The part that Fox hit the nail on the head was asking them what they really wanted to do in life. They responded saying to teach Philosophy, now all jokes aside, what's stopping this person from going after that? This movement that this person supports isn't going to get them to where they want to be in life, or atleast have a go.
Like all things people have their own interpretation of what "anti-work" is.
For me it's centered around making sure that people aren't working crazy hours at the expense of enjoying the life we live. I'm thinking the Amazon workers who seem to be getting treated terribly. Or its people that work extremely long hours and get paid a very average wage. Or its people burnt out from having worked very hard in their careers. It's the burnout work culture.
Unfortunately in this case, the viewpoint that was taken by the media and certainly communicated by the mod was around simply doing the least amount of work possible. For some people this is okay, but I wouldn't be encouraging it to live a fulfilled life.
If this person had said, I work x number of hours a week dog walking so I can follow my passion of x, then that's completely fine.
Off-topic: Amazon or in general delivery workers are a case where the IT industry heavily failed to improve work or be a positive influence. Instead of providing people with information, they are put under heavy surveillance. This is the only application a lot of the older generation can think of when the topic of digitisation comes up, but it is not restricted to that.
The consequence is an inhumanly clocked working schedule for people in that field. But consumers support it too. The ability to not track a package results in a moderate life crisis. A benign benefit that has severe results on the job. No wonder nobody wants to do deliveries anymore.
This phenomenon does extend to other industries like any production. Surveillance of production is sensible, surveillance of people is not and I don't think there is any benefit to it and a lot of negatives.
In that regard I understand why people just don't want to work in such an environment. It doesn't even net increased productivity.
Well if they don’t have a job at all and/or their passion does not bring in an income from said passion then I don’t know how they will put food on the table.
My point was that this person conveyed themselves as a 30 year old dog walker who sleeps on the job and wants to work less hours. But if they could follow their passion they would want to teach. But this person was not making any strides in achieving this at all.
There's enough food to go around. We no longer need to base the foundation of survival on subsistence farming. Like 1% of the population is literally "putting food on the table", i.e. farming. The remaining 99% are doing things of questionable utility, like art, religion, philosphy... Only a hypercapitalist would not understand how anyone could exist without a "job".
What does "making strides" towards philosophy even mean? Philosophy is largely about taking the time to think about stuff. This person in question seems to have that down. Sure they might fail to figure anything meaningful out, but that's valuable in its own right. A lifetime of sleep walking dogs could lead to enlightenment.
Academic Philosophy is definitely not like that. The amount of effort it takes to even keep on top of new papers being published (within whatever subfield you happen to specialise in) is extraordinary.
Okay, but be realistic. If I quit my job tomorrow, it wouldn't be long before I could no longer afford rent. What you're proposing might be true, but that's currently not how society is at the moment.
No, this person wanted to teach philosophy, not be philosophical themselves. Please watch the interview.
A lifetime of sleep walking dogs could lead to enlightenment, if that was the case and this person did believe that then they would have said that their passion was walking dogs because it provides them with philosophical thought.
No, antiwork is the idea that work is unnatural, forced upon us and not part of what it is to be human. For example, I work in academia so I have lot of personal freedom and I enjoy my work. However, work itself is still forced upon me. I have no practical choice on over whether I should work or not. Antiwork means that you think this is bad and that you should have that choice. Antiwork is not Socialism, it is not workers' rights. It can't be because antiwork means that workers shouldn't even exist!
Would I be happier unemployed? No, probably not. I'd feel like shit. Because society is setup so that if you are unemployed you are poor and people think you are a loser. Careers are how we measure ourselves and others. But this is part of what is crap with this system. It's insane that I (and most others) would feel bad for having too much leisure time.
Alaska. You can move out there by yourself, do whatever the hell you want (as long as its by yourself and doesn’t impact others), and no one will notice or care.
In re-reading this thread, I realize something: if you move to Alaska to avoid being forced to work by society, you better damn well believe that you will be forced to work by nature.
I think this says something about the very nature of work. In our modern times it is detached from its purpose (survival of self and species), but that is ultimately what drives the need to work.
This idea that a capable, working-age living thing should be able to free load off of others’ work to stay alive is not dignifying for that person, and unfairly burdens the one who is working to keep the other person alive.
Put another way, just because a farmer can make enough to feed a town doesn’t mean the farmer should only be allowed enough grain to feed his family, with everything else divided among those who don’t work. What’s the incentive to work?
And when you introduce government rules to enforce those things, the farmer is compelled by violence and force to give away his labor.
Just like missing the connection between work and survival, people miss the connection between government regulation and the promise of force behind it as a punishment for non-compliance.
The reason people pay taxes (which is the only way we have as a society to redistribute resources from those who work to those who don’t) is because their money will be taken if it is not paid, or they will be put in jail if they lie about how much they owe.
So while the original comment complains about how you’re compelled to work, that’s actually not true. It is a societal norm to work and to have a good quality of life, but no one is forcing you. But at the same time they are asking to increase government benefits and force those who work to pay for their survival.
All this said - if the conversation is framed around how much work it takes to survive, I think as a society it would make sense for that number to drop as we’ve increased scale of production and automation.
This is only true if you define "work" as "tasks that has to be executed to survive". If you live in the wilderness you have to "work" a lot because you have to execute many tasks to survive. That is not what work is. I have to eat and defecate to survive, but you wouldn't call that "work", would you?
The definition of "work" used by every leftist movement in the world is different. They define it as "directly or indirectly selling your time to other humans in exchange for material benefits." Thus, if I hunt alone in the wilderness to get meat for myself I'm not "working". But if there is another person in the wilderness who forces me to hunt to get meat for us then I'm "working".
I hope you understand the difference. Scrubbing toilets is not per se "work". Scrubbing toilets so that someone will give you money to buy food is "work".
People are herd animals so for most (including me) living in the wilderness is not an option. But to participate in society I have to pay the "entrance fee" - to subject myself to work. As a species, we can do better.
Well, I agree we can do better, especially in terms of the fairness of distribution of wealth, but frankly yes, to take part in a society, you either need to 'pay the entrance fee' or have it waived for you.
We generally 'waive' the fee for children, the elderly, and the disabled, but ultimately, right at the very sharp end, some folks HAVE to work so the others have food. So those of us who are not growing food need to produce something of value to trade in order to get food.
The solution we have today (we all contribute our labour in exchange for tokens which can be used to buy food and other things) is significantly better than how it was a couple of hundred years ago (slaves do the work).
