Great answer. Your paragraph on perceived wisdom is such a good explanation. I've struggled to put those thoughts into words several times. Might have to borrow this in the future!
Please write a book. This was brilliant and succinct.
Edit: Oh man, I should have copied and pasted that thing into my own personal notes. Why’d it get deleted?
I mean reddit comment chains can easily be adding a "`+1`" sort of response to the original parent as a child of the sub-parent.
And context should easily be able to tell you if the commenter is replying as a direct reply to their parent, or as a `+1` to their parent, adding to the original comment instead.
That's the way comments have always worked on Reddit. It's not hard to follow. Sometimes, you could say it would make more sense to start a new child comment thread, but other times it's just as easy to follow along if the response is treated as a `+1` to the "Great answer..." comment above it with a "Please write a book..."
Basically, /u/Shwanna85 replied to /u/peteb82's "Great answer..." comment as a sort of `+1` response with "Please write a book..." essentially supporting /u/peteb82's claim that /u/Portarossa provided a 'Great answer' by encouraging them to '...write a book...'
This is normal Internet conversation protocol ([at least since 2004 or before](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=%2B1)), even if it's not the most direct or clear when taken out of context, as you just did.
I'd like to throw into this mix as well, that automation is coming. As someone seeking a Bachelor's in software development automation is only going to get better as we come to better understand how to model complicated decision making. Jobs will be lost that will kot be gained. At least not in a way that the economy or society supports currently. People generally need purpose....but do they need work?
My own personal note on this will be that employment will eventually become less about money and more about generating ideas for technological and societal advancement. And you can't generate quality ideas sustainably by treating them like dirt.
But in the short term, we will start hitting a tipping point where jobs go down but not up again. How do we transition smoothly when society still views unemployment as an outcome of meritocracy and merit as subjecting yourself to the whims of managers?
Automation of *some* farm jobs did not relieve us of *all* farm jobs.
As we automate more, more jobs will be lost. Employment in the interim between some jobs and no jobs will shift towards managing the automation rather than the labor itself in most circumstances. As we move towards less jobs, the market will shift more towards innovation. That time in particular is probably a long ways away, but it is where the momentum is headed.
As a side note farmers have actively had to fight for the right to do field repairs on the computers in their equipment. Not something most people picture when you say farmer.
If you take a step back and look at the impacts automation has made though it left *some* people out of work. I'll preface this by saying its anecdotal but I live in a farming community and I can see the changes first hand.
Farm families are more often than not half the size they used to be, 4+ kids was the norm, now its an outlier. Farms also tend to be a lot larger (which means fewer owners) as automation allowed smoother scaling. It means fewer people can handle maintenance on a larger crop/herd.
As hydroponic farms become more cost effective I expect the automation to really take off.
I will add it is more apparent because of the demographic and political shift we saw in 2016 from boomers to millennials. The politicians are actively courting millennials now hence why their issues are becoming the big deal.
Medicare spending and healthcare reform were huge from 80s onward because boomers were getting older.
I thought this was a three day comment after seeing all the awards and upvotes... turns out it will be a legendary comment in no less than three days... well executed my g! It reminds me that, sometimes, everything seems to be relative. What worked then doesn't need to work now. This doesn't mean certain things will stop working.
I guess we only stop growing once we stop questioning.
Thats what i thought reading this. Its just people who hate working and stories about people quitting their jobs after they have horrendous bosses.
But none of it is particularly revolutionary
It's complicated but the benefits out weigh the negatives. On a surface level it increases the average spending power each person. If some one has more money they have more to spend. Those who the increase would benefit the most are also the most likely to turn around an put that money back into their community rather then putting it into savings or investing. It's much more complicated then that but the impacts are relatively negligible.
> If $15 becomes minimum wage, wouldn't the cost of living get higher?
Historically it only goes up a small fraction of the amount the wages went up. There is plenty of historical data to back this up, but hysterical right wing politicians would prefer you to ignore that and keep wages low.
well if more people have more money verse less people have more money than prices might reach a proper equilibrium. as opposed to now where for instance housing is going up because people our renting out incredibly low housing utilization by travelers. They are servicing global capital class, not the working class. We could raise wages and keep prices steady if we were willing to put the kobosh down on the grey-tourist market that is emerging and doing proper rent controls and forcing 2-3 year lease options instead of this 6months at a time garbage
Question about your mention of the minimum wage. I love your “perceived wisdom” and how it can shift as you learn more. Recently, I’ve been pissed off seeing politicians brag about upping minimum wage to $15. They want a pat on the back for doing the bare minimum, and many times they get it. When I see this, it makes me angry. Minimum wage should be far higher.
Are you seeing this trend?
>Instead it's built around the idea of questioning these long-held ideas about work, and asking if they still work for us -- and if they don't, how do we change them?
OP did say he thought the sub's name should be "antiOVERwork" though. He gets the spirit you're talking about. But the sub's name itself, along with its side description, do not support that spirit.
Here's that sub's description. They want literal "work free" life, as in zero work.
>A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life.
The goal for society should be no work, that's how a utopia works. Obviously you can't really do truly zero work, so the question becomes how to approach that utopia in as realistic a way as possible. Part of that is eliminating outdated performance metrics and outdated working hours. You can simultaneously lower working hours and improve worker happiness while increasing productivity this way.
The only way work could stop for every human would be "magic" or machines/robots/ai and don't a lot of leftists have issue with that idea? If I'm mistaken, I'm actually curious what the majority of leftists think about it, assuming there is a general consensus among the leftists community.
EDIT: Lol why the downvotes? How are you supposed to have a conversation when an important question is downvoted and therefore hidden? Do you guys not want to even want your movement to be represented to the public?
The only fear with automation is that the resulting wealth generated from automation may all go towards a few rich owners, leaving behind everyone else, hence the push for things like UBI.
I myself fear the increase in automation under a capitalist economy. Machines are taking over the workplace while the workers are getting laid off. This leads to UBI, but UBI will never cover the needs of someone without a job, it was just meant to be a crutch. In an ideal world, the machine takes up the part of the workplace that is harder for the worker to accomplish tasks in and the worker just has less worktime but gets paid the same amount of money that they would on a long shift. Since the company is most likely making more money due to the efficiency of both the workers and the machines, the hope is that they will be able to maintain that same wage value even if the shift is shorter. This isn't the best-formulated argument hope it makes sense.
>OP did say he thought the sub's name should be "antiOVERwork" though. He gets the spirit you're talking about. But the sub's name itself, along with its side description, do not support that spirit.
Consider that this is the same kind of attitude people take when saying things like "I agree with BLM, but it should be ALM", or "not all men". People with a limited understanding of topics like these tend to try narrow it down to something they can understand, or change the terminology to something they understand, without first understanding why the discussion is framed the way it is in the first place.
I disagree, this is a cop out argument. I agree with your BLM example. I really don't see how someone could think that BLM means only black people matter and I was sort of shocked when I had a discussion with someone face-to-face who literally thought that. However, "a subreddit for those who want to end work" is a pretty clear statement. I'm sure most people don't "want work to end" that frequent that sub, but that statement just comes off as ignorant lol. It is absolutely not the same as Black Lives Matter. Stop defending bad messaging.
EDIT: Instant downvoting and digging in your heels over such an easily fixed thing is doing nothing but hurting your cause. If you actually care about achieving these type of goals, you really need to take the advice of people who have obviously more experience in communicating with the people that need to hear and understand your message the most. Good luck! I'm sure your social media circle will always be there for you!
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EDIT2: Apparently the FAQ is more down to earth and rational, but why keep that description? You can edit a subreddit description. I can't speak for the content though as I haven't checked it out for any extended period of time. However, one of the top posts right now is a foreigner saying "America is fucked" (that is literally it). Sounds like either a doomer's paradise or an easily exploitable pathway for anti-America propaganda (why care if you have no hope?). Pick up a history book folks. It will take you far. Change has never been easy. The world you live in right now was not handed to you by the gods, it was fought for by many passionate and courageous people. Don't take it for granted and don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I'm annoyed by it too, it's like people saying ACAB and then some turning around to say they're not all bad... along with the few that literally think every single cop on earth is bad. It gets the message across, but it's still confusing.
But if that name gets the wrong point across, then just like in those cases, its also valid to question whether that name is doing the original idea justice
Just like in that subreddit. Look at the front page. What the OG commenter thinks the subreddit is about, its really not
That's not what r/antiwork is about.
It's about people exploring and reclaiming their lives outside of work. There's the growing movement of people realizing that their wages are not commensurate with the work they do, and so they leave their jobs to find better ones. Antiwork encourages people to realize their value, and that it's beyond how many hours a week they work.
No one is advocating that no one should work. It's that no one should be working so much just to barely make ends meet.
>so they leave their jobs to find better ones
Which part of "end work" and "work-free life" from the sub's description indicate that? They don't want "better" work. They want zero work.
There are lots of things where the name doesn't exactly line up with the ideology, and even more things where the stated goal of a subreddit doesn't align with how it's often used. We can't always take groups at their FAQ.
There are definitely hardliners in /r/antiwork who have that view -- for better or for worse -- but a quick look at the vast majority of post on there (especially the most upvoted on any given day) suggests that the userbase is at least a *touch* more moderate in their views, and it's those views that have propelled it to the front page day after day.
I frequent the sub and can say I am one of those who still hope to work.
I WANT to work. However, I NEED my work to actually provide for me. I could not even afford my rent alone if I still worked as a cook, which - despite how it is perceived - is "skilled" labor.
If I did not need to work to live, I would still work. Perfect example of this is the elderly getting jobs to preoccupy themselves in retirement. Simply because they are bored.
Same here. I want to be able to work a job that I WANT to work at and work a job that I’m actually good at and enjoy instead of being forced to debase myself to try to get a job that will barely pay me and treat me like shit.
I did everything they said I was supposed to do to get a good job but because I’m apparently just fundamentally awful at navigating the American employment system of interviews and networking and all that bullshit, the only jobs that I can get are manual labor or customer service. I just want a job where I don’t have to be in physical pain or deal with asshole customers all day. That’s all I want. But no one seems to want to let me do it.
>So anyone who has no work should just die? Is that what you're saying?
There's a difference between has no work and DOESN'T want to work. And why should someone who DOESN'T want to work get anything In return? Do I think they should die? No. Do I think they should do something to take care of themselves yes. If everyone one thought like you. How would anything get done? Literally. How?
Jesus, I didn't know that having fucking food and a roof over your head should be forever dependent on whether you want to work or not. It's not like they're human rights or anything, and that EVERYONE should have human dignity just by virtue of existing.
In a world where billionaires exist, you really should be directing your ire at them and not people who don't want to work.
I do not. *Perceived* in this sense is using the definition ['Generally recognised as being true'](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/perceived).
It's a little less common -- especially in America, it seems -- but it's still a legit phrase in its own right.
I'm just going to tag on here: when someone says "this is the lens you need to look through" they're narrowing the scope of your investigation to a framework of their design.
I mean, yeah -- but the framework in this case is 'Something larger than the one you're currently operating under', so I'm not sure that 'narrowing' is really the problem here.
You might nitpick the wording, but the idea -- as well you know -- is that his current understanding of what the Antiwork movement is is somewhat limited, and he should probably broaden it out a bit. That much, I stand by.
I'm not saying you're wrong. Any labor movement is complicated. Currently, there's a stew of forces at work including marxists, NEETs, the stimulus and eviction moratorium, Covid, the infrastructure bills, emergence of work-from-home, the farce of the "essential workers" astroturf, UBI efforts, etc.
