
Antiwork – a radical shift in how we view “jobs” - tdaltonc
https://contributoria.com/issue/2014-12/543d1c2487628e9a6500001b
======
sago
I've been fortunate to anti-work all my life. I've started companies, built
technology, made sales, written books, and generally got paid well to do what
I love. I've anti-worked very hard. Often 15 hour days for months on a new
project. I have a spouse who is a homebird and provides me the flexibility and
support I need for that. In return I support the household. I've been
reasonably successful. Not rich, but I have a home, a residual income, assets,
I can buy nice things, and buy nice experiences. I can provide for my children
and give to charity.

There are plenty of people who work, who work more than one job. They turn up,
are told what to do, are at the mercy of the politicking of the organisation,
get paid poorly, are physically exhausted, are pressured into moral
compromises, have little medical or mental health support, have no assets or
qualifications to be able to escape, and are well aware they would not be able
to find anything substantially better. Perhaps they work 10 hours a day, then
go home, cook for their kids, put them to bed, do the laundry and clean and
crash.

When people try to compare my effort against those people, and say "look at
people like him, he's proof hard work is the road to success!" I find it
morally obnoxious.

The lie that work is the road to success is perpetuated by those who are able
to anti-work, to maximise their own success on the backs of those who can't.

~~~
jokoon
> on the backs of those who can't

So, do you feel guilty ?

I have no mercy for people who work hard and pretend they deserve more because
they're not unemployed. I'm unemployed, but I'm not living comfortably, and I
honestly cannot fathom the idea of obeying someone because I should
"contribute" because that's righteous. I live in france, there's a lot of
welfare there, unemployment is at 10% (the U3 stat), workers are treated
nicely, but there's a lot of hypocrisy about it.

I don't think most people cannot "antiwork". Work is not mandatory, work is
consented. People can negotiate their salary. If nobody does, I'd agree to
blame the entire society and its citizens for not standing up to higher
standards. Slavery has been abolished, but slave wages show that people now
consent to be treated like shit, so to me, people are responsible of their own
situations.

In my opinion, if people agree to be treated like slaves, let them be treated
like so, and let the other laze away. We live in the 21th century, people
should not give up so easily on their life.

I'm tired of people arguing that capitalism and free market are virtuous,
while a large majority of people are being paid at the minimum wage. Minimum
wage doesn't feel like freedom, it feels everybody is treated the same no
matter the contribution. It's not free market anymore, it sounds more like an
exploitative society that can't lift individuals out of their poverty.

~~~
jasim
You are quite lucky to live in a time and place where humans are treated well
and without the shackling notion of productivity. But it has less to do with
your personal agency and more to do with your luck. People can be made
responsible for their situation only so much. Individuals are powerless before
the collective idea of normalcy of the society they live in.

Steve Bruce puts its nicely in his book "Sociology: A Very Short Introduction"
\- None of us personally created the social institutions that shape our lives;
we were born into them. The roles that structure our behaviour and encapsulate
the expectations that others will have of us preceded our arrival and will
endure (no doubt slightly modified) after we depart. Reality may be socially
constructed, but, taken in its totality, it is not the work of any nameable
individual and it certainly has little or nothing to do with any one of us.

~~~
jokoon
> You are quite lucky to live in a time and place where humans are treated
> well and without the shackling notion of productivity.

You say that, but when you're poor and society talks you down by arguing that
you only get what you deserves, it feels like you're cheating and behaving
like a stubborn thug.

At the end of the day, I put so much pressure on me, I ended up believing I
was mentally ill, and it enabled all sort of self confidence issues and
distorted views on society.

> Reality may be socially constructed, but, taken in its totality, it is not
> the work of any nameable individual and it certainly has little or nothing
> to do with any one of us.

I still have trouble projecting my lonely self in that big scheme that is
human society. This whole civilization seems scary and often too full of
things I'm scared of.

------
javajosh
Follow your bliss...to the poorhouse.

Not all work is created equal. What we have in reality is an information space
where _allocation_ is firmly in the center (financial industry at the center
of the overall economy; IT at the center of each and every business). People
who make a living allocating money are happy people because they literally do
nothing but pick from their options. And yet somehow these pickers (investors,
bankers, executives) are some of the best remunerated people in our society.
Note that the startup scene itself is just a high risk/reward set of options
from which those same people get to pick.

(The crazy thing is that in a growing economy the "allocation class"
domination is self-reinforcing because it's impossible to pick wrong.)

Meanwhile as children we're taught "follow your passion" and exposed to arts,
crafts, stories, and other things that have nothing to do with allocation.
Meanwhile the allocation class is dominated by a social structure defined
primarily by college admission boards. "Legacy" students have an edge, this
implies that our brand of capitalism is at least loosely hereditary. They are
offered jobs on graduation that most of the nation doesn't even know exist.

