[Besticle]

It takes one bad experience to ruin a reputation.

Guy went on Fox news (against the communities) wishes and made millions of people's first impression of r/AntiWork to be negative.

In the modern world optics are EVERYTHING and that cannot be understated. Imho the first thing they need to change (which they have with their move to the new subreddit) is renaming it from r/AntiWork to r/WorkReform.

Most of the sub (I'd wager >80%) are Americans asking for workers rights that are the norm in western Europe. Things like paid maternal/paternal leave, greater work life balance and paid overtime, flexibly working and WFH.

The majority of people in America are almost certainly in favour of that, but you get a dog walker going on TV on a notoriously provocative network talking about "anti-work" it's just mind boggling.

[belval]

It's against the rule to say that you did not read the article, so I won't say it, but:

> In the modern world optics are EVERYTHING and that cannot be understated. Imho the first thing they need to change (which they have with their move to the new subreddit) is renaming it from r/AntiWork to r/WorkReform.

/r/WorkReform exists already.

> Most of the sub (I'd wager >80%) are Americans asking for workers rights that are the norm in western Europe. Things like paid maternal/paternal leave, greater work life balance and paid overtime, flexibly working and WFH.

This is the author's point, that before /r/antiwork realigned itself, their moderator was actually representative of the average /r/antiwork user, that through an influx of left-aligned users, it got "sanewashed". These new users were ashamed of being associated with the original mod, but that mod is still very much the one that was dicussing legitimate /r/antiwork ideas before we ever heard of their fringe community.

[throwamon]

> It's against the rule to say that you did not read the article, so I won't say it

Maybe it should be against the rules to say you know it's against the rules, and so on recursively. This loophole is often exploited to make these remarks equally useless and extra snarky.

[belval]

The spirit of the rule isn't that you can't point out when the article addresses the exact questions that the parent is asking:

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

My comment sole focus is not that parent didn't read the article. Instead, I chose to answer the comment's question with the answers from the article.

> Useless and extra snarky.

Making a top comment based on an article headline, with no knowledge of what is actually discussed is what's useless and against the HN discussion spirit where we usually try to foster meaningful conversations.

[swsieber]

Your comment:

> It's against the rule to say that you did not read the article, so I won't say it, but:

>> In the modern world optics are EVERYTHING and that cannot be understated. Imho the first thing they need to change (which they have with their move to the new subreddit) is renaming it from r/AntiWork to r/WorkReform.

> /r/WorkReform exists already.

Could have been shortened to

>> In the modern world optics are EVERYTHING and that cannot be understated. Imho the first thing they need to change (which they have with their move to the new subreddit) is renaming it from r/AntiWork to r/WorkReform.

> /r/WorkReform exists already.

And it would have been better.

[swsieber]

>> which they have with their move to the new subreddit

> /r/WorkReform exists already.

Yes, they noted that

[Besticle]

don't care didn't read

[pmorici]

I happened upon the r/AntiWork comments section from time to time before that Fox News segment and it always struck me as full of people who were making every excuse not to take responsibility for their own circumstances and who have a fantasy that low skill jobs should some how pay enough to be life long careers instead of viewing them as stepping stones to bigger and better things.

[enragedcacti]

A lot of the most popular threads had less to do with lifelong careers and more about being treated with basic human decency by your employer (and telling them off when the labor market turned in worker's favor).

That said, to address your point head on, is it possible in the US for everyone to move on to "bigger and better" things? I don't think so which is why we have so many adults with families in min. wage or lowing paying jobs. There is no pool of well paying jobs for them all to move into, there is no magic solution where everyone can have their needs met just by pulling harder on their bootstraps.

So the question then becomes: should a person (or two people) working a full time job be able to provide for themselves and their family? I think the answer to that question is yes. You might disagree, but I don't think its fair to write them off as having a "fantasy".

