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The Abolition of Work (2002)

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Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#161

Post by Emma_Goldman »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #152
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person to whom you are responding spoke of necessities, you speak of scarcity as the fact of demand exceeding supply. Clearly the crux of your disagreement is what is involved in a good life and society. The argument against your view is that human desire is not fixed, but expands with the development of every new frontier of consumption. The more we can produce, the more we want. Should we let that process run i…

> The argument against your view is that human desire is not fixed, but expands with the development of every new frontier of consumption. The more we can produce, the more we want. Should we let that process run indefinitely? The problem is that we are not inherently given the opportunity to make that decision for other people. It's one thing to speak theoretically about this process of exogenous desires forming ane…

"It's quite another thing to tell people "no more inventions or creative labor, society is wealthy enough."

I am not a proponent of eliminating growth, let alone creativity and inventions. Those are great things, within limits. I simply think we ought to move away from the opposite extreme of maximalist production and consumption. I agree that how to do that is enormously difficult.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#162

Post by jmfldn »

A rather extreme and ridiculous prescription but there's no doubt that we live in economies of overwork which are a product of a particular kind of economic system of endless, mindless growth. This is the cause of rampant inequality, rampant mental illness caused by stress and feelings of meaninglessness and powerlessness, ecological destruction and so on.

The problem is Capitalism and the related mindless obsession with GDP. Degrowth economics in the form of an ecologically-sane post capitalism, is the only way humans can thrive again, and probably the only way we can survive as a species. This would not mean no work, it would mean our economics were in line with our needs as a species and planet.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#163

Post by djrobstep »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #158
djrobstep wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just said that "hand over your watch or get shot" is choice. So then is "hand over your tax or go to prison", yes?

I said that libertarians use "voluntary" to refer to a situation that doesn't involve coercion. I did not say that a coerced individual had no choice in the matter. Why would anyone bother to coerce someone who had no choices?

Coercion implies lack of free choice. That's what it is.

A mugging is coercive precisely because the alternative choice (getting shot) is not meaningful.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#164

Post by chordalkeyboard »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #161
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The argument against your view is that human desire is not fixed, but expands with the development of every new frontier of consumption. The more we can produce, the more we want. Should we let that process run indefinitely? The problem is that we are not inherently given the opportunity to make that decision for other people. It's one thing to speak theoretically about this process of exogenous desires forming ane…

"It's quite another thing to tell people "no more inventions or creative labor, society is wealthy enough." I am not a proponent of eliminating growth, let alone creativity and inventions. Those are great things, within limits. I simply think we ought to move away from the opposite extreme of maximalist production and consumption. I agree that how to do that is enormously difficult.

> Those are great things, within limits. I simply think we ought to move away from the opposite extreme of maximalist production and consumption.

Who can be trusted to decide what those limits are for other people?

> I agree that how to do that is enormously difficult.

There is a perspective that interest rates are connected to time preference and higher interest rates incentivize a longer time preference, which would make people more inclined to plan for the future and consume less.

I agree that it is enormously difficult and not likely to be solved by merely changing the rate of return on invested capital.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#165

Post by chordalkeyboard »

djrobstep wrote: post #163
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said that libertarians use "voluntary" to refer to a situation that doesn't involve coercion. I did not say that a coerced individual had no choice in the matter. Why would anyone bother to coerce someone who had no choices?

Coercion implies lack of free choice. That's what it is . A mugging is coercive precisely because the alternative choice (getting shot) is not meaningful.

> Coercion implies lack of free choice. That's what it is.

"free choice" != "choice"

"choice" != "voluntary"

I mentioned semantics for a reason.

> A mugging is coercive precisely because the alternative choice (getting shot) is not meaningful.

Its not really desirable but neither is it wholly without meaning. Some things are worth dying for. For some people increasing the cost of robbery to murder for their assailant is one of those things.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#166

Post by chordalkeyboard »

sirmoveon wrote: post #156

The vision is correct; I disagree with the phrasing and tactic. Instead of focusing in a negative "Abolish work"; lets do it from a positive standpoint: Shelter for everyone, Healthy eating made free, Education accessible to all... If we take away the main reasons the average person has to work for as an obligation, we can leverage a society detached from obligatory labor. I've always thought about it from the workpl…

Who is supposed to provide all this food, shelter, and education? And what are they getting in return for their time and labor?

