/r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by kemitche » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:34 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #283

rootusrootus wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How exactly is this supposed to work? The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work? I'm not a committed supporter of UBI, so my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt (or more) but I assume the whole point is to promote wealth redistribution. Not print money. So you give everyone some amount, say 12K/year, and then support it with taxes. It sounds infeasible with the current budg…

> Not print money. So you give everyone some amount, say 12K/year, and then support it with taxes. I’m trying to say this with utmost respect. But $12k x 330M is $4T/year. In 2021, the US collected about $4T [0]. The US spent about $7T [1]. So it would take lots of iterations to figure this out. I think there are some efficiencies so you can reduce some of this budget but introducing a UBI like this would up the spen…

> Proposing this seems less likely than just researching Star Trek replicators to reduce the need to buy food or something.

The problem with that is, without UBI, replicators don't solve the problem. The corporation that invents such a thing would get rich and charge the poorest to use it.

We currently HAVE enough food, shelter, and health care as a society to cover everyone, but the efficiency/productivity gains haven't sufficiently sufficiently benefited everyone. UBI is one proposed option for correcting that situation.

As for the actual cost - just as an exercise for trimming, without going into excessive detail:

* About 80 million of the 330 million in the US are under 18[1]. Let's assume 4 year olds don't need UBI. Maybe there's a childcare credit, maybe not, but for the sake of NOT encouraging parents to have kids just for the paycheck, let's start UBI at 18+ years old

* About half of US households make over $75k right now[2]. 33% make over 100k. I'm handwaving a bit here, but let's say the tax changes to support UBI result in increased taxes, and the "breakeven" point is somewhere around the 75k mark (i.e., above 75k household income - which would be 87k for a 1 person home, or 99k for a 2 person home, with the UBI - there's enough taxed off that the household is paying as much or more in taxes than they get from UBI).

With those two tweaks, you're down to 125 million people or less that are getting more than they put in. And that comes to about 1.25T USD. And... if you look at our spending trends[3], that 7T USD number for 2021 you quoted already includes 1.6T in "income security". So it might actually be possible to hit UBI with the current budget/deficit by rearranging how the money is distributed.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri...

[3] https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spend...

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

#352

Post by neutronicus » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #40

This reminds me of "Defund the Police", wherein supporters would try to convince others that the slogan did not literally mean what it says. Like AntiWork, It seems to have been started by those who genuinely wanted to abolish the police. But as time went on people joined who instead wanted to reform the police by dramatically cutting back what they were meant to respond to. But the slogan stayed, and was very mislea…

I certainly had acquaintances who wanted to abolish the police, and were very upset to hear people claiming the slogan meant anything else.

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

#353

Post by thrashh » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:35 PM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #266

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…

> I haven't browsed the subreddit in forever but just took a look, and it's sad to see it's just a bunch of stupid memes now. Every decent subreddit eventually devolved into a bunch of stupid memes. The September that never ends. This has been a problem in the internet since its initial days (in the Usenet for example). The problem with systems like Reddit (less so news.ycombinator) is that the "ethernal september" c…

I personally think hacker news hasn’t fallen victim as much mainly because it’s so small in comparison.

I feel like once any community starts growing faster than a certain rate, its core focus inevitably dilutes because there are not enough older members to impress the culture of the community onto newer members.

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

#354

Post by nameisname » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

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…

The organization itself has become very user hostile as well which I think has played a large part in the overall quality drop. There's a reason everyone links to old.

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

#355

Post by JSavageOne » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

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

I would prefer to fund it via a land value tax, which is seen as the most efficient form of taxation due to having no deadweight loss.

Like the other commenter said, the concept of a UBI is already practically the reality in countries with strong welfare states where no one technically needs to work. We just disguise it with all this means-testing because as a society we're still devoted to this pro-work capitalist grind mental model of everyone needing to make a buck to justify their existence.