But why should I have to pay the entrance fee and why should I have to work? Unless you believe axiomatically that everyone "should" work there is no rational reason why everyone should work. Hunter gatherers didn't work. They hunted, gathered food, took care of the children and whatnot but they decidedly did not work. But now, thousands of years later, we're devoting most of waking hours to work. That's not progress. And all for no good reason. All those developers optimizing ctr rates for ads or building casino sites for gambling addicts, are not adding anything of value to society. They are making it worse. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's so much pointless work out there that is just work for work's own sake.
I think you’re completely wrong about progress. We can travel in less than 24 hours to pretty much anywhere on the planet. We can put telescopes in space. We can speak to each other even when we’re in different cities. None of this would be possible if no-one worked.
Either we all go back to being hunter gatherers, or we exploit the poor to do our fair share of the work that needs to be done for us to live the lifestyles we want to lead. You don’t want to work? Fine. But then you are not entitled to other people’s work product either.
No computer, no electricity, no plants you don’t grow yourself, no meat you haven’t personally slaughtered.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think we could be doing better. But the problem starts with consumerism and same-day shipping and buy-now, pay-later, and LaCroix, not with work.
If we could reduce consumerism, we could for sure reduce our working hours significantly.
Well, I think technological progress is driven by human ingenuity and not work.
I don't think work should be the entrance fee to society. You're saying that if I don't work then bad things should happen to me. I should starve (since I can't hunt nor grow vegetables) and I should not have a computer or even electricity. I.e. I should be punished. I don't see how that improves my life or society.
I think these ideas rub you the wrong way because your identity is tied to your work. If people see work as a problem rather than a solution then your status would evaporate. The guy working part-time as a dog walker and sleeps through most of it would be on an equal footing to you who work XX hours per week and earns $YYYk dollars per year.
> You're saying that if I don't work then bad things should happen to me.
No, you’re saying ‘I should be allowed to opt out of work while others labour in fields and cobalt mines and cocoa plantations’. If you can’t hunt or grow vegetables, you should perform some other task that society thinks is valuable, and share your part of collective responsibility that way.
Exploitation is already a big enough issue without us making it worse. Brave New World describes very well exactly what would happen - we would end up with worker castes and ruler castes. I see the work already moving in this direction and it is sad.
I have absolutely no problems with people choosing to work fewer hours or in less lucrative professions, provided they are not expecting society to pick up their slack.
Don’t forget that for every farmer in the fields, you also need some sort of supply chain and distribution network, you need people to build the trucks and drive them, you need people to gather the resources needed to build trucks, you need the folks drilling for oil and those working at the oil refineries, as well as the ships that bring the oil to where it’s needed (as well as folks gathering the resources and turning them into ship parts etc.)
We can afford this now because everyone who buys a vegetable in a shop pays a tiny fraction of all these costs. If nobody had to pay for vegetables any more, it’s not just the farmer who is working ‘for free’.
This is just one small product, and the simplest example I could think of. I would imagine that computers and the internet would have significantly more people who would need to work for free in order for you to have a computer.
Well, I think that your argument is inconsistent. First you say that I won't be punished for not working. Then you say that I should starve if I don't work. But you still insist that working is optional! Clearly, people should be forced to work according to you. How is this materially different from slavery?
And the work you think I should do should be valuable. Who decides what work is valuable? What makes money? If so, can I be a drug dealer? That makes a lot of money. If I can't, then you must admit that what makes money is not a good indicator of what actually are useful services to soceity.
You claim that my existence causes "slack" that has to be picked up. I disagree both with the notion that human existence causes slack and that work somehow causes "slack" to be picked up. As said, I could be selling drugs and thus having enough money to buy food and pay rent. But that's not picking up "slack".
You seem to be unable to see the big picture. The costs of work and the work-centric lifestyle are massive. People spend significant portions of their lives doing things they'd rather not do and to boot, the associated consumption patterns are changing the world's climate forever. You say that benefits outweigh all that because otherwise society wouldn't function. But you have no proof at all.
> First you say that I won't be punished for not working. Then you say that I should starve if I don't work. But you still insist that working is optional! Clearly, people should be forced to work according to you.
So I did not say any of those things (except that work is optional).
I don’t have a Ferrari, but the fact I don’t have something is not a punishment unless it’s freely given to everyone else (eg: liberty, oxygen, etc.).
You don’t have to starve if you don’t work. You are welcome to grow your own food, fish and hunt, and sustain yourself without working. However, if you want other people to do those things for you, you need to give them something in return.
Your drug dealer example is a good one because it highlights a problem with using the market to determine value. Ultimately, consumers determine the value of product or service, and as a drug dealer you may make a lot of money because consumers are willing to pay for the drugs you sell. I completely agree that value and societal net benefits are not always linked, and this is a flaw in the current system. But I have not seen a better model yet.
Your existence in and of itself does not cause slack. Your inability or unwillingness to sustain yourself does.
I think accusing me of being unable to see the big picture is a bit rude and unnecessary. I see a very different big picture to the one you seem to see though.
> People spend significant portions of their lives doing things they'd rather not do and to boot, the associated consumption patterns are changing the world's climate forever.
I completely agree, and have mentioned several times that I think consumerism is a major problem, and by reducing consumerism on an individual level, many people could reduce their own working hours. On a societal level, we would see major environmental benefits.
> You say that benefits outweigh all that because otherwise society wouldn't function. But you have no proof at all.
I shouldn’t need to prove a position that I’m not arguing. I am arguing that society currently works this way, and you are saying we should change it for this model where you don’t have to work, without any evidence that it would be successful. Where’s your proof? The fact that some people like to spend their free time saving lives or writing code?
But you cannot with a straight face claim that work is optional if not
working leads to starvation and eventually death. The difference
between a ferrari and existence is that that the latter is a
right. Every human has the right to exist but none has the right to
own a ferrari. It's notable that the punishment you think is suitable
for non-workers (e.g. death) is usually reserved for the most heinous
of crimes. The conclusion is that you and the rest of society deem
non-working a worse crime than, say, assault which only nets you a few
years in prison.
> You don’t have to starve if you don’t work. You are welcome to grow
your own food, fish and hunt, and sustain yourself without working.
You are repeating arguments I have already addressed.
A better model than equating money with value is workfree societies
driven by voluntarism. I have given you many examples of those, so you
cannot claim that you haven't seen better models. Indeed, there is
ample evidence to suggest that the current model is not the best we
can do but you seem unable to consider that evidence.
> Where’s your proof? The fact that some people like to spend their
free time saving lives or writing code?
