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/r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

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Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#271

Post by ignasheahy »

JSavageOne wrote: post #156

I remember stumbling upon /r/antiwork a few years ago and being so happy I'd stumbled upon a thriving movement that so effectively criticized one of the core principles of society that everyone takes for granted - that everyone must effectively sell their labor to someone else (unless they're rich enough to opt out, or clever enough to create some business or invest their way out). To me anti-work is the recognition…

>We need better alternatives to Reddit I am working on one - heahy.com, it's still very small and unfortunately mostly used for memes and porn :) I will try to do something about having more high quality discussions but probably some changes to design are necessary before doing any marketing.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#272

Post by gruez »

vanusa wrote: post #81

I grant that the absolutist antiwork position fails to meet basic reality compliance standards. But does that give the current de-facto state religion -- cradle-to-grave workaholism (wildly out of proportion to the amount of work we actually need to do to sustain ourselves) -- a pass? Why is the promotion one position an instance of 'sanewashing', while the normalization of other (no less insane in my view) position…

>But does that give the current de-facto state religion -- cradle-to-grave workaholism (wildly out of proportion to the amount of work we actually need to do to sustain ourselves) -- a pass?

It's not really a "religion" though. People aren't working "wildly out of proportion to the amount of work we actually need to do to sustain ourselves" so they end up in Valhalla or whatever. They're doing it because they want to be able to buy goods/services with that money, or for the FIRE crowd, doing it so they can stop working a decade or two later.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#273

Post by rhino369 »

shakes_mcjunkie wrote: post #149
the_snooze wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Defund the Police That slogan was straight up political malpractice. If you have to explain your position, then you're already losing. Something like "government accountability" or "serve the people" probably could have gotten wider support than "defund the police."

You could say literally the same thing about any political slogan. For example, please explain "government accountability" or "serve the people"? That literally could be anything. Another example, "Medicare for All", pretty straight forward, but what does it look like as a policy? https://www.propublica.org/article/medicare-for-all-is-not-m... Or "Make American Great Again" or "Build Back Better". Any slogan can be q…

All slogans are somewhat vague. But "defund the police" strongly implies something that the movement allegedly doesn't actually support.

And it wasn't a misinterpretation because the movement literally tried to entirely defund several major police departments.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#274

Post by msla »

echopurity wrote: post #14

"Sanewashing" is a highly biased slur. It's usually called "reformism" by people who support actual change.

"Sanewashing" is the charitable explanation: Someone convincing themselves that the slogan means something sane out of social pressure to conform and adopt a slogan they don't agree with. The less charitable explanation for what's going on is called "gaslighting": The people you're talking with know damn well the slogan means something insane, but they'll lie to you and act condescending and superior in order to convince you to ignore all of the evidence and accept a sane definition.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#275

Post by aerostable_slug »

gavinray wrote: post #182
JSavageOne wrote: post #156

I remember stumbling upon /r/antiwork a few years ago and being so happy I'd stumbled upon a thriving movement that so effectively criticized one of the core principles of society that everyone takes for granted - that everyone must effectively sell their labor to someone else (unless they're rich enough to opt out, or clever enough to create some business or invest their way out). To me anti-work is the recognition…

>Universal basic income I'm going to sound like I'm being snarky here, and I promise I'm not. How exactly is this supposed to work? The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work? I don't say this from a place of privilege. I grew up lower class trailer trash and have been homeless. Maybe I don't understand the concept fully but it seems a bit absurd and unfeasible

It seems like those who don't want their old jobs back, don't want to work for the wages offered in places like sandwich shops, or think they're above a certain class of work prove this out. The "everyone really wants to work" idea seems pretty squarely in the land of myth, at least here in California.

Someone has to wash dishes, dig ditches, empty bedpans, make sandwiches, etc. Further, the sandwich shop which employs family members etc. and doesn't pay an unskilled laborer $30/hour will crush the ones that do. Multiple businesses have demonstrated that virtue alone doesn't make overpriced goods sustainable in the long term. And nobody seems to want to examine the basic math behind adding $10 per hour to everyone's hourly wage.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#276

Post by dymk »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #260
dymk wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You tax a couple dozen ultra rich billionaires and a couple dozen ultra profitable companies. There's plenty of money. We don't need to print more. And each doesn't need the spare $20B anyways.

