever reach your level of success. You sound like you've worked hard to get to where you are, and all that work was necessary in the current system. But someone who finds doing the things you do twice as difficult, can't work twice as hard as you did. People have a finite capacity to work hard, and if you were working near the limit for an individual, how could someone with less luck ever be financially stable. ADHD for instance affects 1 in 20, and makes it very hard for people to learn and work. That's not the only condition that makes life harder, and any portion of people over 1% in America means millions of people. I go down that road because millions of people don't deserve to die for things outside of their control. It just isn't right when society can do so much more to help them.
Many people have this misconception about determinism meaning we should just give up and die. This couldn't be further from the truth. An important point in my outlook is that you might never be able to win a rigged game. If you're born with little economic merit and a limited capacity to gain more, then you will probably not win the capitalist game. Hell, you might not even be able to survive in it. That's why we must change the game, reform or rebuild the system to allow even the least economically productive people to have secure housing, food, water, and other necessities. So that everyone has economic security and any wages earned can be used for one's self actualization rather than for survival.
Another part of my outlook is that I see humans as machines. I don't believe people deserve human rights because of their immortal soul or anything like that, but I believe human rights are foundational to making a world worth living in. Therefore everyone must be given human rights, because otherwise all our rights are on the chopping block for profit. Therefore people starving in the richest country on earth is an existential threat for me.
I have the belief we all can improve and become better than our past selves, but that requires technology in the the form of ideas, and resources like time and energy. The internal locus of control and therefore the protestant work ethic are individually useful for motivation, requiring far less thought to get good results than what I believe is the truth. However, ignorance and an incorrect view will eventually lead us off course. So we should get a new tool, a new technology to lead us down a better path.
In order to not get crushed in hopelessness and depression, I turned to Buddhist philosophy mixed with classical Greek philosophy. If everyone is a product of luck and the circumstances that got them there, everyone is at all times trying their best. This might sound bad if one looks down on someone's best not being good enough, but if one sees the unknown value and potential that exists in such complex and awesome creatures, it lifts a burden off one's chest. People can be augmented with ideas and physical tech, allowing a blind person, a psychopath, or anybody with any deviation from "optimal" standards to live fulfilling lives that benefit everyone. The big point is that we just don't know for certain, and unless the cost would be so great as to jeopardize other people even more, we must try to give people the help they need.
I want a world where a younger you doesn't have so much anxiety about your financial security. Where the consequences of you making a mistake aren't so serious because you know you can always have a solid safety net you can fall into. What you worry about won't be existential, and as much is guaranteed for you as technology permits. Tech has boosted human productivity so far, that we need fewer and fewer people to provide everyone with necessities. The excess people power can be used on improving lives beyond that point. We just need to defeat the notion that the goal of humanity is to increase profits for a small elite. Society must serve people, not the other way around.
Honestly, you sound a bit like you're demanding the younger generations go through the same hardships you did simply because it'll make you feel like your struggles weren't meaningless. Your struggles and sacrifices were valiant and brave. Future people not having them does not make what you did any less impressive or noble. Besides, we have our own challenges and have to make our own sacrifices thanks to climate change and the fact that we still need to fix this system.
It's not a contest. There will always be people better off and worse off then each person. Some people would call me rich, others would call me poor... I've been called both (recently). And "success" can be defined a lot of ways. One could say that my focus on career has made me a failure in other more important areas of life. That's the trade off I made and I need to live with that, or make some drastic changes very soon.