Yes? That those communities exist within a work-centric society
strongly suggests that work is not required for humans to do useful
tasks.
> But you cannot with a straight face claim that work is optional if not working leads to starvation and eventually death.
Again, you may choose to farm, hunt etc. for yourself, and choosing not to work would not therefore result in starvation.
> It's notable that the punishment you think is suitable for non-workers
You keep trying to frame my words in this way. I don’t think that anyone deserves a punishment.
> You are repeating arguments I have already addressed.
I haven’t seen anywhere you have addressed this point short of bluntly insisting that you should not have to, and others should do this for you.
> I have given you many examples of those, so you cannot claim that you haven't seen better models.
No, you have mentioned a couple of hobbies with no direct impact on the day-to-day life of most of society. No mention of why people would volunteer to become farmers, hunters, sewage workers, coal miners, refuse collectors, etc.
> Indeed, there is ample evidence to suggest that the current model is not the best we can do but you seem unable to consider that evidence.
I have repeatedly acknowledged problems in the current model. However, evidence of problems with the current model is not evidence of the absence of problems in a different one. At this point I’m starting to feel like you are being deliberately obtuse.
If you do not work society takes away your ability to acquire food and housing. This is, indeed, a punishment. That is a physical punishment in the exact same sense as being imprisoned is. There is also a psychological punishment due to the ostracization people suffer. The latter may for many be a more severe punishment than the former. Regardless, there is a severe punishment.
You keep bringing up "you can farm and hunt" as a cop-out to imply that work is optional. In most countries there is no wilderness with game to hunt in, nor is there unused agricultural land to establish farms on.
> I haven’t seen anywhere you have addressed this point short of bluntly insisting that you should not have to, and others should do this for you.
> > I have given you many examples of those, so you cannot claim that you haven't seen better models.
> No, you have mentioned a couple of hobbies with no direct impact on the day-to-day life of most of society. No mention of why people would volunteer to become farmers, hunters, sewage workers, coal miners, refuse collectors, etc.
That's untrue. I have given you plenty of examples of tasks critical to society that people have executed voluntarily. Attempting to satisfy your demand for examples for every "unpleasant" task you can come up with would be a waste of my time and would not convince you either way.
Let's put it this way. What would it take to convince you that a workfree society is possible? What evidence do you need? If you can't formulate that, then perhaps it is because you don't want to be convinced?
It feels as though accusing me of making personal attacks is just a way for you to try to get out of the corner you’ve backed yourself into. The comment history is public, anyone can read back and see who started making assumptions about the other first.
> You keep bringing up "you can farm and hunt" as a cop-out to imply that work is optional. In most countries there is no wilderness with game to hunt in, nor is there unused agricultural land to establish farms on.
This is a fair point, and I’ll concede on that.
> Let's put it this way. What would it take to convince you that a workfree society is possible? What evidence do you need? If you can't formulate that, then perhaps it is because you don't want to be convinced?
What would it take to convince you you that you can survive on water and light alone? What evidence do you need? If you can't formulate that, then perhaps it is because you don't want to be convinced?
In all seriousness though, I believe that workfree (per your definition of work) societies can (and do) exist, but they cannot work on a macro scale. I believe this because in ‘workfree’ societies, members are assigned roles and complete tasks still, the only difference is that there’s no exchange of money.
This works because individuals are able to independently verify whether everyone in the community is pulling their weight. Without every individual being able to do that to every other individual, then you either a) simply have to trust people, which has historically tended to result in a few taking advantage of the many, or b) come up with some way of attesting work has been done, which is just another name for money.
By your definition any society which uses money cannot be a workfree society.
> It feels as though accusing me of making personal attacks is just a
way for you to try to get out of the corner you’ve backed yourself
into
What corner? I'm spending my free time teaching you about work
philosophies you haven't heard of. The personal attacks you keep
repeating is that I'm arguing that others should work for me and that
I shouldn't have to work. If you believe that is the point of my
argument then I'm wasting my time.
> This is a fair point, and I’ll concede on that.
Even if wilderness and unused farmland existed in abundance taking
advantage of it requires you to disconnect from society. It is not
feasible to live that way.
> In all seriousness though, I believe that workfree (per your
definition of work) societies can (and do) exist, but they cannot
work on a macro scale.
Societies in general do not exist on macro scales. Nations are not
societies, they are abstractions whose purpose is to organize work. Of
course I can't tell how the world would look like if work became
voluntary. I doubt global cooperation would be harder than it is today.
> This works because individuals are able to independently verify
whether everyone in the community is pulling their weight.
You are still unable to see that the point of work freedom is that
executing useful tasks is not "pulling weight" or "picking up slack"
(an expression you used before). If you enjoy what you are doing what
difference does it make whether someone is pulling weight or not?
> By your definition any society which uses money cannot be a workfree society.
Yes, kind of. If the distribution of money is uneven society is
probably not workfree.
> The personal attacks you keep repeating is that I'm arguing that others should work for me and that I shouldn't have to work
This is not a personal attack. It's literally what you have said. The following are direct quotes: "why should I have to work?"[0]. "we would then ask farmers to give us food in exchange for nothing at all? Sure."[1]
If you don't believe that the things you say are the points of your argument, then I agree one or both of us are wasting our time.
> Even if wilderness and unused farmland existed in abundance taking advantage of it requires you to disconnect from society. It is not feasible to live that way.
> Societies in general do not exist on macro scales.
I don't understand. If you're saying there's no such thing as society on a macro scale, then what 'society' are you disconnecting from? Why would you not be able to have a society in the wilderness or on the farmland?
> If you enjoy what you are doing what difference does it make whether someone is pulling weight or not?
Absolutely not! Right up until you expect things which are the products of someone else's labour to be provided for you.
I think what most people are saying is that if you're not working to feed yourself, then someone else is. And further, it's not fair to ask society to pick up the slack for people who could contribute, but choose not to.
In other words: by saying you shouldn't starve for refusing to work, aren't you also saying that someone else should grow your food for you for free?
My job is completely detached from the processes and people that ensure there is food on my table. There is no slack to pick up because there is no contribution. Most software developers are in the exact same position. There is no "contributing" in programming casino sites, optimizing trading algorithms to make fat cats richer, or developing aaa games. Society would be better off if we didn't work.
I would counter by saying that entertainment is actually valuable. Gambling and playing games are things that people choose to spend their time and money doing because they are fun. (Obviously taking advantages of addiction is immoral, but that’s a whole other bag of worms).
