this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Antiwork
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We're trying to reduce the numbers of hours a person has to work.
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We talk about the end of paid work being mandatory for survival.
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You're missing the concept completely. It's not about not perfoming labor, it's about eliminating work.
Labor is performing tasks that need to be done to meet the needs of the individual and the community. That's not what work is. Work is exploitation. Work is about financial profit for the benefit of the powerful few at the expense of the worker.
Work is parasitism. It forces us into a life of ruthless, competitive struggle and leaves the loser majority in miserable, pointless servitude. Labor is an act of necessity and generosity, not a commodity. It has purpose and serves the whole, which then serves the individual. Labor creates, supports, and improves the community, while work domineers it and drains it for the profit of others.
In your vision, how do we get anything non-essential? For example, lemmy. The folks who design server hardware, the folks who work on the circuit designs that power your computers, the folks who spend hundreds of hours coding the boring OS that powers your computer etc. If there's no profit motive, does Intel just spontaneously arise from the head of Zeus/the people?
Or how do you renumerate the doctors who have to spend decades studying so they can keep you alive? Give them shiny badges and say an extra special thank you? Because we tried clapping pots and pans back in 2020, not many doctors with whom I spoke gave two shits about that.
Why would we not have those things? Are you incapable of conceptualizing having motivations for creating and doing things other than for financial profit? Why, in your estimation, can't we have a system were people do things because they care about those things and they're worth doing because they benefit everyone?
Money is an artificial construct serves no real purpose other than to consolidate power and resources into the hands of a few by depriving the many and keeping them in servitude. Removing money as a motivation, if something is worth having, people will want to have it, which means that some of those people will still choose make/do that thing for their own benefit, which in turn benefits everyone.
If the point of working for money is to use that money to obtain goods and services, there's no reason to just get rid of the money aspect and just make those goods and services available directly. The only thing that really changes is that we stop over-working ourselves to over-produce frivolous bullshit for the sake of generating more wealth for the wealthy while being denied the fruits of that work.
Because I'm not 13 anymore?
Let's just think that through in the most basic of necessities, food. Even ignoring the craziness with meat production, we'll just assume everyone is a vegetarian.
Mass food production requires several inputs including heavy machinery and fertilizer. Fertilizer requires a bunch of chemical inputs as well as a stunning amount of electricity and heavy industry. Most of it comes from abroad. The heavy machinery similarly requires a lot of fabricated metals, circuitry etc. So at this point, we need people to get together independently to run: several different types of mines for the chemical and metal components, build intricate heavy factories, then ship the results over seas for long distances on the hopes that someone else will do something nice for them eventually.
Okay, now lets say these inputs get to the fertilizer/farm equipment factories, which other kind people spend time operating again, on the hope that someone will do something nice for them. Cool. Now, those inputs need to get to the farms, which are probably not located next door. So, we need the intricate processes for building trucks, moving those trucks, distributing goods from those trucks and of course roadworks on which to move said trucks.
And we haven't even gotten to the hassle of transporting and distributing the food. ("Oh boy, I've always wanted a chance to stock groceries!")
Another way to think of it, even in a scenario where we have money, we don't have enough people acting as teachers and nurses, you think people are going to volunteer to give random old people sponge baths for the heck of it?
This is so silly that it almost feels like you're trolling.
My bad. I didn't realize I was talking to someone stupid enough to look at the state of the world and still be able to cling to the idea that large-scale industrialism has a viable place in the future of society.
Well, if you can't make your point with logic, name calling always works!
I'm not going to be nice to people who insist on keeping the world a dying, dystopian shithole, and it's not my job to think for them. If people refuse to take a moral stance in the face of societal destruction, they can go fuck themselves and deserve to be belittled.
You misunderstand me. I don't care if you're being silly at me, I've been a camp counsellor and had similar children make fun of me, it's adorable more than anything else.
I mean you haven't made a sensible point. I mean, the world as a dystopian shithole? Jesus, how ignorant and privileged can you be? Infant mortality is at an all time low, life expectancies at an all time high, working hours are almost lower than they've been in human history, the number of people starving to death is lower than almost ever before in modern history, the number of human slaves is lower than ever before, the percentage of folks dying to war/conflict is lower than ever before. But yes, in your monumental ignorance and privilege, sure it's worse than ever before because your parents had it slightly easier.
Almost anyone from almost any point in human history would give their left arm to be you, even if you choose to whine about it like a first world child crying because they didn't get the latest toy.
Your silly insults are adorable but also a sad reminder of how fucking myopic and self centered people can be.