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The Abolition of Work (2002)

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Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#11

Post by georgewsinger »

I am a capitalist libertarian, with anarcho-capitalist sympathies, and I too support the long-term abolition of "work" as we know it.

Ending toil is, in principle, impossible with our current level of societal wealth. We will need major, non-trivial technological innovation in order to truly escape our toil (through capitalism, of course :). Teams of innovators will need to build out AI & robotic infrastructure (among other things) in order to make this happen.

I hope that humans will look back on us thousands (if not hundreds) of years into the future and look in horror at how hard we had to toil for our basic necessities.

The leftist desire to redistribute wealth (which I think is strongly misplaced and immoral) will become irrelevant once we achieve a certain level of abundance that is unlike anything we are accustomed to today. It will be like wanting to redistribute oxygen or dirt -- two resources so abundant they are essentially free.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#12

Post by ianleeclark »

daenz wrote: post #6

>Such is “work.” Play is just the opposite. Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it’s forced. This is axiomatic. Work and play are both voluntary to different degrees. You can survive without working, although your existence will likely be miserable. You can also survive without playing, but again, your existence will also likely be miserable. Play is something we prefer to do voluntarily…

> Declaring that you have no choice is a result of the inability to confront the weakness to acknowledge the unpleasant decision.

Not everyone believes that these choices exist. The author offered the POV--although unstated--that the compulsions sufficient enough exist to either fully obfuscate or remove this choice, and you responded with the fact that this choice exists--not why or how this choice exists, just simply the assertion that it does.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#13

Post by chongli »

georgewsinger wrote: post #11

I am a capitalist libertarian, with anarcho-capitalist sympathies, and I too support the long-term abolition of "work" as we know it. Ending toil is, in principle, impossible with our current level of societal wealth. We will need major, non-trivial technological innovation in order to truly escape our toil (through capitalism, of course :). Teams of innovators will need to build out AI & robotic infrastructure (amon…

We will never have an abundance of land, at least not without colonizing the galaxy. In a post-work society, people who own all the land will effectively own everyone else. How will people afford rent?

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#14

Post by mehrdadn »

daenz wrote: post #6

>Such is “work.” Play is just the opposite. Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it’s forced. This is axiomatic. Work and play are both voluntary to different degrees. You can survive without working, although your existence will likely be miserable. You can also survive without playing, but again, your existence will also likely be miserable. Play is something we prefer to do voluntarily…

Even play isn't always truly voluntary... when your mom tells you to go play with your sibling or another kid... it's not really voluntary is it.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#15

Post by roenxi »

lordwarnut wrote: post #2

The quote that stands out to me the most is: Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren’t free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or-else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officia…

> Work makes a mockery of freedom

Being embedded in a flimsy sack of meat controlled largely by deterministic chemicals makes a mockery of freedom. And yet here we are, embodied. Makes a mockery of fairness too.

That paragraph is taking a stand against large organised bodies, without taking a sufficiently nuanced opinion on what 'freedom' means. If we take part in a larger body than ourselves, we lose a bit of ourselves (quite a lot, really) to the larger body. That is forced upon us by the inescapable fact that individual humans are delicate and feeble, so there need to be a lot of us to get things done. It is impossible to gain freedom from that.

We don't get sewerage systems, international trade or defence forces by people acting individually. The only point of contention is whether joining specific groups is mandatory or not (eg, opting out of the control of a state bureaucrat is largely impossible). Even the most hardened individualist has to admit a company gets a lot more done than an individual.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#16

Post by thinkingemote »

daenz wrote: post #6

>Such is “work.” Play is just the opposite. Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it’s forced. This is axiomatic. Work and play are both voluntary to different degrees. You can survive without working, although your existence will likely be miserable. You can also survive without playing, but again, your existence will also likely be miserable. Play is something we prefer to do voluntarily…

I read it as him saying yes we have no choice but he wants one. Therefore change the system to anarchism.

Ultimately and quickly it comes down to philosophy and your view of the truth of the world.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#17

Post by baud147258 »

lordwarnut wrote: post #2

The quote that stands out to me the most is: Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren’t free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or-else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officia…

it looks like a shitty workplace.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#18

Post by jakelazaroff »

daenz wrote: post #6

>Such is “work.” Play is just the opposite. Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it’s forced. This is axiomatic. Work and play are both voluntary to different degrees. You can survive without working, although your existence will likely be miserable. You can also survive without playing, but again, your existence will also likely be miserable. Play is something we prefer to do voluntarily…

> Calling work non-voluntary reveals more about the author than it does about the system they describe: that they feel that they have no choice.

Assuming I don’t want to starve to death, what are my other options?

I could beg, although that’s still work in the sense that I’d be trading my time for money. I could go around to places that offer free meals to homeless people, but that seems unreliable. And I could steal money or food. That’s about all I can think of.

I suppose that’s technically a “choice”, but only by the most ruthlessly literal definition.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#19

Post by alangou »

This argument has a lot of big words, but in the end, we humans run up against the hard wall of reality in a world of scarce resources. To say that the nearly all misery arises from how we currently work is laughable. Let me know when winter stops being cold and food falls from heaven onto our dinner tables.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#20

Post by Bakary »

georgewsinger wrote: post #11

I am a capitalist libertarian, with anarcho-capitalist sympathies, and I too support the long-term abolition of "work" as we know it. Ending toil is, in principle, impossible with our current level of societal wealth. We will need major, non-trivial technological innovation in order to truly escape our toil (through capitalism, of course :). Teams of innovators will need to build out AI & robotic infrastructure (amon…

>The leftist desire to redistribute wealth (which I think is strongly misplaced and immoral)

While not a leftist per se, I've always found this concept of redistribution immorality to be a little strange. Much wealth is already regularly redistributed from value creator to rent-seeker. Laws can be optimized to serve the needs of corporations. Much of wealth creation also depends on the previous work of others in the same environment, whether it's infrastructure or even the work that goes in having a decent place to live where people can afford to be a healthy consuming market. Would your typical software engineer have been as successful in Sierra Leone?

The flipside of that concept is to have privatized profits but collectivized negative externalities. That's not to mention entire industries consisting in intelligent and skilled workers spending their lives redistributing wealth from a wealthy person to another (traders, corporate lawyers, etc.)

That's why injecting the concept of morality feels misplaced: if the there already is redistribution, then workers taking a share through governmental action is just an actor exercising whatever power they had, where they previously did not and other actors did.

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