~~~
derekp7
On the "follow your passion" advice... There are a number of occupations that
can lead to success. Many of those occupations require a certain amount of
skill to pull off. And if you are passionate about a given skill, you stand a
better chance than average of acquiring a high level of proficiency in said
skill (at least in most cases). Therefore, the advice to "follow your passion"
is to find the occupation that you are most comfortable with, and not pursue a
job that you hate just because it pays well.

This even works for some of the "follow your passion" cliches, such as being
an artist or musician. In those cases, you may not make it rich on stage, but
you could do well in advertising (which requires artistic and/or musical
talent). But you also have to refine some secondary skills, such as psychology
(so you know the techniques to combine with your art that will be successful
in getting people to buy product).

~~~
zanny
The broader point is those that run the economy are also those who need no
"job" or "work" at all. They already have everything and are the arbiters of
its dissemination. You are told to find a passion, but for the children of the
privileged elite there is no need for passion or pursuit, because its already
in your hands on a silver plate from birth or from graduation.

------
icebraining
_" Ne Travaillez Jamais"_ (Never Work) - Guy Debord, 1963.

[http://oaj.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/3/391/F4.large.jpg](http://oaj.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/3/391/F4.large.jpg)

 _To the extent that automation and cybernetics foreshadow the massive
replacement of workers by mechanical slaves, forced labour is revealed as
belonging purely to the barbaric practices needed to maintain order. Thus
power manufactures the dose of fatigue necessary for the passive assimilation
of its televised diktats. What carrot is worth working for, after this? The
game is up; there is nothing to lose anymore, not even an illusion. The
organization of work and the organization of leisure are the blades of the
castrating shears whose job is to improve the race of fawning dogs. One day,
will we see strikers, demanding automation and a ten-hour week, choosing,
instead of picketing, to make love in the factories, the offices and the
culture centres? Only the planners, the managers, the union bosses and the
sociologists would be surprised and worried. Not without reason; after all,
their skin is at stake._

 _" THE REVOLUTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE"_ \- Raoul Vaneigem, 1972

(Full text:
[http://www.scenewash.org/lobbies/chainthinker/situationist/v...](http://www.scenewash.org/lobbies/chainthinker/situationist/vaneigem/rel/roel.html))

------
andrewmutz
The standard of living we all enjoy today is due to billions of people doing
things they consider work and not "antiwork".

If we can live in a world like ours where everyone is doing "antiwork" instead
of work, that would certainly be better. But it's not at all clear from this
article how such a world would function.

Many of the actions necessary for clean water, plentiful food, good shelter,
etc. (as they are provided today) are actions that no one would do "out of
love, fun, interest, talent, enthusiasm, inspiration".

~~~
transfire
You are correct in so far as you are correct ;) The flip side however is the
large quantity of jobs that are not really useful but are simply created for a
variety of ignoble reasons. Worst among them is the creation of jobs for the
purpose of improving "employment rates". Nearly as bad is the proliferation of
bureaucracies --typically the creation of paper trails and overseers to
monitor other paper trials and overseers. The "work ethic" can lead to
perverse incentives, to "make work" where none is really necessary.

~~~
swatow
Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly
by the government?

~~~
quanticle
I would venture that many of the jobs in any large (where large means > 10,000
people) corporation are bullshit jobs. For example, take Human Resources. Yes,
you need a certain amount of HR to make sure that labor laws are being
followed and that hiring/firing paperwork gets processed. But at most large
corporations, the vast majority of HR's output appears to have no
justification save to justify spending more on HR. Employee "engagement"
surveys come to mind as the prime example of this.

I would be willing to bet that you could halve the HR workforce at many
corporations (especially with some effort invested into automating HR
functions) and not notice any drops in productivity.

More generally, a lot of "middle management" falls into this category. From
what I see, it really looks like a lot of management work is really just make-
work created by... other middle managers. Yes, some level of management is
necessary to coordinate teams, but from where I sit, I see my manager spending
literally 8 hours a day creating PowerPoint presentations that have no
meaningful content whatsoever. And the funny thing is, he hates it more than I
do! He's a (ex)programmer. He'd rather be writing code! But somehow the
organization has decided (as a consequence of some managerial fiat, far above
my pay grade) that it is more "productive" for my manager to be making
PowerPoint presentations than writing code.

