Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

tracingwoodgrains.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 566 posts

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

#391

Post by patch_cable »

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…

This, except in my circles I heard “police abolitionist” followed by “it doesn’t really mean abolishing the police…”

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

#392

Post by addingnumbers »

quitit wrote: post #139
tgb wrote: post #28

I think this article is trying to have its cake and eat it too. If the sub has been sanewashed and overrun by average left-of-center opinions and become wildly popular, then how can it be true that Doreen still represents the movement? The movement changed, as the article points out, and therefore Doreen was a terrible choice of representative. The fact that she predates the change is exactly the reason she is not re…

Subreddit's changing their spots isn't uncommon, it's the norm for reddit. The author has a very clear agenda here, and while they're welcome to construct a case for that view, they've left out inconvenient details while attempting to appear neutral. The core issue is that the subreddit already had an agreement that no one would attempt to represent the movement or do interviews. The forethought there was that a redd…

> It's deeply disingenuous to suggest that the work reform principles of the subreddit are moot because a mod started the original subreddit as a protest against work.

This point might stand better using a word other than "principle," from principium (beginning), from princeps (initiator).

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

#393

Post by loceng »

wonderwonder wrote: post #323
loceng wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation technology has allowed a machine to create 100,000s to millions of a product with very little input from a human to put in the raw resources into it. GDP grows instantly by at least 13% (in the US) if doing a $1,000/month UBI, for example. Etc. Andrew Yang has looked into this a lot - his last two books: “The War On Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income I…

"GDP grows instantly by at least 13% (in the US) if doing a $1,000/month UBI, for example" That really does not track though, sure GDP will go up if the money is spent, but its just spending money that we either borrowed or just printed. Not to mention a ton of that money would be saved, essentially removing it from circulation. Inflation would go out of control. If not, then why not just print 100,000 for each perso…

It's too complex to rehash here in a comment - there are people like Andrew Yang who "have done the MATH" and it works out; you tie UBI to inflation also, so people only with UBI don't get priced out of the market, at the same time people can move to towns where things like housing inflation isn't running wild, etc.

Yang also has said you make up most of the difference with a Value Added Tax (consumption tax) - and you can say make Facebook ads have an 80% tax, and diapers - necessities having 0% tax, that way poorer people aren't impacted by the tax; if everyone's receiving $12,000 / year in UBI then you can design it so only people spending more than $200,000 per year are actually paying back into the system - otherwise the taxes you pay is just putting that $12k UBI back into the system. What Yang points out is with the UBI tied to inflation + VAT you can have many levers to pull on if you need to to increase/decrease tax.

Another chunk of covering that UBI comes from cash and cash-like social assistance programs that people will have to decide for themselves if the $1,000/month is better for them or if their current social assistance programs (for cash and cash-like things) is better for them; and no, it's not a Trojan Horse, Yang doesn't want to cut social assistance programs - but if people choose the cash because that's better for their specific circumstances (and they get to decide that, not a bureaucratic government) then that program's spending is going down - the cost of what's provided goes down (turned into the UBI) but then also the management/bureaucracy cost of managing different programs will go down as well depending on how many people chose the UBI over the cash/cash-like options.

And then there's even more that ties into this that reduces costs; stress going down, crime going down, emergency services costs (fire/ambulance/police) go down, etc.

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

#394

Post by shakes_mcjunkie »

the_snooze wrote: post #369
shakes_mcjunkie wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point about "Make America Great Again" is anyone can be like "I don't get it what does it mean though?" which happened a lot from liberals and left for this slogan specifically. Conservatives get the benefit of being easily aligned around their leaders and values, so sure "Make America Great Again" works really well in that context where everyone wants pretty much the same thing. "Defund the Police" had a specific…

>My point about "Make America Great Again" is anyone can be like "I don't get it what does it mean though?" which happened a lot from liberals and left for this slogan specifically. Conservatives get the benefit of being easily aligned around their leaders and values, so sure "Make America Great Again" works really well in that context where everyone wants pretty much the same thing. I absolutely agree with you here,…

Given the long history of the US culture broadly being anti-left, what possible slogan could there be that's "aspirational and adaptable and unassailable". I think you put effort into a slogan but it's pretty much impossible for any leftist slogan to meet those criteria.

And anyways, again, I highly disagree that any slogan is unassailable. A lot of people still attacked "MAGA" so where is the line that you measure "unassailablity"? I could say to someone against "Defund the Police" that you hate Black people but there just isn't widespread support for that opinion like there is with being anti american. "Defund the Police" is a compromise slogan, "Abolish the Police" is the more radical version and arguably even clearer and less assailable but again mainstream US culture just doesn't want to face that reality.

Also, adaptable slogans are great for campaigns (where you probably don't want to assign policy specifics) and conservatives (who largely agree on everything already) but not for positions that are supposed to end up with policy changes. What adaptable slogan is there for leftist movement that's asking specifically to tackle the issue of police violence? The problem with adaptable slogans is they become compromised or co-opted. "Black Lives Matter" became a the conservative rally "All Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter". Can this be avoided on the left by a more adaptable slogan? I doubt it.

So, okay maybe there's some slightly better slogan than "Defund the Police" but at the end of the day it's not the slogan that's the issue, it's liberals that don't actually agree with the basic idea but want to pretend they're still pro-left or whatever.

Edit: to complete the thought, all of this is to say, all the disagreement with the slogan is overall to a bad faith, pointless end. If the media and liberals and whoever are spending a bunch of time arguing about the slogan, it's time that could have been spent discussing and negotiating policy specifics. But liberals and mainstream media didn't want to do that. So we ended up with a lot of arguing about a slogan and not much actual policy and the police won.

