/r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification • Hacker News Board

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

#561

Post by loceng » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #537

loceng wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever invested in yourself and did you become more valuable to yourself, to the people around you, etc? And do you think people who are struggling to just survive, who are constantly stressed (which causes mental health issues, poor decision making, and long-term dis-ease progression) will become more productive to society, become more valuable/useful to society if their basic needs are covered - and that peo…

I'm all for automation, let's build more of it. But the current state of automation technology is nowhere near the level that UBI proponents naively assume. In the real world that shit it tremendously expensive, not very flexible, and often unreliable. Increased automation will raise living standards but it generally doesn't free up time for humans to do non-work things. People contine working just as much but on dif…

I think if you actually created a matrix and outlined costs and productivity of machines and their development and operations cost, you'd clearly see that your argument is wrong - but until someone thoroughly puts that effort in, it's all just conjecture from both of us isn't it?

What if you don't actually have to raise your taxes because the productivity increase, and reduced inefficiency, actually pays for itself? Or what if it is a temporary tax but then not only elevates the quality of life of the poorest who would arguably benefit the most (at least who's basic needs aren't met so Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs aren't met anywhere near adequately) but that also your own quality of life improves as well - more than the "$1,000"/month you're receiving in addition?

Also realize that companies/businesses avoiding taxes can't avoid a VAT, so that revenue leak is fixed and puts more money into the system that otherwise is draining it without replenishing it.

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

#562

Post by minkzilla » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 8:06 PM UTC

Miner49er wrote: post #113

minkzilla wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would provide for people? It seems to me we would either all starve and die, AI would do it for us (impossible in its current state), or we rely on effectively slave labor of poorer countries (which would mean work is not abolished for everyone).

Here's Doreen's website. A lot of early posts on the sub were from here: https://abolishwork.com/about/ They use a specific definition of work, so they maybe aren't necessarily anti-work in the way you are thinking.

Thanks for the response. There are some interesting ideas on hat site. I guess this is another example of something discussed extensively in the rest of the thread, the name/slogan of the movement not using the conventional meaning of terms.

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

#563

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 7:10 AM UTC

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…

>We need better alternatives to Reddit, or Reddit needs to fix the mess because the post/comment quality there is straight trash there.

I've looked for years but nothing's popped up. Everytime I saw a lead it had other issues either with population, or cultural problems which would make it even worse than reddit.

I don't even want a true reddit alternative per se either. Just a subspace where I could talk about games and anime and not feel like I'm walking on landmines just because some people see a one-off potentially offensive scene and think suddenly that games/anime are the source of all problems.

>All the default homepage subreddits are trash

FWIW, defaults aren't a thing anymore. It still is in spirit because the design of reddit means the old defaults still have the most subscribers. But new users aren't instantly being thrown into gifs/videos/earthporn/etc.

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

#564

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 7:19 AM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #291

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 am not trying to disagree at all, in fact I think we very much need to do more for the poorest among us, especially the kids. Where does that 30k come from though? For 300 million people, that's 9 trillion dollars a year, ~half of GDP. Inflation would be out of control, essentially Venezuela / Zimbabwe levels.

1. 22% of the US population are children. so it doesn't have to be UBI the moment someone pops out of the wound

2. we put almost a trillion dollars into welfare every year.

3. You don't have to provide Equal UBI to every citizen regardless of their income. You can make it like a reverse tax that decreases as you go higher in income that peters out at 100k or so (which 30% of Americans make).

No point in taking the plan someone gave as an example so literally. These are econimic problems that experts spent decades thinking aobut and would take months to draft in order to prevent these obvious counterarguments.

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

#565

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 7:42 AM UTC

themaninthedark wrote: post #335

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…

You absolutely do not have to sell your labor to someone else. If you learn to hunt, fish, farm and forage, you can sustain yourself. You can move to Alaska or the Canadian wilderness and do so. If you don't like the cold, there is the Amazon. There are people who live like this. The problem is: we want modern medicine, TV shows, cellphones, nice clothes, etc. Living is the fight against entropy. In order to live, yo…

You inevitably have to pay taxes in a good 95% of the land, and you don't get to choose which plot of land you're born on. That's the kicker that prevents this "truly sustainable" life you propose.

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

#566

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 10:23 AM UTC

kelseyfrog wrote: post #343

Edman274 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then how can it be true that Doreen still represents the movement Represents the "movement", or represents the sub? They obviously still represented the sub - they were there when it got created, were a moderator, were picked by other moderators to be a representative of the subreddit in media events (which is conflated with the nebulous concept of "the movement") The issue here is that the "movement" may not be re…

Representation is really at the heart of it. What the article left out was that Doreen was asked by mods and by the community(by poll) not to participate in the interview. She did it anyway. The broader social epistemic question of "what makes someone a representative?" or "How do people gain the social status: representative?" is the most interesting part of this. Reddit itself plays a role in the construction of re…

>If a mod created the sub, and actively participates, but is disavowed as a representative, are they still a representative?

by reddit's rules, yes. You have to be fundamentally destroying a decently large and active sub before the admins step in and kick out a mod. But the number of times this has happened in 15 years can be counted on one hand.

Otherwise, admins don't care about what mods do with their subs. seniority first, most senior mods ultimately has the power to kick out everyone else and ban every user if they wish. And that's why these kinds of "movements" are doomed to fail under reddit's structure.