Yes, the phenomenon of bullshit jobs is far worse in government than in the
private sector. But it's still here in industry, and the larger and older the
industry, the more prevalent it is. Software companies haven't accumulated as
much cruft, but that's largely because companies in software tend to die
before they have a chance to accumulate the cruft that's present in industries
with higher barriers to entry.

EDIT: Tyler Cowen [1] has an excellent term for this phenomenon: "zero
marginal product" work.

[1]
[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/zer...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/zero-
marginal-product-workers.html)

~~~
andy_ppp
HR is an industry that could definitely be completely replaced by an algorithm
+ remote people + software. Anyone want to help me build this or does it
already exist?

------
fernly
I find the analysis of the popular attitudes toward work very resonant. We (as
a society) do treat the unemployed or unemployable as morally suspect. We do
punish people for needing welfare. Many receive the idea of Basic Income with
suspicion nearing to revulsion not on economic grounds, but on moral grounds:
people would use it to "be lazy".

This, I think, is a particularly telling summary of the connection between
Christian doctrine and attitudes to work: "The underlying idea is that you’re
endlessly undeserving – that reward, ie happiness, will always be contingent
on the endurance of some unpleasant activity (eg “hard work”). Again, we could
trace this notion to early moral ideas – eg original sin and redemption
through suffering ..."

However I see two shortcomings in this essay. First, he doesn't make what
should be the obvious economic connection. True, any job has value; this is
evident from the fact that the employer pays for it to be done. There is a
market in labor. However, the religion-derived morality that makes it deeply
wrong not to work tends to drive down the price of labor. People will accept
shittier jobs for lower wages than they would otherwise, when they also accept
the belief that it is evil to be unemployed, and virtuous to have work
regardless of the type or satisfaction of the work.

Thus the societal attitudes ably described in the essay serve the interests of
the employers and work against the interests of the workers. If the workers
didn't buy into this zeitgeist, they might not not-work, they might even work
the same shitty jobs, but they would be more willing to drop them, and would
demand higher pay in line with the shittyness. The necessary jobs would still
get done (ya want fries with that); but the employers would have to pay more
and provide better conditions because the workers would feel morally free to
be more choosy about pay and conditions.

The second thing wrong with the essay is that it ends without even sketching a
solution, or a direction that society might take if "antiwork" gained
traction. It seems to be an empty term.

~~~
quanticle
>True, any job has value; this is evident from the fact that the employer pays
for it to be done.

Value to the employer != value to society != value to the laborer. We're using
one word to describe three concepts, and running headlong into the confusion
that results.

~~~
fernly
True. And I think that's the point of the subject essay: that "work" is
surrounded by attitudes and mythologies that distort everyone's perceptions of
its value.

------
tdaltonc
I don't think that "do what you want" is going to cut it. The world of
ubiquitous-automation is going to need an ethics. Some principles to guide
people toward wise activities and away from unwise activities. Addictive,
abusive, and destructive patterns of behavior are bad. In the 20th century we
explained their unwisdom by saying things like, "if you become an alcoholic,
your children will starve because you didn't work to feed them" or
"compulsively binge-viewing TV will keep you from your studies." These
activities are still unwise, but "do what you want" doesn't give us the
ontological or moral tools to explain their unwisdom to each other (especially
to children).

~~~
quanticle
>Some principles to guide people toward wise activities and away from unwise
activities.

The paternalism inherent in categorizing some activities as "wise" and others
as "unwise" is exactly the sort of thing the article argues against. If I want
to spend my days playing a video game, and I find genuine fulfillment in it,
who are you to say that it is a "wise" or "unwise" activity?

>Addictive, abusive, and destructive patterns of behavior are bad.

They're "bad" because you're coming at it from a reference frame that says
that every hand and every mind is needed to ensure the collective survival and
prosperity of the community. In short, no work, no food. But that hasn't been
the case for quite some time. Moreover, it also looks like you're taking the
view that addiction is a choice. Empirically, it is not. Drug users do not
_choose_ to be addicted to drugs. They are addicted because of a poor choice
they made years (or, in some cases, decades) ago. Thirty years of experience
has shown that treating drug addiction as a moral problem is ineffective,
expensive, and corrosive to society.

>"compulsively binge-viewing TV will keep you from your studies."