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

#356

Post by enaaem » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

bloaf wrote: post #261

gavinray wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

If you give someone a fish, they starve after a day. Teach someone to fish and they can eat + sell the fish. But if I make a fish-catching machine to catch fish for everyone, does everyone eat, or does everyone starve? UBI is essentially a means of ensuring that in a world where the robots catch all the fish, people can still afford to buy a fish.

You still need a fish catching machine. In the literal sense. Despite all the innovations, we still need fisherman and sailors. Even if we have a fish catching machine who/what will make the fish catching machine? And there are still tons of other automation problems and a fish catching machines isn't even the hardest one.

The automation challenge is often conveniently underplayed, while it's an insanely hard problem. You might as wel say a wizard will do it.

Will it be possible some day in the future? Probably? In a relevant time frame? Probably not.

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

#357

Post by cherrycherry98 » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #277

dymk wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 politic…

I agree with you, taxation does nothing but enable the government to work on projects it deems important in the name of helping the public. It's inefficient and obviously open to corruption.

If we really think that it is unjust for money to be concentrated in the hands of the rich and should go to the public instead of their heirs or private interests, there should be an option of zeroing out one's bank account. That is, literally destroying money (not to be confused with wealth). This should have roughly the same effect as dividing up one's fortune and distributing it evenly to all holders of that currency.

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

#358

Post by jklinger410 » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

bleachedsleet wrote: post #245

jklinger410 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually defund the police means exactly what it says. The proposal is that police budgets get diverted to mental health and rehabilitation programs. The budget moved to mental health & rehab would be handled under a different agency than the police, which is something that is constantly argued over. Many opponents of defund the police agree with the overall budget reallocation, but they believe the budget should not…

> Actually defund the police means exactly what it says. …to you. Not everyone agrees and the simple fact that this discussion is taking place and you are defending this slogan would seem to render this purported clarity moot.

Most of the confusion is semantic in nature. Whether defund means remove all funding or just some funding.

I think some radicals wanted to remove all funding, and radicals on the other side latched onto that and spread that as if it were the truth.

Defund the police has mostly been about reallocating budgets between agencies. There are, however, a few specific branches of police that protestors have want shut down, but not to remove policing entirely.

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

#359

Post by mlyle » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

bleachedsleet wrote: post #231

mlyle wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Defund" can be a relative term that doesn't necessarily mean to fully remove funding. E.g. we've had decades of hyperbole where relatively small cuts to defense funding are referred to by opponents as "defunding" US troops. We spend a whole lot on policing compared to most other developed nations, and we're not getting terrific outcomes either on civil liberties or crime rates. It might be time to take a different a…

> On the other hand, maybe we're just so socioculturally fucked that it requires massive authoritarian investment to keep a crummy level of peace. I'm undecided. This statement disturbs me. Please clarify.

If you spend a huge amount of money on police, and get bad outcomes for both crime rate and negative impacts of policing, there's really two options:

- The money is poorly spent, and better (perhaps less) spending would obtain better outcomes

- Because of other factors, we're doing approximately as well as we can: if we deployed resources away from the authoritarian, heavy-handed mechanisms, we'd have even more crimes and bad outcomes.

I think the former is more likely, but I can't entirely exclude the latter.

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

#360

Post by ryeights » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

wsb_mod2 wrote: post #117

kilroy123 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I preferred it before GME and all that craziness. So before 2020. Just not the same anymore.

2020 was marked by a 10x increase in comment volume, largely coming from both incredible, pandemic driven, market volatility as well as stimulus checks and stay at home orders. It is very unlikely (I hope) that this environment will happen again. Nonetheless, can you express exactly what it is that "just [isn't] the same anymore"?

Not OP, but IMO WSB used to be interesting because it represented a small contrarian movement within the highly structured world of finance; a ‘secret club,’ if you will. I always browsed WSB primarily because it was fun, not because I expected to get mega-rich; after the GME blowup/meme-ification/massive media coverage, now everybody and their grandma trades OTM options (and now penny stocks and cryptos and NFTs etc etc) and it just isn’t cool anymore.