Ok, so do it. Get some like-minded people who want to live free of industrial society and go hunter-gather in a national park, or the deep Amazon rainforest or some other out of the way place.
The Abolition of Work (2002)
41–50 of 236 posts
Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)
#42I 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…
You can get rid of toil, automate the whole world and the day's needs, but it will be just used as a leverage for power. People don't not only have material needs.
Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)
#43There are a lot of flaws in the article, so I’ll just pick one. The author casually lists a vast swath of jobs that are a priori deemed completely useless, with no reasoning given as to why they have no use other than that they are “paper pushers”. I think that every single one of those jobs is only useless if you don’t think deeply about it at all. Take one example, real estate. The article states everyone working i…
I think that's a very strange way of looking at the real estate industry. They don't determine who gets to live where at all. They simply gather and withhold information that they then offer for a fee.
In most situations the same information can (or at least could) be gathered in different ways also, leaving out real estate industry from the loop.
Also just to clarify what I mean: real estate owners =/= real estate industry. They are just part of a bigger picture.
Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)
#44Earlier 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.
> very alternative to work requires you to turn your life upside down. Oh, yes, absolutely. But this is moving the goalpost. The question was not whether one could stop working without having to make changes to their lifestyle. The question was whether one could stop working without literally starving to death. In most developed countries, the answer is yes. No one really starves to death due to poverty in developed…
Check out the correlation between poverty and lower life expectancy, and it will become clear that poverty is indeed a death sentence (not to mention its effects on quality of life).
Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)
#45>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…
> You can survive without working, although your existence will likely be miserable.
For a large number of people not working is likely to directly lead to literally death. For most people it is not a choice at all.
Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)
#46Besides 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 Wars, putting on a Broadway Musical isn't 'work'?
These things require immense work, stress toil in all sorts of ways by all sorts of people - most of whom had to 'work/grind' for 20 years in school in order to develop the applied intelligence, skills, knowledge, fortitude, maturity to be able to even work in aspirational/creative work. And then they still depend on the rest of us to make their food, cars, homes, and 'stuff'.
Even our current , relatively modern systems and knowledge requires work to simply maintain, let alone improve.
They are not magically self-sustaining, even if they are somewhat more intelligent and powerful.
If we 'do what we want' we will be materially poorer than aboriginals, poorer than neolithic peoples ... frankly we'll starve to death as even they had to grind it out just to make do.
There is no way out. Life requires a modicum of effort, point blank. Maybe ... maybe ... we can offers some the ability to 'opt mostly out' but even then I feel we'll be doing people a disservice, for how could a unsocialized man-child, still yet illiterate and completely untutored at age 18 from not having made the effort, even realize what he'll have missed out on?
We can make a better world but 'some effort' will be a perennial requirement. This seems to be a metaphysical constraint.
Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)
#47A lot of people find work to be very satisfying. The issue isn’t one of work but one of many of the jobs we currently have.
"A lot of people find work to be very satisfying." I'd like to see some stats on this.
According to Pew at least [1], about 85% of workers are "satisfied or very satisfied" with their jobs, with 49% being "very satisfied". That still leaves a lot of unsatisfied people, but there is also a lot of people relatively happy with their current arrangement.
[1] https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/10/06/3-how-americans-v...
Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Assuming I don’t want to starve to death, what are my other options? Welfare in most developed countries is enough not to starve and not to become fully homeless. But in many countries, it does not go one inch beyond this. Subsisting on welfare is indeed a very uncomfortable life. But it is not literal starvation to death.
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 don't know what this website is, it might be bs but google found this:
> more than a third of the country still lives in an area where able-bodied adults are exempt food stamp work requirements.
Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> Assuming I don’t want to starve to death, what are my other options? Welfare in most developed countries is enough not to starve and not to become fully homeless. But in many countries, it does not go one inch beyond this. Subsisting on welfare is indeed a very uncomfortable life. But it is not literal starvation to death.
>> Welfare in most developed countries is enough not to starve and not to become fully homeless.
Right, because even that requires someone do work to support people on welfare.
>> Subsisting on welfare is indeed a very uncomfortable life. But it is not literal starvation to death.
It would lead to quick death if we all tried to live that way at once.
Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)
#50>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…
> You can survive without working, although your existence will likely be miserable. For a large number of people not working is likely to directly lead to literally death. For most people it is not a choice at all.
That's true of all living things. It's a choice.
You can sit there and twiddle your thumbs until entropy does its thing, or you can choose to work against it.
You can hunt, gather, and farm. Or you can do something in exchange for credits to get food from other people who do.