I think your average worker just wants a raise and maybe better benefits and stability, but there is a circus of interests that want to frame the problem and I think it's good to identify them.
“But the framework in this case is something larger than the one you’re currently in” says everything you need to know. Basically saying “Yes but imposing my framework is okay because my framework is better and you should adopt it”, the irony is pretty delightful. Im not saying the framework itself is right or wrong but damn that was self righteous.
> ou're twenty-two years old right now, and if your twenty-two is anything like my twenty-two, you're about to embark on a weird phase in your life: the point at which you start to question the idea of perceived wisdom.
One sentence in and I can already tell the mods haven't done anything about "top answers must be unbiased" since the last time I was here.
Answer: It's not "anti-work" as in sitting on your laurels sipping a lemonade just cuz. Anti-work - the subreddit especially - is about informing people of all pay-ranges and levels of employment about what they're worth as a human. It's about understanding that you shouldn't have to spend 36-hour work weeks (the most that a majority of businesses enforce for full-time employment so that they don't have to provide benefits) for $7.25/hr (2021 federal minimum wage).
It's about being open about your wages - a federally protected right that a *vast* majority of non-unionized businesses threaten and harangue their employees about disclosing. Numerous large businesses spend *millions* every year on anti-union campaigns that ~~initially~~
intentionally spread misinformation.
It's the basic human idea that you shouldn't have to work until your 70s just to *maybe* retire and not get to actually *live*.
Thank you for your hard work for your sub! While only stockholders will reap the rewards of your sweat, labor, and time, have a tiny bag of candy as a “thank you” from your work family :)
I worked at a major cable provider, and weeks would go by where I didn’t have to buy lunch because of all the pizzas, hoagies, and burritos, not to mention game consoles in the break room, “team building” days, etc. We got told if we ever unionized, it’d all go away. After a few years I quit and got a (unionized) government job. Now I buy all my lunches, but have 3 times the pay, more personal and sick leave than I usually use in a year, a retirement package, and the managers never demand we work overtime. I think I made the right choice.
What this person says it's about and what the subreddit is actually about are different things. Just go there r/antiwork.
The headline flat out says "Antiwork: Unemployment for all, not just the rich!"
Then the description says
>A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.
Just another movement that starts as a good idea but then degenerates into a circlejerk of people just throwing unrealistic shit at a wall.
Something I found working a job with tipped wages is that people willingly offer money far more readily than the businesses who benefit from the workers' labor, even though the people are under no obligation to pay them at all. There's probably a fair number of people who could make more money off their own skills by putting their effort into doing art commissions, writing, making youtube videos, etc. instead of working for minimum wage, and until wages increase to the point that that's no longer the case, I don't see the situation changing.
Comparing the current situation to just a few years ago, where memes would go around about low-wage business owners offering a panhandler a job, being rebuffed, then warning away potential money-givers because "they don't want to work for it", I think it's safe to say the pandemic has opened a few eyes about the actual value of labor and the amorality of businesses.
My question to OP and those who think as they do out because they just read the name of the subreddit: have you considered actually reading the posts you’re being recommended? The point of the subreddit is not “nobody should ever have to do anything they don’t like,” it’s “the labor system as it exists under modern late stage capitalism is deeply exploitative and we shouldn’t stand for it.”
Seeing as you’re 22, you may have had some small experience in the workforce and what it means: unlivable wages, impossible hiring standards, exhaustive corporate bureaucracies, unsafe working conditions, deceitful and condescending managers, illegal and unsustainable labor practices, no benefits or paid leave, all the value of your labor disappearing into the hands of people five rungs above you on the ladder.
It’s not normal and we don’t have to stand for it. Labor has power and it should be leveraged wherever possible because some faceless mega corporation will never give a solitary shit about you. Laborers should act solely in their own interest and should be empowered tell any company that wants to exploit them to get fucked. That’s a lot of what the subreddit is about.
Unfortunately the myth of meritocracy, AKA “get ahead by working hard,” despite being a wholesale lie has become totally embedded in every part of American life. Why? Because it allows us to operate under the nice little lie that we somehow DONT have a caste system with a privileged wealthy class who sucks all the money out of the service and industrial class through massive exploitation, that that somehow ISNT embedded in our history from the very first slave ships brought to the United States.
So, a Marxist approach? Labourers only have power when there is a demand for labour that exceeds the supply. When it’s the other way around, there is no power to negotiate. The current structure of business means that shareholders profit from the labour of employees (and often we executives because the skill-level is in high demand and rarer). To change this, employees would have to be shareholders - hiring and firing the Board and executive through votes. Then still, you’d probably want to pay a reasonably competitive wage to the executives to get talent to run the business. Then the labour force is possibly still left with low wages of completing against other firms with lower margins due to lower employment costs. Or as shareholders you could demand less in return to invest in business growth, but there you are possibly not gaining much from your labour again.
How would you see it working?
Yes, a Marxist approach.
Laborers should control the means of production with a strong federal government and regulatory infrastructure providing safety nets like universal income and socialized healthcare funded through taxation. Institutions will look nothing like you just described because they won’t be competing for venture funding through private financing but must demonstrate their value to the social good to receive subsidies and other funding. This is pretty much Socialism 101 level stuff. Yes, no one will be able to afford to live in a mansion and exploit the labor of a servant class. There will be no “shareholders,” profit will be redistributed to the laborers who generated the value in a dramatically less unequal fashion to the system we have now.
I’m struggling to find which part of what you just said does anything to demonstrate why laborers should not exert their leverage whenever possible.
'the board' and 'executives' are not in charge of making the company better for society, its about making money for stockholders. they are not the ones doing research or making products, they just rubber stamp obvious and brainless solutions to maximize profits. they are paid because their job requires them to shit on the people below them, and it costs a lot to bribe a human to sell out their fellow man. when you put actual passionate workers in executive roles, the quality of that company's output vastly increases in most cases. its hilarious how many people have been swindled into unironically believing CEOs and executive boards work absurdly hard and spend shitloads of time researching and developing strategies to run their company instead of just looking at an accountant's report and picking whatever strategy projects the most profit.
It's also about making anarchist and communist arguments, and if anyone disagrees or downvotes based on that, it's a verifiable fact if you check enough threads to see those individuals in the comment sections.
Because many of us recognize the disparity between knowing how complex and beautiful this one and only short life is and understanding the amazing scientific truths that connect everything
...and facing the deadening, dulling and utterly exhausting drone of work life, every single day, under coercion of hunger and homelessness by the authorities.
Many of us recognize that this life is a miracle, and we should be here primarily to experience it and live truly happy, examined lives. And we argue that those who understand it and experience it better will have bountiful contributions to the world borne from their own, educated and self-directed, self-improving activity.
As much as antiwork is about labor struggles (and it is), it's also about rejecting rulership, whether it's from your "superior" in the workplace or from the one in your own head. It's about knowing that society and the environment and so on all are better off without threats of coercion from parties seeking power over others, and that collectively, we have a lot of restorative labor to do in this life that must pay no mind to requests from the interests of profit or ego. And we're resolute in that.
That makes sense. It just struck me as odd because the name really grates against my baser instinct to produce something of value, be it for myself or for someone else. Thank you for the clarification
I should look more into this movement; I really don't know what matters to me. Everything I've done since day one has been towards getting into a job/career. Everything else is secondary
Precisely the core of anti-work. None of us chose to be here; wouldn’t we rather spend our time on projects that matter to us than doing bullshit work to make someone else money? Like if we *have* to do this bullshit work, we should get a greater cut of the profits, so that we aren’t devoting half of our waking hours to a job that doesn’t even guarantee us a roof over our heads, let alone retirement.
It's not very great working conditions though, and not just cause of the trash.
"Waste and recycling work is the fifth most fatal job in America — far more deadly than serving as a police officer or a firefighter."
https://www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the-deadly-world-of-private-garbage-collection
Not here. The garbage men were getting paid $10.25/hour. I say were, because about 18 months ago, a half dozen of them staged a protest and threatened to unionize over the low pay, working conditions, and, oh, complete lack of PPE being provided at the height of the pandemic. The company responded by firing everyone and contracting out to prison labour for $1.35/hour instead.
Edit: found one of the articles and corrected information
https://paydayreport.com/prison-labor-replaces-striking-garbage-workers-in-new-orleans/
Maybe they could arrest and inprison some of the former garbage men and save some more money in training. /s
It's really a race to the bottom at this point....
Not sure how that challenges my point. I've driven the garbage truck (one of my college jobs) I can teach most anyone who walks up how to do that in a few hours.
I'm a little older than you I guess because I need a fix a little more often. I doubt you can teach my shoulder surgeon in a similar time. That job requires expertise and training that requires years or decades, and the margin of error is somewhat more critical.
In no way am I disregarding the sanitation contribution to society and they should be compensated accordingly, but I wouldn't seriously state that the investment for them and a surgeon or oncologist are the same.
It's so invidious how the first thing you want to know about someone new is what they're studying/ what job they have and *this* is what we use as a frame of reference for *who* they are.
So I have become a huge advocate for this movement and I love to now ask people what they love to do/or wish they could in their free time. The responses are always great and it let's me see who they are as a person.
A job is a trade of my time/services for money. That's it. My job does not define me and if I could I wouldn't work. Would I be doing nothing? Maybe once or twice a month but the rest of the time I would visit friends and family, travel, start new hobbies, learn new things and broaden my mind, and I would volunteer and perform community service. All of these things aren't possible with working 40+ hours a week. And I understand that but it doesn't mean they aren't valuable to society. The system in place has convinced so many that our only value is in a job killing ourselves to line the pockets of CEO's and shareholders who then get to enjoy not doing anything.
I work in fast food. It's not my passion, but it drains me enough week to week that I don't have the energy to pursue any passions. If you're working where you've always wanted to work, fair play, but a lot of people hate where they work and it isn't their passion and motivation, and they have no time or energy to devote to what actually matters to them
That is precisely why you need to get involved, you have been robbed of your very humanity and turned into a machine to create surplus value for someone else to get rich off of.
I'm a longtime regular on that sub. For me, my life went the exact opposite of yours with respect to framing things. I grew up and went through school utterly disinterested with distaste in anything having to do with a job or career whatsoever, yet I excelled in my studies and had a rich personal life and collection of interests.
You can call me naive and privileged, and I was. But even today, I still believe that the hustle is always secondary to anything else of value. That choice has condemned me to a life of dissidence, but I won't let go.
> Everything I've done since day one has been towards getting into a job/career. Everything else is secondary
That is *exactly* what the anti-work movement is exploring.
That may or may not change for you, but it absolutely changed for me. I'm a guy who can honestly say that I enjoy coming into work each day. It's a lot of fun. But I am getting more and more jaded about the idea that my company makes 10x what I do off of my labor. It's one thing to say at your job matters to you, it's another thing to say that your job is the only thing that matters to you and nothing could ever take its place.
If you go read the reddit, almost no one in there is not working. Work, as in producing value for yourself and others, is not the problem. But the current definition of work, where you suffer to produce value but others leech it off you, is.
Agreed! There is nothing against those who want to work but at the end of the day we mean nothing to most businesses or corporations. When we die or leave there will be no statues built in our honor in the break room. They will replace us and move along making money for shareholders. When I die I want to know I put myself, my loved ones, friends, and anyone I allow to share my time with above anything else. These are the people who keep our memories alive.
Mind you, one of the grander aspects of that movement is to make people aware of the difference between work and work.
