So, in honor of Doreen getting kicked off of the sub, I managed to finally get the motivation to read her book, Abolish Work: A Lazy Exposition of Philosophical Ergophobia. if you're wondering why it says Nick Ford in the author name, it's because she's trans, and Nick is her old name. So same person, different gender. I at least try to respect gender identities, so...I will be going by her preferred name and pronouns.
Anyway, most of this book was basically a collection of anti work essays she collated, but I do want to focus on her closing statements. IN this closing statement, I made the following points I want to address.
1) She opposes UBI because she fears a world in which labor doesn't have the power to fight back due to automation.
2) She supports "game-ifying" work, basically turning work into play.
3) She supports anarchism, but doesn't have a super clear view of what an actual anarchistic world would look like
So, without further ado, to address these points.
1) She opposes UBI because she fears a world in which labor doesn't have the power to fight back due to automation.
Her logic here is a direct criticism on my anti work vision, which is why I felt compelled to address this. Basically it goes like this. If we have a UBI, and it leads to a less work centric world, automation will happen, but the means of production will remain in the hands of the powerful. She fears this will cause the world to fall into dystopia, in which the gains of UBI are not distributed well due to UBI being a poverty level UBI, and jobs disappearing. So she fears a world of extreme income inequality, and also the fact that in such a world, labor would lose their biggest strength, their ability to strike and take direct action via companies.
This is such...a leftist take on things. It almost seems like it isn't anti work at all. As I see it, the left romanticizes labor. They see the struggle of the worker against capitalism as essential, and that makes me question how anti work they actually are. We should celebrate technological unemployment in a sane society. More technological unemployment means more freedom. And it means less work.
Now, distribution in such a society in the future is problematic. But...that's for future generations to figure out. As I see it, we'll never see this world in our lifetimes, assuming you're 20 or older and you're reading this. Work, in the foreseeable future, will remain in some form, and while I see it changing drastically over the rest of my life, there will almost always be some work to do. Whether you can live on those wages is questionable, given I see traditional employment being replaced by the gig and service economy for most, but there will always need to be work done. Again, my UBI is only a poverty line level UBI for a reason. And a huge part of that is because we still need labor. In the future, the social contract might need to be rewritten. And I'm okay with that. UBI and human centered capitalism is my goal, but as I've stated before, this goal is only valid for maybe the next 50-100 years. After that it might just become another old ideology where a new ideology comes around to replace it. And maybe by then, socialism or a much higher UBI with much higher levels of taxation would make sense. It doesn't now, arguably, but in the future it would.
Why not pursue leftism now? Well, because socialism, given the current needs of society, sucks. Moderate socialism like market socialism solves nothing to me, and extreme socialism leads to tyranny. And anarchism, well much like Doreen, I cant even wrap my head around how it would WORK. And if I cant figure that out, as I see it, I have no business advocating for it. I only support ideas I know that work. Look at my inflation article about UBI. I was able to say, okay if this happens, it means this went wrong and this is how you fix that. Thats what I mean by being able to understand things. I understand how the policy works, have an idea of the outcomes, and I know how to course correct. For me, Doreen's concern is a concern for the next generation. By the time it actually happens, we will be long dead, and the people working on that set of problems can research and figure out where they wanna go from here. It's not my concern now.
I feel like leftists tend to be weird like that. They're just so wrapped up in their ideology like obsession with labor and blah blah blah that it compromises their anti work vision. They cant wrap their heads around a world in which people laboring isnt leverage against the system, because that's how their system works. I wonder if they can even comprehend of a true anti work world, because their obsession with labor makes them rigid in that sense.
2) She supports "game-ifying" work, basically turning work into play.
Doreen, being an anarchist, has a weird view of work. She opposes wage slavery, which is valid, but still assumes work has to be done, and in her hypothetical anarchistic world, sees work being done in a playful way. Basically, by making tasks "play", it makes them more fun to do them, increasing incentives without monetary rewards. But...idk. Like, to me, work is work. Wage labor and being forced to work for a boss adds an additional level of oppression to it, but honestly...I'm both anti wage labor and against work as a concept. I support technological innovation to make our lives easier. We used to fill our days with mundane tasks like washing clothes. Then we made clothes washers and then we started doing something else. See the problem? We create labor saving devices over time, but we never truly enjoy them, because our work oriented mindsets make more work. We're like, okay, this freed up time for us to do other work, so now we do other work. But for me, I think there comes a time when we should just save time and spend more time doing NOT work. And again, thats why I support automation. Doreen sees automation as a potential issue, but I dont. I see it as liberation. And if we can phase out work over time through automation without just insisting on making more work, we would all be better off for it.