And why are we studying? To get a job, which is exactly the problem that UBI
seeks to solve. If compulsive TV-watching (or heck, even compulsive novel-
reading) is more interesting than your studies, then maybe the problem is with
the studies, not the TV.

~~~
_yosefk
What happens when the majority of people can't phrase or spell what you've
just written, having played video games all their lives? An Idiocracy kind of
deal, something else, you think?

"Paternalism"...

~~~
quanticle
As opposed to a future where the majority of people _don 't_ read or spell,
because they've spent the last 8-10 hours doing the same repetitive thing over
and over again and they're too tired to do anything other than vegetate in
front of the TV? To be honest, I think an "Idiocracy" type of future is more
likely from the path we're currently treading, where a large number of people
will be forced to work long hours at rote, mind-numbing labor because society
has predicated your value as a human being on whether you're able to perform
some kind of work, even if it's make-work all day.

Historically, scientific and artistic advances have come once people get a
measure wealth and free time that allows them to stop worrying about basic
necessities and start wondering about the larger questions. I don't see why
giving _more_ people that luxury would lead to a _decline_ in artistic and
scientific innovation.

------
masterleep
This article reads like a proposal for journeying to the moon that was
designed without knowledge of the theory of gravitation.

For example, the author does not appear to realize that the reason most people
work is to exchange their time and efforts for something they value more,
which is usually money but could be experience or other things, in any
combination.

~~~
CompanyLaser
The hegemony of consumerism is falling apart and the things people
increasingly "value more" than work is free time and to be loved by the people
they love. That's something work won't give you in exchange.

~~~
sukilot
Work gives you free time when you are more efficient at your profession than
by subsistence farming.

~~~
ticviking
You are presuming access to land to subsistence farm upon, skills needed to
subsistence farm, and tolerance by the institutions to retreating from the
existing economy and engaging in that.

------
zkhalique
If you divide today's GDP by the number of people employed, and adjust for
inflation, you'll find that average worker productivity went up 4x since the
1950s, while wages stayed stagnant or went down.

[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-
american...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-
working-harder-charts)

Companies aren't hiring like they used to. There is no need. Automation and
outsourcing have reduced the demand for local labor.

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=185](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=185)

This is a good thing. Overpopulation is behind some of the biggest dangers
that face the entire human race, including climate change, overfishing,
ecosystem collapse (bees and others disappearing due to stresses introduced by
changes in agriculture), factory farms (ethical issues) etc.

Countries have to break their dependence on the old style pyramid of more
young people paying for old people's social security. It encourages
exponential population growth, which just leads people into trouble later on
and kicks the can down the road.

~~~
lupin_sansei
These studies are flawed as they use "median household income" but households
have changed a lot since the 1950s. There's many many more single parent
households than in the 1950s. If you compare individual wages instead of
households you can better see the wage increase since the 1950s.

~~~
jqm
Also a cell phone cost $7000000 in 1950. So if we look at the change in terms
of cell phones rather than in terms of pieces of paper with pictures of dead
white guys on them, wages have gone up over a million time while productivity
has only gone up 4X. (well, not really, but to make a point...).

In the 1950's families generally had one car. They didn't eat out as much.
Less vacations. More work to manage a household. So amount of paper in hand is
maybe less of an indicator than amount of goods and services that paper can
buy. Which has increased I think.

------
danbruc
We obviously have to work because goods and services do not suddenly appear
out of the blue. And we should obviously try to spread the required work as
evenly as possible across all the people so that everyone does his fair share
of the necessary work. It also is obviously a good thing if we manage that as
many people as possible can do work they like to make the necessary work even
easier to do. But beyond that? Are there really people seriously believing
that work is more than a means to an end? I have a hard time imagining this.

EDIT: Would someone downvoting this care to explain why? Because you are
really believing necessary work has some intrinsic value or goodness or
whatever? If yes, what is it?

~~~
sukilot
You are speaking from a communist ethos that not everyone agrees with.

~~~
danbruc
Communist ethos? In seriously don't get the connection. The premise is
uncontroversial, isn't it? Until we automated everything humans will have to
do necessary work to sustain our livings and doing unnecessary work for the
sake of keeping everyone busy is a dumb waste of resources. After that I
really don't care. If someone is not into fairly sharing this necessary work,
go for it, work long hours. I will happily work less and spend my time with
stuff I love to do if you really want to do all the work. If you want to do
work you don't like, I won't stop you. What am I missing?