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

#395

Post by wonderwonder »

jerska wrote: post #367
wonderwonder wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not trying to disagree at all, in fact I think we very much need to do more for the poorest among us, especially the kids. Where does that 30k come from though? For 300 million people, that's 9 trillion dollars a year, ~half of GDP. Inflation would be out of control, essentially Venezuela / Zimbabwe levels.

You are trying to disagree here. Otherwise, you’d have looked at other comparable economic powers worldwide that provide a more socialist alternative and see that they are nowhere near the inflation rate you’re describing, e.g. France. Granted, it’s not $30K a year, but $7.5K for a single person, with free healthcare & education that could be considered a form of income. Doing the same maths as you did, round it $10K…

Again, where does the 30% of gdp come from? Frances tax brackets seem to run ~10 - 15% higher than the comparable US ones. Now if I could get free health care and college for my kids I may be open to paying an extra 10% assuming the quality was good. Using round numbers though, we are taxing everyone an extra 10 - 15% but need to raise an extra 30% of gdp, we are still short. France has a VAT of 20% on goods sold, likely why their Debt to GDP is stable. So while they dont have inflation, everything has gone up 20% right off the bat.

Is a VAT a regressive tax? The poor likely spend 100% of their income so are taxed 20% on everything. The rich are able to save a good portion of it, so get to keep it tax free after income taxes.

Not sure I would be willing to pay essentially 30 - 35% more in taxes for 'free' health care. That's more than I save for retirement. How would I retire? Retirement would essentially be living on the UBI.

Frances Debt to GDP is similar to the US. What happens as population decline affects France and less people work? The Debt to GDP keeps climbing and begins to do so faster and faster.

Doctors and medical professionals would likely have to take paycuts as the federal government cannot afford to pay them 325k a year. You could argue that we could make up the difference by cutting military spending which I agree with, but the military is very much a jobs program as is, so a ton of those soldiers and military contractors including high paying engineering jobs at places like Lockheed go away now. Once that happens and the US can no longer afford to project force in europe, what happens in France when Russia gets aggressive, do they in turn have to raise defense spending and reduce benefits. If we have a military conflict, are we bringing back the draft?

So again I am not disagreeing, I think certain benefits should be given, including universal health care, I am just saying its very complicated and I don't have all the answers and would love to hear some.

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

#396

Post by shakes_mcjunkie »

honkdaddy wrote: post #304
shakes_mcjunkie wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really surprising that all kinds of different people are a part of a political movement? You would find this same kind of diversity of thought in any group of people.

No that's definitely true, I should have been more specific. In my case, I was referring to some past acquaintances who are very vocal about their views on social media. Specifically, the perspective I'm bothered by, is that of being pro-police intervention when it's for a cause you don't support, but calling to defund the police when they're disrupting a protest you _do_ support.

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.

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

#397

Post by yongjik »

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.

Maybe, but even these people have the basic sense to not make "defund education" their foremost slogan.

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

#398

Post by totony »

nradov wrote: post #384
totony wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work? 1. UBI aims to streamline redistribution of wealth and remove a lot of bureaucracy around it, reducing a lot of the cost of the current system 2. Why the middle class specifically? Upper class could shoulder most of the costs (if there are) easily >I would not be ok going to work to pay people that have decided t…

Have you actually done the math? The reality is that there aren't enough upper class people to generate sufficient tax revenue for a meaningful UBI. While I do support higher taxes at the upper levels, you can only squeeze people so much before they decide to bail out and move to tax havens.

>The reality is that there aren't enough upper class people to generate sufficient tax revenue for a meaningful UBI.

What makes you think so?

There are a lot of discussion online about the costs/benefits of UBI. This article has an US-centric view on how this could be afforded

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/budget-neutral-universal-bas...

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

#399

Post by GameOfFrowns »

nameisname wrote: post #349
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cut most of our bureaucratic social safety net (food stamps, disability, social security, etc) and replace it with a system where everyone gets enough for the bare basics. If you were smart, you'd fund it with a carbon tax. In all honesty I don't see UBI becoming a thing until we start automating ourselves into unemployment. People say this would increase inflation. Maybe. Let's trial it with 1% of the population…

There will still be those who spend all their UBI on drugs or whatever and have nowhere to stay. Do we just let them die on the street since there's no more social safety nets?

I assume with more 'normal' people being liberated from the yoke of work there might be more volunteers and volunteer initiatives to help those in need out. The question is how much of the self-destructive behaviour if a product of a 'sick' society where mental health treatment seems prohibited by the cost.

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

#400

Post by nradov »

loceng wrote: post #313
wonderwonder wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not trying to disagree at all, in fact I think we very much need to do more for the poorest among us, especially the kids. Where does that 30k come from though? For 300 million people, that's 9 trillion dollars a year, ~half of GDP. Inflation would be out of control, essentially Venezuela / Zimbabwe levels.

Automation technology has allowed a machine to create 100,000s to millions of a product with very little input from a human to put in the raw resources into it. GDP grows instantly by at least 13% (in the US) if doing a $1,000/month UBI, for example. Etc. Andrew Yang has looked into this a lot - his last two books: “The War On Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income I…

This is nonsense completely disconnected from reality. Sure we could increase GDP in nominal dollar terms by 13% or 130% or any arbitrary number by just printing more dollars but inflation doesn't make us wealthier. At some point someone has to actually make things. Most forms of resource extraction, farming, and manufacturing are still quite labor intensive. The dilettantes who believe that automation will save us from working have probably never had to clean the conveyor belt in a mushroom packing plant; show me a robot capable of doing that.
Post reply on HN