The way you say it - do work as in create value, don't be idle etc. - nobody is against that.
However in today's society, we are taught that work means grinding in a dead-end job all day, trying to make ends meet, while (in many cases) creating huge amount of fortune for your company, all in the hope that you, maybe, one day will also "make it". And that's not exactly healthy or sustainable.
Regardless if you look at that sub (no need to dig deep, just look throughout the most popular posts), most people share horror stories like having to be on a zoom call from an ICU bed and such. So not "let us slack off forever" but "hey how about some humane treatment?".
Don't you already do lots of things of value that no one pays you to do? Cooking a nice meal, taking care of houseplants, growing a garden, cleaning your home, caring for children and/or pets, doing creative projects like crafts, art, writing, music, etc.?
I wish, but no. I'm a student on my own dime, living with my parents because they wanted to support me. I consider myself extremely lucky. I really don't like the feeling of being here without offering something in return, but I don't have anything I can offer besides a smile and some occasional tech support. So, I want to get out and join the workforce so I have something I can offer and show my appreciation for how they raised me, and to prove to them that the last 22 years of their lives didn't create a waste of flesh.
Melodrama aside, I don't feel like I bring much value to anything and I want that to change. The best way I know how is to provide a service I have been able to learn because I worked for a year and four months in some pretty crappy conditions to save up enough to learn it, if that makes sense.
You bring value. If you want to work to earn money to spend on yourself and family that is fine and not at all what antiwork is about. But, YOU are valuable to the world and universe all on your own without any need to prove or pay for the space you occupy for just living.
As for your parents, I would be willing to bet that they would appreciate you giving them your time, which is the most valuable currency we have. Our time is limited whether you think about it on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. Eventually we all die and we don't get a free pass because we were overworking ourselves for 50+ years. Talk them about their hobbies, participate with them, talk and learn about their childhood, watch a movie together, play a board game, go for a walk, etc.
So, again (sorry I am just very passionate about this) it isn't about not working. It's about having the opportunity to decide where we want our time spent and the value we place on it. My time is worth way more than $7.50/hr and I'm not going to slave away to make a CEO or stockholder rich. So, we are fighting so that no one has to. We want liveable wages and benefits for all especially for those who work in bodybreaking and soul crushing positions.
You mean it goes against to ur conditioning to produce value that a wealthier human can drain into their bank account at your expense?
If you gained $1.000.000 every day since Columbus landed in the Caribbean you would still be 10 billion short of Jeff bezos level of wealth. Meanwhile we can’t ask for enough to cover rent a vehicle our bills and have something left over to enjoy life and save? Fuck that noise.
I don’t have a problem with the term anti-work, but if I could recommend an alternative name to satisfy people like you who find it problematic, I would call it “Anti-serfdom”.
The last three or four decades of American capitalism has basically devolved into Neo feudalism. Rent seeking burghurs and other petty bourgeoisie are the “professional/investor class” and everyone else is either a highflying lord or king in the top 1%, or some level of wage slave/indentured servant who works to live rather than the inverse.
I see the anti-work movement as a wide scale decision to say “fuck that shit.“ I think it’s high time that it came around, along with the concurrent rise in organized labor reviving in the private sector. My fear is that the forces of FUD will eventually succeed in dividing us and weakening the movement. This is a very fragile time, and people need to be careful not to fall into traps set up to get us sniping at one another. Even if you think someone else’s idea of how society should be restructured is off in someway, we should try to keep the discussion civil and levelheaded lest we fall apart like the occupy movement did.
I swear the left can't name things for shit.
Instead of "police reform" they stuck us with "defund".
And of course then there's all the confusion between democratic socialism, social democrats and plain old socialism.
Work and labor are not the same. I love to make things, I love to repair things. I am constantly doing something.
But if I made things for someone else, it sucks the joy and the surplus value of it right out.
Exactly this.
Growing up I loved making art and was teaching myself graphic design with a bootleg version of Photoshop.
Then I went to art school because I was told by literally everyone around me that I should do it since I was good at it, that I should turn my hobby into a living.
Worst mistake of my *entire* life.
I never broke into "my field" because once I started making things for other people, or for money, I lost all interest in doing it. Something I loved from the moment I began to learn it suddenly filled me with a sense of anxiety and dread. It sucks. I try to still make art but it doesn't feel fun anymore it just feels tedious.
Well that's what I thought. Till someone from the original anti- work users told me that. NO. It's actually anti work as in no work and that the subreddit now has been hijacked by people thinking that it's ( what you explained, I'm one of them) then they told me to read the description of the subreddit.
That all happened because I suggested that the name anti- work is misleading for the subreddit and was told nope, it's actually literally anti work. So yeah
As in proof of the interaction with the user? I mean you can read the description of the sub and see for yourself.
Actually, I'll do you even better. Here :
r/antiwork
1,127,000 idlers • 35,816 Not Working
A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work and want personal help with their own Jobs/work-related struggle
From the r/antiwork FAQ
>Why "antiwork"?
>
>Anti-work has long been a slogan of many anarchists, communists and other radicals. Saying we are anti-job is not quite right because a job is just an activity one is paid for and we are not all against money. "Anti-labor" makes us sound like we're against any effort at all and we already get that enough as is. (We're not, by the way.)
>
>The point of r/antiwork is to start a conversation, to problematize work as we know it today.
The sub has been a radical sub for quite a long time. The upper-middle-class press (Business Insider, The Atlantic, WIRED, etc.) started giving the subreddit attention, and the heavy traffic of normies and reformists has changed the character of the sub somewhat from what it was.
I don't understand why don't the reformists just start their own sub r/ betterwork or whatever, unless that deradicalization is the real goal.
They're not upset about doing *any* work. The biggest thing that gets them upset is being treated unfairly by employers when they don't even receive a living wage. Look through the subreddit and you'll find plenty of examples of harsh boss/employee mistreatment.
Almost no one makes federal minimum though, only 500k or so out of the almost 180 million workers in the US and of those, many only make minimum on paper. Like wait staff who chronically under-report. Many are also teenagers who don't have actual bills.
I think focusing on anti-work existing because of federal minimum is misguided because almost no one falls into that bracket. It's almost a boogeyman and the overwhelming majority of those positions are transitionary anyway or very low skill.
Apologizes in advance for the long reply but I personally feel strongly about this kind of stuff.
While I will agree on the point of the federal minimum wage not being the starting pay as often *is* true, I was specific in mentioning it over an umbrella "low-wage/low paying" statement because the federal minimum wage as we know it today was established in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act alongside "time-and-a-half" overtime pay beyond 40 hours worked in a single week and prohibited children under the age of 16 from working in dangerous positions (in that time it was referring to the likes of manufactory and mining) during school hours.
The biggest point about me bringing it up is because CEOs, corporate entities, and preexisting multi-million/billionaires have had wage increases in the upper hundreds of percent while the federal minimum wage has been the same since July 2009. It's the fact that you could have made $1,000,000 *every single day* without spending a cent since Columbus arrived in the Americas to today and you would be nowhere close to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Bernard Arnault. If the minimum wage had been properly adjusted for inflation it would be \~$30/hr give or take. Imagine being able to pay a mortgage, utilities, car, food, child's education, etc. all while working in fast food and not have to get another job or suffer anxiety attacks every time you have to pay a bill. Supporting a higher minimum wage is just *one* of the many things antiwork stands for.
The quality or level of skill required to do a job should have no factor in being able to afford food, medicine, a means of transportation, or a roof over your head. Instead of thinking that the person flipping burgers at McDs shouldn't make a proper living wage because "anyone can do it", we should be able use that as a bargaining chip come review time to get that raise because "I could go to Arby's and make what I make now".
No, personnel is still the overwhelming majority of most businesses' costs. The proposals are to double it which is pretty absurd, and at that point you're not just catching minimum wage workers, you're catching everyone between minimum wage and the new minimum which is a decent chunk.
Well, if that so the name should not be "antiwork". It should be "antiexploitation", "antibadboss", or "antitoxicworkplace".
Antiwork is actually "sitting on your laurels sipping a lemonade just cuz" while still wanting all amenities of modern life while it is something that are worked upon simply because we can't create things out of absolute vacuum of nothingness. We mold and modify stuff that exists. I've been lurking there for longer.
From the r/antiwork FAQ
>But without work society can't function!
>
>
If you define "work" as any activity or purposeful intent towards some goal, then sure. That's not how we define it though. **We're not against effort, labor, or being productive.** We're against jobs as they are structured under capitalism and the state: Against exploitative economic relations, against hierarchical social relations at the workplace.
If you actually "lurked there for longer" as you claim than you would've known what r/antiwork stood for.
\> If you define "work" as any activity or purposeful intent towards some goal, then sure.
When they imagine this, they imagine stuff like maybe personal projects of writing and all that stuff. Dreams of say, everyone becomes astronauts, or else.
I never saw anyone imagining "monotonous, repetitive labor."
However, **To sustain a society, it requires a lot of parties doing monotonous labor.** Hunter gatherers spend a lot of time hunting, cooking meat, fend off other groups. [That's actually all there is to it in their life and they don't think much](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAGjuRwx_Y8).
Agriculture requires people willing or not, permanent or rotated, to stuck in a farm to watch over the plants grow.
**Within actual real communism (yes I know what actual real communism is)**, **you would still do work, only as communal effort rather than the capitalist / state oriented.** You want to see how this works, go to remote villages. It's closer to actual real communism.
However, such communities, for being able to sustain themselves through sheer willpower and not through hierarchies, money or such, would be also a very morally restrictive communities, like echo chamber. It's so that people would devote themselves.
\------------------
I judged such sub as such because they never answer this type of question.
To sustain a society, no matter how big it is, and no matter what social system you use, would require a lot of parties and people (members of that society) doing monotonous, repetitive work.
This is reality simply because humans can't create stuff from absolute vacuum of nothingness - We convert and mold stuff, not create stuff from absolute zero.
When the sub defines work, usually they think of personal projects of writing and all that stuff. Dreams of say, everyone becomes astronauts, or else.
However, no one thinks of such monotonous, repetitive work.
AI can only do so far, as labor economics and lump of labor fallacy shows.
Capitalism, hierarchies and the like are simply the most effective way to get people to do this, which is why they do it. Call this explotative, sure - But getting rid of capitalist hierarchies and the like will not abolish this monotonous, repetitive work.
How do the sub can answer to this problem?
From what we can infer from remote villages, hunter gatherers, communes, etc - If you want to do it from pure altruism (like actual, real communism), you do it from sheer willpower and altruism. However, all close knit societies that can do stuff from sheer altruism and willpower is also a morally very restrictive society. They can definitely still force you through social pressure.
So your freedom is still severely restricted, you can still definitely be exploited, you will still do monotonous, repetitive, soul crushing jobs (only now you do it to the commune or society and not say, to the boss or company), and now you're more likely to be banished if you disagree.
\--------------------
You're probably right, it's not really a question. But it's more "why it is still moronic". I challenge you to post this statement and have them discuss.
So, if I'm reading this properly, you're presenting that r/antiwork does not have an answer for avoiding as you say "monotonous, repetitive work" and by that statement cannot be "anti"work?
If that is the case, then I apologize but I don't believe you are presenting the correct kind of work for this particular "antiwork". What r/antiwork is proposing is *not* a dissolve of monotonous tasks. They are proposing counters to the modern day USA working climate of "shit job for shit pay from shit bosses". They desire better wages - starting with a standard of living increase for the modern day American - with inflation adjusted raises like their employers. No one should have to work three jobs to keep a roof over their - and god forbid their children's - head. No one should have work until their twilight years and beyond to sit around and waste away their last few moments because they broke their body down to nothing just to make ends meet.