~~~
icebraining
I think (s)he's referring to the part about "spreading the work as evenly as
possible", though the post sounds like a Red Scare parody to me.

~~~
NhanH
"Spreading the work as evenly as possible" is not communist ethos (likewise,
evenly distribution of wealth is also not communist ethos). "From each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is the classic
Marxism principle (it's the same for any other communism - they differ in the
method to get there, not the principle).

There are a lot of problem in practice with trying to evenly distribute the
work. And they're mostly the same reasons why we have to rely on free market
to distribute the majority of wealth: the centralization and power issue, the
inefficient issue, identity issue when your worth is tied to the minimum work
you need to do (granted this is already a problem nowadays). And to determine
a minimum fair share of work means to determine the minimum total work that a
society needs to do, which is equivalent to determine the minimum amount of
wealth to be produced. Ask 10 people and you will have 20 different answers on
what is the "minimum living standard should be".

Also, it stops (or drastically slow down) society from technological
progressing. Whether it's a good or bad thing is up for interpretation.

~~~
danbruc
I am not sure if and where I disagree with you or if I just misunderstand you.
I don't see the distinction you are drawing between "Spreading the work as
evenly as possible" and "From each according to his ability, to each according
to his needs". But I also don't think that this is the heart of Marxism but it
is about getting rid of the possibility to exploit workers by the possession
of the means of production by a small elite. Likewise I don't see that Marxism
necessarily implies some kind of centralization or inefficiency, i.e. I don't
think there is a contradiction between free or partially regulated markets and
Marxism, they look almost orthogonal to me.

~~~
NhanH
Everything you said is correct! There was just a few details I didn't have in
my post that make it slightly confusing.

"Spreading the work as evenly as possible" and "From each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs" differs because people's ability is
different, and because the work itself is not interchangeable (specialization
and what not). This is more of a technicality than anything else, because the
former might imply that everyone has to be doing similar work (in term of
wealth producing efficiency, time working etc).

Getting rid of the possibility to exploit workers by the possession of the
means of production by a small elite is definitely the overarching motivation
for communism. I can't remember it right now, but I think there is a line of
practical reasoning that leads to the principle mentioned (which is to says
that for practical purpose, one will lead to another). I will have to look it
up.

Marxism (at least the motivation and principle mentioned above) by itself
definitely doesn't implies centralization! It's unfortunately that this the
insight is often missed by people. However, according to Marx, to get to
communism, we have to transition through socialism first, which is the abolish
of private ownership for major means of production (in Socialism society,
means of production is owned by _public enterprise_ , as opposed to being held
_in common_ in Communism society). This step poses a centralization issue (as
the power that be won't relinquish their power), and inefficiency is just a
byproduct of centralization (because of corruption and lack of creative
destruction, mostly).

We have not found a way to transition directly to communism from a capitalism
society (assuming that communism is desirable).

------
CompanyLaser
I was actually just reading Max Weber today. The radical change in
Christianity over time is astounding.

Jesus: "consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor
spin thread"

...I don't think he meant that literally, but he definitely didn't mean, "work
as hard as you can so you can give a little to charity yet still anonymously
hire tons of people to make you nice things"

~~~
et1337
That passage is meant to keep you from worrying, not from working. Later on
there's this: "Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own
business and working with your hands."

~~~
thret
Christianity was never for the rich:

“Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor” and "it is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to
enter the Kingdom of God!” - Mark 10:21+

~~~
throwaway43
They also serve who only stand and wait.

------
arh68
_Anti_ work is a terrible name that just throws people off. Why not _self_
-work? It's the work you give yourself. I get the gist of the article: it's
not Work vs Leisure, it's Their Work vs Your Own Work, with Leisure on the
side.