Not all mental disorders are a bad thing, if used to a persons advantage they can help. Growing up I thought I had ADHD, I told me dad and he responded "no son of mine has ADHD".. and that was the end of that... sigh... Recently I stumbled across the How to ADHD channel on YouTube and it all seems a little too relatable... so who knows what shit I have going on. I definitely have anxiety and depression. We all have our shit. I had a co-worker who had a father that was schizophrenic; he was a brilliant engineering who could see solutions in his mind and build them to show all the "normal" people in the room the solution to their problems. Jay Leno is dyslexic and has done well for himself. Elon Musk, who may currently be hated publicly is still very successful, and happens to be autistic. I know these are one-off examples, but not being neurotypical isn't a death sentence, nor does it mean there is no path to success. In many cases it's those different brains that lead to some of the biggest leaps forward in technology. And if you know there are some things that are more difficult, you an try and put systems in place to help, or hope that you have an understand boss. My old boss figured out I'd do awesome work if it was something interesting and worthwhile. If he gave me a project and it wasn't done in a day or two, or I didn't have a lot of progress, he knew I didn't care about it and would give it to someone else. I struggle with that a lot. He was the only boss that got it and worked around it, usually at some point I just had to suck it up and do the thing just so I could put it behind me and stop ruminating about it all day and night. That's hard for me, but it's not impossible and trying to work on it still. If I hadn't been challenged in life to figure some of this stuff out, I'd be useless. Most people in the world would be useless if left to our own devices with no real reason to do anything with our life.
If you believe the game is rigged, and you can't win, why play? If I'm playing a game with someone and I find out they're cheating, I stop playing the game with them. Why wouldn't you? That's why I don't hang out in casinos; the house always wins. When it comes to capitalism, I don't view it as needing to be winner take all. Maybe in the purest sense where only the titans of industry at the top are playing, but if we're all playing, if I can make enough money to make sure I have a roof over my head, food in my belly, some free time to spend as I see fit and have a life outside of work, and a comfortable retirement, that's all I really need. I don't need a "win" all of capitalism and have a gold house and a rocket car. I think that's the case for most people. If reforming and rebuilding the game, your end goal sounds nice, but doesn't seem like a realistic possibly. People keep trying, and the results are usually a lot of misery and death. I'm all for new ideas, but they need to have merit, not just trade bad thing A for bad thing B... especially if we've seen it tried many times with similar results. Try new stuff, not the same old failed stuff. No matter what the system, there will be suffering in some form, that's life according to the Buddha.
I agreed that everyone is trying their best with what they have, even if I may lose sight of it sometimes as I view their life through my lens. I think everyone is guilty of that from time to time. In terms of technology making people "optimal", I don't even know if that's a good thing. Yes, I'm glad we have wheelchairs for people without legs to move around, and whatever else. But if technology becomes sufficiently advanced where everyone who's born is giving some injection that makes them "optimal", I think we lose something in that. If everyone is the same life becomes boring, everyone has a similar perspective, everyone starts to see problems in the same way. I think the world would stagnate as we engineered away our humanity.
I'd also like a world where I didn't anxiety and all that, but would that have been good? Sure, it has given me a host of issues I now need to talk to a professional about and seem to be making no progress, but at the same time, it was that fear that drove me to make my own way in the world. I don't know where I'd be without it; probably nowhere good. It's a very complicated issue, as these things often are. I like the idea of technology driving us toward 100% unemployment as a goal. I just don't know how we get from here to there without a lot of pain, and how we avoid tyranny from whoever or whatever is controlling the allocation of resources, as there will always be a subset of the population that will seek power, and it's never the ones you want. For me, I'll take a small amount of power over myself and my life, however real or imagined it may be, rather than a safety net that I'm never sure if I can trust.
I don't think others need to suffer because I did (at least I don't think I think that). I do think that many hands make light work. If 50% of the population decides they're not going to play the game anymore, because the other 50% will take care of them... that puts a significant extra burden on that 50% left working to try and support everyone. There would be a lot tension between those two sides and a lot of things we rely on today would probably fail in the process until new systems could be built and put into place (but who would do it...). There are so many complex questions to be answered and systems that would need to be solved for. Everyone one of those systems has far reaching impacts into countless other systems. I'm not saying it can never happen, but it will take several generations and bold, yet humble, leaders over multiple generations to get there. We don't have that; I don't even see in on the horizon. Simply changing it now, because we'd like it to happen faster than it realistically can, will be pure chaos. I don't envy anyone who has to live through that and I hope I'm not forced to. Our systems now are far from perfect, but at least we kind of know what we're getting. The enemy you know is better than the one you don't, I suppose.