Turning work into games doesn't make it not work for me, sorry. if anything a problematic trend ive noticed in games is they're turning more into work. They are adding tons of artificial grinding systems and battle passes and fomo to keep people playing and grinding for artificial rewards. Sometimes I play games not because I want to but because i wanna get a certain reward before the time limit runs out.It's BS, and it makes games less fun.
If you do the opposite, turning work into games, that might soften the blow, but I'll still know it's work. Because the tasks would be inherently not fun to me.
3) She supports anarchism, but doesn't have a super clear view of what an actual anarchistic world would look like
So she basically admitted her conception of an anarchistic anti work world is fuzzy because she can't fully grasp the concept of anarchism...yeah no crap. I dont support anarchism for the same reasons. It's a problem with leftism in general. They have a lot of theories about how capitalism bad because xyz, but when they have to come up with solutions that work, they end up speaking in generalities and dont understand what they're advocating for.
With me, I stick with what works. Which is why i support human centered capitalism. I can understand things like UBI as policy, predicting benefits, costs, as well as how this could shift the country culturally. And I can anticipate problems, develop countermeasures for them, and design the policy to minimize and avoid them as much as possible in the first place. WHen you advocate for something as extreme as abolishing the state and the work place...you better have done your homework. Not doing so would lead to potential disaster. There's a joke among liberals of the anti far left about "what would your job be on the commune after the revolution?" and the answer is always some theory teacher. Heck Doreen said on fox she wishes to teach philosophy so typical leftist in that sense. But in reality, we need people to grow crops, and gather natural resources, and make things, and provide services to people. And these guys dont understand that if they got their way, they'd probably be forced in more oppressive ways to do those things.
Look, wage slavery sucks, but it beats some communist forcing me to work or go to the gulag by gunpoint. These revolutions never go the way leftists think they do, and often lead to a worse world. I know some out there support the likes of China, and the USSR, and North Korea. Doreen doesn't, she seemed to explicitly dislike tankies in my discussions with her and her friends on r/antiwork before, but...ya know? Those kinds of left wing radical shifts tend to...go that way. Even if you dont intend for them. Precisely because you guys dont actually know what the post revolution landscape will be like. And as the reality of things sets in, what ends up happening is some tyrant auth left comes in, realizes we need crops grown, and resources mined, blah blah blah, so they force everyone to, by gunpoint.
Actual leftist objectives are horrifying in practice. This is why I'm not a leftist. These guys advocate for ideas that cant work, and in practice might end up far worse than they advocate for.
I know people like Doreen dont think it will turn out this way. But....we need policies that actually get to our goals in concrete ways. People might fear a future where capitalists own the means of production and jobs are automated. And maybe it is a concern. But that concern is generations away as I see it. My goals would work with the current system, to accomplish that which can be accomplished now. UBI can happen. I did the math, I studied the likely effects, I did my research. Leftists might not always like the implications of it within their ideology, but on the flip side I dont think they've thought out their ideology logistically themselves.
I dont see the revolution as leading to a positive outcome. I cant imagine this ideal anarchistic world where everyone plays and kinda sorta does some work. No, if we want an anti work future, it's gonna realistically happen through automation and safety nets like UBI. And that's why I support what we do. That isn't to say I have the answer to Doreen's concern. But let's face it, Doreen's concern isn't gonna materialize in our lifetimes, if it ever does, and if it does, well, perhaps some form of communism or socialism or anarchism would make more sense. Or perhaps they can just lobby as citizens for higher levels of UBI. Either way that's a battle for the distant future as I see it. For now, if we could just get a UBI, that would be a game changer in itself. Maybe in 2122 the issues will be different where the concerns are different, but in 2022, it's the path for the future as I see it.
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