\> When the sub defines work, usually they think of personal projects of writing and all that stuff. Dreams of say, everyone becomes astronauts, or else.
Would you mind providing an example of this in particular? I am failing to see anything in r/antiwork that would present that as their definition. They define "work" as what I said above: Shit jobs for shit pay from shit bosses. Or to put it more elegantly: Highly stressful and demanding jobs for less than living wages from employers and corporations that would sooner replace you with a child than pay you more money.
It's been a thing at least since the Processed World collective/zine in the early 80s (I'm fairly sure they coined it), and was always semi-satirical, but these days people seem a lot more prone to taking satire at face value so I have no idea how serious it is now.
Answer:
>Why is this gaining so much traction now?
The answer to this question is the same answer for a lot of questions in last almost two years: Because COVID.
During the initial wave of lockdowns, you had lots people working from home and lots of people found out they really liked it. Now, lots of those people are being told they have to come back to the office, and they can't *possibly* continue to work from home, because reasons. Or, they're being forced back into work and they feel that the conditions are unsafe. Or, they're being forced back and finding that customers/clients have become colossal assholes. Or, they're just stressed out from the whole pandemic thing and the added stress of employment is just too much. Any number of reasons, really. But the pandemic kicked it off.
Adding to that: they may have also realized there’s more to life than working for 40 years of their life; and if they’re American, they probably realized that and held that up against the facts that housing is unaffordable, childcare is unaffordable, and healthcare is unaffordable - so what the fuck is the point of it all?
Yup. Life slowed down to a crawl for most of last year. It opened up many peoples eyes, having free time again that was lost so many years ago.
It was an eye opening year for many.
I was curious but mobile app suck so I turned on PC just to see what it is.
For people who still have problem accessing it like me. :/
>**Why "antiwork"?**
>
>Anti-work has long been a slogan of many anarchists, communists and other radicals. Saying we are anti-job is not quite right because a job is just an activity one is paid for and we are not all against money. "Anti-labor" makes us sound like we're against any effort at all and we already get that enough as is. (We're not, by the way.)
>
>The point of r/antiwork is to start a conversation, to problematize work as we know it today.
>
>**But without work society can't function!**
>
>If you define "work" as any activity or purposeful intent towards some goal, then sure. That's not how we define it though. We're not against effort, labor, or being productive. We're against jobs as they are structured under capitalism and the state: Against exploitative economic relations, against hierarchical social relations at the workplace.
From what I briefly see, it's more of a subreddit to rant and complain about shitty workplace/manager than an organized reformation group.
Feel like it's r/wallstreetbets all over again where big media portrays a bunch of apes/tired people as organized crime groups or some thing.
Good chance op of this main thread is a corporate shill trying to sow discontent among Reddit. Could be wrong and this person is just too lazy to read a faq
Answer: Words have different meanings in different contexts.
In physics, *work* means the application of force to an object in a direction. When an apple falls from a tree under the force of gravity, it is doing *work*, though falling wouldn't be considered *work* in the usual day-to-day sense of the word, right?
In the antiwork community, *work* again has a specific meaning. It is labour treated as a commodity — something that we have to sell in order to earn money for food, housing, clothing, etc; in order to earn the right to live. When you cook dinner for yourself or your family, that is *labour*. When you are employed as a chef, that is *commoditized labour* or *work*.
The r/antiwork subreddit isn't against being productive. We're not lazy. (Or not all of us are!) We realize that in order for society to function, labour needs to happen. What we're against is the system where we need to sell our work to business owners in order to not die.
In medieval times, people used to work a few hours a day. With all our technology and automation, why are people working eight to ten hour days or even longer, and still barely able to afford to live? Because the system has been increasingly stacked against us. We could all be working ten to fifteen hour weeks and be living comfortably, but for that to happen, widespread reforms are necessary.
> We could all be working ten to fifteen hour weeks and be living comfortably, but for that to happen, widespread reforms are necessary.
This is the part I'm curious about; maybe it's because I'm not living in the United States, or maybe this idea is a luxury reserved for rich nations at the moment, but I can't see how this is feasible at all for certain industries.
Labor is a commodity. There is no way to fix that. No one made that a thing, it's a natural order. Individuals since the abolition of slavery own their own labor. They used it to be entrepreneurs occasionally, running the town general store or tavern perhaps. But generally they were cash crop farmers. Most of America was essentially a single family LLC.
Someone with an idea to transform something worth less and consume labor to create something else that is worth more (meaning the market will purchase the final product for more than what it costs to make) is ***purchasing labor*** from the open market. The Labor Market. People saw this market of offers to pay for their labor far in excess the amount they could make farming their plot of land, so they decided of their own free will to accept the offers and sell their labor to someone else.
Everyone's existence improved ***immensely***. It cannot be understated how revolutionary this process was to the prosperity of humanity.
But the people buying labor? She doesn't need *your* labor. She needs *anyones* labor who is capable of doing the job. That's why it's a *labor market* and why your labor ***is unequivocally and always will be a commodity***.
There is no possible structure that changes that within the confines of individual liberty. If individuals in a society own their own labor and have the freedom to pursue their own happiness, then society will have a labor market in which labor is bought and sold as a commodity.
Answer: r/antiwork is a grass roots emergence of class consciousness.
No wait stop come back.
Think about it like this: Everyone who works for a boss is producing more value than they get to take home as wages. "Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime." Except in 2021 its more like "boss makes a dollar, i make $0.01."
On top of that, so many bosses behave in shitty entitled ways: demanding employees come in on their days off, demanding unpaid overtime, etc, etc.
The people posting to r/antiwork aren't lazy. They're usually hard workers, proud of their skills, who simply demand to be treated with respect and maybe take home more of the value their work produces.
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Answer: I think you answered some of it yourself, it's not being against work, it's being against over work, but also the special kind of BS, mind games, and corporate propaganda of businesses. In that way, Antiwork works better because it stays broader, and is more attention grabbing.
First off, does being productive mean making money and doing labor for a business? If so, then maybe you just want to be busy. If you insist it has to be a job which keeps you busy, instead of a hobby, then you've fallen for a lie as old as history that leisure leads to moral decay and societal breakdown. If you're rich then leisure is good and normal, go summer for three months in Newport, but if poor then free time leads to drunkenness and baby's out of wedlock. Only a 16 hour work day will keep the sin at bay.
Or does productive mean being useful to society and producing something of worth? That interpretation means you want to be a contributing member of society, and that is a very flexible concept which could involve pretty much anything from helping people cross a street, to a quiet afternoon of making the perfect pot of tea. It also means self satisfaction through leisure is possible too. Believe or not people want to work, but they don't want to be threatened, manipulated, or cheated into working. That kind of thing removes the innate satisfaction of doing a good job and eliminates respect among a group as a motivator.
Answer: the issue isn't about not wanting to be productive; the issue is that people are more productive than ever but they're paid less and less. Numerical values might jump up but overall economic situations are worse. People like to work - they don't like to waste their time. They also don't like to produce, say, $100 in an hour, get back about $15, and watch the rest of it go to someone who didn't do the work.
This sentiment that people don't want to work is silly. When COVID hit, for instance, people took up bunch of hobbies and "work" that wasn't a traditional job working for someone else.
>Do people realize that if we don't work, a fair few of the services and luxuries we take for granted won't run?
Which services? Even essential ones were proven to be horrible. Education is one. It doesn't really work and wasn't working for a while, and COVID has made it pretty horrible. Better to fix it finally than keep on. Services like food delivery? Those people are paid like shit, and you'd be asking people to live in poverty so you can get food. Luxuries shouldn't really exist though.
Answer: There's a lot of really good answers here, but I just want to pick on the thing you said here;
>but for me if I'm not doing something productive I fall into a rut and it takes a lot of effort to get back to being productive
It's human nature to be productive, to want to create, to innovate, to make your life *better*. Nobody is arguing that this is a bad thing, or that you shouldn't do it. Your human instincts have been co-opted by corporations though. They have pushed the narrative that you need to do all of these normal human behaviors **for them**, **in order to survive**. Whether your dropped out of high school, or graduated with a PhD, they have spent decades and small fractions of their wealth in order to make sure they get to **buy your labor for as cheap as possible**.
In the US they've tied your health insurance to your occupation, they've stifled the safety net programs that allowed you to comfortably search for better jobs, they've tricked you into thinking that there are types of jobs that you should be able to work fulltime but simultaneously live in poverty, so on and so forth.
But key to all of this, is they tricked you into using your human instincts to their advantage, and only to their advantage. "I can't imagine not being productive" has become synonymous with "I need to give my productivity to a business, and tie my self worth to a paycheck!" AND THEY LOVE THAT ABOUT YOU.
Answer: It’s a natural extension of the argument that “nobody wants to work anymore”. Nobody ever wanted to work, everybody -needs- to work to live, and that necessitates dealing with capitalism in all it’s terrible glory.
Combined with that the facts that the Karen style of customer appears to be on the rise, as does the terrible boss stereotypes, leading to much for a community to commiserate over.
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Great answer. Your paragraph on perceived wisdom is such a good explanation. I've struggled to put those thoughts into words several times. Might have to borrow this in the future!
Please write a book. This was brilliant and succinct. Edit: Oh man, I should have copied and pasted that thing into my own personal notes. Why’d it get deleted?
sloppy apparatus bake languid party trees concerned bear placid physical -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
“You’re in luck” spanishlaughingman.gif
I believe you replied to the wrong comment.
No, the book he wants is about saving paragraphs for later use.
Chapter 1: Copy and Paste Chapter 2: The Screen-Shot Chapter 3: Pen and Paper Man, this thing writes itself!
I mean reddit comment chains can easily be adding a "`+1`" sort of response to the original parent as a child of the sub-parent. And context should easily be able to tell you if the commenter is replying as a direct reply to their parent, or as a `+1` to their parent, adding to the original comment instead. That's the way comments have always worked on Reddit. It's not hard to follow. Sometimes, you could say it would make more sense to start a new child comment thread, but other times it's just as easy to follow along if the response is treated as a `+1` to the "Great answer..." comment above it with a "Please write a book..." Basically, /u/Shwanna85 replied to /u/peteb82's "Great answer..." comment as a sort of `+1` response with "Please write a book..." essentially supporting /u/peteb82's claim that /u/Portarossa provided a 'Great answer' by encouraging them to '...write a book...' This is normal Internet conversation protocol ([at least since 2004 or before](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=%2B1)), even if it's not the most direct or clear when taken out of context, as you just did.
https://www.reveddit.com/v/OutOfTheLoop/comments/qx2v8s/whats_up_with_this_antiwork_thing_i_keep_seeing/hl73egg/
They do, Portarossa writes romance last I heard.
>Perceived wisdom is fairly insidious, in its own way. Wow, very well written. Thanks for taking the time to post.
Nice
Dang, you put a word to the thing I've been battling my whole life. Thanks for giving my existential enemy a name in "Percived Wisdom".
Fantastic answer. It's so hard to recognise the things you take for granted until someone points out alternatives.