False. You'd need 4 trillion dollars a year to give 12k to everyone in the US. That would mean doubling US federal expenditures. And some people would stop working, hence stop paying income tax. Some businesses would leave the country. I do expect someday it will be feasible though. Maybe in my lifetime.

Maybe we lower the US military spending budget to "only" be 10% higher than the next highest spender. That should free up some cash.

Gotta start somewhere :)

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#277

Post by zozbot234 »

dymk wrote: post #238
optimiz3 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You tax a couple dozen ultra rich billionaires and a couple dozen ultra profitable companies. There's plenty of money. The federal deficit is 2.8T for 1 year. If we confiscated the 100% assets of the top 10 US billionaires we don't even get close to half of 1 year of federal spending. It's not plausible that a massive increase in taxes would pay for UBI. https://www.usdebtclock.org/ https://www.statista.com/statist…

The public holds over $22 trillion of the national debt. Bonds. Somehow we still get away with funding other welfare programs, even though we have a rising debt ceiling. Anyways, this is why you increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy, in order to pay for UBI. It doesn't mean more debt.

The "ultra-wealthy" are not where the money is. Besides, what many leftists actually end up saying by focusing on those is that Gates and Buffett should not be allowed to put their money towards eradicating malaria, giving every African safe drinking water, and countless such high-value causes. Instead that hard-won wealth should be taxed from them and frittered away to fund a one-time super binge of mindless political activism and foolish "green" boondoggles in the highly developed West. Needless to say, I think this is a very bad idea.

You want to tax Larry Ellison's yacht and other ludicrous spending, fine by me. But that's the ultra-wealthy's consumption - it's not even their income, much less their wealth. If you can't tell the difference, you're not getting the point of this debate.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#278

Post by Dracophoenix »

wsb_mod2 wrote: post #57
jasode wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new option happened around 2014-07: https://old.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/2a32sq/experimen... Apparently, there were some subreddits that got bombarded with unwanted comments which prompted the new feature.

I don't think most moderators don't know this option exists. It's located on a page that you only visit once to set up the subreddit, or to make large subreddit changes. (On old reddit, not sure about new reddit) To Reddit's credit, they have been adding new features over the years to help separate communities and ensure they are somewhat able to maintain their culture. E.g. Crowd Control which limits the posting / c…

>E.g. Crowd Control which limits the posting / commenting abilities of individual users based on their history or other heuristics.

Aren't you of the opinion this could be misused?

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#279

Post by fullshark »

hannasanarion wrote: post #217
fullshark wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you asked 100 people what it meant at its heyday maybe 70-80 would say "abolish the police." Connotation of words and all that. Just for humor's sake, google dictionary definition of defund is "prevent from continuing to receive funds" thus kill/abolish.

And those same people would happily call for legislation to defund sanctuary cities, defund education, defund planned parenthood, defund medicaid, with the full understanding that the proposals aren't intended to wipe those things from the face of the earth.

I mean, do you want to build a winning coalition or do you want to keep sending out confusing political messages and complain amongst yourselves about how the game just isn't fair?

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#280

Post by optimiz3 »

asow92 wrote: post #246
dymk wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You tax a couple dozen ultra rich billionaires and a couple dozen ultra profitable companies. There's plenty of money. We don't need to print more. And each doesn't need the spare $20B anyways.

Even if we zero out every US billionaire (imagine that for a second; take 100% of their wealth and leave them with exactly $0) it would not even cover 1/5 of the US national debt. We can't see taking their money as a viable long term solution to UBI. Our debt is out of control and our day of reckoning will come eventually. Nothing is free; markets will correct for UBI and people will become just as poor as they were…

The COVID stimulus programs were a sort of UBI program. We're now starting to see mass inflation in part due to lower labor participation and excess liquidity.

Obviously only part of the picture as quantitative easing and low rates are also driving excess liquidity, and omicron is also driving lower short-term labor participation.

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