As for optimizing trading algos, the counter is that making markets more efficient is also valuable to society at large, and that is what most quants would say they are doing.
As you pointed out in some other comments, there are certainly issues with the current system. Though, I don’t think the conclusion is for people to stop working entirely. If that were the case all of these “useless” jobs would go away and we would then ask farmers to give us food in exchange for nothing at all?
I think what might be better is offering more incentives for people to work in industries that make a real positive impact on the world. And in lieu of that, people who feel they aren’t contributing in a meaningful way can try to seek out more meaningful work. And we as a society should support *that*.
Your counter-argument to my examples of worthless work is "well, actually, that work is valuable!" The reason why you use this argument is because we are so conditioned to believe that money is the same thing as value. Thus, by definition, every work is valuable because someone pays.
Try and think of it from a utilitarian perspective. Is some aaa game creating or destroying more happiness? Is it a net positive for society? For some games perhaps the answer is yes, for others it is no. Children getting obese from sedentary lifestyle and not socialising with friends is certainly a large cost.
> If that were the case all of these “useless” jobs would go away and we would then ask farmers to give us food in exchange for nothing at all?
I reject the idea that money determines what has worth. Because believing so leads to absurd conclusions. Like dealing drugs being more valuable than taking care of sick people, or pills against male pattern baldness being more valuable than aids medicines for sub-Saharan Africans, or Jeff Bezos being a million times more valuable than me. In fact, the very idea that money is what decides worth is what got us into this mess in the first place.
You ask how we should decide what jobs has "value" and which hasn't. Well, if it isn't obvious that a job has "value" then perhaps it has no value?
Workless societies depend on voluntarism so there is no need to precisely define value. For instance, who decided that creating Linux was valuable use of Linus Torvalds time? In situations where you really have to define value, democratic votes is fairer than "letting the market" (i.e rich people) decide.
This presents a workless society as a real thing, rather than a hypothetical. I might be wrong, but I’m not aware of any workless society (apart from hunter gatherer tribes and history). If you have examples of a society that functions fully without work, then please share, I’d be interested to see how you solve volunteering for unpleasant or undesirable tasks that no-one wants.
They have existed on small scales. Everything from hippie communies to Christian monasteries to Israeli kibbutzim. The reason tasks are undesirable is because the tasks are detached from people's lives. Raising kids is certainly "objectively" undesirable, yet people do it for free and at great costs. Why? Because it's meaningful.
You might have invented electricity or the computer through ingenuity, but who is going to build the infrastructure that supports it? Who is going to build the poles in your suburb to get the electricity to you? Who is going to build the telecommunications infrastructure and maintain it such that if it breaks there is someone there to fix it?
Because most of them enjoy doing it and their community directly benefits from the work.
Not all pay for work is monetary, but firefighting is still work.
And I just realized - maybe you hate your job. If that’s the case, go find something else you enjoy that happens to pay the bills. Life is too short to be spending your working hours hating life, and if you’re on this site you can probably find some sort of job (or start a business) that you enjoy and others find valuable.
In the most literal sense no, but I think it does address your point.
Honestly it’s an odd example to pick because there are paid firefighters too - why would you need to pay firefighters if enough people are willing to do it for free?
"How come volunteer fire departments exist?" is a rethorical quesiton. Whether volunteer firefighters have other jobs is beside the point. Clearly, useful tasks can be executed without a work context.
The reason you need to pay firefighters is because society is work-centric.
I think people would volunteer. Main reason not many volunteer is because they are busy with work. In a workfree society people would have much more free time to spend than they have now.
"But why should I have to pay the entrance fee and why should I have to work?" You don't have to, nobody is forcing you to work. If you want to dumpster dive and live on the streets you never have to work. Plenty of people live like this. You choose to work because it's the easiest way for you to support the lifestyle you want to live. What you're really asking is "why won't society give me nice things while I do nothing" and the reason is because you're not that special. If everyone thought like this then we would all end up worse off.
You claim that work is optional because you can choose not to work and become a homeless bum? That to me seems like a facetious argument.
The only time global CO2 emissions significantly decreased was when people stopped working due to the Covid pandemic. Thus, I think the evidence is against your claim that we would all be worse off.
If you're a homeless bum you'll have all the free time in the world to draw and make music and read and hang out with friends. That's what you want, right? You sound pretty classist asserting the life of a bohemian is beneath you. Sounds like you do really want nice things. Well, everyone wants nice things. That's why we came up with a fair system to allocate nice things to people who pay for nice things. If nobody works, nobody has nice things.
Because society isn't a free resource, it requires time and effort (i.e. work) to create and maintain, and that work can either be distributed across its members, or it can be done entirely by some and others simply mooch off of their work. If you feel like work is disproportionately done by some and not others, or that some work creates no value, that's a valid argument and worth exploring. But the idea that people should just be free to consume societal benefits without contributing to those benefits is obviously flawed. It assumes you should be free to personally consume, but others will be required to work to provide you with the goods and services you are consuming, meaning the ability to opt out of work isn't available to all. At that point it becomes clear that people with this particular anti-work view don't actually have issues with the current capitalist system in which some coerce others to labor and exploit the benefits, they simply have an issue that they aren't in the position to do the exploiting.
Perhaps that kind of utopia becomes more feasible when we become a society in which everything is completely automated, but we aren't anywhere close to that, so in the meantime, everybody should be expected to contribute.
Workfree societies have existed so it is incorrect to claim that work is required for society to exist. For example, the free software community exists and is workfree. However, it seems you and many others are incapable to rationally reason about these issues since you implied that "people with this particular anti-work view" (i.e. me) just wants to be the ones doing the exploiting. It's plain as day that a massive number of jobs are not necessary. The conclusion should be that people shouldn't be coerced to do them.
If the jobs are truly unnecessary, the company and society will stop paying for them.
If no one will do that work at a wage that the market will bear, then that job goes away.
And from other comments it appears you only believe work happens when there is An exchange of money. Raising a kid is the hardest job and work that I’ve ever done. I don’t get paid money for that…
Volunteers still “work”. The fact that they are volunteering shows they could be paid for their time and effort, but instead are doing it for free. But it’s not like they weren’t adding value as soon as the exchange of money is removed.
> If the jobs are truly unnecessary, the company and society will stop paying for them.
This is a circular argument, isn't it? Why is the work necessary? Because society pays for it. Why does society pay for it? Because the work is necessary.
I reject it. Money != value.