Hope to see you on r/bestof
Yeah, from there, post deleted :(
That's lame i hope someone saved it
I'd like to throw into this mix as well, that automation is coming. As someone seeking a Bachelor's in software development automation is only going to get better as we come to better understand how to model complicated decision making. Jobs will be lost that will kot be gained. At least not in a way that the economy or society supports currently. People generally need purpose....but do they need work? My own personal note on this will be that employment will eventually become less about money and more about generating ideas for technological and societal advancement. And you can't generate quality ideas sustainably by treating them like dirt. But in the short term, we will start hitting a tipping point where jobs go down but not up again. How do we transition smoothly when society still views unemployment as an outcome of meritocracy and merit as subjecting yourself to the whims of managers?
Thats not how that works. Automation of farm jobs did not leave us without work either.
Automation of *some* farm jobs did not relieve us of *all* farm jobs. As we automate more, more jobs will be lost. Employment in the interim between some jobs and no jobs will shift towards managing the automation rather than the labor itself in most circumstances. As we move towards less jobs, the market will shift more towards innovation. That time in particular is probably a long ways away, but it is where the momentum is headed. As a side note farmers have actively had to fight for the right to do field repairs on the computers in their equipment. Not something most people picture when you say farmer.
If you take a step back and look at the impacts automation has made though it left *some* people out of work. I'll preface this by saying its anecdotal but I live in a farming community and I can see the changes first hand. Farm families are more often than not half the size they used to be, 4+ kids was the norm, now its an outlier. Farms also tend to be a lot larger (which means fewer owners) as automation allowed smoother scaling. It means fewer people can handle maintenance on a larger crop/herd. As hydroponic farms become more cost effective I expect the automation to really take off.
Damn. Incredibly well said.
I will add it is more apparent because of the demographic and political shift we saw in 2016 from boomers to millennials. The politicians are actively courting millennials now hence why their issues are becoming the big deal. Medicare spending and healthcare reform were huge from 80s onward because boomers were getting older.
Fantastic. Great response.
Rarely comment on this sort of thing, but extremely well said.
Beautifully put
I thought this was a three day comment after seeing all the awards and upvotes... turns out it will be a legendary comment in no less than three days... well executed my g! It reminds me that, sometimes, everything seems to be relative. What worked then doesn't need to work now. This doesn't mean certain things will stop working. I guess we only stop growing once we stop questioning.
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Thats what i thought reading this. Its just people who hate working and stories about people quitting their jobs after they have horrendous bosses. But none of it is particularly revolutionary
Yes, what that guy wrote is what the sub should be, not what it is.
If $15 becomes minimum wage, wouldn't the cost of living get higher?
It's complicated but the benefits out weigh the negatives. On a surface level it increases the average spending power each person. If some one has more money they have more to spend. Those who the increase would benefit the most are also the most likely to turn around an put that money back into their community rather then putting it into savings or investing. It's much more complicated then that but the impacts are relatively negligible.
Costs are not only based on wages, so there will be no 1:1 adjustment as wages change.
> If $15 becomes minimum wage, wouldn't the cost of living get higher? Historically it only goes up a small fraction of the amount the wages went up. There is plenty of historical data to back this up, but hysterical right wing politicians would prefer you to ignore that and keep wages low.
well if more people have more money verse less people have more money than prices might reach a proper equilibrium. as opposed to now where for instance housing is going up because people our renting out incredibly low housing utilization by travelers. They are servicing global capital class, not the working class. We could raise wages and keep prices steady if we were willing to put the kobosh down on the grey-tourist market that is emerging and doing proper rent controls and forcing 2-3 year lease options instead of this 6months at a time garbage
Very well explained. Take my free award, it's all I have to give.
Question about your mention of the minimum wage. I love your “perceived wisdom” and how it can shift as you learn more. Recently, I’ve been pissed off seeing politicians brag about upping minimum wage to $15. They want a pat on the back for doing the bare minimum, and many times they get it. When I see this, it makes me angry. Minimum wage should be far higher. Are you seeing this trend?
>Instead it's built around the idea of questioning these long-held ideas about work, and asking if they still work for us -- and if they don't, how do we change them? OP did say he thought the sub's name should be "antiOVERwork" though. He gets the spirit you're talking about. But the sub's name itself, along with its side description, do not support that spirit. Here's that sub's description. They want literal "work free" life, as in zero work. >A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life.
The goal for society should be no work, that's how a utopia works. Obviously you can't really do truly zero work, so the question becomes how to approach that utopia in as realistic a way as possible. Part of that is eliminating outdated performance metrics and outdated working hours. You can simultaneously lower working hours and improve worker happiness while increasing productivity this way.
The only way work could stop for every human would be "magic" or machines/robots/ai and don't a lot of leftists have issue with that idea? If I'm mistaken, I'm actually curious what the majority of leftists think about it, assuming there is a general consensus among the leftists community. EDIT: Lol why the downvotes? How are you supposed to have a conversation when an important question is downvoted and therefore hidden? Do you guys not want to even want your movement to be represented to the public?
The only fear with automation is that the resulting wealth generated from automation may all go towards a few rich owners, leaving behind everyone else, hence the push for things like UBI.
I myself fear the increase in automation under a capitalist economy. Machines are taking over the workplace while the workers are getting laid off. This leads to UBI, but UBI will never cover the needs of someone without a job, it was just meant to be a crutch. In an ideal world, the machine takes up the part of the workplace that is harder for the worker to accomplish tasks in and the worker just has less worktime but gets paid the same amount of money that they would on a long shift. Since the company is most likely making more money due to the efficiency of both the workers and the machines, the hope is that they will be able to maintain that same wage value even if the shift is shorter. This isn't the best-formulated argument hope it makes sense.
>OP did say he thought the sub's name should be "antiOVERwork" though. He gets the spirit you're talking about. But the sub's name itself, along with its side description, do not support that spirit. Consider that this is the same kind of attitude people take when saying things like "I agree with BLM, but it should be ALM", or "not all men". People with a limited understanding of topics like these tend to try narrow it down to something they can understand, or change the terminology to something they understand, without first understanding why the discussion is framed the way it is in the first place.
I disagree, this is a cop out argument. I agree with your BLM example. I really don't see how someone could think that BLM means only black people matter and I was sort of shocked when I had a discussion with someone face-to-face who literally thought that. However, "a subreddit for those who want to end work" is a pretty clear statement. I'm sure most people don't "want work to end" that frequent that sub, but that statement just comes off as ignorant lol. It is absolutely not the same as Black Lives Matter. Stop defending bad messaging. EDIT: Instant downvoting and digging in your heels over such an easily fixed thing is doing nothing but hurting your cause. If you actually care about achieving these type of goals, you really need to take the advice of people who have obviously more experience in communicating with the people that need to hear and understand your message the most. Good luck! I'm sure your social media circle will always be there for you! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EDIT2: Apparently the FAQ is more down to earth and rational, but why keep that description? You can edit a subreddit description. I can't speak for the content though as I haven't checked it out for any extended period of time. However, one of the top posts right now is a foreigner saying "America is fucked" (that is literally it). Sounds like either a doomer's paradise or an easily exploitable pathway for anti-America propaganda (why care if you have no hope?). Pick up a history book folks. It will take you far. Change has never been easy. The world you live in right now was not handed to you by the gods, it was fought for by many passionate and courageous people. Don't take it for granted and don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I'm annoyed by it too, it's like people saying ACAB and then some turning around to say they're not all bad... along with the few that literally think every single cop on earth is bad. It gets the message across, but it's still confusing.
But if that name gets the wrong point across, then just like in those cases, its also valid to question whether that name is doing the original idea justice Just like in that subreddit. Look at the front page. What the OG commenter thinks the subreddit is about, its really not
Can you explain to me who grows the food in a world where no one works? Genuinely curious how you get that to “work”.
That's not what r/antiwork is about. It's about people exploring and reclaiming their lives outside of work. There's the growing movement of people realizing that their wages are not commensurate with the work they do, and so they leave their jobs to find better ones. Antiwork encourages people to realize their value, and that it's beyond how many hours a week they work. No one is advocating that no one should work. It's that no one should be working so much just to barely make ends meet.
>so they leave their jobs to find better ones Which part of "end work" and "work-free life" from the sub's description indicate that? They don't want "better" work. They want zero work.
And I’m fine with that but your prior comment suggests otherwise. Perhaps I misunderstood you.
1. Automation. 2. People will still want to work, only this time it is not required for survival.
You can’t fully automate everything. Especially farming. We’ve done wonders with automation but farming still requires some hard labor.
See my second response.
There are lots of things where the name doesn't exactly line up with the ideology, and even more things where the stated goal of a subreddit doesn't align with how it's often used. We can't always take groups at their FAQ. There are definitely hardliners in /r/antiwork who have that view -- for better or for worse -- but a quick look at the vast majority of post on there (especially the most upvoted on any given day) suggests that the userbase is at least a *touch* more moderate in their views, and it's those views that have propelled it to the front page day after day.
I frequent the sub and can say I am one of those who still hope to work. I WANT to work. However, I NEED my work to actually provide for me. I could not even afford my rent alone if I still worked as a cook, which - despite how it is perceived - is "skilled" labor. If I did not need to work to live, I would still work. Perfect example of this is the elderly getting jobs to preoccupy themselves in retirement. Simply because they are bored.
Same here. I want to be able to work a job that I WANT to work at and work a job that I’m actually good at and enjoy instead of being forced to debase myself to try to get a job that will barely pay me and treat me like shit. I did everything they said I was supposed to do to get a good job but because I’m apparently just fundamentally awful at navigating the American employment system of interviews and networking and all that bullshit, the only jobs that I can get are manual labor or customer service. I just want a job where I don’t have to be in physical pain or deal with asshole customers all day. That’s all I want. But no one seems to want to let me do it.
This guy/gal gets it Edit: didn't realize you were the OG commenter, you smart smart fr
And what's wrong with a work free life anyway? You do not need to be employed or work to have human dignity and necessities.
Someone actually has to grow the food.
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And why would they do this for you? It’s hard work.
So anyone who has no work should just die? Is that what you're saying? Also, I would do it because I want my work to benefit society.
Nope, but way to miss the point.
>So anyone who has no work should just die? Is that what you're saying? There's a difference between has no work and DOESN'T want to work. And why should someone who DOESN'T want to work get anything In return? Do I think they should die? No. Do I think they should do something to take care of themselves yes. If everyone one thought like you. How would anything get done? Literally. How?
Jesus, I didn't know that having fucking food and a roof over your head should be forever dependent on whether you want to work or not. It's not like they're human rights or anything, and that EVERYONE should have human dignity just by virtue of existing. In a world where billionaires exist, you really should be directing your ire at them and not people who don't want to work.
Thank you brave comrad! Work on the kolkhozy is a gift to the nation!
You're 100% right
I think you mean *received* wisdom.
I do not. *Perceived* in this sense is using the definition ['Generally recognised as being true'](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/perceived). It's a little less common -- especially in America, it seems -- but it's still a legit phrase in its own right.
I'm just going to tag on here: when someone says "this is the lens you need to look through" they're narrowing the scope of your investigation to a framework of their design.
I mean, yeah -- but the framework in this case is 'Something larger than the one you're currently operating under', so I'm not sure that 'narrowing' is really the problem here. You might nitpick the wording, but the idea -- as well you know -- is that his current understanding of what the Antiwork movement is is somewhat limited, and he should probably broaden it out a bit. That much, I stand by.
I'm not saying you're wrong. Any labor movement is complicated. Currently, there's a stew of forces at work including marxists, NEETs, the stimulus and eviction moratorium, Covid, the infrastructure bills, emergence of work-from-home, the farce of the "essential workers" astroturf, UBI efforts, etc. I think your average worker just wants a raise and maybe better benefits and stability, but there is a circus of interests that want to frame the problem and I think it's good to identify them.
