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/r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

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Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#401

Post by lamontcg »

JSavageOne wrote: post #156

I remember stumbling upon /r/antiwork a few years ago and being so happy I'd stumbled upon a thriving movement that so effectively criticized one of the core principles of society that everyone takes for granted - that everyone must effectively sell their labor to someone else (unless they're rich enough to opt out, or clever enough to create some business or invest their way out). To me anti-work is the recognition…

And leftists continue to self-sabotage...

I don't see any problem with where r/antiwork wound up.

Look at what the right wing does tactically to get their message across. They setup forums which are gateway drugs, which offer watered down cryptic messages where they go around joking to "hide their power levels" and shit. If you remember the nazi babytalk subreddits that were all about "frens" you know what I mean.

That is effective outreach of propaganda efforts. They do it because it works.

Leftists had a great, popular tool here with the new r/antiwork which nudged people one very small step in the leftist direction. Leftists should embrace that for it became and the function it was serving. Instead it sounds like you're going to burn it down because it is insufficiently pure.

Even if they're only talking about how and why their boss sucks and they want a new boss, you should focus on the fact that you've created a common place in the public where everyone can start commiserating on how their bosses suck. That's not a zero. It just also isn't the glorious workers revolution I guess so we have to burn it all down.

EDIT: looks like there's been a switch in the mod group and the people currently running the show are actually NOT taking a hard line and are more in line with exactly what I'm talking about:

https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/sm4l3z/update_on_...

The linked youtube video in there is pretty short and good as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhHCf6eEGzw

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#402

Post by giantg2 »

bleachedsleet wrote: post #231
mlyle wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Defund" can be a relative term that doesn't necessarily mean to fully remove funding. E.g. we've had decades of hyperbole where relatively small cuts to defense funding are referred to by opponents as "defunding" US troops. We spend a whole lot on policing compared to most other developed nations, and we're not getting terrific outcomes either on civil liberties or crime rates. It might be time to take a different a…

> On the other hand, maybe we're just so socioculturally fucked that it requires massive authoritarian investment to keep a crummy level of peace. I'm undecided. This statement disturbs me. Please clarify.

There are a number of socioeconomic factors that are believed to be the underlying influence on violent crime. My own personal summary on this is that people tend to become criminals when they lose hope in having a fair shot at a successful life, or see an opportunity that they don't find morally reprehensible ("well, it's really the bank/insurance money so it's not hurting a person"). So I think this hopelessness is mostly what drove the pandemic crime increase.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#403

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #386
wonderwonder wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work? Every single family would then do a calculation to see if its worth the second earner working or if they make more just staying home and getting a UBI. I would not be ok going to work to pay people that have decided that they are fine living on the UBI and don't want to work anymore. Seems like a pretty antagonist…

> So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work? No, ideally, we would raise taxes on the upper class, to give money (compared to the status quo system where we already have means-tested poverty support aid) to the people choosing to do more work (since means-tested aid gets cut with additional income, but UBI doesn't, except by the effects of progressive taxa…

[deleted]

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#404

Post by wonderwonder »

totony wrote: post #376
wonderwonder wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work? Every single family would then do a calculation to see if its worth the second earner working or if they make more just staying home and getting a UBI. I would not be ok going to work to pay people that have decided that they are fine living on the UBI and don't want to work anymore. Seems like a pretty antagonist…

>So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work? 1. UBI aims to streamline redistribution of wealth and remove a lot of bureaucracy around it, reducing a lot of the cost of the current system 2. Why the middle class specifically? Upper class could shoulder most of the costs (if there are) easily >I would not be ok going to work to pay people that have decided t…

Lets say we instituted a 100% wealth tax on the 1%, that's 45 trillion if somehow we could get the cash value for their stocks at a normal valuation(which someone would have to buy). How many years does that fund the UBI for until we run out of that money?

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#405

Post by zozbot234 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #328
quirino wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be solved by a Negative Income Tax [1]: > In economics, a negative income tax (NIT) is a system which reverses the direction in which tax is paid for incomes below a certain level; in other words, earners above that level pay money to the state while earners below it receive money. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax Edit: I'm not economically literate enough to say I fully support this,…

So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work? Every single family would then do a calculation to see if its worth the second earner working or if they make more just staying home and getting a UBI. I would not be ok going to work to pay people that have decided that they are fine living on the UBI and don't want to work anymore. Seems like a pretty antagonist…

That "free money" is just enough to subsist on and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Instead of "choosing not to work", think of it as "seeking work that's a good fit for them". The incentives are set up so that entering the labor market and improving their earnings makes them better off - which, incredibly enough, most poverty alleviation programs (which are a non-trivial chunk of all government spending) utterly fail at.

> see if its worth the second earner working or if they make more just staying home

The available experimental outcomes show that by and large, people that stay at home on a properly-designed UBI are those who can thereby make highly-valued contributions to the household, such as by raising young kids. Otherwise, they choose to work just as much.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#406

Post by double_nan »

enaaem wrote: post #356
bloaf wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give someone a fish, they starve after a day. Teach someone to fish and they can eat + sell the fish. But if I make a fish-catching machine to catch fish for everyone, does everyone eat, or does everyone starve? UBI is essentially a means of ensuring that in a world where the robots catch all the fish, people can still afford to buy a fish.

