this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Antiwork/Work Reform
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Date Created: June 15, 2023
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Essential Reads
Start here! These are probably the most talked-about essays on the topic.
- 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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They both fail, but the problem isn't the system. The problem is people. People try to put themselves into positions of power, retain their position of power and exploit that position of power. Capitalism and communism are simply attempted solutions, however unfortunately they don't adequately deal with the human problem.
With capitalism, people exploit the value exchange. They lie about how much something costs to source or produce, then lie about how much someone else should pay for it, and also about how much a worker's time is worth. Such that you end up with people doing a lot and getting nothing and people doing very little if anything but getting lots.
With communism, people put themselves in positions of power to decide how things should be distributed, then vigorously quell and dissenting voices that ask whether things are being distributed fairly. The end result is more or less the same as capitalism - a small portion of people getting a large portion of wealth.
Any solution must take into account human tendencies to abuse the system, and make efforts to prevent it. However quite often perfection ends up being the enemy of progress - we don't try new things because they might be abused, and end up sticking with the current system which is definitely being abused. This only benefits the abusers. Rather, we should aggressively try new social systems, but also regularly review and either reverse or continue to improve upon them. If nothing else, the changing system will disrupt abusers, as they have to constantly develop new methods.
I think it is interesting that when talking about systems designed to organize people, their labor, and what to produce, that you are blaming people. It's kind of like blaming water for flowing down hill when you want it to go up into your kitchen sink. Maybe use pipes and pressurized water instead.
If these systems don't work, the issues are with the systems and not with the people.
this is like playing poker with someone and blaming the game when they exploit their position as dealer to slip themself an ace off the bottom of the deck.
that said, i partially agree. the systems shouldn't encourage greed or authoritarianism. we need a middle way and a system that accounts for peoples' less wholesome tendencies and doesn't reward them while encouraging wholesome behavior like sharing and generosity.
burning man culture does an interesting job of this with decommodification and gifting principles.
I'm suspicious of burning man culture. It's not a completely isolated example and there is too much influence that could leak from/to external society for it to be a real test case. I am not saying it wouldn't work, just that it's current successes have been biased.
i hear you. i have a lot of close friends that are super into the scene though and they're the most generous people i know.
i don't get to go myself often (talking about regional burns, the big burn doesn't interest me). I'm an introvert that's sensitive to noise and burns aren't environments where i can recharge easily.
I don't think they blamed people. I think they said the issue is that the systems didn't account for people. That's saying the systems are inadequate solutions for the scenario.
It's like saying an iron rod rusts when placed in salt water because it didn't account for the salt water. The iron rod might be a good design but it's not designed for that use.
I feel like you're misrepresenting or misunderstanding what communism is. You might base your opinion on the soviet union but they never actually achieved communism, and some would even say it was state capitalism and not even socialism. In fact it's unlikely we'll ever see what an actual communist society would be because it's very much a vague utopia, and just a goal to strive towards.
Communism by definition actually isn't very clear because Marx never actually got into the details of how a communist society day to day life would look like. But he did postulate the primary idea of communism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." One idea of communism is that it's stateless and classless, meaning there literally couldn't be a small portion of people getting a large portion of wealth. Marx himself actually said that future communist institutions should be designed to be decided democratically by the people.
I'm going to copy my other comment as it covers my thoughts on this:
I absolutely agree with democratically deciding everything. I think technology has reached the point where we could give people that opportunity. We all have devices in our pockets that have the capability to communicate with everyone else, so we don't need representatives to do it on our behalf (particularly when all too often they don't actually represent us when they vote on policy). There are potential problems with this, of course, however these problems are primarily technical in nature and could be overcome.
Thanks for the thought provoking reply!
My impression is that all systems fail long term and need to break down and be renewed after crisis. Once it becomes entrenched, I think odds are heavily against being able to try social systems.
Have you seen a system like you describe, where a structure to continue change and experimentation is built in? To me capitalism with strong controls seems the most stable and successful (assuming your benchmark is population qualify of life not just GDP), e.g. some European systems.
Arrrrg I wrote out a big reply, was about to post, then realised I'd accidentally downvoted you. When I changed that downvote to an upvote my reply was reset. #lemmybugs.
Here's take 2.
I'd agree with this, genreally. It feeds into the point in my last paragraph: we need a changing system to destabilise incumbant powers, such that they cannot abuse the system as effectively. These changes must be driven by objective improvemnents, democratically decided. Furthermore, I would say that total democracy is a win.