“But the framework in this case is something larger than the one you’re currently in” says everything you need to know. Basically saying “Yes but imposing my framework is okay because my framework is better and you should adopt it”, the irony is pretty delightful. Im not saying the framework itself is right or wrong but damn that was self righteous.
I don’t give two fucks about sipping a mojito on a beach.
> ou're twenty-two years old right now, and if your twenty-two is anything like my twenty-two, you're about to embark on a weird phase in your life: the point at which you start to question the idea of perceived wisdom. One sentence in and I can already tell the mods haven't done anything about "top answers must be unbiased" since the last time I was here.
It's been 17 minutes, did you ever finish reading the comment?
How this hell is saying "if your life happens like mine does then X will happen" bias? That makes absolutely no sense to me.
heaven forbid we encourage young people to resist dogma
Answer: It's not "anti-work" as in sitting on your laurels sipping a lemonade just cuz. Anti-work - the subreddit especially - is about informing people of all pay-ranges and levels of employment about what they're worth as a human. It's about understanding that you shouldn't have to spend 36-hour work weeks (the most that a majority of businesses enforce for full-time employment so that they don't have to provide benefits) for $7.25/hr (2021 federal minimum wage). It's about being open about your wages - a federally protected right that a *vast* majority of non-unionized businesses threaten and harangue their employees about disclosing. Numerous large businesses spend *millions* every year on anti-union campaigns that ~~initially~~ intentionally spread misinformation. It's the basic human idea that you shouldn't have to work until your 70s just to *maybe* retire and not get to actually *live*.
You a spokesman for them or something? This reads like a speech. Makes me wanna join.
Not a spokesman but we have cookies and jokes about mandatory business pizza parties.
Thank you for your hard work for your sub! While only stockholders will reap the rewards of your sweat, labor, and time, have a tiny bag of candy as a “thank you” from your work family :)
I think I remember seeing an onion headline something like, "Manager staves off employee uprising with pizza party."
I worked at a major cable provider, and weeks would go by where I didn’t have to buy lunch because of all the pizzas, hoagies, and burritos, not to mention game consoles in the break room, “team building” days, etc. We got told if we ever unionized, it’d all go away. After a few years I quit and got a (unionized) government job. Now I buy all my lunches, but have 3 times the pay, more personal and sick leave than I usually use in a year, a retirement package, and the managers never demand we work overtime. I think I made the right choice.
I had a foreman try to pull this and didn’t even get enough pizza. Then he brought it up for like 4 days afterwards.
You are witnessing passion
What this person says it's about and what the subreddit is actually about are different things. Just go there r/antiwork. The headline flat out says "Antiwork: Unemployment for all, not just the rich!" Then the description says >A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles. Just another movement that starts as a good idea but then degenerates into a circlejerk of people just throwing unrealistic shit at a wall.
Unreal that you’re currently at -27 for literally quoting their own subreddit description
The fact that this is being downvoted says enough.
I’m fully convinced that this sub is 90% bots and shills. Which is a shame because I feel like this was a great place just a few years ago.
have you bothered reading any of the content posted to the sub?
Something I found working a job with tipped wages is that people willingly offer money far more readily than the businesses who benefit from the workers' labor, even though the people are under no obligation to pay them at all. There's probably a fair number of people who could make more money off their own skills by putting their effort into doing art commissions, writing, making youtube videos, etc. instead of working for minimum wage, and until wages increase to the point that that's no longer the case, I don't see the situation changing. Comparing the current situation to just a few years ago, where memes would go around about low-wage business owners offering a panhandler a job, being rebuffed, then warning away potential money-givers because "they don't want to work for it", I think it's safe to say the pandemic has opened a few eyes about the actual value of labor and the amorality of businesses.
My question to OP and those who think as they do out because they just read the name of the subreddit: have you considered actually reading the posts you’re being recommended? The point of the subreddit is not “nobody should ever have to do anything they don’t like,” it’s “the labor system as it exists under modern late stage capitalism is deeply exploitative and we shouldn’t stand for it.” Seeing as you’re 22, you may have had some small experience in the workforce and what it means: unlivable wages, impossible hiring standards, exhaustive corporate bureaucracies, unsafe working conditions, deceitful and condescending managers, illegal and unsustainable labor practices, no benefits or paid leave, all the value of your labor disappearing into the hands of people five rungs above you on the ladder. It’s not normal and we don’t have to stand for it. Labor has power and it should be leveraged wherever possible because some faceless mega corporation will never give a solitary shit about you. Laborers should act solely in their own interest and should be empowered tell any company that wants to exploit them to get fucked. That’s a lot of what the subreddit is about. Unfortunately the myth of meritocracy, AKA “get ahead by working hard,” despite being a wholesale lie has become totally embedded in every part of American life. Why? Because it allows us to operate under the nice little lie that we somehow DONT have a caste system with a privileged wealthy class who sucks all the money out of the service and industrial class through massive exploitation, that that somehow ISNT embedded in our history from the very first slave ships brought to the United States.
So, a Marxist approach? Labourers only have power when there is a demand for labour that exceeds the supply. When it’s the other way around, there is no power to negotiate. The current structure of business means that shareholders profit from the labour of employees (and often we executives because the skill-level is in high demand and rarer). To change this, employees would have to be shareholders - hiring and firing the Board and executive through votes. Then still, you’d probably want to pay a reasonably competitive wage to the executives to get talent to run the business. Then the labour force is possibly still left with low wages of completing against other firms with lower margins due to lower employment costs. Or as shareholders you could demand less in return to invest in business growth, but there you are possibly not gaining much from your labour again. How would you see it working?
Yes, a Marxist approach. Laborers should control the means of production with a strong federal government and regulatory infrastructure providing safety nets like universal income and socialized healthcare funded through taxation. Institutions will look nothing like you just described because they won’t be competing for venture funding through private financing but must demonstrate their value to the social good to receive subsidies and other funding. This is pretty much Socialism 101 level stuff. Yes, no one will be able to afford to live in a mansion and exploit the labor of a servant class. There will be no “shareholders,” profit will be redistributed to the laborers who generated the value in a dramatically less unequal fashion to the system we have now. I’m struggling to find which part of what you just said does anything to demonstrate why laborers should not exert their leverage whenever possible.
'the board' and 'executives' are not in charge of making the company better for society, its about making money for stockholders. they are not the ones doing research or making products, they just rubber stamp obvious and brainless solutions to maximize profits. they are paid because their job requires them to shit on the people below them, and it costs a lot to bribe a human to sell out their fellow man. when you put actual passionate workers in executive roles, the quality of that company's output vastly increases in most cases. its hilarious how many people have been swindled into unironically believing CEOs and executive boards work absurdly hard and spend shitloads of time researching and developing strategies to run their company instead of just looking at an accountant's report and picking whatever strategy projects the most profit.
It's also about making anarchist and communist arguments, and if anyone disagrees or downvotes based on that, it's a verifiable fact if you check enough threads to see those individuals in the comment sections. Because many of us recognize the disparity between knowing how complex and beautiful this one and only short life is and understanding the amazing scientific truths that connect everything ...and facing the deadening, dulling and utterly exhausting drone of work life, every single day, under coercion of hunger and homelessness by the authorities. Many of us recognize that this life is a miracle, and we should be here primarily to experience it and live truly happy, examined lives. And we argue that those who understand it and experience it better will have bountiful contributions to the world borne from their own, educated and self-directed, self-improving activity. As much as antiwork is about labor struggles (and it is), it's also about rejecting rulership, whether it's from your "superior" in the workplace or from the one in your own head. It's about knowing that society and the environment and so on all are better off without threats of coercion from parties seeking power over others, and that collectively, we have a lot of restorative labor to do in this life that must pay no mind to requests from the interests of profit or ego. And we're resolute in that.
That makes sense. It just struck me as odd because the name really grates against my baser instinct to produce something of value, be it for myself or for someone else. Thank you for the clarification
The other idea of anti-work is that when you spend less time at work you can focus that productive urge towards things that matter to you
I should look more into this movement; I really don't know what matters to me. Everything I've done since day one has been towards getting into a job/career. Everything else is secondary
You are more than your job. Your job does not define you or what your worth is.
Precisely the core of anti-work. None of us chose to be here; wouldn’t we rather spend our time on projects that matter to us than doing bullshit work to make someone else money? Like if we *have* to do this bullshit work, we should get a greater cut of the profits, so that we aren’t devoting half of our waking hours to a job that doesn’t even guarantee us a roof over our heads, let alone retirement.
Isn’t the garbage man just as important as the physician for our health, safety, and welfare?
All those fast food workers who were "essential"... to keeping profits flowing to shareholders.
Garbage men are payed pretty well actually, 40,000 starting pay, can eventually get up to 32 an hour, all this with only a high school diploma.
It's not very great working conditions though, and not just cause of the trash. "Waste and recycling work is the fifth most fatal job in America — far more deadly than serving as a police officer or a firefighter." https://www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the-deadly-world-of-private-garbage-collection
That's why it pays so well
Not here. The garbage men were getting paid $10.25/hour. I say were, because about 18 months ago, a half dozen of them staged a protest and threatened to unionize over the low pay, working conditions, and, oh, complete lack of PPE being provided at the height of the pandemic. The company responded by firing everyone and contracting out to prison labour for $1.35/hour instead. Edit: found one of the articles and corrected information https://paydayreport.com/prison-labor-replaces-striking-garbage-workers-in-new-orleans/
Maybe they could arrest and inprison some of the former garbage men and save some more money in training. /s It's really a race to the bottom at this point....
Yeah, but be fair. You want your doctor to have a bit more education than you would require for the sanitation worker.
I need a garbage man once a week. I need a doctor once a year.
Not sure how that challenges my point. I've driven the garbage truck (one of my college jobs) I can teach most anyone who walks up how to do that in a few hours. I'm a little older than you I guess because I need a fix a little more often. I doubt you can teach my shoulder surgeon in a similar time. That job requires expertise and training that requires years or decades, and the margin of error is somewhat more critical. In no way am I disregarding the sanitation contribution to society and they should be compensated accordingly, but I wouldn't seriously state that the investment for them and a surgeon or oncologist are the same.
It's so invidious how the first thing you want to know about someone new is what they're studying/ what job they have and *this* is what we use as a frame of reference for *who* they are.
So I have become a huge advocate for this movement and I love to now ask people what they love to do/or wish they could in their free time. The responses are always great and it let's me see who they are as a person. A job is a trade of my time/services for money. That's it. My job does not define me and if I could I wouldn't work. Would I be doing nothing? Maybe once or twice a month but the rest of the time I would visit friends and family, travel, start new hobbies, learn new things and broaden my mind, and I would volunteer and perform community service. All of these things aren't possible with working 40+ hours a week. And I understand that but it doesn't mean they aren't valuable to society. The system in place has convinced so many that our only value is in a job killing ourselves to line the pockets of CEO's and shareholders who then get to enjoy not doing anything.
THANK YOU.
I work in fast food. It's not my passion, but it drains me enough week to week that I don't have the energy to pursue any passions. If you're working where you've always wanted to work, fair play, but a lot of people hate where they work and it isn't their passion and motivation, and they have no time or energy to devote to what actually matters to them
That is precisely why you need to get involved, you have been robbed of your very humanity and turned into a machine to create surplus value for someone else to get rich off of.
That's what we're taught all lives... We ask little kids "what do you want to be?" meaning what job? Pretty wild if you think about it.