I guess my point with the "optimal" thing was a little misleading. I don't believe do or die meritocracy is a good goal to strive for, so I don't believe we should force people to be able bodied. The point is that one doesn't need to make themselves able by society's standards because they can be happy as they are.
Work should be something one does to get the nicer things in life, not something one does to live. This is the only way to make people economically free. This will only be accomplished through violence, preferably through the state, exercised on the very wealthy. (When I say violence I mean laws. All laws have to be backed by threat of violence, otherwise they're just recommendations.)
They may have stacked the deck in their favor, but like you said, if you believe it's not possible you'll never succeed. You choose to believe you can make a good life through capitalism. I can see that the game is becoming increasingly unfair, and choose to believe that state power can be used to eventually make government mandated human rights a reality. I believe liberalism can, in theory realize a future where work is optional. We just need to sacrifice the economic liberties that only the rich can actually use. This doesn't mean the state should do everything, unions and non profit NGOs are essential, but state power is necessary as only it can do certain things.
As far as capitalism goes, it will eventually push small players like you out of the game if left unregulated. That's why if capitalism is to continue to exist as a thing the average person can buy into, we need a minimum of massive reform and social programs and a redistribution of the wealth held by the stupid rich. If liberal democracy is unable to deliver this, people will tear it down and there's no guarantee the succeeding system will be democratic. This is why we must enact this change with haste.
Why would the ultra wealthy stick around to have all their money taken from them? It seems like they could buy an island somewhere and go live very nice lives, and pull the rug out from the whole plan pretty easily.
I agree they unchecked capitalism doesn’t work, that’s why it is regulated. They may need to do a better job, but big mergers need to be approved and are often denied. Some monopolies have been broken up. AT&T being a rather well known one. AT&T has clawed their way back up, but they don’t stand alone anymore, we have various options and there is some competition. There is currently some talk about doing something to Google. The threat is always there and it has been used many times.
The US (I assume that’s what we’re talking about) also does have social safety nets, there is just a lot more red tape and bureaucracy than most would like. Last I checked the US spends over $4T/year on these programs as is, significantly more than the military spending everyone always talks about. $4T for plans people think suck; this stuff isn’t cheap. They could simply everything and just give everyone $1k/month no matter who they are and hope it all works out. We’d save a lot of administrative costs, but I’m sure people would complain that it’s not enough for some and that others make too much to get anything… just like with the Covid checks, and even those didn’t go to everyone.
Even if every last dime was taken from the ultra wealthy, it seems we’d burn though they money insanely fast. Then what happens after all the rich people are gone who were supposed to fund this stuff? If you take all the assets of the richest 15 people (about $1.4T being generous with some very lazy math), you could give each American about $4,000 one time. That’s not much different than the Covid relief checks. Seems like a lot of work to destroy the economy for almost no upside. Once you take out the top people, the list doesn’t look to great when you talk about dividing it by 340m people. For every billion dollars you take, each person gets less than $3. So when you knock out someone with $50B, you get a check in the mail for $150; congrats you can pay the heating bill for 3 weeks in the winter, in exchange Nike was wiped out and all the employees were laid off, along with anyone who relied on downstream industries.
Now, if you really want thinks to be fair, this should be global. Why should Americans live better than everyone? As it stands someone making $40k in the US is in the top 1% globally, last I heard. Doing it globally, for every billion taken, each person gets 12 cents. So instead of $150, you get $6… you can have lunch at Subway, once.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a job than live whatever kind of life can be afforded by those numbers. And the first pay out would be as good as it ever gets. Each one after that will drop dramatically as the richest people are cleaned out. It won’t take long before the cost of the postage is more than the value of the check. Mathematically, it’s a bad plan.
