Antiwork

I think a lot of people have trouble understanding the difference between "I don't want to contribute anything to society" and "I don't want to spend half my waking life laboring for peanuts so that my boss can get rich".

Obviously, we should contribute according to our means, but we need to be compensated for those contributions accordingly.

there are ways to contribute that aren't 40+ hours a week.

Yes, owners do this.

You'd still have to work for your living in said scenario.

Nobody is gonna bring you chicken tendies three times a day in your hidden cottage.

Uncontacted hunter gathered tribes work, it's right there in the description. Not 40 hours a week, sure, but you can live a much simpler lifestyle in the wilderness on a similar work ethic.

Labor is an intrinsic requirement of human life.

You could try. But there's 2 problems with that. Firstly surviving on your own is extremely difficult. Subsistence farming is hell and without a community often ends in death after a single drought or bad crop.

And secondly the medieval era didn't have that much empty, unclaimed land that could support either farming or hunting. There were farming communities everywhere there was open space. And old forests in Europe are pretty much entirely man controlled by this point. Poaching was a serious crime because of population control and logging was also controlled.

What I'm saying is, no man is an island and very few could survive as one. There's a reason we developed society.

It's a good point, perhaps we were freer before. Then again, 90% of the European population were basically slaves during the dark and middle ages, and I also enjoy not dying from dysentery.

During the 2020 epidemic and lockdown bunches of people were furloughed and we all got to acquaint ourselves with extended cabin fever. Many of us picked up new hobbies and some of those could ne monetized and were better than the (often toxic, underpaid) dayjobs.

It was a conspicuous phenomenon now called the great resignation. Our capitalst masters compain how no one wants to work, but it's evident to the rest of us that it's the toxic underpaid conditions we don't like, and we'd be glad to work if conditions were better.

I suspect laziness isn't a real character flaw or deadly sin so much as the desire to not suffer as we work. (There is avolition, a symptom of mental illnes such as major depression, and this is what drives people to couch-potaro for weeks or months at a time.)

Yeah, if that’s an option then I respect people who do that, but if you want the comforts of modern society then you need to contribute.

Imo anti work is about pushing back on the ridiculous expectations of companies, and ensuring that employees receive some of the benefits of automation to ease the load on them.

This tweet strikes me as the “but I want everything for freeee!!!” person who makes anti work look bad. Like that idiot Reddit mod who went on Fox News or whatever news station it was.

No there isn't; it's all claimed by various people or national parks or something.

The idea that one can go out to the woods and build a new society unhindered is pure fantasy.

There's the tiny problem of me not being American though.

The end of work is not the end of labor. The goal of ending work is better described as destroying work as it exists now, with the exploitation and coercion required to make people work.

In general, I agree with you and I understand what you mean. But building your own house and growing your own food - don't underestimate that. It is an amazing idea (and feeling) to work for your own direct benefit. But it is an awful lot of work. My uncle in law lives like that in Ukraine. They have a small house in the middle of a nowhere village. The only money they get is from biking (!) with some of their crops to the next town to sell them. That's a nice life but they have to work hard work from dawn to late evening every single day. No sick days. No weekends. No evenings off. No running water. No warm showers. No plumbing. You poop outside, in the cold, in a little wooden house with a bucket. They kind of chose to live like this (his other siblings moved away, he didn't want to give up their parents' land) but it is a hard life that tears on you. It breaks your bones, literally. As much as we all hate working for corporate here - for obvious reasons that demand all the support we got - be cautious of over-romantisizing this kind of self-sufficient lifestyle in the countryside.

The main thing that is overlooked is that people who don't work still contribute to society in ways that don't align with capitalism. Not all art needs to be bought and sold. A ton of care is provided for free instead of through a job. A community cleaning up a common space without exchanging money is still contributing to society.

I wouldn't even consider a lot of things that do align with capitalism to be contributing to society. Most advertising for example.

Are we owed anything simply by being born?

A major problem with our society is that everything is framed conceptually as debt. A world where you are not born into debt is seen as unjust because your basic needs must be provided by others, and that can supposedly only be a financial transaction.

But from a purely logistical and motivational perspective, it's easy to imagine not threatening people with homelessness and death for not working. Everything is heavily automated. The large majority of people used to be subsistence farmers, now the proportion working in agriculture is less than 2% and we produce way more than is actually needed for human survival. You only need a little bit of labor provided beyond transactional compensation to make it happen. As for why anyone would choose to do so, it would be for all the same reasons people already work other than the threat of death; status, money, luxury, desire for purpose and fulfillment.

The only question is whether it is morally good and acceptable to allocate resources to someone without demanding payment. And it is; just stop thinking of debt as inherently right and required, and recognize that it's better not to force debt on someone just for being born and having basic needs.

You are not owed a damn thing, the universe is a cold, uncaring bitch.

That said, we humans are nothing if not an ingenious bunch. We've come up with all sorts of ways to work more efficiently. The amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it

Instead of choosing to work less and live a life of leisure, freedom and the pursuit of happiness, we kept working at the same or an increasing rate to make more money, or rather, those who own(ed) the capital and technology that makes it so did.

It's a bit of a pithy answer in an online comment but I genuinely believe humanity as a whole would be happier with less if it meant we got to live life on our own terms by default. Ever growing consumption way past the point of necessity comes with a host of problems (power and wealth imbalance, climate change, destruction of nature, etc) but by far the biggest one is the sheer waste of our few laps around the sun.

Every square inch of the earth is owned. I cannot fuck off into the woods, build a cabin, grow vegetables, hunt food, etc. I'm forced to be a part of society. Laws say I cannot provide for myself by natural means, there for society is required to provide for me within its system.