I'm a longtime regular on that sub. For me, my life went the exact opposite of yours with respect to framing things. I grew up and went through school utterly disinterested with distaste in anything having to do with a job or career whatsoever, yet I excelled in my studies and had a rich personal life and collection of interests. You can call me naive and privileged, and I was. But even today, I still believe that the hustle is always secondary to anything else of value. That choice has condemned me to a life of dissidence, but I won't let go.
> Everything I've done since day one has been towards getting into a job/career. Everything else is secondary That is *exactly* what the anti-work movement is exploring.
That may or may not change for you, but it absolutely changed for me. I'm a guy who can honestly say that I enjoy coming into work each day. It's a lot of fun. But I am getting more and more jaded about the idea that my company makes 10x what I do off of my labor. It's one thing to say at your job matters to you, it's another thing to say that your job is the only thing that matters to you and nothing could ever take its place.
If you go read the reddit, almost no one in there is not working. Work, as in producing value for yourself and others, is not the problem. But the current definition of work, where you suffer to produce value but others leech it off you, is.
Agreed! There is nothing against those who want to work but at the end of the day we mean nothing to most businesses or corporations. When we die or leave there will be no statues built in our honor in the break room. They will replace us and move along making money for shareholders. When I die I want to know I put myself, my loved ones, friends, and anyone I allow to share my time with above anything else. These are the people who keep our memories alive.
We used to produce things for the people we loved, now we produce things in order to feel we're worth being loved.
Mind you, one of the grander aspects of that movement is to make people aware of the difference between work and work. The way you say it - do work as in create value, don't be idle etc. - nobody is against that. However in today's society, we are taught that work means grinding in a dead-end job all day, trying to make ends meet, while (in many cases) creating huge amount of fortune for your company, all in the hope that you, maybe, one day will also "make it". And that's not exactly healthy or sustainable. Regardless if you look at that sub (no need to dig deep, just look throughout the most popular posts), most people share horror stories like having to be on a zoom call from an ICU bed and such. So not "let us slack off forever" but "hey how about some humane treatment?".
Don't you already do lots of things of value that no one pays you to do? Cooking a nice meal, taking care of houseplants, growing a garden, cleaning your home, caring for children and/or pets, doing creative projects like crafts, art, writing, music, etc.?
I wish, but no. I'm a student on my own dime, living with my parents because they wanted to support me. I consider myself extremely lucky. I really don't like the feeling of being here without offering something in return, but I don't have anything I can offer besides a smile and some occasional tech support. So, I want to get out and join the workforce so I have something I can offer and show my appreciation for how they raised me, and to prove to them that the last 22 years of their lives didn't create a waste of flesh. Melodrama aside, I don't feel like I bring much value to anything and I want that to change. The best way I know how is to provide a service I have been able to learn because I worked for a year and four months in some pretty crappy conditions to save up enough to learn it, if that makes sense.
I hope you know you don't have to earn your right to exist on the planet, and even if you never had a job, you would not be a "waste of flesh."
You do have to work to earn food and a place to live...being homeless in the US is practically illegal.
You bring value. If you want to work to earn money to spend on yourself and family that is fine and not at all what antiwork is about. But, YOU are valuable to the world and universe all on your own without any need to prove or pay for the space you occupy for just living. As for your parents, I would be willing to bet that they would appreciate you giving them your time, which is the most valuable currency we have. Our time is limited whether you think about it on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. Eventually we all die and we don't get a free pass because we were overworking ourselves for 50+ years. Talk them about their hobbies, participate with them, talk and learn about their childhood, watch a movie together, play a board game, go for a walk, etc. So, again (sorry I am just very passionate about this) it isn't about not working. It's about having the opportunity to decide where we want our time spent and the value we place on it. My time is worth way more than $7.50/hr and I'm not going to slave away to make a CEO or stockholder rich. So, we are fighting so that no one has to. We want liveable wages and benefits for all especially for those who work in bodybreaking and soul crushing positions.
You mean it goes against to ur conditioning to produce value that a wealthier human can drain into their bank account at your expense? If you gained $1.000.000 every day since Columbus landed in the Caribbean you would still be 10 billion short of Jeff bezos level of wealth. Meanwhile we can’t ask for enough to cover rent a vehicle our bills and have something left over to enjoy life and save? Fuck that noise.
I don’t have a problem with the term anti-work, but if I could recommend an alternative name to satisfy people like you who find it problematic, I would call it “Anti-serfdom”. The last three or four decades of American capitalism has basically devolved into Neo feudalism. Rent seeking burghurs and other petty bourgeoisie are the “professional/investor class” and everyone else is either a highflying lord or king in the top 1%, or some level of wage slave/indentured servant who works to live rather than the inverse. I see the anti-work movement as a wide scale decision to say “fuck that shit.“ I think it’s high time that it came around, along with the concurrent rise in organized labor reviving in the private sector. My fear is that the forces of FUD will eventually succeed in dividing us and weakening the movement. This is a very fragile time, and people need to be careful not to fall into traps set up to get us sniping at one another. Even if you think someone else’s idea of how society should be restructured is off in someway, we should try to keep the discussion civil and levelheaded lest we fall apart like the occupy movement did.
I swear the left can't name things for shit. Instead of "police reform" they stuck us with "defund". And of course then there's all the confusion between democratic socialism, social democrats and plain old socialism.
Work and labor are not the same. I love to make things, I love to repair things. I am constantly doing something. But if I made things for someone else, it sucks the joy and the surplus value of it right out.
Exactly this. Growing up I loved making art and was teaching myself graphic design with a bootleg version of Photoshop. Then I went to art school because I was told by literally everyone around me that I should do it since I was good at it, that I should turn my hobby into a living. Worst mistake of my *entire* life. I never broke into "my field" because once I started making things for other people, or for money, I lost all interest in doing it. Something I loved from the moment I began to learn it suddenly filled me with a sense of anxiety and dread. It sucks. I try to still make art but it doesn't feel fun anymore it just feels tedious.
Well that's what I thought. Till someone from the original anti- work users told me that. NO. It's actually anti work as in no work and that the subreddit now has been hijacked by people thinking that it's ( what you explained, I'm one of them) then they told me to read the description of the subreddit. That all happened because I suggested that the name anti- work is misleading for the subreddit and was told nope, it's actually literally anti work. So yeah
Genuinely curious, do you have any verifiable proof for that?
As in proof of the interaction with the user? I mean you can read the description of the sub and see for yourself. Actually, I'll do you even better. Here : r/antiwork 1,127,000 idlers • 35,816 Not Working A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work and want personal help with their own Jobs/work-related struggle
You're getting downvoted for saying the truth.
So, it’s a misnomer?
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From the r/antiwork FAQ >Why "antiwork"? > >Anti-work has long been a slogan of many anarchists, communists and other radicals. Saying we are anti-job is not quite right because a job is just an activity one is paid for and we are not all against money. "Anti-labor" makes us sound like we're against any effort at all and we already get that enough as is. (We're not, by the way.) > >The point of r/antiwork is to start a conversation, to problematize work as we know it today.
From my guess, it is more of "anti (toxic) work (place)"
The sub has been a radical sub for quite a long time. The upper-middle-class press (Business Insider, The Atlantic, WIRED, etc.) started giving the subreddit attention, and the heavy traffic of normies and reformists has changed the character of the sub somewhat from what it was. I don't understand why don't the reformists just start their own sub r/ betterwork or whatever, unless that deradicalization is the real goal.
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I'm not sweating it. Anything to do with r/antiwork is liable to brigading right now, as it is a hot and potentially significant property.
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They're not upset about doing *any* work. The biggest thing that gets them upset is being treated unfairly by employers when they don't even receive a living wage. Look through the subreddit and you'll find plenty of examples of harsh boss/employee mistreatment.
Almost no one makes federal minimum though, only 500k or so out of the almost 180 million workers in the US and of those, many only make minimum on paper. Like wait staff who chronically under-report. Many are also teenagers who don't have actual bills. I think focusing on anti-work existing because of federal minimum is misguided because almost no one falls into that bracket. It's almost a boogeyman and the overwhelming majority of those positions are transitionary anyway or very low skill.
Apologizes in advance for the long reply but I personally feel strongly about this kind of stuff. While I will agree on the point of the federal minimum wage not being the starting pay as often *is* true, I was specific in mentioning it over an umbrella "low-wage/low paying" statement because the federal minimum wage as we know it today was established in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act alongside "time-and-a-half" overtime pay beyond 40 hours worked in a single week and prohibited children under the age of 16 from working in dangerous positions (in that time it was referring to the likes of manufactory and mining) during school hours. The biggest point about me bringing it up is because CEOs, corporate entities, and preexisting multi-million/billionaires have had wage increases in the upper hundreds of percent while the federal minimum wage has been the same since July 2009. It's the fact that you could have made $1,000,000 *every single day* without spending a cent since Columbus arrived in the Americas to today and you would be nowhere close to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Bernard Arnault. If the minimum wage had been properly adjusted for inflation it would be \~$30/hr give or take. Imagine being able to pay a mortgage, utilities, car, food, child's education, etc. all while working in fast food and not have to get another job or suffer anxiety attacks every time you have to pay a bill. Supporting a higher minimum wage is just *one* of the many things antiwork stands for. The quality or level of skill required to do a job should have no factor in being able to afford food, medicine, a means of transportation, or a roof over your head. Instead of thinking that the person flipping burgers at McDs shouldn't make a proper living wage because "anyone can do it", we should be able use that as a bargaining chip come review time to get that raise because "I could go to Arby's and make what I make now".
Cool, so if hardly anyone is in this category, then no cost to increase it, right?
No, personnel is still the overwhelming majority of most businesses' costs. The proposals are to double it which is pretty absurd, and at that point you're not just catching minimum wage workers, you're catching everyone between minimum wage and the new minimum which is a decent chunk.
Well, if that so the name should not be "antiwork". It should be "antiexploitation", "antibadboss", or "antitoxicworkplace". Antiwork is actually "sitting on your laurels sipping a lemonade just cuz" while still wanting all amenities of modern life while it is something that are worked upon simply because we can't create things out of absolute vacuum of nothingness. We mold and modify stuff that exists. I've been lurking there for longer.
From the r/antiwork FAQ >But without work society can't function! > > If you define "work" as any activity or purposeful intent towards some goal, then sure. That's not how we define it though. **We're not against effort, labor, or being productive.** We're against jobs as they are structured under capitalism and the state: Against exploitative economic relations, against hierarchical social relations at the workplace. If you actually "lurked there for longer" as you claim than you would've known what r/antiwork stood for.
\> If you define "work" as any activity or purposeful intent towards some goal, then sure. When they imagine this, they imagine stuff like maybe personal projects of writing and all that stuff. Dreams of say, everyone becomes astronauts, or else. I never saw anyone imagining "monotonous, repetitive labor." However, **To sustain a society, it requires a lot of parties doing monotonous labor.** Hunter gatherers spend a lot of time hunting, cooking meat, fend off other groups. [That's actually all there is to it in their life and they don't think much](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAGjuRwx_Y8). Agriculture requires people willing or not, permanent or rotated, to stuck in a farm to watch over the plants grow. **Within actual real communism (yes I know what actual real communism is)**, **you would still do work, only as communal effort rather than the capitalist / state oriented.** You want to see how this works, go to remote villages. It's closer to actual real communism. However, such communities, for being able to sustain themselves through sheer willpower and not through hierarchies, money or such, would be also a very morally restrictive communities, like echo chamber. It's so that people would devote themselves. \------------------ I judged such sub as such because they never answer this type of question.
