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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

#421

Post by wombatpm »

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…

Perhaps we need anti Twitter —Where comments need to be at at least 280 characters to encourage explanations and discourse. I self censor in this regard where I start many replies, but discard them if all I have typed is two lines of witty snark.

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

#422

Post by mantas »

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…

> To me anti-work is the recognition that forced wage labor is not acceptable

Good. Then it should be acceptable to let people starve. Why feed someone who can't accept that he has to contribute to society?

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

#423

Post by double_nan »

wombatpm wrote: post #421
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…

Perhaps we need anti Twitter —Where comments need to be at at least 280 characters to encourage explanations and discourse. I self censor in this regard where I start many replies, but discard them if all I have typed is two lines of witty snark.

Your comment is 202 non space characters :) But I like your point nevertheless!

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

#424

Post by OmegaPG »

Levitz wrote: post #170
helloooooooo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably has to do with the post incentives. On Reddit, if you get downvoted into oblivion, your post disappears even if you get thousands of comments. On 4Chan, the more active the post, the more it gets bumped to the top. So being inflammatory on one makes your post disappear, and on the other it sends it to the top of the feed.

Reddit is grossly overmoderated. You have a vote system that enforces a hivemind by itself, on top of a normal moderation system that deletes an enormous amount of content, on top of automated moderation banning posts if you use this or that word, on top of a shadowban system on top of a global content policy system. The result is that only stuff that the majority of users allow will get displayed.

> Reddit is grossly overmoderated

I think bigger problem is poor moderation. Most of the mods are driven by some agenda and even propaganda.

Instead of focusing on quality, they focus on how their subreddit content can be aligned to their agenda.

Any user who doesn't comply, gets banned. Since roughly only 1% user actively engage in a subreddit, update macha end with Eco chamber.

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

#425

Post by MockObject »

rhino369 wrote: post #273
shakes_mcjunkie wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think your last two sentences directly contradict.

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

#426

Post by sol_invictus »

JSavageOne wrote: post #324
sol_invictus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what exactly is the alternative for selling your labour to someone else - and more importantly, one that is scalable to the general populace?

Let people work on whatever they want. People can still get jobs if they want. In fact, most people probably still will. Otherwise nobody would be working in countries where welfare isn't capped, which obviously isn't the case. Also just think back to all the rich trust fund kids and financially independent people you know (eg. multimillionaires). What percentage of them don't work anymore? In my experience, most con…

I dont understand the logic in this at all. Is the idea to have some sort of free flowing money pool a la UBI that ensures all people can obtain basic necessities? If so, then what will ensure those necessities exist in the first place if the intent is to remove money as a tool of trade? You cant just make supply and demand magically disappear.

This sounds just about as superficial as the dude on fox news who wants to walk dogs and teach philosophy as their profession. Surprisingly or not, none of the antiwork activists are queuing to work in rice fields or other gritty but absolutely necessary jobs.

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

#427

Post by MockObject »

prepend wrote: post #373
gruez wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This reminds me of "Defund the Police", wherein supporters would try to convince others that the slogan did not literally mean what it says. I have a hard time figuring out whether: 1) all the people who are saying "no we don't really mean defund the police" are just the moderate elements battling it out with the extreme elements (eg. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol... ) 2) most of them…

I’m thinking the latter as it seems so crazy to use a specific word and then argue against its understood meaning. Why would I want to bother with that confusion when I could just call it “reform police” or whatever. Gaslighting is very mainstream and seems so commonplace in even banal, insubstantial things like debating whether “defund police” means to remove funding from the police or something else.

Exactly correct.

If someone advocates for more funding for social workers and mental health care, they can just say so. That funding doesn't necessarily need to come from police budgets.

If someone advocates to "defund Planned Parenthood", they would be disappointed with a mere reduction in funding.

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

#428

Post by LegitShady »

JSavageOne wrote: post #370
BobbyJo wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me anti-work is the recognition that forced wage labor is not acceptable, and that technological advancement and automation should enable greater freedom for individuals to spend their time how they choose. We could already have this reality today if we just implemented a universal basic income, but until the boomers retire from office that's just not happening. It's not acceptable, but it is necessary. People a…

> There are tons of jobs no one wants to do, but everyone needs done. If these jobs truly are necessary, then wages would rise to the point where people would be attracted to do them. If truck driving paid as much as FAANG software engineering, I assure you there'd be no shortage of truck drivers (even if it required grinding a trucker Leetcode). Higher wages further incentivize automation, or alternative means of co…

Why would the cost of those unpopular jobs go up? If a company can't find anyone at "market rates" they can just get temporary foreign workers and never raise the wage. As long as everyone is cashing in on the cheaper tfws the price never goes up and they never need to hire anyone at a riser wage.

All these market conditions for wages don't work with all the policies set in place to depress worker wage increase.

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

#429

Post by Dracophoenix »

wsb_mod2 wrote: post #287
Dracophoenix wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

How so? It's a black box algorithm owned by Reddit Admins. Moderators only have the ability to set the threshold, with very vague terms (low, moderate, high, or something similar) If admins wanted to disappear a viewpoint, it would be a lot easier to just autosuspend the accounts, or shadowban without a trace.

Just because the admins can do (and have done) worse shouldn't make Crowd Control an acceptable measure by comparison. If anything, I'd say a black box algorithm dictated by the admins is worse than the preemptory auto-mod banning that goes on in a number of political subreddits. I have little confidence the admins won't eventually use it to police subs at a mass scale without the need of the moderator.

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

#430

Post by sol_invictus »

shadowgovt wrote: post #286
sol_invictus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what exactly is the alternative for selling your labour to someone else - and more importantly, one that is scalable to the general populace?

Most anarchist philosophy starts from the idea that "general populace" is a bad idea to begin with. People should be living in small, hyper-independent communities. They sidestep the scalability question by asserting that a community of a few hundred (or even a few thousand) is already unnatural. (Not a philosophy I agree with, but one that I observe as pretty cornerstone).

Localism should be encouraged more, I agree, but I just get the vibe these antiwork activists arent arguing for that, but rather for some subjective right to spend their days doing what pleases them while someone else provides the basic necessities for them.
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