Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs

#171

Post by namelessoracle » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 9:53 PM UTC

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #165

namelessoracle wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My analogy is to look at your computer. Screws are essential, but you can probably go without a few and if one breaks you will just throw it away and get another one. A graphics card is expensive, and the computer might still work in some core ways without it! Yet that you might try to get repaired and go through an annoying RGA process to get a new one. Which type of worker is the screw and which one is the graphics…

The analogy is ok if you only consider the capitalist's point of view. Screws don't need health care not do they have children that have to pay for college. If you want to also consider the worker's point of view, you need think of things like cost of living vs salary and unionizing. Computer part analogies are much too naive for that.

I dont think there's anything at all naive by realizing that the capitalists perspective on you is just like how they view a part of a machine they own, and they will treat you according to how you would treat a piece of machine based on how expensive / difficult to replace you/it are.

Sense you seemed to miss the point. Capitalists dont care about you. The dirty secret though is that communists/socialists view you as a cog in a machine too. Every large system will.

Re: Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs

#172

Post by gruez » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 10:04 PM UTC

mikewarot wrote: post #162

gruez wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think that this is a great way to cover up the problem with the wave of people disabled by Long Covid falling out of the work force. I must have missed the memo about the hoards of workers being disabled by long covid. Can you link me to it?

https://www.barrons.com/articles/labor-shortage-workers-mill...

>Some 3 million workers remain out of the labor force

>Bunker estimates that roughly 20% of Covid cases in the U.S. turn into long Covid, and that at least half of that slice isn’t able to work. Doing some back-of-the-envelope math, that’s 4.6 million people.

So 153% of people out of the workforce have long covid? That seems a bit high.

Re: Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs

#173

Post by mgh2 » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 10:52 PM UTC

roxaaaane wrote: post #123

What's with the hostility towards the subreddit? I am surprised by the HN reaction to it. I think that unless you are working minimum wage you don't get to call the sub "nihilistic, apathetic or zoomer adhd" if anything most of the members were essential workers during covid and struggle to afford basic living otherwise they would not be angry. I am very surprised by the comments in the thread to be honest, if you wo…

The devaluation of values https://trendguardian.medium.com/why-we-are-dispensable-7a57...

Re: Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs

#174

Post by karmakurtisaani » Mon, Jan 10, 2022, 11:06 PM UTC

namelessoracle wrote: post #171

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy is ok if you only consider the capitalist's point of view. Screws don't need health care not do they have children that have to pay for college. If you want to also consider the worker's point of view, you need think of things like cost of living vs salary and unionizing. Computer part analogies are much too naive for that.

I dont think there's anything at all naive by realizing that the capitalists perspective on you is just like how they view a part of a machine they own, and they will treat you according to how you would treat a piece of machine based on how expensive / difficult to replace you/it are. Sense you seemed to miss the point. Capitalists dont care about you. The dirty secret though is that communists/socialists view you a…

Ok, thanks for the clarification. I got the impression that you were arguing for the "capitalist" viewpoint rather than just characterizing it, as that opinion seems to be somewhat popular here. My mistake if that was not the case.

For the record, my intention was to contrast that to the antiwork sentiment, and how it is understandable, if not a direct consequence, starting from the "capitalist" model of thinking about work.

Re: Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs

#175

Post by gremlinsinc » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:23 AM UTC

mgh2 wrote: post #115

noahtallen wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would it be like if the goals of that subreddit were accomplished? - Would it be that most people could choose not to work? (I.e under some kind of UBI program?) I’d like to not have to work ;) - Would it be that the benefits and pay for many jobs would be vastly improved? That also sounds pretty nice. - Maybe it’d be that companies have to compete harder to be actually nice places to work. Also a good thing. Wh…

The phone and computer you are using, the vaccine that protects you from covid, the medicines that keep you living when you get sick, these are the products of thousand years of hard work from past generations. People wanting to "abolish work" may rather leech on society, it is a consequence of social media brainwashing: gambling, crypto, FIRE, 4hww, etc. These concepts have wide scale, harmful implications for the f…

> People wanting to "abolish work" may rather leech on society, it is a consequence of social media brainwashing: gambling, crypto, FIRE, 4hww, etc. These concepts have wide scale, harmful implications for the future of humanity

Leech on society... I think you've got this backwards. The "leech on society" is all rent-seekers.

Maybe we should ban landlords, seems they're pretty leechy by just holding onto a residence so they can make people who can't really afford it, pay them just for the privilege of having a bed to sleep in....