> Raising a kid is the hardest job and work that I’ve ever done. I don’t get paid money for that…
That's a good example of a task that is valuable (in the real sense) but not work (since it is voluntary). Here is how I define "work": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30127704
Many free software developers work for organisations who have chosen to share their work freely because their revenue stream comes from support or hosting.
There are free software projects where hobbyists build things to scratch a personal itch, but most of these people are contributing their free time and have another job.
You keep repeating the point that ‘a massive number of jobs are not necessary’. Can you define what is ‘necessary work’ and how society can determine a priori what that work might be?
Yes, free software is workfree as tasks are executed without there being monetary gain. Time is not traded for money. Read my other comments in this thread for examples on (worse than) useless jobs.
I dispute that. Many contributors to free software are doing so in exchange for money, either directly by being paid by their employer or allowing ‘sponsored features’, or indirectly by soliciting donations or through monetising their software through support contracts etc.
I agree there are hobbyists who do give their time without expecting any financial return, but the free software community does include a significant proportion of people who are paid directly or indirectly for the time they spend on any particular project.
> I dispute that. Many contributors to free software are doing so in exchange for money, either directly by being paid by their employer or allowing ‘sponsored features’, or indirectly by soliciting donations or through monetising their software through support contracts etc.
Sure, in the same way that an Amnesty volunteer could be an undercover CIA agent paid by the government. That, however, is not the community's main mode of operation.
It’s impossible to tell for sure, but it looks like approximately half of open source contributions take place during working hours, and workdays have twice as many contributions as weekends, so I would say that yes, it is at least one main mode of operation.
You mention Linus Torvalds in another comment, but did you know he has been paid to work on Linux since around 1997?
Such stats are notoriously noisy. Ohloh only analyzes the most popular free software projects so there is a long, long tail of projects that is unaccounted for in the statistics. Furthermore, even if most commits are submitted during office hours (in what timezone?) how can we know that they are paid specifically for contributing? E.g. could be some bored developers commit to their own personal project.
Regardless, the amount of companies involved in free software could be evidence of the superiority of voluntarism over "workism" for complex human systems.
I agree it’s noisy, just offering it as some evidence.
I think the statistic that half as many commits are on weekend days is particularly interesting, because people who are really doing it for free would likely contribute MORE outside their working hours.
The entire thing was a disaster, start to finish. If you're going on Fox News, at least clean your room, put on something other than a sweatshirt, and come PREPARED. You have to know that Fox is going to ask you horribly loaded questions that aim to make you seem like the biggest fool on earth.
But the funny part is, they didn't even do that. The questions asked pretty much amounted to "What are your aspirations?" and "What do you do for a living?" And when the answers to that are "I want to teach Philosophy" and "I sleep on the job that I work 20 hours a week while I punish dogs by refusing them water"[1] then maybe you shouldn't be speaking like what you are doing is too much work.
She could have mentioned the growing wealth inequality, the need for unions, the causes behind the "great resignation", the shifting attitudes of not taking bullshit, but instead she had to say how "Laziness is a virtue!" as if anybody ever is going to agree with that. I would say it's a strawman of the typical reddit moderator (who does it for free, by the way), but if a strawman is made of flesh and blood, is it really a strawman anymore?
Who were the mods at /r/antiwork kidding. I guess this is the egotistical delusion that happens when your head mod is a self admitted rapist.[2]
You expect him to do work to prepare for the interview? I thought it was clear he was anti-work! He wanted to clean up his room....then realized laziness is a virtue!
I didn't really follow the whole affair, but I found it interesting that Fox apparently specifically requested this particular mod for the interview - and that the mod had already given interviews in the past.
I haven't seen those past interviews, but if she behaved like that in the past, could it be that requesting her was the brunt of Fox' strategy?
Like, they might have known she would make a fool of herself (and the movement) without them even needing to trip her up with loaded questions.
She was the head mod, and was the only one to have done other interviews. That doesn’t seem that interesting to me. Who else would you request to interview, but the person who handles media and is “in-charge.” (Not really all that in-charge, though she made the subreddit private, so)
FYI you may want to rehost that second image. Reddit is currently scrubbing that image off their website, and they will delete it if they become aware of it.
How so? Masturbating next to someone after they specifically told them it made them uncomfortable, inappropriate touching, and purposefully turning off alarms specifically set to stop this from happening again out of "desperation for emotional intamacy". Then going to talk about it as if it wasn't her fault and it's actually okay now because she went to therapy except she didn't because it's too expensive but it's actually okay because she gave money to an organization....
Call it like it is. It's insanely rapey. I have no remorse for people who do things like this, and then try to play the victim.
I think what really happened was that r/antiwork started out as being more of a philosophical sub for people who wanted to explore the utopian but unrealistic vision of people not having to work at all. Then, later, it grew to host this larger movement of frustrated workers needing reform. The mod Doreen I believe originally founded the sub, but now is not a good representative of the larger movement. Fox News is of course happy to take advantage of that, to make the movement look bad
Worth mentioning that they have autism, which is why they aren't making eye contact and are rocking in their chair. Although that is probably a better reason to not be on the show at all if you are trying to present yourself as a large-scale movement to millions of viewers.
She is aware of her issue and could have chosen to manage it. For instance if she knows she tends to have such coping behaviours she could use a fixed chair and a better camera angle. Or she could have refused the interview altogether as she clearly had no message or insight to pass there was no reason to go on air.
Failing at an action you chose to engage in and then to excuse it by supposed psychological issues is not really what any half-decent person does.
Going out on a limb: Any mildly autistic person aware of their issues takes action to avoid such painful situations. So I would also doubt there is an actual diagnosis and she is just looking for an excuse to not feel/be made responsible for the harm she caused this entire movement.
Look, I'm not trying to defend her. But do you think that autism goes away when it's a zoom call or something? I think that it's a perfectly fine explanation for no eye contact/rocking, as both are common symptoms of autism. Think it's a bit rash to immediately assume they are "clearly not medically disabled".
In the past people would hold themselves to a high standard and celebrate triumph over adversity.
Today people are fetishizing this “neurodivergent” psychosis and it’s downright weird. This person could absolutely sit still if they every bothered to have priorities in their life.
I understand your concern. Two things to note though:
1. Who are you to immediately assume that they are lying, as if that's the best explanation? Not every single person who has autism has the ability to completely repress everything about it. To assume otherwise is nothing short of ableism - and I'm not using that word lightly. I absolutely do get the concern though - words DO need meaning.