 _Anti_ work makes it sound like it's the opposite of work. It's not the
opposite of work; it's the opposite of _pointless_ work. If anything needs a
new nickname, it's the _pointless_ work. Pseudo-work. And if we're going to be
morally superior about one or the other, I think the author makes a good case
for celebrating _self_ work, not pseudowork. (I don't know who celebrates
leisure, it's usually the butt of a joke)

~~~
czottmann
I wholeheartedly agree. This point irked me the entire time as the author did
not condemn work itself.

I wish there was a way to upvote your comment more than once!

------
jokoon
I don't know if I have a shitty personality, or if it comes from the fact that
I live in france where there's a lot of welfare and unions, which results in
workers being treated very nicely. On the other hand, U3 unemployment is at
10%.

I'm 30 and I've never been paid a salary in my entire life except for 1 month.
Same for my father, and my mother is not so much better on that.

I tried being honest and tried the "reintegrate myself" option, but I have to
say I'm not convinced.

If some people are ready to bite their tongue and subscribe to the obeying
workforce, I would let them be, but I will never let them insult unemployed
people as being lazy. But I think I belong to the portion of people who is not
really actively doing something I think is productive, or is not being able to
effectively progress towards that goal. I can't always stick the blame on me.

I understand that civilization and economics are something people hold dearly,
like it's important for the well being of millions of people, but sometimes,
you have to be honest and explore the sociology and psychology of it if you
want to make real improvements. I can't honestly believe politics are
completely insensitive to this. Or may they will be in 50 years.

------
calinet6
Work is an effort to do something meaningful with time. If our perspective on
it is skewed, then that can change—and perhaps it should—but work itself is
not evil, nor should we redefine the word to be so construed.

As W. Edwards Deming said, "All anyone asks for is a chance to work with
pride." Prideful, real work—work that produces joy for the worker and results
in something of value— _is_ virtuous.

The real problem is structural. A requirement of working with pride is to be a
part of an organization that treats employees well and enables that pride, and
removes all barriers to it. They must seek a quality product and a valuable
result as a primary goal.

This is why Deming advocated for Quality as a first principle, and why his
system was so functional and correct. It took into account primarily the need
for every individual in the organization to _take pride in work._ Learn more
--
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming)

And to sum this up, never a better time for this poem:

To be of use – by Marge Piercy

[http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2006/09...](http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2006/09/04)

    
    
      The people I love the best
      jump into work head first
      without dallying in the shallows
      and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
      They seem to become natives of that element,
      the black sleek heads of seals
      bouncing like half-submerged balls.
      
      I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
      who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
      who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
      who do what has to be done, again and again.
      
      I want to be with people who submerge 
      in the task, who go into the fields to harvest 
      and work in a row and pass the bags along,
      who are not parlor generals and field deserters
      but move in a common rhythm
      when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
      
      The work of the world is common as mud.
      Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
      But the thing worth doing well done
      has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
      Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
      Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
      but you know they were made to be used.
      The pitcher cries for water to carry
      and a person for work that is real.

------
miscellaneous
If you think about this from first principles, it is clear that work is
necessary. Considering that we (self-organizing collections of matter) exist
in a universe where entropy tends to a maximum, doing work is necessary to
maintain our existence.

As for the moral argument as to why people on welfare are often viewed
negatively, I think the reasoning is fairly obvious - most taxpayers are doing
work which they don't necessarily enjoy, and may become annoyed if they think
they are being exploited by people who are not working. Hence why nobody cares
if a person who is _not_ on welfare doesn't work.

Finally, I would be interested to know what specific jobs the author is
referring to as "BS jobs". As far as I'm aware, people are only given money if
someone else finds utility in what they are doing.

~~~
d4nt
Consider this example:

I run the EMEA division of a multinational, I want to justify a bigger budget
and/or get a bigger bonus and so I hire a data analyst to prepare some reports
showing my division in a favourable light. The reports are well received and
have desired effect for the first year or two until my competitor who runs
AsiaPac realises what's happening and also hires a data analyst. The situation
then returns to normal, but the company now employs two more data analysts
than it did a few years ago. Neither one of us will fire our data analyst for
fear of looking bad, but the data analysts are in competition and so have no
net benefit to the company's performance or humanity as a whole.

~~~
miscellaneous
I guess I was more looking for an entire category (or industry) of jobs that
was deemed "BS" \- since that is what I thought the author was implying. But
nevertheless, I have considered your example.

I have the following thoughts: -Are these data analysts preparing accurate
(factual) reports? If so, then I would contend that they are in fact doing a
useful service by allowing upper management to make better resource allocation
decisions (i.e. more accurately determine which division is performing the
best). -If the data analysts are employed to produce inaccurate or biased
reports purely for the benefit of the division managers, then I believe this
would be an example of illegal behaviour and an agency problem. For this
reason, I would expect that the head office would employ (neutral) data
analysts to avoid this problem.

------
wooyi
Hard work is the foundation of success. The best people I know are all hard
workers. They love their jobs, they are competitive, and they work hard.

It is a privilege to be able to work in such an environment as it is so rare.

~~~
sago
Work will set you free!

First define success in a way that isn't just "happy" (because then you're
defining anti-work, as the OP was). Then take the set of all successful
people, based on that criteria, and the set of all hard working people, and
tell me how big the overlap is.

I suspect that many successful people are hard-working. But the other
direction that hard work is the foundation of success will be transparently
nonsense.

You're using the classic fallacy of affirming the consequent here.