People will point to Brexit as an example of the hazards of giving people a vote. However, the truth is Brexit was a disinformation campaign - such a campaign cannot be maintained indefinitely, it can only be focused onto key events - particularly when it was driven by targeted lies (primarily on Facebook) immediately before a vote. You can say whatever you want if only the people who won't question it see it, and by the time anyone else does it will be too late. If people had subsequent opporunities to decide how Brexit would be done, along with votes on whether or not to proceed down any particular route, things wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad.
I believe in a strong social safety net. The bare basics of human needs should be provided for any citizen: food, clothing, and shelter. Without these needs, people get desperate, and they turn feral. They resort to crime - which then easily becomes a habit. This is worse for everyone overall; by preventing this we help maintain a stable and productive society.
The basics should be provided. If people want nice things, they should have to work for it. If you want a nice house, you need to work and earn enough. If you want nice designer clothes, you need to work. If you want a PS5/Sexbox/1337 PC you need to work for it and earn it. If you just want to rest on your laurels with the bare minimum, that should be an option, too.
However lazing about doing nothing is incredibly fucking boring and unfulfilling. No one wants to live their life that way. The lifetime benefit scrounger is pretty much a myth - maybe there's one or two who game the system, but it never lasts forever. People want to improve their position in life, they want to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", they just need the opportunity.
I know this full well. I've had the luxury of not doing anything, I've skirted poverty but never quite truly fell into it. And it's not anywhere anyone wants to be. However, even in my position success is limited - debtors and financiers prey upon anyone who falls below a certain line. If you pay off your credit cards every month, they'll feed you more credit, then when you start building up debt they'll rack up your interest rates such that your instinct is to dig in deeper in some vein hope of finding your way out.
Meanwhile, the past is littered with famous artists, many musicians, who have spent some time living off the state. These stories have become fewer and fewer over the past couple decades - no one can live off the dole anymore. This begs the question: how much social development has the human race missed out on, given that young people have been stretched to their limit, such that they barely even want to contribute anything because their prospects are now so bleak?
People shouldn't be exploited to their limits. Particularly, citizens of any country shouldn't be left to rot. Any great country that calls itself wealthy should be able to care for its people, such that these people can find their feet and positively contribute to the collective good. And that collective good must belong to everyone, not just those who sit at the top and do very little to contribute themselves.
The problem with things like welfare and food stamps isn't that people are lazy, it's that the system produces distorted incentives. If getting a job means you lose money, why would you ever get a job? How are you supposed to get a better job if you can't get a basic one?
There should just be a universal basic income. And instead of a simple cutoff, your benefits should ramp down as your work income ramps up so that you basically keep 50 cents of every extra dollar you make from working until you're completely weened off of the UBI.
That's the thing, getting a job shouldn't mean you have less money. You should have the basic welfare safety net, regardless, then work for more. If you want to do nothing, wear generic basic clothes, eat basic nutritional meals and live in a hostel, then that should be an option. If you want to keep some of those but get some nicer things, then you can work a bit. If you want to live in luxury with a nice house, fancy food and stylish top quality clothes, then you'll need to work more.
Universal income is a good stepping stone, however it does little to control the price of goods. If everyone earns a little, then many goods will start to cost more. Whereas if basic goods are purchased in bulk by the state the collective bargaining helps keep prices down - which then has a knock on effect with higher priced goods.
Your sentiment is why I don't consider myself a communist. Capitalism can work well but it requires extraordinarily powerful regulations. Communism is maybe a bit better but still requires the same amount of regulation we're failing to implement now.
We need to fix capitalism before we make the move to communism.
I think a lot of the issue comes down to terminology. Communism has been bastardised and turned into a dirty word, it has very negative connotations for a lot of people. Most implementations of communism in the world don't really fit the ideology, and now people think of the countries for the definition.
I would first define socialist policy: that which is made for the greater good of society as a whole, rather than for the benefit of select groups at the expense of society.
I think true communism is what you would get if you consistently implemented socialist policy again and again over a long period. If we develop robust policies that create a net benefit for the people as a group, we will end up having a communist society.
But trying to jump and change to communism straight away is fraught with issues, because during the change sociopathic people will take the opportunity and steer things in their favour by implementing policy that benefits themselves over others.