2. You say "Today people are fetishizing this neurodivergent psychosis" as if this is a recent trend. It's not. At all. Tuberculosis was a disease that was romanticized in the early 19th century, and the obsession with thin & pale bodies in culture is theorized to have originated from this. I'm not gonna claim to be an expert to this however, so if someone reading this knows more about this subject than I do then please chime in.
I've seen "no eye contact" mentioned a few times. I think this can be explained by the fact that this person either didn't realize, or wasn't told, that they need to stare directly into their webcam for a television interview.
The personal attacks and especially acting like dog walking is some lowly profession is just disgusting. Anyone doing anything "ambitious" is only being held up by the support of many others making just as meaningful contributions. A dog walker provides a great service to a community that impacts many peoples lives by keeping their companions, which provide emotional support and boost their productivity, healthy and happy. IMHO this is exactly the toxic attitude causing the movement.
It's not so much that the problem is being a dog walker, it's that she's a dog walker who only works 20-25 hours a week and believes people should work even less. And that her response to Fox News's question about whether they were being lazy was "Laziness is a virtue". This mod made previous posts about how she literally sleeps on the job[1], so this isn't about a noble career choice, it's just about laziness. She was unprepared, wouldn't look at the camera, showed up disheveled, and didn't even make her bed before the interview. Multiple times the mods had polled the community about who should give interviews, and the response was overwhelmingly that no one should. The mods thought they knew better, and this was the result.
Essentially the issue here is that the subreddit started years ago not as a discussion of worker rights reforms, but of people wanting to figure out how to work as little as possible, period. The meaning was literally on the tin. As the pandemic wore on redditors joined the sub to complain about their jobs, their burnout, and advocate for worker rights and reforms. But a look at the sub's about section or the sub's mods made it clear those posts weren't what the sub was originally about. And all it took was an interview with the longest standing mod to make that clear.
Now the sub is private, and /r/WorkReform will hopefully actually stand for something.
Thanks for the missing context I haven't been following the news around this in any detail. Also, I agree it was politically a bad move and she should have expected it and prepared better. Just him mocking aspiring to be a dog walker really revolted me. I deeply appreciate everyone who does things for me so I can be doing other things that interest me no matter what they might be.
I'm not sure why it's not a reasonable career for someone leading a movement. Unless/until the movement can pay them to be full time, they have to do something to eat. I would imagine people leading a movement would prioritize a lower number of work hours to distract from that and a flexible schedule.
That said, this appears to be a mod of a subreddit, not the leader of a movement.
If someone like this individual is your ideal of a leader, more power to you. And one _can_ really be a leader while doing something menial (look at Buddha for example), but there has to be something more to a person than walking dogs. And that is what reporter tried hard to uncover, but of course it was interpreted as him trolling. But he was really onto something. You might want to work something minimal, but that's not the end goal. Remember the guy who was promoting the "4 hour work week"? He was not advocating to just sit and do nothing, he was saying - work less so that you can do things you like. And that is what reporter tried to uncover - ok, so one works 20 hours a week - why? what's the purpose? Have any hobbies? Do something exciting remaining time? Raising children, boating, hiking, playing sports, meditating, flying a kite, partying, travelling - WHAT is it that you do now that you have so much extra time? And it turned out that this individual has no answer, which likely means that the answer is "wasting". And that's the most damaging revelation in the whole interview - you cheat your employer, you are a parasite on society, and is that for some higher purpose? Nope, not at all. People working 90 hours a week have more exciting and fulfilling lives
I specifically said that this person wasn't a leader - I said that walking dogs while leading a movement was a reasonable choice. That is, this person isn't a leader, but it's unrelated to the fact that they are a dogwalker.
You seem to have watched a different interview than I did. I don't recall seeing the interviewer ask about what else they did with their time off. I saw the interviewer accuse the person of being lazy and ask if they had higher career aspirations.
> And it turned out that this individual has no answer, which likely means that the answer is "wasting"
I have no idea how hard it is to be the starting mod of a 1.4 million person subreddit, but I guess it requires some amount of work.
As far as I can see, this person didn't act like a leader of the movement at all except by founding the subreddit and deleting the inevitable spam and porn links. Does they have any posts where they is acting like a leader?
No, but I think that's part of the problem. The movement to abolish or reform work (it's a big tent and I don't agree with everyone or everything about it) is a leaderless movement, but in taking this interview, Doreen set herself up to be perceived as a leader by the movement's enemies (I say "enemies" because the Fox audience is surely hostile to the idea).
Here's the thing though: Our social and economic systems are founded on RIGHTS. The person saying "I don't wanna work bullshit jobs to afford a decent life and following my passion" relies on the exact same rights as the person saying "I refuse working at all towards any goal simply because I can."
These specific anti-work people may literally be just lazy, but by pushing that agenda, they are naturally advocating for workers' rights. It doesn't actually matter what their motivations (or lacks thereof) are; Only the rights matter.
Similarily, with Universal Basic Income you will surely get some people who simply engage in indefinite hedonism, but it is absolutely worth it for the effects of UBI on everybody else.
I think that's the whole point that any amount of work that is obligatory to survive is too much.
Showing a person who opposes work in current mainstream culture will only end up with mixture of laughter, indignation and branding him as lazy.
It's very similar to the reaction you'd get few decades ago if you showed a black man who thinks he's people.
Evereybody in our culture was brainwashed with supposed virtues of being compelled to work. Noble struggle of providing.
All while 99% of our goods are made by machines and chemistry, with rich fully allowed to capture as much of the value produced by those machines and processes as they can.
All of that is just a modern version of feudalism. Better than any earlier system (same way feudalism was for its time) but still crap.
In the future anti-work in the style "I don't care, fu, where's my robot that covers all the work I don't freely choose to do" will be a mainstream view. And working people of today will just be a bunch of grumpy boomers lamenting that youngsters have no ethics.
> In the future, anti-work in the style of "where's my robot that does all work I don't freely choose to do"
Maybe someday. This was one of the common optimistic promises of the space age (along with "power too cheap to meter") that the 70s smothered like a wet blanket.
”Essentially the issue here is that the subreddit started years ago not as a discussion of worker rights reforms, but of people wanting to figure out how to work as little as possible, period”
What else are worker rights in the 2020s? We only have one life, why not enjoy it like the men in suits?
I'm anti-work in the sense, that there are too many bullshit jobs, income discrepancy is way too high and across the board, jobs require a large amount of in my opinion unreasonable things of their workers, like believing in the vision on the surface, showing up everyday at specific hours etc. Nonetheless, I like working, even in the range of 50+ hours a week, I just also think that our society would be much better if I and others weren't forced to do so to survive. The thing is that lazy people are exactly on of the biggest inhibitors of reforms in that direction.
