This is kind of a continuation of my previous article about whether my generation, or I am lazy, and I feel like this is something that requires a lot of clarification.
Among detractors to anti work ideologies, most of them have this knee jerk reaction about the anti work crowd. The fact is, society is so ingrained with the devotion to the concept to work, that it is sacrosanct, and not to be questioned. In their minds, they think, of course we have to work, we've always had to work, what are with these people thinking no one should have to work, how do things get done? It's like their core ideological opposition to us is the fact that they see us abandoning a clear obligation in society for selfish reasons that imperil the common good. This seems to be the most charitable view of the anti-anti work crowd.
But, that's the thing, perhaps, being someone who has left "the cave", maybe it's time to actually question this assumption about society? I'm going to be honest, as I said in my own personal story, I've never been big on the idea of work. I've always treated it with existential dread. I've always seen it as a negative thing. But for a time, I did see it as necessary. And as long as it is necessary, I guess flat out abandoning or rejecting such a calling is, to some extent, immoral. I can see real logic in the "he who does not work does not eat" mentality of old. At one time, if you didn't work, you didn't have enough crops in the winter, and people starved to death. Why not let the people who refuse to work, to starve to death if their laziness imperils a community? In a real, true scarcity oriented economy, the "jobists" as I like to call them have a point. He who does not work, shall not eat. We need to work to survive, because if we don't, we don't survive. It makes sense.
However, I would like to show everyone a chart. See that chart near the top of the page? That's the percentage of the economy working in agriculture over time. Notice something happen around 1800? Well, that's when the industrial revolution and modern capitalism began. And since then, the number of people in agriculture has dropped to under 5% in the most advanced countries. Why is that? Economic growth. But more specifically, what actually is economic growth? We like to define it as the number of people working and the amount of stuff being produced, but over time, what really drives the economy where we can produce more and more stuff...per person? After all, if it were just the number of people, we would still need most people to work in the agricultural sector just to survive. Instead we moved them to other sectors. What allowed this?
One answer: TECHNOLOGY. Agriculture isn't done the way it used to be. Farmers now have machines that have made it possible to mass produce all of the food we need for all, with only like 2-3% of the population. But what of the other people? We moved them to other industries, and they focused on doing other stuff. Nowadays, we have this extremely advanced economy with GDP per capita being $60k+. Even COVID, with its massive layoffs to minimize human activity to minimize spread of the virus, only barely put a dent in this number. Because what really drives economic growth is actually technology.
If anything, that's the problem. As books like Jeremy Rifkin's "The End of Work", and Andrew Yang's "The War on Normal People" have taught me, it's that technological unemployment is a major driver of unhappiness and unrest under capitalism. Yang points to the fourth industrial revolution causing technological unemployment like never before, but this is actually debatable as many jobists will insist that technology might displace jobs but there will always be more jobs in the future. I mean, to some extent, they're right, but that doesn't mean this isn't good for workers. We all know about the luddites, who smashed the machines in England, because the machines took their jobs. African Americans have long been subject to being screwed by technological unemployment, being forced off of farms in the 1960s as machines started picking cotton. So then they went north to make cars. And now machines make the cars, and now Detroit and the like is a massive ghetto. Whites have also been impacted, why do you think West Virginia went from socialist to conservative? Because their livelihoods depend on coal, and coal is a dirty energy source that should go the way of the dodo, but republicans wanna preserve it because...jobs...and because screw liberals and climate change. And as we look at the political instability starting post 2008, I think the big driver is this technological unemployment displacing people. The rust belt is swinging from being blue leaning to being red leaning, as the neoliberal democratic party abandons this area of the country for the areas that are winners in the 21st century economy such as the big cities, and the south/sun belt. And even within the democratic party there is a notable faction (I myself being part of it) that are flat out unhappy with the direction of the democratic party in recent years and decades. As ironically Bill Clinton once said, it's the economy stupid!
The fact is, regardless of whether technological employment will eventually drive half the country out of the workforce or not with no alternative forcing us to implement a basic income, as some would suggest, technology displaces jobs. It displaces livelihoods. And capitalism has always had problems with the distribution of wealth and income. To me, this core issue is related to....jobs, and our obsession with them. Why are we forcing people to continue to work for these private companies who dont give a crap about us, and just use us as de facto slaves, only to throw us away when they're done and hoard all of the wealth? Isn't the problem of the 21st century not one of a lack of resources, like pre-19th century agrarian economics was, but one of a lack of...meaningful employment that pays a decent wage?
Really, isn't employment, the problem? We talk nonstop about creating jobs for the future, as if we should be spending our time finding ways to continue to keep this system of forcing us to work forever, making more jobs, to fuel more economic growth, all while peoples' lives are increasingly precarious, and even worse, EXPENDABLE?!
Really, if we're that expendable, where we can be fired at any time, and replaced, or fired, and not needed, then why do we insist on continuing this pursuit of jobs?