Term limits for everything. If the morons are going to pick an idiot to run their village at least there's a chance they'll elect a smart man, if only by mistake.
Not even term limits, I'd say politics should be like jury duty. Everyone has to do it, they get paid time off work for it, they don't get to make a career out of it.
But there should also be some meritocracy. The EU actually manages that quite well - the European Commission is made up of "unelected bureaucrats", but actually what that means is they're made up of talented lawyers chosen by each member state. These lawyers write laws. Then, the democratically elected Members of European Parliament vote on the laws.
The clever people who know how to write laws write the laws, then the people democratically vote on the laws. That's a pretty good principle.
The only difference I would add is that people should have a more direct say on their vote. If I want to vote on a particular law, I should be able to vote on that law. If I don't care I should be able to pool my vote with some group that I align with, who can then vote on my behalf.
If I don't like how the group votes, I can leave and vote for another next time.
None of this, "vote for a guy, then hope they do what I expect of them for the next 4 years" bollocks.
Furthermore, after the first vote, there should be an opportunity for more votes. So if the group I align with votes against my interest, I have a chance to object later on, be it before the realisation of the policy or upon review after the policy has been running for some time.
Sure, there are faults with this. People can be manipulated. However, you can't manipulate people constantly, forever, and eventually good policy should win through.
Okay, so how do we get everyone to actually bother to vote? In the US we've been having problems trying to get equal representation at the polls and so far haven't really done a great job of fixing it.
Having a team of lawyers to draft and submit legal terms is a great idea, in fact it's kind of the point of lawyers. The issue is having the people who vote on them be able to both understand them, and to check both the writer and the representative check each other for corruption. If you give the representative the ability to remove the lawyer then the representative holds the real power, if you don't, you give the lawyer more power. We need a balance in there somewhere.
Let's also not forget that direct democracy has lead to the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the election of theocratic and fascistic leaders. How do we balance that?
Capping terms at 1 or 2 prevents people from being able to consolidate and exploit their power. But we'll still need leaders to vote on our behalf so how do we prevent corruption? What if we had a new institution whose sole job was to check the government and maintain an open forum where all opinions can be shared and argued.
More than any of this, I really think the rich just need to be scared of the poor again.
I'd wager that new institution would get regulatory captured pretty quickly.
You wouldn't need everyone to vote on everything. However there is a natural incentive to vote on things that interest and affect you. Right now, people don't vote because they don't believe it will change anything - you vote for a person, but they're no different to any other person. Meanwhile, if they were given the opportunity to vote on whether their tax money should go to fixing their roads or building a new school, more people will have an opinion on that and want to vote.
For things they don't care about, they could either not vote, or better they could join a representative group. Rather than voting for a person to represent you for a set period, you join or leave a representative as you see fit. If you want to vote on a particular issue, or if the representative doesn't vote the way you like, you withdraw your representative membership. Representatives would have to continue to act in the interests of their members, else they would lose their status.
I disagree that democracy led to Roe vs Wade being reversed. Trump was elected despite not having the most votes - which isn't democratic - and then he appointed people to the court - not democratic - to rig the votes in their rulings. Even the opportunity to appoint new judges isn't democratic, as they are appointed for life, so the timing of when one elects to retire or dies determines who gets to decide their replacement. This prevents the system from being democratic or fair - it is a political decision made by politicians, rather than a meritocratic decision made by experts of the profession. The legal profession should be picking judges, not politicians.
I disagree that people would somehow be more compelled to vote for issues they care about. Most people care about who the president is but that still doesn't get everyone to the polls. Forcing states to have more reasonable access to mail in ballots would be a step in the right direction but the problem in my opinion is really a out getting people to see it more as a duty than a chore. Say we used a tax credit to incentivize voting?
As for the idea of just letting political parties do what they want, they kind of already do, see DNC primaries 2016. That system already exists and is being actively exploited by the ruling class. I don't think that's a fix.
Again, we come back to term limits, people who are elected to office need to be forced out of politics after a set amount of time to prevent career politicians. And more specifically we need to make it so they cannot accept a job offer or payment for services from anyone who could have benefited from their decisions while in office. Maybe we have a pension for ex-representatives to live on for 8 years after leaving office, and make it illegal for them to have any other income? It should be a service to our country, not our country serving them.
The Buddhist Sangha has survived for 2500 years and is essentially a gift economy.