This is exactly the point made in this article and others. We've uncritically
accepted the myth that hard work leads to success.

The prime beneficiaries of this are the successful people who control masses
of capital and are thus able to anti-work (i.e. they do what they enjoy,
building their business, creating new products, competing). The prime losers
are those who do hard work for them for squeezed wages.

~~~
EdSharkey
So, it is a good thing to enjoy one's "anti-work". Which is to say, it's a
personal and societal good to enjoy what you do for a living. Um, is this some
new existentialism thing? Yes, attention attention: it would be best for
everyone to like what they do, especially when what they do is hard. If you
can't dazzle them with data, baffle them with bullsh*t, am I right?

Here's a fun what-if. What if in the next 10-20 years, robots and software
begin automating away huge swaths of the non-creative drudgery jobs, doing the
work safer and better than humans ever could. And, right around the same time,
we develop life extending vitamins to give humans 500+ year lifespans at the
physical age of 30. The vitamins soon become cheap to make, anyone can get
them. Millions of people, suddenly vigorous and youthful, who used to have
[bad/fake] labor jobs will now be priced out of the market. Grumble, grumble,
they say. Life was better when I at least HAD a crummy job, grumble! Thank
God, the anti-work problem is solved: the crappy jobs have been purged. Except
now we've got a huge new powderkeg of a problem to deal with.

My question is, will we plan our future society ahead of time and peacefully
enter this new era of plenty and health? Or, will we have wars and endless
class strife between the have-jobs and not-have-jobs? Can we have a public
debate about this before it actually happens?

When I read the OP and your message, I hear a negative view. Both of you posit
negative thoughts about the current work scene that could lead a reader to
doubt and resent their own job and position/status. You're simply stirring up
trouble and unhappiness when you fail to also bring solutions to the table.

~~~
sago
> If you can't dazzle them with data, baffle them with bullsh*t, am I right?

Given that your reply contained no data, you tell me.

> Life was better when I at least HAD a crummy job, grumble!

That very much depends on what they do instead.

Plenty of people enjoy gardening who don't get paid to do it now. Plenty of
people enjoy making things, craft, art, writing, furniture making, these are
largely leisure activities now. Forms of education for themselves and others
going to the library, or the park, reading. Working on yourself physically.
Cooking. Consumption of media. Volunteering.

The idea that someone would rather do busywork than those things is silly, I
think. But if, in that future, we still base our judgement of people's moral
worth, by whether they have a crummy job, then I think the lack of crummy jobs
becomes an issue.

The future you outline is coming, in some form or another (at least the work
part, the 500yr lifespan less certainly). The question is, in that world, do
we want to keep tying people's worth to their ability to find drudgery work?
Do we want to keep going with a society that would concentrate even more
wealth in the hands of those who control the capital, with no meaningful
ability for anyone else to raise themselves out of their 'lower-class' status.
It is hard to see how a plutocratic capitalism is going to work then. So I
think we need more of this debate now, not less.

The solution being brought to the table, a small step in the grand scheme, but
a necessary one, is to stop the rhetoric that work of any kind is inherently
virtuous, and to stop the rhetoric that work is the way to gain one's success.

------
cturner
The thing I find most frustrating about periods of hard work is that it ruins
your ability to think.

------
chromanoid
Read the "Manifesto against Labour"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POHENPfWhi8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POHENPfWhi8)
[http://www.krisis.org/1999/manifesto-against-
labour](http://www.krisis.org/1999/manifesto-against-labour)

 _Those who do not work (labour) shall not eat! This cynical principle is
still in effect; all the more nowadays when it becomes hopelessly obsolete. It
is really an absurdity: Never before the society was that much a labour
society as it is now when labour itself is made superfluous._

------
rbrogan
Personally, I try to differentiate between something that is work, something
that productive, versus something that is keeping busy but not really
accomplishing anything. Keeping busy will most likely be worse than being
idle. It is wasting energy and occupying time. If you would not think of
leaving equipment running for the sake of burning energy, why do it with
people? If there is no concept of legitimate idleness or leisure, then there
will be a lack of pressure to find meaningful work for people to do.

------
Rainymood
"From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up
he is worth anything that his brain can produce." \- Thomas Edison

------
suttree
I think the shift has already happened. All those people who talk about the
"future of work" are the ones I'd quite like to send into the future. The far
future.

Work has already changed, the future is here, but it's here because people
need two jobs to make rent, or because people freelance so that they can
realise their personal visions, not because robots are going to steal our
jobs.