That's the issue with global capitalism and why most nationalistic attempts at communism couldn't be successful. The system of global capitalism is enabled by mechanisms the US supports and upholds. The system wouldn't suddenly collapse if the US stopped upholding it, but it would need to adjust. The free flow of capital is what allows it, so the free flow of capital would need to be crippled. Other strategies like agreed upon tax rates for companies made by most large governments could also improve things. Ultimately it does require global class consciousness and global cooperation.
When it comes to regulating capitalism, we need to do more than we currently do. The tide of deregulation must be halted and reversed in many complex ways I don't have time to get into. This will probably require a constitutional amendment or reform of the courts the restore the power of regulatory agencies.
When it comes to our current welfare spending, most of it comes from Medicare and social security, both popular programs that do a lot of good. Expanding Medicare to cover everyone would raise taxes for everyone, but it would save everybody money and actually give people more disposable income. Social security could theoretically be expanded, effectively budgeting for everyone's retirement, but we really don't need to touch it anytime soon.
If every last dime was taken from the very wealthy, then it wouldn't just be withdrawing money from a bank account, it would involve distributing more stock in companies to the workers. This is the role that unions and non government collectives could play. Ideally, it would involve restructuring companies so they worked more democratically and CEOs and executives would be elected by workers rather than chosen by people with capital who have no stake in the company besides profit. This would need to happen in tandem with everything else, and it would be a gradual transition away from capital investments to worker owned companies. Taking from the wealthy isn't a long term strategy, but a technique used to transition away from capital ruling over everything.
Eventually, there would be no ultra wealthy, but taking from them will no longer be necessary. That democratization of business and workers would be the socialist element that would need to be enabled by the government. Workers would be able to switch industries by earning stock with them that they could switch to a new industry through currency. Then, when they feel like retiring, they could live off that stock for a while. If we expand human lifespans and reverse aging, it might even be cyclical where people would spend years in retirement, and then come out of it to work before retiring again.
It's radically different, but it would allow people to carve out existences in the system. People who never retire because they enjoy work would support those who worked only to earn bonus comfort, and automation would make much of society run without much work. It's a futuristic goal, but it honestly isn't that unrealistic technologically. We have slowed aging in mice and expanded their lifespans already, even reversing the age of human cells, and automation through ai has made huge breakthroughs recently. Look at how much tech has changed life in the last 100 years. Is this change really so far fetched?
Maybe... maybe not. I was told Obamacare would be great too, but my out of pocket costs went up dramatically, while everything about it became more complex and annoying. I used to have an HMO. I paid a extra each check, but showing up to a doctor just meant a co-pay. I went to the ER, paid $250, and didn't have to worry about anything after that (it would have been a $30k bill). Now I'm forced into a high deductible plan where basically everything is out of pocket for the first $3k, then there is some weird split, then there is a max out of pocket at some point. It sucks. I like the idea of Medicare for all, as I want things to be simple. When I'm sick the last thing I want to think about is money... but with how bad they fucked things up for me last time I have 0 faith that they won't fuck up a single payer program as well.
This is vastly different than what I usually hear when people talk about the rich paying for everything. If this is what people mean, then everyone else I've ever talked to is either grossly misinformed or really bad at explaining things. Either way, that's not good. I have a lot of questions though.
So... let's say I get hired at an Amazon warehouse. As part of each check I'd get some amount of stock? Then when I leave and go over to work for Uber, I'd start getting some of their stock with each paycheck?
It looks like Amazon actually used to do this, but ended it to fund the minimum wage increase everyone was demanding.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/3/17934194/amazon-minimum-wage-raise-stock-options-bonus-warehouse
But it mentions they still have a stock purchase plan, which many companies do. I guess the idea being that if you still want the stock, you can use some of the increase in pay to buy the stock. This concept of taking some of your pay to buy stock can be done regardless of what the company offers, but that goes back to the financial literacy conversation which we don't need to rehash.