Re: Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs

#176

Post by PickledHotdog » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:53 AM UTC

scruple wrote: post #164

PickledHotdog wrote: post #151

I'd be interested to hear the ages of people belittling /r/antiwork It seems to me that many are blind to the fact that there's generations of people coming through who are getting dudded on the "work hard and you'll at least be comfortable" agreement of previous generations. Instead they're learning that they'll work hard and that's all they'll do until they die. Wage stagnation, sky-rocketing cost of living, deteri…

> I'd be interested to hear the ages of people belittling /r/antiwork I'd be more interested in hearing what social class they're in.

Ah yes, that would be interesting to hear too. I suspect a place like this might skew a little higher in age and toward oh, I dunno, highly paid tech workers living comfortably upper-middle class lives

Re: Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs

#177

Post by captainbland » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

roxaaaane wrote: post #123

What's with the hostility towards the subreddit? I am surprised by the HN reaction to it. I think that unless you are working minimum wage you don't get to call the sub "nihilistic, apathetic or zoomer adhd" if anything most of the members were essential workers during covid and struggle to afford basic living otherwise they would not be angry. I am very surprised by the comments in the thread to be honest, if you wo…

It's not that surprising. HN is a draw for people whose lives are frankly incredibly sheltered. Not everyone of course, but many. Just by the numbers many have never lived a life on minimum wage without e.g. parental support or even had a person like that in their close social circle/immediate family.

These are people whose idea of a bad day is when their code has a bug in it, or their home theatre system took too long to update, or the food they ordered wasn't perfect and delivered with a huge smile by exactly the kind of person they're trying to deride.

Many won't know what it's like to not be able to heat their living space or be without a reliable car or tell their landlord rent isn't going to be made this month.

So it's not surprising they don't get it. Life is fine for them. The boat shouldn't be rocked, everything is working as intended so long as it's working for them.

Re: Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs

#178

Post by alanlammiman » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #155

imtringued wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would solve absolutely nothing. Btw religions forbid interest for very good reasons.

>Btw religions forbid interest for very good reasons. By preventing anyone but rich people to have access to capital, while at the same time sounding like a policy that most people would support?

I was reading about early Islam (Reza Aslan's 'no god but god'). It's not a rule that has aged well, but according to him the reasoning was that basically in pre-islamic arabia if you didn't have family support (e.g. widow, orphan), you'd have no livelihood, would end up borrowing money and then fall into slavery. In the absence of financial markets, bankruptcy laws, social safety net, free markets for labour/entrepreneurship, forbidding usury potentially made sense.

As an economist, I still think consumer lending (excluding consumer lending that is actually funding investment like mortgages and vehicle financing) in 2022 is pretty questionable and only economically logical in a minority of cases, and that it would make sense to restrict/regulate some of it more heavily.

Re: Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs

#179

Post by alanlammiman » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

blockwriter wrote: post #163

alanlammiman wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well maybe if you made $20/h in cash and the share price is $20 you get 1 share/h. You can sell it (so you dont need to keep the equity in perpetuity) but if you live off $15, that you can have $5 (plus/minus appreciation/depreciation &dividends) shares in 60y time is a feature not a bug. Or maybe you have some mechanism whereby people have to sell back their shares when they leave (like partners at professional serv…

Maybe, but the share price is unlikely to be $20, or anything close to an hourly wage, if the company is paying all of its employees in equity positions.

Well, but you're also cutting the cash outflow. From a P&L perspective it doesn't matter if you're paying $20 in cash or in stock.

Re: Reddit ‘antiwork’ forum booms as millions of Americans quit jobs

#180

Post by mgh2 » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 7:09 PM UTC

gremlinsinc wrote: post #175

mgh2 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phone and computer you are using, the vaccine that protects you from covid, the medicines that keep you living when you get sick, these are the products of thousand years of hard work from past generations. People wanting to "abolish work" may rather leech on society, it is a consequence of social media brainwashing: gambling, crypto, FIRE, 4hww, etc. These concepts have wide scale, harmful implications for the f…

> People wanting to "abolish work" may rather leech on society, it is a consequence of social media brainwashing: gambling, crypto, FIRE, 4hww, etc. These concepts have wide scale, harmful implications for the future of humanity Leech on society... I think you've got this backwards. The "leech on society" is all rent-seekers. Maybe we should ban landlords, seems they're pretty leechy by just holding onto a residence…

Blame boomers, for you will become like them: grow or die. This is the harsh reality.

Should a doctor or nurse be paid as a restaurant or retail worker? Who is the "essential" worker? Look at the market, tech is becoming more essential, not services.

If you don't upgrade your skills and stay stagnant, you will be decimated. If you are young, you can still learn and adapt, change careers and industries.

You cannot afford to think like a boomer anymore: adapt or die. This is the harsh reality.