[monkeybutton]

There are a lot of low skilled jobs in a service economy. I imagine that a significant fraction of all jobs are low skilled ones. Not everyone is chasing the hustle or whatever either, so there's a significant amount of people will be working those low skilled jobs their whole lives. What quality of life do they deserve? Does society want a permanent underclass that are treated miserably?

[mojzu]

There's also a lot of overlap between these jobs and ones that were essential to keep society running during various lockdowns, so the value these jobs provide doesn't seem to be reflected in the remuneration.

What I don't understand is why many see it as acceptable for any business to pay less than a living wage under any circumstance, it's just a roundabout way of making taxpayers pay for a businesses labour force

[gruez]

>so the value these jobs provide doesn't seem to be reflected in the remuneration.

that's because remuneration isn't based on value, it's based on market conditions. value merely provides an upper bound. as an extreme example, clean water provides near infinite value to you (you need water to survive, so you're willing to pay infinite dollars for it), yet you can get it from your tap at less than a penny per gallon.

>What I don't understand is why many see it as acceptable for any business to pay less than a living wage under any circumstance, it's just a roundabout way of making taxpayers pay for a businesses labour force

But those people on welfare would receive welfare regardless of whether they're hired or not? I don't see how that's "making taxpayers pay for a businesses labour force".

[pmorici]

I don’t believe your premise that such a large share of the available jobs are low skill that there is no room for people to move on to something better. If you look at fast food for example I’m seeing there are about 2.5 million workers which is a tiny percentage of the overall workforce. Looking at the age distribution of the US work force you could staff every fast food restaurant with only 16-19 year olds and still only be employing about half of that age groups work force.

https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11b.htm

[enragedcacti]

why would you seek out statistics for one single industry that you perceive as low skill rather than just finding low wage statistics specifically?

44% of U.S. workers are employed in low wage jobs with a median annual wage of $18,000. [1]

Sure we can staff fast food with only 16-19 year olds but what about every other sector of the service industry and the myriad of other "low skill" jobs? are there 40 million plus "high skill" jobs out there waiting for the taking? The answer is no. [2]

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-2019-almost-half-o...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/21/low-wag...

[stathibus]

That is the "sanewashed" viewpoint. The original message of r/antiwork was that nobody should have to work to live a comfortable life in modern society, and their needs should be provided by others who do.

[Miner49er]

> should be provided by others who do.

No, I don't think this is accurate. They wanted to abolish work for everyone, not for a select few.

[minkzilla]

What would provide for people? It seems to me we would either all starve and die, AI would do it for us (impossible in its current state), or we rely on effectively slave labor of poorer countries (which would mean work is not abolished for everyone).

[Miner49er]

Here's Doreen's website. A lot of early posts on the sub were from here: https://abolishwork.com/about/

They use a specific definition of work, so they maybe aren't necessarily anti-work in the way you are thinking.

[minkzilla]

Thanks for the response. There are some interesting ideas on hat site. I guess this is another example of something discussed extensively in the rest of the thread, the name/slogan of the movement not using the conventional meaning of terms.

[smus]

You cannot structurally expect everyone to have a good career in the us. It is not currently mathematically possible. Please don't delude yourself into thinking the economy could function the same as it currently does without lifelong service industry workers

[achenet]

there is no reason to believe that a service worker can't have a good career.

This may not be the case now, but that can change.

I'm always wary of paraphrasing Graeber, but it's possible that living in a world where a small handful of individuals own the majority of the wealth has led to the market rewarding various jobs in a way that creates more misery than is strictly necessary - for example corporate lawyers being paid hundreds of thousands because they can help billionaires get even richer, while farmers producing the most important of all resources, food, are constantly hovering around the poverty line.

EDIT: and as a mathematician, I would appreciate a proof of your "mathematically impossible" proposition. :)

[smus]

Sorry, I think you missed my point. My point is that our economy is currently structured with so many jobs paying too little, having no benefits, no pto/healthcare, that "people should just get a better job" argument doesn't hold water numerically. I think the solution to that is to ease the wealth gap.