At the end of the day, what you're describing sounds like some kind of hybrid between a pension, stock purchase plan, and 401k (which usually offers some kind of employer match). I don't see it being radically different. The only difference is taking all the stock from other current owners, which seems like choice, not something that must be done to have these other things in place... as evidenced by these other things already being in place in our current system.
I don't think this would help with the equality thing, as some companies will do better than others. Someone who spent 10 years at Apple would be living high on the hog, while someone who worked at Blackberry would be broke. Financial advisors will warn people about overvaluing the stock of the company you work for, and this is why. If you're giving stock as part of your compensation, the general rule is to treat it like any other income, sell it, and re-invest it into a more diversified portfolio based on your goals. That sounds like a lot more work than what a pension or a 401k with a target date fund would, while ultimately serving the same role. If people can sell this stock, or borrow against it, they will, and they'll be in the same spot they are today. You'll have the savers and the spenders, where the savers end up accumulating money to have a comfortable retirement, and the spenders live a more exciting life, with a more depressing end. That's a personality thing; do you live for today, or delay gratification in hopes of a better tomorrow? Ultimately a balance is good, but it's never one someone can get perfect as we never know what the future holds.
I actually like like the idea of a pension, but they've fallen out of favor. I have one, but my company stopped contributing to it, which sucks. I think a big reason for pensions not being much of a thing anymore is all the jump hoping. No one wants to deal with tiny pensions from 20 different companies. They were really designed for someone who was going to work at once place for 40 years. I think it served a similar function as to what you're talking about. It's a company investing for your retirement on your behalf. The 401k match does this as well, but the employee has to opt-in and has the option to screw themselves by taking money out early with huge penalties. A universal pension which can follow you from company to company would be nice to avoid splitting it up. I guess one could argue that's what social security is, but social security isn't your own account, it's a big pool of cash.
Unfortunately most people, even people who are self proclaimed socialists, don't think through what seizing the means of production means. It means that the capital that is owned by a class of people who do little labor for it, is given back to the people who labor. Another reason people don't describe the system is that many different versions and strategies exist to accomplish this goal. I'm not an economist by any means, so I'm not wed to that plan.
It's ultimately about accomplishing the goal of economic equity where anything beyond the necessities is earned through labor, not ownership. The current system where you gain wealth primarily from owning capital leads to people getting impractical sums of wealth. Scarcity means that those impractical sums are allocated in a way that lets people suffer and die needlessly.
Additionally, many people who are merely social democrats don't want capitalism to go away so long as people aren't left behind. I'm not determined to destroy capitalism at all costs, making me a bit of a social democrat. However, I don't care if capitalism is destroyed so long as the goal is accomplished.
It's easier to unite people behind the mentality of making the economy more fair than to nail down a solid plan that everyone agrees to. Most people will never need to understand how the intricacies of the system work beyond how they interact with it. So why make sure everyone fully comprehends anything beyond the input and the output? I don't know exactly how my computer works, but I can use it. So long as the information is available to everyone and the basics are common enough knowledge, we can have people informed enough to vote and fight for it.
I'm getting tired, and this will probably be my last response, but I will say that the current Amazon stock purchase plan is missing the point. Almost all the capital is owned by shareholders who don't work at the company, so owning the stock gives workers little say over company decisions or ability to realize the full profits. The point is to give all that stock back to the workers or a democratic government. There's still room for executives who make decisions, but they are only representatives. The role of CEO would probably be similar in name and public relations only. It would be like calling Biden the king of the US. The system being owned by workers isn't a choice, but the main feature of such a system.
Part of the reason the ACA has problems is because it needed Republican and moderate Democrat support, leading to compromises that hindered it. The fact that the senate is an elected position necessitates the removal of the filibuster to get things done.