> When we hire people, we make sure they are better prepared than our market competition. We provide them with a desk, computers, printers, access to food and beverage, access to tuition related to the job they will be making, and many stuff the employee doesn't have to pay for. How and why could we think society-wide should be different? Governments should start thinking of their citizens as employees.

Access to those things are provided conditionally upon their satisfactory performance. What conditions are you proposing that governments require to be met?

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#167

Post by pfalcon »

roenxi wrote: post #15
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 oursel…

> controlled largely by deterministic chemicals

I wonder if that's a typo, but there's no determinism all the way up from position of an electron in the core, and thru protein binding, which is also non-deterministic. That's why they run that COVID Folding@Home stuff - to assess how well vaccine particles can bind to a virus thru variations - lone "hit" or "non-hit" don't matter much.

That non-determinism alone is a great source of suffering, even before we get to "embodiment" and "need to feed that embodiment". ;-)

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#168

Post by mkl »

gfxgirl wrote: post #76

> Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world This is utter nonsense. Many people enjoy their work immensely. To take a HN hero I'll bet Steve Jobs enjoyed changing the world via his work and through that loved his work. I'll be Steven Spielberg loves (loved?) his work. Further, short of AGI, there will always be work. Let's imagine no one had to work anymore. What would we all do? We certainly wouldn't…

> Even in Star Trek (post scarcity) what do think the 1000+ crew members each ship do? They do work.

Star Trek is hardly a documentary. The characters work because that's what the writers want, to tell their stories. By contrast, in Iain M. Banks's post-scarcity Culture novels, work is not really a thing. Instead people have hobbies and interests, some people accomplish things by getting really into hobbies like spaceship building (but it would have been automated if they didn't), and a very few people choose to play important societal roles.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#169

Post by sirmoveon »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #166
sirmoveon wrote: post #156

The vision is correct; I disagree with the phrasing and tactic. Instead of focusing in a negative "Abolish work"; lets do it from a positive standpoint: Shelter for everyone, Healthy eating made free, Education accessible to all... If we take away the main reasons the average person has to work for as an obligation, we can leverage a society detached from obligatory labor. I've always thought about it from the workpl…

Who is supposed to provide all this food, shelter, and education? And what are they getting in return for their time and labor? > When we hire people, we make sure they are better prepared than our market competition. We provide them with a desk, computers, printers, access to food and beverage, access to tuition related to the job they will be making, and many stuff the employee doesn't have to pay for. How and why…

Basic healthy food, shelter and education isn't as costly as society wants you to believe. I think that is the point being made when people talk about abolishing work and offering all the basics for free. I believe its a correct premise aswell. We are not talking about luxury.

> Access to those things are provided conditionally upon their satisfactory performance. What conditions are you proposing that governments require to be met?

As soon as we hire people we provide them with all these basic perks, they are not conditional, because we believe if we are sending soldiers to fight we better provide them with the best chances of succeeding. Its the same idea society-wide. If you mean you fire the employees that don't perform you'd be right, but governments could create brackets. The point is, in this day and age there's no reason why we couldn't provide every citizen of a developed society all these basic things. You could argue shelter is the most expensive but there are examples like Singapore solving the issue society-wide.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#170

Post by pfalcon »

pmoriarty wrote: post #27

I've long been a fan of this essay, as something to strive for over the next, say 500 years, assuming that civilization lasts that long, technological "progress" continues, and all the surplus humans that are no longer necessary for work don't get wiped out by the elites who want more of the world to themselves. However, this essay has always seemed to be heavy on idealism and light on practical or concrete solutions…

> Who's going to want to play the garbageman game?

I'm sorry, but that's exactly the kind of "work" which needs sharing and gamification. Look up "plogging" for example. Also, in 3rd-world, signs like "Whoever litters here, thou shalt become an impotent or infertile" (and all the varieties) are quite popular. In more developed countries, gamification is "put each kind of garbage in its own can" (in half of that world, those cans are still emptied to the same trash truck).

> Or the fix the sewage system game?

"Install a smarthome leak protection system. While doing so, learn how to plug that leak in the first place, dammit!"

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