:) :) :)

[JSavageOne]

For me antiwork is just anti forced wage labour. If we had a universal basic income, then that would be accomplished and people would be free to work on whatever they want. If technology is advanced enough to be able to afford this which I'd argue is already the case, I don't see why this shouldn't be the case.

[nradov]

Technology isn't advanced enough to be able to afford this. Have you ever actually worked in a factory or on a farm? Have you done the math to calculate how much taxes would have to raise in order to give everyone a UBI at even the US federal poverty level? This is magical thinking disconnected from the reality of how the economy works.

[batshit_beaver]

Related to this, but is there ANY explanation out there from proponents of UBI that would clarify how UBI can be done sustainably and perpetually, without causing runaway inflation where UBI is always below poverty level anyway?

I'm obviously too retarded for such an advanced concept, but in my head there's no scenario where a utopian UBI-based society is possible, even with more advanced tech. To allow everyone to have food, shelter, and other necessities regardless of their usefulness to society, at the very least we'd have to have severe birth rate restrictions, strong law enforcement, and other fun authoritarian systems that would no longer qualify the environment as a utopia in the eyes of UBI supporters.

Seems like yet another liberal pipe dream that is entirely disconnected from reality, though I'd love to be proven wrong, if anyone has some good reading suggestions on this subject.

[JSavageOne]

Personally if I were in charge, I'd start by slowly phasing it in via distributing it from the proceeds of a land value tax (the most efficient tax, Henry George called this a citizen's dividend). Then the UBI amount is anchored and there's no possibility of runaway inflation.

[batshit_beaver]

I still don't get it. If rich people own land with value X, and you tax it and produce Y amount that gets distributed to everyone, doesn't that Y directly increase the cost of food and shelter or any other thing that the poor people would want to buy?

Moreover, what's to stop rich people from selling their land? Or abandoning it and moving to another country?

UBI doesn't make any sense to me as CONCEPT. Sure you can find some creative ways to raise some money this year and give it to the poor (or everyone), but how do you create a such a system that continues to function over years and decades?

Money that is given to someone just for existing inherently has no value, so it cannot possibly have much purchasing power. The only things it can buy are things that are subsidized by the government anyway and exists already, such as low income housing and food-stamp-eligible food. What I don't understand is that people seem to think UBI would somehow result in a higher standard of living for people who are already in low income housing and on food stamps, and I just can't think of a mechanism for that.

[thebean11]

I don't think it's the case yet..the unemployment rate is under 5%. What jobs do you think could be eliminated?

[gruez]

>For me antiwork is just anti forced wage labour. If we had a universal basic income, then that would be accomplished and people would be free to work on whatever they want

What type of living conditions are we looking to guarantee? If your baseline is "prehistoric living conditions", I'm sure it's quite affordable. If it's "21st century middle class america" it will be ruinously expensive. Incremental improvements in technology can eventually bring us to a point where we can afford to give arbitrary fixed standard of living to everyone, but not if that standard of living is constantly increasing.

[causi]

In the modern world optics are EVERYTHING and that cannot be understated. Imho the first thing they need to change (which they have with their move to the new subreddit) is renaming it from r/AntiWork to r/WorkReform.

That was the biggest thing in my opinion. AntiWork was too open to the type of people who don't care about workers' rights and were just there because they think the world owes them a living. NEETs are horrible for the cause of labor reform.

[djbusby]

NEET, an acronym for "Not in Education, Employment, or Training"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET

[wutbrodo]

Did you read any of the article? The whole point is that it was specifically a radical space, founded and filled by radicals, with a (somewhat) coherent radical message. The fact that there was a shift to "we should have mildly better working conditions within the same system" and "lol funny quitting text" may disqualify Doreen from being the representative, but the discussion being had here is how exactly that shift in the community's purpose is managed.

I'm extremely far from agreeing with the anarchist view of work, but your comment contains precisely the dynamic that the piece describes: a cause-focused community gains steam and followers, at which point the message is neutered (despite retaining a now-contradictory name) and those responsible for the movement's success are written out of history and ostracized as unrepresentative weirdos.