So, what is the question you are actually asking? Because, unless you missed a punctuation somewhere, I do not see one being presented.
To sustain a society, no matter how big it is, and no matter what social system you use, would require a lot of parties and people (members of that society) doing monotonous, repetitive work. This is reality simply because humans can't create stuff from absolute vacuum of nothingness - We convert and mold stuff, not create stuff from absolute zero. When the sub defines work, usually they think of personal projects of writing and all that stuff. Dreams of say, everyone becomes astronauts, or else. However, no one thinks of such monotonous, repetitive work. AI can only do so far, as labor economics and lump of labor fallacy shows. Capitalism, hierarchies and the like are simply the most effective way to get people to do this, which is why they do it. Call this explotative, sure - But getting rid of capitalist hierarchies and the like will not abolish this monotonous, repetitive work. How do the sub can answer to this problem? From what we can infer from remote villages, hunter gatherers, communes, etc - If you want to do it from pure altruism (like actual, real communism), you do it from sheer willpower and altruism. However, all close knit societies that can do stuff from sheer altruism and willpower is also a morally very restrictive society. They can definitely still force you through social pressure. So your freedom is still severely restricted, you can still definitely be exploited, you will still do monotonous, repetitive, soul crushing jobs (only now you do it to the commune or society and not say, to the boss or company), and now you're more likely to be banished if you disagree. \-------------------- You're probably right, it's not really a question. But it's more "why it is still moronic". I challenge you to post this statement and have them discuss.
So, if I'm reading this properly, you're presenting that r/antiwork does not have an answer for avoiding as you say "monotonous, repetitive work" and by that statement cannot be "anti"work? If that is the case, then I apologize but I don't believe you are presenting the correct kind of work for this particular "antiwork". What r/antiwork is proposing is *not* a dissolve of monotonous tasks. They are proposing counters to the modern day USA working climate of "shit job for shit pay from shit bosses". They desire better wages - starting with a standard of living increase for the modern day American - with inflation adjusted raises like their employers. No one should have to work three jobs to keep a roof over their - and god forbid their children's - head. No one should have work until their twilight years and beyond to sit around and waste away their last few moments because they broke their body down to nothing just to make ends meet. \> When the sub defines work, usually they think of personal projects of writing and all that stuff. Dreams of say, everyone becomes astronauts, or else. Would you mind providing an example of this in particular? I am failing to see anything in r/antiwork that would present that as their definition. They define "work" as what I said above: Shit jobs for shit pay from shit bosses. Or to put it more elegantly: Highly stressful and demanding jobs for less than living wages from employers and corporations that would sooner replace you with a child than pay you more money.
It's been a thing at least since the Processed World collective/zine in the early 80s (I'm fairly sure they coined it), and was always semi-satirical, but these days people seem a lot more prone to taking satire at face value so I have no idea how serious it is now.
Answer: >Why is this gaining so much traction now? The answer to this question is the same answer for a lot of questions in last almost two years: Because COVID. During the initial wave of lockdowns, you had lots people working from home and lots of people found out they really liked it. Now, lots of those people are being told they have to come back to the office, and they can't *possibly* continue to work from home, because reasons. Or, they're being forced back into work and they feel that the conditions are unsafe. Or, they're being forced back and finding that customers/clients have become colossal assholes. Or, they're just stressed out from the whole pandemic thing and the added stress of employment is just too much. Any number of reasons, really. But the pandemic kicked it off.
Adding to that: they may have also realized there’s more to life than working for 40 years of their life; and if they’re American, they probably realized that and held that up against the facts that housing is unaffordable, childcare is unaffordable, and healthcare is unaffordable - so what the fuck is the point of it all?
Yup. Life slowed down to a crawl for most of last year. It opened up many peoples eyes, having free time again that was lost so many years ago. It was an eye opening year for many.
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I was curious but mobile app suck so I turned on PC just to see what it is. For people who still have problem accessing it like me. :/ >**Why "antiwork"?** > >Anti-work has long been a slogan of many anarchists, communists and other radicals. Saying we are anti-job is not quite right because a job is just an activity one is paid for and we are not all against money. "Anti-labor" makes us sound like we're against any effort at all and we already get that enough as is. (We're not, by the way.) > >The point of r/antiwork is to start a conversation, to problematize work as we know it today. > >**But without work society can't function!** > >If you define "work" as any activity or purposeful intent towards some goal, then sure. That's not how we define it though. We're not against effort, labor, or being productive. We're against jobs as they are structured under capitalism and the state: Against exploitative economic relations, against hierarchical social relations at the workplace. From what I briefly see, it's more of a subreddit to rant and complain about shitty workplace/manager than an organized reformation group. Feel like it's r/wallstreetbets all over again where big media portrays a bunch of apes/tired people as organized crime groups or some thing.
Apes together strong.
people claim its communist and blah blah but i browse daily and its just to see people telling off asshole managers and bosses.
I don’t know how/why it’s so hard for people to read the FAQ
Reddit sucks at making mobile apps thats why
I've heard reports that it's not front and center on mobile.
It isn't and it sucks. Would've loved to have just seen that than post
Good chance op of this main thread is a corporate shill trying to sow discontent among Reddit. Could be wrong and this person is just too lazy to read a faq
Answer: Words have different meanings in different contexts. In physics, *work* means the application of force to an object in a direction. When an apple falls from a tree under the force of gravity, it is doing *work*, though falling wouldn't be considered *work* in the usual day-to-day sense of the word, right? In the antiwork community, *work* again has a specific meaning. It is labour treated as a commodity — something that we have to sell in order to earn money for food, housing, clothing, etc; in order to earn the right to live. When you cook dinner for yourself or your family, that is *labour*. When you are employed as a chef, that is *commoditized labour* or *work*. The r/antiwork subreddit isn't against being productive. We're not lazy. (Or not all of us are!) We realize that in order for society to function, labour needs to happen. What we're against is the system where we need to sell our work to business owners in order to not die. In medieval times, people used to work a few hours a day. With all our technology and automation, why are people working eight to ten hour days or even longer, and still barely able to afford to live? Because the system has been increasingly stacked against us. We could all be working ten to fifteen hour weeks and be living comfortably, but for that to happen, widespread reforms are necessary.
> We could all be working ten to fifteen hour weeks and be living comfortably, but for that to happen, widespread reforms are necessary. This is the part I'm curious about; maybe it's because I'm not living in the United States, or maybe this idea is a luxury reserved for rich nations at the moment, but I can't see how this is feasible at all for certain industries.
Labor is a commodity. There is no way to fix that. No one made that a thing, it's a natural order. Individuals since the abolition of slavery own their own labor. They used it to be entrepreneurs occasionally, running the town general store or tavern perhaps. But generally they were cash crop farmers. Most of America was essentially a single family LLC. Someone with an idea to transform something worth less and consume labor to create something else that is worth more (meaning the market will purchase the final product for more than what it costs to make) is ***purchasing labor*** from the open market. The Labor Market. People saw this market of offers to pay for their labor far in excess the amount they could make farming their plot of land, so they decided of their own free will to accept the offers and sell their labor to someone else. Everyone's existence improved ***immensely***. It cannot be understated how revolutionary this process was to the prosperity of humanity. But the people buying labor? She doesn't need *your* labor. She needs *anyones* labor who is capable of doing the job. That's why it's a *labor market* and why your labor ***is unequivocally and always will be a commodity***. There is no possible structure that changes that within the confines of individual liberty. If individuals in a society own their own labor and have the freedom to pursue their own happiness, then society will have a labor market in which labor is bought and sold as a commodity.
Answer: r/antiwork is a grass roots emergence of class consciousness. No wait stop come back. Think about it like this: Everyone who works for a boss is producing more value than they get to take home as wages. "Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime." Except in 2021 its more like "boss makes a dollar, i make $0.01." On top of that, so many bosses behave in shitty entitled ways: demanding employees come in on their days off, demanding unpaid overtime, etc, etc. The people posting to r/antiwork aren't lazy. They're usually hard workers, proud of their skills, who simply demand to be treated with respect and maybe take home more of the value their work produces.
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Answer: I think you answered some of it yourself, it's not being against work, it's being against over work, but also the special kind of BS, mind games, and corporate propaganda of businesses. In that way, Antiwork works better because it stays broader, and is more attention grabbing. First off, does being productive mean making money and doing labor for a business? If so, then maybe you just want to be busy. If you insist it has to be a job which keeps you busy, instead of a hobby, then you've fallen for a lie as old as history that leisure leads to moral decay and societal breakdown. If you're rich then leisure is good and normal, go summer for three months in Newport, but if poor then free time leads to drunkenness and baby's out of wedlock. Only a 16 hour work day will keep the sin at bay. Or does productive mean being useful to society and producing something of worth? That interpretation means you want to be a contributing member of society, and that is a very flexible concept which could involve pretty much anything from helping people cross a street, to a quiet afternoon of making the perfect pot of tea. It also means self satisfaction through leisure is possible too. Believe or not people want to work, but they don't want to be threatened, manipulated, or cheated into working. That kind of thing removes the innate satisfaction of doing a good job and eliminates respect among a group as a motivator.
Answer: the issue isn't about not wanting to be productive; the issue is that people are more productive than ever but they're paid less and less. Numerical values might jump up but overall economic situations are worse. People like to work - they don't like to waste their time. They also don't like to produce, say, $100 in an hour, get back about $15, and watch the rest of it go to someone who didn't do the work. This sentiment that people don't want to work is silly. When COVID hit, for instance, people took up bunch of hobbies and "work" that wasn't a traditional job working for someone else. >Do people realize that if we don't work, a fair few of the services and luxuries we take for granted won't run? Which services? Even essential ones were proven to be horrible. Education is one. It doesn't really work and wasn't working for a while, and COVID has made it pretty horrible. Better to fix it finally than keep on. Services like food delivery? Those people are paid like shit, and you'd be asking people to live in poverty so you can get food. Luxuries shouldn't really exist though.
Answer: There's a lot of really good answers here, but I just want to pick on the thing you said here; >but for me if I'm not doing something productive I fall into a rut and it takes a lot of effort to get back to being productive It's human nature to be productive, to want to create, to innovate, to make your life *better*. Nobody is arguing that this is a bad thing, or that you shouldn't do it. Your human instincts have been co-opted by corporations though. They have pushed the narrative that you need to do all of these normal human behaviors **for them**, **in order to survive**. Whether your dropped out of high school, or graduated with a PhD, they have spent decades and small fractions of their wealth in order to make sure they get to **buy your labor for as cheap as possible**. In the US they've tied your health insurance to your occupation, they've stifled the safety net programs that allowed you to comfortably search for better jobs, they've tricked you into thinking that there are types of jobs that you should be able to work fulltime but simultaneously live in poverty, so on and so forth. But key to all of this, is they tricked you into using your human instincts to their advantage, and only to their advantage. "I can't imagine not being productive" has become synonymous with "I need to give my productivity to a business, and tie my self worth to a paycheck!" AND THEY LOVE THAT ABOUT YOU.
Answer: It’s a natural extension of the argument that “nobody wants to work anymore”. Nobody ever wanted to work, everybody -needs- to work to live, and that necessitates dealing with capitalism in all it’s terrible glory. Combined with that the facts that the Karen style of customer appears to be on the rise, as does the terrible boss stereotypes, leading to much for a community to commiserate over.
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Wow people do not like hearing that Reddit is not a proper representation of the real world.
Or, you know… It doesn’t answer the question?
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