At some point, we really need to have an existential crisis as a society, and that's why I'm anti work. I've gone through all of these existential crises already and I'm just screaming at people to take the black pill already. I'm just so turned off and alienated from this system, that I just can't defend it, and act like everything's fine. It feels...wrong. Like, it's not the rejection of work that makes me feel wrong, that feels authentic, it's the acceptance of the mainstream work ethic that feels wrong. We really are Sisyphus rolling a rock up a hill endlessly for no freaking reason other than we have always done it, and we won't even question it. Our solution to running out of rocks is rather than saying "yay we don't need to roll rocks up hills any more", we make more rocks, because that's somehow easier than confronting the system that is so designed around rock rolling that we punish and condemn anyone who doesn't accept their rock, or doesn't have a rock. Rock rolling is mandatory for society, and don't you dare question it.
Now, at the same time, that's not to say that we don't need anyone working. A common fallacy among the jobists is that they see anti work and are like "well if NO ONE works, how will society survive?" Yeah, we absolutely need some labor. At best we could reduce the work week and just keep the same old system, but in practice, due to geographic barriers, and employer needs, and the whole "our system isn't designed around people working part time" sort of thing, it might be better just to give people a basic income and let them choose what they wanna do.
I'm not an idiot, I'm not saying no one should work ever overnight. It would be nice to eventually reach that point, but it's not something we will do in our lifetimes. But, if we could all work a lot less, or give people a basic income to make work more voluntarily, then that's all well and good.
And that's where I'm at. People have this idea that anti workers are irrational degenerates who are abandoning a necessary social obligation for everyone to partake in. Sorry, we haven't needed everyone working since the 1800s. Work weeks have gotten shorter through the 19th and early 20th century, and at this point the greatest economic challenge we seem to face is...employing everyone.
Idk, I admit, I'm kinda "lazy" in the sense that I really don't wanna work, but at least I'm honest about it. But at the same time, I view my laziness not as a matter of societal dereliction, but of just wanting off of this batcrap insane treadmill already. I mean, if we can literally make a better society where work isn't as necessary, why shouldn't we? It seems to be like people would be more financially secure and better off if we did, and yes, I believe, the stuff will still get made. We can have balance there, and that's all I'm actually for. Balance.
To me, the jobists are the actual immoral ones. They're the ones who wanna force everyone to work, often without guaranteeing them work or a paycheck to live on. That's why I give Bernie so much credit while disagreeing with him on work. At least he understands the basic bare minimum of "if we're going to force people to work, we should give them a decent wage, and healthcare, and we should guarantee work for the unemployed". Again, not the ideal solution since I see jobs programs as inefficient and dystopian, as do the naysayers on the right who are for social darwinism, but that's where I step in and say, "ya know what, instead of giving people jobs digging ditches so they can say they put in their sweat and toil for their bread, let's just give them the bread and let them work if they want more."
But yeah, it's messed up. Our politics are between the people who think that the surplus population should die, vs, the surplus population should be treated decently and integrated into the system. Meanwhile I'm just like "well if there's a surplus, why don't we just give people a little bit so they can survive and let them self determine from there?" No benevolent authoritarianism, no answering the sisyphus problem with more rocks. Just...hey, let's allow anyone who doesnt wanna roll a rock any more not to roll rocks, while still heavily incentivizing people in a positive way to keep rolling rocks.
Anyway. That's how I see it at least. The way I see it, this system is pants on head backwards, and should be heavily rethought in coming years and decades. We literally don't need to work like it's 1800 before. If anything, maintaining the ancient work ethic seems to be the source of most of society's problems these days. If people wanna screw off and not work (within moderation at least), we should let them. It's not like we're all gonna starve when winter comes anyway. When people suffer when winter comes these days, it's because there arent enough good paying jobs available and the system is completely broken and failing people left and right. While poverty (and work) were inevitable for much of human history, in our modern society, both are a societal choice. And I choose a better society that isn't stuck in the past.
That said, I'm not gonna be sorry for being lazy. If anything, lazy people are what drive society forward. As Bill Gates once said, "I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." And you know what? That's what makes GDP per capita go up. Lazy people say instead of breaking my back, I'll make a machine to do the work for me. A lazy person says, instead of worshipping the protestant work ethic, I'm gonna make a society that both gives people freedom while providing for them at the same time. A lazy person asks the hard existential questions of "do we need to live like this any more, and if we don't, why are we still doing so?" And as a lazy person, I wish the rest of you would just take that black pill of laziness and understand where I'm coming from, rather than shaming people who think like me because you're so narrow minded and ignorant with your conception of reality. I wouldn't be for the policies I'm for, if I did not think they were doable, and I did not think they could work. I only spend so much time writing about them (which is a form of work, btw, even if it isn't paid) to show that they can be done. So either get on board, or get out I guess. Your choice.
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