You still need a fish catching machine. In the literal sense. Despite all the innovations, we still need fisherman and sailors. Even if we have a fish catching machine who/what will make the fish catching machine? And there are still tons of other automation problems and a fish catching machines isn't even the hardest one. The automation challenge is often conveniently underplayed, while it's an insanely hard problem…

It's fascinating how some people view on manufacturing is oversimplified. Fish catching machine needs maintenance, it uses consumable items to work properly. To produce all of that there should be tools, transportation, mining, engineering and so on. There will be no state in any near term future when it would be possible to have work optional for any meaningful group of people. All the welfare we have right now is basically a subsidy (mandatory charity) of working people to not working people.

I believed more in "corporate welfare" when a corporation finds a way to create a free product for large group of people while selling something else. But closer and closer connections between the government and corporations made this possibility less likely from my opinion.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#407

Post by vanusa »

wutbrodo wrote: post #147
vanusa wrote: post #81

I grant that the absolutist antiwork position fails to meet basic reality compliance standards. But does that give the current de-facto state religion -- cradle-to-grave workaholism (wildly out of proportion to the amount of work we actually need to do to sustain ourselves) -- a pass? Why is the promotion one position an instance of 'sanewashing', while the normalization of other (no less insane in my view) position…

This is completely orthogonal to the article's thesis. The entire piece is about optics, and doesn't take any position. In fact, the only time the piece departs from its neutral tone is to decry the latecomers accused of sanewashing the space and pushing its original community to its periphery. This is sympathetic to the radicals, albeit incidentally. You've also misunderstood what sanewashing is. Sanewashing is with…

I understand what the word means. My point, which I thought was very clear, is simply:

If what the r/antiwork community attempting to do in promoting their position an instance of an (attempted) "transformation of a radical viewpoint into one that's palatable to the mainstream" ...

Then is not the normalization of an unhealthy addiction to overwork (as a kind of "virtue") -- arguably an instance of a successful transformation of a pretty much equally radical viewpoint?

In other words: "If theirs is a 'radical' viewpoint -- how did this shit we actually live under (and which is slowly killing us and the planet with it) get to become a 'normal, sane' viewpoint"?

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#408

Post by aeternum »

GameOfFrowns wrote: post #389
danenania wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to think about it: we already have a basic income in the US. Nobody starves to death in the US. Nobody is denied medical care in the emergency room. In many places (though not everywhere), there are shelters where a person can sleep inside. There are food stamps and a patchwork of welfare programs. However meager they may seem, things like this amount to a form of universal basic income. Does it prevent peopl…

I like the general idea of UBI but I don't see it work without price fixing which is often the first step in an economical downward spiral. Also I don't understand how any low-trust society like ours would survive the transition phase into UBI when people (even though they like working) might take an extended holiday if the UBI pays for all living costs. Suddenly millions of critical positions would be left unoccupie…

Why would it need price-fixing? We basically provided a UBI of 5k as part of the pandemic and it seems to have worked relatively well.

If a position is critical enough it should probably be a higher paid position.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#409

Post by arc619 »

gavinray wrote: post #182
JSavageOne wrote: post #156

I remember stumbling upon /r/antiwork a few years ago and being so happy I'd stumbled upon a thriving movement that so effectively criticized one of the core principles of society that everyone takes for granted - that everyone must effectively sell their labor to someone else (unless they're rich enough to opt out, or clever enough to create some business or invest their way out). To me anti-work is the recognition…

>Universal basic income I'm going to sound like I'm being snarky here, and I promise I'm not. How exactly is this supposed to work? The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work? I don't say this from a place of privilege. I grew up lower class trailer trash and have been homeless. Maybe I don't understand the concept fully but it seems a bit absurd and unfeasible

UBI is added on top of work so work will always mean you're better off.

Would you give up your job just to spend all day doing nothing, or would you end up doing something productive?

If you had infinite money, would you do nothing?

What do uber rich people do all day? Why do they work?

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#410

Post by bmhin »

GameOfFrowns wrote: post #389
danenania wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to think about it: we already have a basic income in the US. Nobody starves to death in the US. Nobody is denied medical care in the emergency room. In many places (though not everywhere), there are shelters where a person can sleep inside. There are food stamps and a patchwork of welfare programs. However meager they may seem, things like this amount to a form of universal basic income. Does it prevent peopl…

I like the general idea of UBI but I don't see it work without price fixing which is often the first step in an economical downward spiral. Also I don't understand how any low-trust society like ours would survive the transition phase into UBI when people (even though they like working) might take an extended holiday if the UBI pays for all living costs. Suddenly millions of critical positions would be left unoccupie…

The inflation argument is one I don't know enough to be able to square myself. Don't fully understand how whatever the UBI is eventually reduces to being below the bare minimum of basic.

But, putting that part aside, the idea is that it's just the barest of basics. So if you have a decent salary now, the UBI that is 1/5th or less than that is not gonna help you pay your rent/mortgage that has gone from 30% of your salary to 150% of your UBI. People could likely realign their life though over time which would be massively impactful. Perhaps some would prefer having their basic needs met + working a very part amount of time for some spending money + engaging in a different core life pursuit. But, with that part taking time the market could presumably correct.

That's just for high earners though who can't currently just drop out / transition overnight due to present obligations. The folks who are closer to where a UBI would be putting them anyway it gets way more difficult. A negative income tax might work there, so that keeping the job is still more regardless of what that currently salary is. That flat UBI tends to have some problems in that regard. Then again, those same folks might be over night doubling their take home cash or being able to have no change in cash for a complete reduction in work and the temptation to just go to zero hours would be high (assuming they aren't in financial pain already where the current amount is still not enough). A flat UBI would probably need to be slowly rolled out. Basically get folks used to being more well off so that the flat UBI only can be appropriately viewed as less ideal than their (new) current situation.

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