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.
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 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.
You think you should not work for a living?
The logical conclusion of
you should have to work (to make money, transactionally, anything not valued by capitalism and rich people doesn’t even count, if you don’t or can’t fit this model it doesnt count) to make a living
is that
if you don’t work (with the previous very large caveats for what counts as ‘work’), you deserve to suffer and die
A lot of people don’t think about the implications of that statement when they make it, but that is the logical end point. My experience is that most people - at least if they aren’t stressed from the existing model - absolutely want to do things, often sharing them for free, without coercion.
But even if not, do you think people should be miserable and die if they can’t or even won’t “work for a living” (for a very particular narrow definition of work that can gain you money under the current system, when stuff created and donated is often more valuable than things payed for due to lack of perverse incentives - e.g. FOSS ^.^).
I’m not even starting on how the current model of labour provides perverse anti-automation incentives. Automation should be liberating, but the way our society values people based on labour (e.g. Protestant Work Ethic) actively forces people (and the non-capitalist class as a whole) to avoid tools or processes that should improve our collective lives :/ - imo this is one of the most fucked up things about capitalism.
Pure capitalism without rules is bad, sure.
Capitalism is also THE most successful system in our history. Without capitalism you’d be dead. Me too. Without capitalism the would wouldn’t be able to sustain more than a few hundred million people. Do not underestimate all the processes we have in place that make it that you have your Hamburger.on your place to eat and survive. Hospitals would cease to function without it.
So let’s call capitalism a necessary evil of you like. I know there are loads of communist types around here that live in the fantasy world where communism can do this and we’ll, it can’t. If you want, just even look at the history of Communism over the entire world. Every single communist government has failed and has caused only pain and suffering on the practical level.
I fully agree with you that you don’t just want to ket people die so that is the solution?
I’d say a limited capitalist system where we place hard limits on what companies can do, hard limits on sizes and incomes and what people can own through -for example- taxes. The more you earn, the more you pay until taxes reach 100%
With that huge income you finance a socialist state where all the basics are free. Free healthcare , free education, etc. Food and housing is paid with Universal income so that everyone can at least afford a basic nice level of living. Anyone who wants extra can work extra in the capitalist system and earn extra if they want, but not need.
That just my 2 cents, but you’ll still need capitalism. Take that away and you’ll destroy the world and kill millions.
Is this a community of a bunch of children? What is this?
Human nature, regardless of political systems, dictates that one and their family must provide trade-worthy value to receive trade-worthy value. There are plenty of exceptions to that thanks to charity (at any scale) and social policies that allow for some to provide little trade-worthy value and still receive essential benefits (for example, those with disabilities). But if there were an option to provide no trade-worthy value and receive completely satisfying goods, accommodations, and freedoms in return, then productive people would naturally feel foolish for spending time working any more than they like to. There is some point where there wouldn’t be enough people to maintain the benefits for the non-workers. Although people would offer to work as good will, labor and supply shortages would be far more frequent or constant. So should we allow the option, but only a limited amount so that the threshold of value-produced to value-consumed is never met? It’s unlikely that there would be good relations between the class of people in society that would be gifted with that option and those that aren’t.
I think the alternative is living out in the wild, fending for yourself. As much as I hate the inequality and mediocrity of modern life, it’s something of a step up from living like that. I love watching Primitive Technology, but I probably couldn’t handle that life. Imagine spending hours collecting fire wood, spending hours/days turning it into charcoal and building a clay oven just to fire up some shit you picked up from the river in hopes of getting a few globules of iron, to make like a small shank or a spear tip or something (after maybe weeks of effort). Oh, and you’re having to get your own food and maybe bathe yourself every so often. Super interesting to watch, but holy shit is that alot of work for so little (compared to what we’re used to seeing). Life is work.
It’s not, actually. The majority of human history is neither humans fending for themselves, nor submitting to wage slavery. Humans are collaborative, social beings. Even the nuclear family is an aberration on our otherwise multi generational and communal shared history.
Good luck finding a sucker to subsidize you and your lazy ass.
“Hello, I would like to benefit from society without contributing to it”
there are ways to contribute that aren’t 40+ hours a week.
It is very unfortunate that posts like the OP portray the anti work movement in that way, but anti work does not mean that. I think this other commenter summarized it better: https://lemm.ee/comment/3155176
Yes, owners do this.
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
“Yet you partecipate in society. Curious! I am very intelligent.”
Who’s going to take care of you?
Are we owed anything simply by being born?
In actual civilization, yes, we are.
Basic accommodations are a human right according to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Jesus had a few things to say about feeding the hungry, but Paul didn’t fully agree.
Are we owed anything simply by being born?
A major problem with our society is that everything is framed conceptually as debt. A world where you are not born into debt is seen as unjust because your basic needs must be provided by others, and that can supposedly only be a financial transaction.
But from a purely logistical and motivational perspective, it’s easy to imagine not threatening people with homelessness and death for not working. Everything is heavily automated. The large majority of people used to be subsistence farmers, now the proportion working in agriculture is less than 2% and we produce way more than is actually needed for human survival. You only need a little bit of labor provided beyond transactional compensation to make it happen. As for why anyone would choose to do so, it would be for all the same reasons people already work other than the threat of death; status, money, luxury, desire for purpose and fulfillment.
The only question is whether it is morally good and acceptable to allocate resources to someone without demanding payment. And it is; just stop thinking of debt as inherently right and required, and recognize that it’s better not to force debt on someone just for being born and having basic needs.
Why the FUCK do you think you’re entitled to get the free labor of bakeries working hard to make bread, farmers farming to create food, and people building technology to make your life easier?
No, you don’t have to work. Go live in the forest and farm your own food. Maybe then when a lion attacks you you’ll realize the value of modern civilization.
