Once I saw a guy arguing for pure capitalism because otherwise the state would have to force people to work with threats of incarceration or whatever.
It's like some sort of trolley problem delusion. It is fine shoving desperate people into whatever jobs they can get, but only if the Invisible Hand does it. It's fine if the threat is homelessness and starvation, but only if the Invisible Hand does it.
Why the hell haven’t you guys shifted the movement name over to work reform after what happened on tv? It’s not helping
Exactly! I have a genetic illness that caused congenital deformities and injuries and disability later in life, starting around my teens thanks to puberty.
From an early age my relationship with work was distorted because I found myself trapped in the gap between two pathways. I was obviously capable of work, with the right treatment and support I had a lot of potential. But I was disabled, and I required expensive supports and medical intervention, and under the public healthcare system there reaches a point of disability and limitations in capacity that you are written off by the system. Shoved in a residential group home, given a pension below the poverty line, and expected not to try. (genuinely, we're expected not to try, if someone on a disability pension works a job, they can loose their pension, which is many cases is also tied to housing and access to medical services)
I'd flip between the two systems, I'd have a great few months with regular access to treatment, I'd get a job plan from the dole office, I'd sit through work readiness courses, I'd be getting healthier and looking forward to working and being a good little contributor to society. Then I'd hit a waiting list for my medical care, my health would slip, I'd be re-assessed by the welfare department and deemed too disabled to work, my job plan would be shredded and I'd get a pension support plan. Then I'd get to the top of the wait list, resume treatment, and get back to getting to work.
I didn't start a "real job" until I was 24, it was a call centre gig and I near killed myself trying to do it.
It wasn't even hard. It was a true 9-5 (no overtime, no bullshit) and you mentally didn't need to bring any of it home with you. It was easy for me, but my body decided it was too much. My health suffered and it took years to fully recover, with me barely pulling myself together here and there for gig work in between being bounced on and off the disability pension system.
The whole endeavour was far more expensive to tax payers than a system like UBI. Processing my case 70 times because the disability support, and employment support eligibility requirements are so strict and the lines between streams so black and white took a lot of administrative resources.
I've been in my current industry for 10 years this November. I work part time, 12-20 hours a week depending on my health. I'm highly successful in my field because I'm working within my body and mind's means and playing to my strengths. I'm a whole person with a life outside work and I bring that range of experiences to my job, enriching what I bring to my organisation - which is good, because my job is a mutual exchange between me and my employer, it's not exploitive towards me the worker, which further prevents burn out for me.
But we exist within the capitalist system of funding and our wages are set by the department of health and human services. I make $34,000AUD a year and it's not enough to survive.
But if I work any harder my body will not survive.
I'm asking to do what I can do for my community, while living a safe existence.... Not being forced to choose between litteraly breaking my back working for someone else's greedy profit, or starving in a tent (though realistically, a lot of people are doing both)
Yeah no.
That is not what most here say when they talk about it. It's immediately "working for a salary is slavery!" (Literally that I've been told literally dozens of times now here)
Everyone can agree with the second paragraph, most people here subscribe to the first paragraph, though.
Personally I am in favour of the former definition, just substitute "othet people" with "automation"
I take issue with all the comments suggesting that the movement should be rebranding into "work reform", because reforming is absolutely not the point. Speaking as someone who subscribes to the anti-work movement, my problem is not that much with current laboral laws and, in fact, I'd go as far as saying that all jobs I have had so far have been reasonably respectful with me except for maybe one.
My problem with that is that we consider normal that, in order to deserve leading a meaningful life, we must be working for someone richer or for the economy. Our life must be dedicated to constantly providing products and services so that we deserve to enjoy what little is left of it. In more concrete terms, I don't like that we must get into wage labor in order to have access to fundamental goods such as food, water, housing, amenities or even free time. I believe all human beings living in a society capable of providing these are entitled to them, I also believe that our current society is perfectly capable of that, and that the only reason why the working class only gets conditional access or no access at all to fundamental goods are bullshit "number go up" reasons. I don't buy for a second that homeless people deserve their status because "they didn't work hard enough". Wage labor being such a central axis of our current way of life is what I'm strongly opposed to.
Furthermore, I regard the power balance between employer and worker to be fundamentally broken, and no reform can do away with that. When you sign a contract and accept the terms of a job, are you really accepting them or just avoiding the alternative, the threat of homelessness? For a lot of people who can't find jobs easily, not signing might mean starving or losing their home. How is that not coercion? Sure, if you don't accept the terms of your current job, you can just look for another (even though this is not a reasonable posibility for a lot of people), but any job will offer as little pay with as many working hours as possible because, due to the lack of meaningful consent, all employers can get away with that. And we accept it as normal and reasonable.
I also don't believe that abolishing wage labor will make people spend their whole lives not adding anything to society. If given enough free time, people will get bored of not doing anything and engage in work that they actually enjoy, of their own actual volition. I know I get involved into a lot of things given long enough vacations or subsidized unemployement. Now imagine if we just could get organized to find out what tasks need to be done, and each picked the tasks that they geniunely want to do, without being coerced. Without rich assholes and investors getting involved and often forcing us to work long hours on tasks that won't add anything to the world, but they make money.
"Reforming" laboral laws is absolutely not enough for this. Sure, I'd appreciate a reduction in my working hours, an increase in my salary, more vacations, etc but even if those goals were met, I'd still be out there protesting for the reasons I've just stated. Work, as we understand it today, is fundamentally broken and cannot be fixed without it being abolished first.
You may not agree with me, mind you, and have a more moderate position stating that work must not be abolished as it can be meaningfully reformed. But then you are subscribing to a different ideology altogether. Which is legitimate and can be argued for, but it does not match the ideology of the anti-work movement. Sure, under late capitalism, some short term goals may match, but the long term goals are entirely different. My point being, "work reform" would be a terrible rebranding for the movement because it stands for a different ideology entirely.
You guys got some Doritos?
If I sort this community by top for the week, this is the top post.
The second post hilariously concludes "All work is degrading."
20
Kings fucking love doritos