The real problem is finding out what you want to do and where you fit (hence
[https://www.somewhere.com](https://www.somewhere.com)).

------
wyager
> the pernicious culture of “hard work”

Yes, because productivity and determination are so pernicious.

I don't understand the point of this article; is it suggesting that we
intentionally try to decrease humanity's labor output in the name of some
poorly-defined notion of "work sucks"?

------
comex
It depends what you mean by work, doesn't it?

I'm quite willing to accept that the value I instinctively place on work and,
to a lesser degree, success has a large societal component. When I try to
evaluate myself, I cannot avoid those values, and it doesn't help that my
predisposition to anxiety emotionally magnifies any idea of not doing
something _useful_ with my life, of wasting time and makes it difficult for me
to ever be truly relaxed if I feel like I'm in such a situation. That's been
the dominant emotion when I think about my day job since I first started
having day jobs some four years ago - anxiety.

And it's pretty arbitrary, isn't it? A common justification or explanation of
caring about success is that it improves one's chances of being important and
remembered. But I am not important; I hope to accomplish something interesting
enough in life that people will remember me for time to come, but it's very
unlikely to happen, and if I consider that there are ways to optimize for
memorability - careers more associated with fame, or writing - that I am not
taking advantage of, and that I don't mind that at all, I can see that that
has nothing to do with my real emotional goals. I value work not as a means to
any end, but because I've internalized it as an end in itself.

Even people who spend money to get buildings named after them - are they doing
it to be remembered, or just because leaving one's name on things is part of
our societal narrative of success, and doing it themselves makes their self-
narrative better track that one?

But... then there are my side projects. The ones that even if I had the
capability to work on full time, I wouldn't, because they don't seem important
enough in the long run (there the anxiety creeps up again) - yet that I like
no less for it. When I think about doing them as side projects, the associated
emotions are pleasure, personal fulfillment, and connection. I value the
intellectual stimulation I get out of them; I value being able to prove to
myself my ability to complete them (which is a different, more idiosyncratic
and egotistical emotion than the desire to matter); I value being able to help
people, if the project is used by others, and to socially engage with them. I
even value the feeling of being (mentally) exhausted after giving the thing my
all, very similar to the feeling of having given a physical activity, say
skiing, my all.

I think those desires are more intrinsic than the desire to work. Inherently
those projects are so similar to work; indeed, I'm lucky enough to be able to
perform for my job almost the same activities (reverse engineering, coding) I
like to do by myself. But I think they are anti-work, because when I pop a
project off the personal stack and onto the work stack, I can't help but think
about it very differently. It grows all sorts of context that didn't exist
before.

But at least it's similar.

------
curiously
so what is it that makes antiworkers so successful? luck? market-fit
awareness?

what special skill or trait do you need to become a successful antiworker?

I have this growing uneasiness about capitalism that its really about capital,
not special skill, not some super insight, but mainly luck and/or capital. Not
brains. Not muscles.

To me this realization throws the entire concept of working hard. It's easy to
see that capitalism is not based on exploiting yourself or peddling your ass
for wages. In fact the people who claim that hard work is road to success are
the very people who benefit it.

It might be that this has become a widely accepted falsehood that was started
by no good factory owners since the industrial age, that is being perpetuated
to this day.

I honestly feel like I've been lied to all my life. Your startup or business
failed, not because you were dumb or it was all your fault, a lot of it has to
do with luck. Luck comes in many forms, sales, market timing, product fit etc.

I almost feel like you are almost entitled to spend some time without
accomplishing much with antiwork but when you stick around luck will
eventually come to you.

In the past month I've completely stopped _trying_ so hard. I just tuned out
and let business happen. it was the best month I've had so far.

------
swatow
_The facts and figures generally don’t support the rose-tinted political view
of work. Studies consistently show how jobs keep many of us poor while also
making us ill, stressed, exhausted and demoralised_

This whole article is a ridiculous strawman. People don't advocate hard work
for its own sake (or if they do, this viewpoint isn't politically
influential). They promote hard work for what it brings, that is, whatever the
worker produced.

Graeber's essay is wrong. There are no "bullshit jobs". From the employer's
point of view, why would they hire someone if hiring that person wasn't
profitable? Does he really think businesses put the ideology of everyone
having a job over profit?

~~~
wes-k
I think if you graphed money and work you'd find some cycles that weren't
really benefitting mankind. There's definitely work that is not needed.

Additionally plenty of people are not working 100% of the time at their job.
Many Amazon Turks are these people. Either they have work they are
procrastinating OR they don't have much to do.

