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The Abolition of Work (2002)

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Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#191

Post by inglor_cz »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #125
jakelazaroff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I’m aware, all welfare in the US (e.g. SNAP and unumeployment benefits) have some sort of work as an eligibility requirement. I suppose you could add “move to a country with a better social safety net” to the list. But it doesn’t change the overall point, which is that every alternative to work requires you to turn your life upside down.

> I suppose you could add “move to a country with a better social safety net” to the list. How many countries allow people to move there for the purpose of collecting public assistance?

Just board a boat in Turkey and you will see. Somewhat risky, true.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#192

Post by Jochim »

mordae wrote: post #173
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who confuses a workplace with a police state is someone who almost certainly has never lived in a police state.

You are probably privileged enough so that you don't have a camera looking at you your whole workday. Some of the people who processed your food or sewn your garments might not have been that lucky. Also, their breaks are timed and there is no playstation.

You don't even need to look that far away, anyone you've interacted with in a bar or supermarket is most likely having their actions timed and watched by a security camera.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#193

Post by jancsika »

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…

> It is impossible to gain freedom from that.

Your sudden shift to such a low-level critique makes it impossible to, say, distinguish a c-corp from a coop (or even c-corps of different sizes, for that matter). Both are merely "impossible to gain freedom from" in your sense.

It's like a submitter defending a spaghetti patchset by talking about the complexity of modern chipsets.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#194

Post by inglor_cz »

sirmoveon wrote: post #169
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

Basic healthy food, shelter and education isn't as costly

The question is - providing for whom?

If you are the first country in the world that declares "basic healthy food, shelter and education is free for everyone who is present here, no strings attached", you incentivize other countries to send their needy your way instead of doing the same.

And that means a lot of people to provide for. Maybe Americans feel reasonably isolated by their oceans, but the distance between Germany and Subsaharan Africa is shorter than between New York and San Francisco.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#195

Post by elindbe3 »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #18
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…

Buy a one way ticket to Southern California, buy a tent and apply for SNAP and Medicaid.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#196

Post by jariel »

postingpals wrote: post #64
jariel wrote: post #46

Besides the fact that work, even the must rudimentary kind can be very fulfilling and rewarding in many ways ... The real problem is that play creates nothing . Play is just play. 'Creative output' is still 'work', just with a hint (maybe 1%) of creative input. Those with the most ostensibly aspirational jobs are grinding! Does anyone think Lady Gaga (or Bach), any tech development, any real research, making Star War…

In practise none of this is correct. We already 'do what we want', what we want happens to be improving ours and others lives by making things. The great issue since the division of labour has been to figure out how to distribute products. If products are distributed to people who can then free up their time to 'play', in practise they free up their time to create things as this is what the author really means by 'pl…

The person making coffee for a living is not 'doing what they want'.

If we were to distribute products and services such that this person could do something on the 'create side' - we'd all be poorer for it because their value is likely in 'coffee making'.

Anarchism is nonsense.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#197

Post by slx26 »

I believe this is a poor essay on a very important topic.

With the evolution of society, the nature of the jobs we do has changed a lot. In part that's ok: "modern living standards" involve more services and products than what we used to have in the past, and many are actually positive for our lives. This "inflation" in beneficial goods and services requires new jobs, specialization, etc. That's perfectly fine. There's a lot of work we actually need and makes our lives better.

But we also have many more useless services and products born from the very own mechanics of the economic system we live in, which continually pushes for increased efficiency and economic movement. If coronavirus hits and economic activity is slowed down, it doesn't matter that our basic needs are covered and food is available, the system won't tolerate this nicely. Why do we accept this? People suffering not due to a lack of basic goods, but rather due to the poor behavior of our economic system? So naive, thinking we were working to be able to cover our needs! A lot of the work we do is not to improve the world we live in, but to sustain the very own needs of our current iteration of capitalism. This is the kind of work that needs to be abolished.

Then we can start to think about what to do with the remaining work. And that can also be done much better, but that's for another chapter of the story.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#198

Post by jancsika »

alangou wrote: post #19

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.

Just curious-- what action would you take if tech made it so that food fell from the heavens? Are you just saying that you'd slightly alter your opinion of "The Abolition of Work" in response?

Or would you, say, give your life to protect that tech from embargo/destruction?

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#199

Post by [deleted] »

postingpals wrote: post #64
jariel wrote: post #46

Besides the fact that work, even the must rudimentary kind can be very fulfilling and rewarding in many ways ... The real problem is that play creates nothing . Play is just play. 'Creative output' is still 'work', just with a hint (maybe 1%) of creative input. Those with the most ostensibly aspirational jobs are grinding! Does anyone think Lady Gaga (or Bach), any tech development, any real research, making Star War…

In practise none of this is correct. We already 'do what we want', what we want happens to be improving ours and others lives by making things. The great issue since the division of labour has been to figure out how to distribute products. If products are distributed to people who can then free up their time to 'play', in practise they free up their time to create things as this is what the author really means by 'pl…

[deleted]

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#200

Post by [deleted] »

notahacker wrote: post #182
pfalcon wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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). I don't think the recycling schemes (illusory and otherwise) were introduced on the assumption that the public would get so addicted to rubbish separation that we'd eventually be able to eliminate the need for any paid garbage collectors though. Or indee…

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