Seriously, I recommend reading the piece. It's too late to do so before commenting, but you may take away something more than "God why is this weirdo claiming that she represents antiwork when it's obviously just a board for bored teenagers to post memes about how they hate their job and tepid centrist messages about overtime pay"

[nothis]

What I'm noticing the past 5 to 10 years is the right outsmarting the left in activism and public imagery. Not with arguments, with wording. It's hard to watch.

One way I'm trying to make sense of is the following: The left is used to being the underdog, the ones fighting for reform against powerful, conservative institutions. They are used to not really stand a chance, it's the spirit that counts. In that position, it makes sense to yell loud, provoking slogans. The people in power will laugh it off, the people you're trying to reach will hear you. But we're in a situation where there are pockets of real power occupied by left-leaning leadership. University campuses. Some parts of the media. Large cities. Certain internet communities. The people in power (who are still largely conservative) are no longer laughing, they're scared. They will use your words against you if they aren't worded well. But it seems left-wing organizers refuse to change their tactics, refuse to acknowledge they entered the mainstream arena.

I still don't get what "abolish the police" is supposed to accomplish. Everyone who bothers understands what it is really about but you don't even have to twist the words, you just have to take them literally and it's a call to pure anarchism. The "blue lives matter" bullshit could have been stopped by changing the slogan to "black lives matter, too". A comedian should not be cancelled for actual, clear-in-context jokes, at least not when genuinely apologizing. A confused college student quoting some Jordan Peterson logic (which he'll likely feel embarrassed for in 5 years without any outside help at all) should not be yelled at in public or you get that shit on Tik Tok as "lefties suppressing free speech". Don't call your work reform movement... "anti-work". Sigh.

Laugh at right-wing stupidity. Take left-wing politics (i.e. European conservative politics) seriously and consider how to implement it in the real world. Do what the right has been doing for centuries, learn from it. They're in the defense now. And the most powerful move on the offense is appearing calm and composed.

[nebula8804]

Are the right really in defense mode? They managed to instill a majority in the supreme court, they have veto power in the senate and after 2022 will likely hold the majority in the house. They are successfully chipping away at the gains of the FDR era.

At the same time the left is fractured into two major camps. One camp is the leadership that seems to end up controlling major movements like Black Lives Matter and subduing it into nothing. This group chooses to not fight. They are benefiting from the status quo.

The other is the "progressive" left that is aiming for European style systems and policies. All they have as a weapon is Twitter and they are not really achieving their goals. What power do "Twitter People" really have if their efforts only translate into gestures from the higher ups(eg. BLM painted on the street in front of the capitol)?

[zhdc1]

> One way I'm trying to make sense of is the following: The left is used to being the underdog, the ones fighting for reform against powerful, conservative institutions.

This isn't necessarily true. The Democrats in the US had a near stranglehold on Federal politics from the 1950s through the mid-1990s. The Republican ascendence in the 1990s came about in part because Democrat-oriented institutions; e.g., large blue-chip companies, labor unions, and the Federal government itself were viewed as inefficient and corrupt by a portion of the voting population.

> But we're in a situation where there are pockets of real power occupied by left-leaning leadership. University campuses. Some parts of the media. Large cities.

This also isn't necessarily true. Democratic sympathies != left-leaning. And the actual truth is that, going on voting records alone, people in the US mainly vote based on whether they live in more or less densely populated regions. The institutions you've mentioned are all Democrat-leaning because they are predominantly located in more urban areas. Which makes sense, since the policies that Democrats generally support are all more effective at higher population densities.

[slingnow]

I wonder what it's like to have such a naive black and white view of the world. You speak of left and right like it's a fantasy movie with some long narrative about good and evil. And you speak as though the concept of right and left has been an unchanging thing ("the right has been doing this for centuries"). Do you believe you are some stoic warrior engaged in a centuries long battle for some ideal?