I personally agree that our goal should be not having to work to live. Making a "living" should not be a thing. People should work because they want to work, or because they want a higher amount of resources and comfort than the basic level provides. That said, that position is one that Fox News would be happy to make a field day of for their viewers, especially if they get someone who can't coherently argue for it, and that's exactly what they got.
Where does the 'basic level' of resources and comfort come from, if one does not work ? I agree that life shouldn't be all about work, surely some form of work is essential to be able to provide the basics, even if that work is farming your own land to grow your own food.
Anyone expecting even a basic level of anything without being willing to contribute at all is not demonstrating good behaviour within society.
According to a random source, in 1991 some 44% of the world population worked in agriculture, and 28% did in 2018. That's 16% of the world that doesn't have to do anything to ensure the 'basic level' of food resources. I'm sure other resources have seen a (smaller) drop. We could have 20 hour workweeks in the 2000's like predicted in early 1900's, 'we' just didn't 'chose' to do so. That or retirement at 45 instead of 65.
A safe and healthy workplace is one thing. Also, a stable schedule (which may actually involve advocating for more working hours). To say that workers' only concern is that they have to actually work is a rather blinkered perspective I think.
Separately, I'm not sure who you are referring to by "the men in suits" but the large majority of men in suits I know (lawyers, accountants, finance professionals) work crazy hours.
If everyone worked 25 hours a week, dog walking would not even exist as a job. Literally anyone can do it as long as they can walk. Let's not pretend it's a noble contribution to society here, it's objectively speaking something a 15 year old teenager can do.
Agreed. I am almost happy that CS has an increasingly bad reputation because I detest the hype and the impact of parts of the industry. To be honest I smiled a bit at the thought that dog walker is an occupation in the US, but why the heck not. You are right that it is toxic to condemn it. Perhaps it is even jealously of office terrorists.
Still, the judgement will come anyway, even if you believe being a dog walker is much better than being a slimy Fox News anchor.
As usual with stories like this, everyone taking part comes across badly. Fox, the interviewer and the Reddit mod.
The anti-work movement is goodin the sense that it is waking people up to spending all their lives working for terrible bosses and companies. Should peoples lives be hard just so we can make other rich people richer? So they can live in giant houses, by the sea? So they can own multiple vehicles and fly first class everywhere? So they can play golf at fancy clubs when they want?
Why should a worker for a massive e-commerce company not be able to use the toilet? Just so the CEO can go to space as a hobby? FFS.
>The anti-work movement is goodin the sense that it is waking people up to spending all their lives working for terrible bosses and companies.
It didn't wake anyone up to anything - everyone except perhaps the entitled rich has been perfectly aware of this ever since the days of the Industrial Revolution. Go watch Metropolis, made in 1927, where the plight of the working class is illustrated as oppressed factory workers literally being thrown into the furnace mouth of Moloch.
People don't put up with work because they're blind to its nature, they put up with work because they have no alternative in a purely capitalist system in which survival can only be rented by the labor class, not owned. But what is the anti-work movement's answer to this? Just don't work? That's not feasible for most people.
People are generally told.. go to school, pass exams, go to college, pass exams, get a job, buy a house, etc. I surmise that the anti-work movement has pulled people out of that way of life.
It's not just about not working. It's about entrepreneurship, working for better companies, smaller companies/startups. It's about not getting so far in debt that you're a slave to a megacorp because you need to pay it off.
Why are reddit mods always like this? They power tripped so hard they'd rather destroy this forum than be embarrassed by it. What causes someone to get delusions of grandeur just because they are doing this unpaid job for reddit which should be limited to just delwting all the nastiness in the forum?
It's cringe and all but I'm more than anything surprised at how much people care about a throwaway 2 minute segment they filmed so viewers have something to laugh about during the commercials. Fox News really has mastered creating news segments that get people riled up
At it's core (the defensible part) anti-work is an American labour/union movement, reacting to the exploitation of workers due to flimsy labour law (think Amazon workers).
But the term anti-work is so emotive against the movement, that is just becomes indefensible. So much that the subreddit itself is no longer a single issue movement.
It was by all the people that hated work at its core and reject the traditional values regarding work, the protestant / puritanical work ethic above all. I agree it changed to that later but really they should have gone with anlther name by then.
r/WorkReform is supposedly the replacement for the faction that wasn't "anti-work" but pro-better work conditions that felt misrepresented in the interview.
In general, I find it is much harder to maintain group focus and cohesion when the movement is defined as anti- something right off the bat. It works for short term causes, but not easy sustain long term.
It starts with negativity, it then attracts more as it goes along. The angriest, most radical ones are promoted to become leaders. Soon the negativity spills into internal fights - “ you are not angry enough, not one of us, we’re banning you!” etc.
- For those outside of the loop, a couple time-ordered points not mentioned here:
Fox contacted to the mods and asked specifically to talk with this person, and the mods accepted this instead of other due to having some experience in other media. All of this without asking the users if they agree with that.
After the Fox interview happened, practically the whole subreddit were upset and disappointed. People asked why this happened in this way, why they didn't prepare a lot more this kind of event, and practically they got an "it is what it is", with a bit of authoritarian smell because the mods took this personally.
People really get even more mad about this, created other subreddits, and created threads in r/antiwork saying things like "mods are mods, not leaders or content creators, and they shouldn't influence the whole sub" and like like "we need new mods".
Mods took that personally, banned a lot of people, removed a lot of comments, more people were mad about this, and even attacked personally the person who spoke in Fox, until they had to close the sub.
Fox wanted to interview a specific mod because they knew that using a person who probably would give a bad public image they can show a bad image of the sub. And not only Fox, but every media who have a opposite idea or ideology to yours.
Mods weren't clever enough to ask the people if they wanted or not to be in Fox, who should be the spokesperson, and what thing they wanted defend, report, or ask for. They also needed to make to the spokesperson a guide about what appearance (not only physical) give and what subjects needs to talk.
The spokesperson never should talk about their personal life. That person is representing a group of people, not only one.
You can stop individual people, but not a common idea.
This is gonna be used for ever to teach people what not to do in an interview for a lot of time.
Never talk to the media. That goes double for right-wing media. They aren't your friends, all they care about is pushing their narrative. They will steam-roll you and ruin your life for ratings / views.
When your enemy is making a mistake, don't interrupt them. If the mod had coherent sensible arguments, I'm sure the host would've done the usual Fox News tactics of talking over them, misstating their points, etc. But he didn't need to. All he had to do was reel out enough rope for her to make a noose.
I disagree. There was nothing wrong with the interview itself. I don't think they looked bad. Fox News did their bit of trying to ridicule the person to please their core audience but the person handled it relatively well and people who were likely to support the AntiWork cause would be able to see the reporter in bad light and be interested in the subreddit. So, the attention they received was good.
If everything had gone well, they would get a swarm of new users to the sub-reddit, people who thought this was a bad idea would dominate the discussion for a few days, but when the dust settled, the subreddit would be much better off for it.
The problem here is that the person being interviewed has a shady past. They have boasted about sleeping on the job, have had multiple allegations of sexual assault and other controversies, which people brought up all the time, which is the reason they had to go private.
She said she would like to teach critical thinking. How unbelievably rich. The host made the excellent point that in this market, the hardest you will work is determined by how hard people in general are willing to work. The market decides how hard you are expected to work, not your boss or the Illuminati. It’s the same something-for-nothing logic-vacuum that led to communism and the massive corruption that followed.
>The market decides how hard you are expected to work
That's like saying house prices in San Francisco are set by how much people are willing to pay. It's true but hides the real problem which is housing is unaffordable for many in that area.
Some people own multiple homes. Some people rent out those second homes. Some turn them into glorified hotels via AirBnB and the like. Some merely sit on them as an investment vehicle or a tax avoidance scheme. These people are leeches on society, artificially increasing housing prices while providing no real value.
> The only "solution" is to create ghettos of human hives which lead to classes of problems on their own.
As a general rule, one can assume that anybody who refers to humans as an infestation or their homes as hives is not a good person. Have the day you deserve.
> As a general rule, one can assume that anybody who refers to humans as an infestation or their homes as hives is not a good person. Have the day you deserve.
Anything concrete to say, aside from weak ad-hominem?
I grew up in post-USSR, I'm pretty sure I know much more about human hives than you do. And I never said anything about infestation. Every family should have their own home.
It doesn’t hide anything. If the price is too high then something is wrong. In your case it’s restraint on supply and in labor the problem is people who don’t know the value of what they have and never put any consideration into making themselves difficult to push around. They jump into precarious financial circumstances, but expensive things and pump out babies and when it comes time to negotiate they have zero leverage. The behavior of the average American is retarded and spoiled. That’s why people from Asia come here and shoot straight to the top — because their parents actually make deliberate decisions to advance their socioeconomic position.
Perhaps, but also for those that simply want to try to improve their lives without the baggage of constantly feeling that the world is oppressing them.
Personally, whatever little I have is probably 1/3 luck, 1/3 hard work, 1/3 good decision making. I've never inherited a single $1, don't have a CEO relative to hire me, etc... but what good would it do to blame the world for any of that? Life _isn't_ always fair, whatever.
Exactly. I have had several opportunities in life to get a significant advancement in income, but it would have meant doing something unethical, so I passed.
Not really, life _isn't_ fair, so do what you can to make the most of it.
No matter who you talk to, everyone will have their hardships, but complaining about it rarely makes things change for the better. I'm not saying one shouldn't advocate for change or try to change a broken system, but for your situation to improve, often the only thing you can do is just try harder and hope for a little luck.
I support the "work reform, unionize, know what you're worth" camp of this "antiwork" crowd, I 100% agree that workers should be more open about wages, try to organise and show solidarity... I'm a salaried worker myself and my quality of life is very much correlated to that of the AVG worker. That doesn't mean I believe that I can fix the world and all of its ills, nor do I care to.
It still falls under the general free market principles. Distribution runs on a very thin profit margin, and if it wasn't Amazon in the lead, it would be Walmart, or others.
Bosses have a way of deflating wages by demanding more hours and effort, too.
The market is like a programming design pattern; kind of a hand wavy concept to fuel discourse. It’s still easily corrupted biology in charge. Repeating the same old semantics is keeping you from seeing the corruption already there.
While I agree on substance with your comment you seem to have a strange interpretation of communism. I very much recommend to read e.g. the brief, very readable and very illuminating Communist Manifesto if you would really like to understand where it came from and what its ideas were before Stalin and Mao made it just a veneer on top of a dictatorship. I'm in no way a communist but I can fully appreciate its ideals and aims (e.g. the idea that everyone should receive resources according to their needs).
Sidenote: it is also worth to actually read Smith (especially books 2+3 of the wealth of nations) to understand that rather than a believer in an invisible hand he was deeply critical of laissez-faire capitalism and saw a need for the state to intervene and manage its excesses and abuses.
Movement? It's a reddit. My favorite reddit, and the only reason I go to Reddit anymore. That is the problem and that's why the fear level of the elites (about unionization) is elevated enough to start running hatchet jobs on a forum.
I think you're drastically overestimating the fear the elites have about unionization. It's relatively easy to outsource jobs or replace with automation/robots.
It's a narrative that is pushed so that they feel like they don't have to change anything. It's not the hirer being abusive or bad, it's the market which has no available talent.
Similar to https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheFrontDesk/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/assholetax/ but where workers complain about their employers, managers, human resources department, toxic workplaces, unions, minimum wage or holiday regulations. First person stories where a worker quit on the spot or otherwise "sticked it to the man" were popular.
My first thought when I heard about this story was to wonder if the 'elites' were involved in nudging this convenient disaster to happen in some shady way
The working theory is the mods, including this one, were paid off to be a total disaster to try prevent the movement gaining further traction. Everyone in the subreddit voted no to a media appearance. That mod decided otherwise with a second interview with another mod not yet aired.
I have no problem believing this but then again it could also totally happen organically bc reddit mods are the biggest assholes on earth, over reaching constantly, totally arbitrary.
There was no vote in the sub, that was on r/wallstreetbets earlier this year. That's actually how this should have been handled, but instead it was all mod-driven.
Like all things people have their own interpretation of what "anti-work" is.
For me it's centered around making sure that people aren't working crazy hours at the expense of enjoying the life we live. I'm thinking the Amazon workers who seem to be getting treated terribly. Or its people that work extremely long hours and get paid a very average wage. Or its people burnt out from having worked very hard in their careers. It's the burnout work culture.
Unfortunately in this case, the viewpoint that was taken by the media and certainly communicated by the mod was around simply doing the least amount of work possible. For some people this is okay, but I wouldn't be encouraging it to live a fulfilled life.
If this person had said, I work x number of hours a week dog walking so I can follow my passion of x, then that's completely fine.