What clicked is that the idea of being oppressed and dominated by other humans is the sacred axiom of a faith that defines an identity, and a subculture that is becoming a new world religion. Questioning it is like asking someone who believes in God why they can't just choose to be a better person, and maybe not only is it unncessary to believe in what appears to be a kind of divine North Korea to be good, but perhaps that aspect is even getting in their own way. That axiomatic gap is what makes views so irreconcilable.
I had some anarchist friends in the 90s who would go to socialist rallies and chant, "Lon-ger chains! Big-ger cag-es!" This went over as well as you might expect, but these antiwork people seem similar. If they persuade people to learn to negotiate for themselves, good on them, but if they convince people to sacrifice their agency and autonomy in the name of appeasing an idol that represents human domination, to me they're just another cargo cult. Still very funny though, well done.
I don’t know what line of work your friends were in, but prior to the current economic dustup, negotiation wasn’t a thing for most jobs. And I don’t mean that it was hard or rare. I mean you literally had no option to negotiate. Companies job offers were take it or leave it.
That sort of widespread treatment of workers as cogs and not an individual is part of the anger of the antiwork movement
Religious or spiritually oriented people don't have this issue as much, as their primary relationship and identity is to something greater than their circumstances, and this gives them faith in alternatives, which means leverage in that bargaining relationship with the world.
They're not just tugging on a leash and calling it freedom, as for them faith itself means there is no leash. There's an underlying belief in the punk and antiwork mentality that unless someone has suffered like they have, we can't understand their truth, but this ignores that nobody would choose to suffer like they did unless they had first given up their identity as having been created by someone invested in their happiness (e.g. being actually loved). It produces some great music and culture, but it's based on a solvable problem.
The whole punk ethos is predicated on an appeal for dignity by people who first believe they don't have it because it was taken from them somehow. Someone made them rage, probably with shame or humiliation. The political beliefs that flow from it are a full psychosexual orientation. I'm not saying they're wrong, but I am saying it is a distinct experience that can't always be shared, and that's what makes reconciling it with opposition almost impossible. Didn't expect to go there, but it's all pretty Freudian.
> A corpse rules society – the corpse of labour. All powers around the globe formed an alliance to defend its rule: the Pope and the World Bank, Tony Blair and Jörg Haider, trade unions and entrepreneurs, German ecologists and French socialists. They don’t know but one slogan: jobs, jobs, jobs!
I would argue the punk movement is not about rage but about anarchy and disobedience towards a conformist society. It's more about being an offensive social drop-out, a splinter under the bourgeois' skin - Not out of rage but out of revulsion.
Of course, everyone on HN has their anecdote about their brother's cousin's girlfriend's former roommate successfully negotiation $1M in stock options at Facebook, but those cases are likely 4-5 standard deviation outliers.
>Anti-work people as well as punks at least to some extent usually strife for a world of generosity and what comes with it.
I see a lot of expectations for others to be generous to them not the other way around, its the have nots that are complaining, the haves are able to fund this dream of making this true through charities or social experiments like places here. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/973653719/california-program-...
>I like the idea of a world full of generosity
I do too, I like the idea of world peace, no crimes, and kindness everywhere. I've lived in places that had that kindness in poorer areas than where I live in "shitty countries". If you localize and select, its not impossible or even rare.
>I currently live a happy stable privileged life and would still love to see my income to support a basic income for example.
In Denmark, your dreams can come true, they tax at high rates (over 50% sometimes), have great social support, and then internet tells me it has some of the lowest corruption rates or is the lowest.
I don't see that at all. If you follow the /r/antiwork subreddit, then it's really not about people expecting free stuff or generosity for nothing in return. People just don't want to be treated like shit by their managers.
People expect not to be fired because they refused to come in on their day off for the 3rd time in a row. People expect to be able to attend family events that they told their boss weeks in advance. People just expect to be treated decent by their employer.
Nobody seriously expects stuff for free. Anti-work is about people saying, if you keep walking all over me just to feel good about yourself, then go do the work yourself, I don't need the paycheck enough to deal with your abuse.
AKA expecting others to be generous.
>People expect not to be fired because they refused to come in on their day off for the 3rd time in a row.
They could take days off that aren't scheduled if they were skilled or non disposable workers or if they chose a job without a shitty boss. Whose fault is it to work with a shitty boss? If you stay in an abusive relationship, who chose to stay?
Not treating someone like shit isn't the result of generosity, it's the result of not being an arsehole.
That’s rude and presumptious, like the very behavior you dislike.
My default is not to expect others to be nice and generous, like if you work for an asshole do you expect them not to be an asshole? Is that an intelligent assumption?
I have realistic expectations.
For a line cook at McDonald’s, yes, replacement is easy so wages are lower and fixed.
For an account manager in a highly relational field, it is much harder to replace this role and so that individual could leverage that skill-scarcity into better wages.
A group. You negotiate with a group. coordinated actions by groups of people or the threat of coordinated actions can be a form of negotiation. That's what the antiwork movement is about to me.
You couldn't be more wrong. First some numbers just for laughs:
Greatest weight lifted was 6270 lbs or 2844 kg while the safe limit for average men is 55 lbs or 25 kg.
Greatest speed was 43.99 km/h (27.33 mph) while average men do 10 km/h.
Then there is endurance too of course! Forget about strength and speed, 8 hours is a huuuuuge amount of time for any physical effort. Walking one could theoretically do 25 miles or 40 km in 8 hours but nurses walk only 4-5 and that is considered a lot. I'm not aware of any 8 hour races but Aleksandr Sorokin did 308 km in 24 hours which is 3 x 8 hours.
You probably wonder why I compare it to top sports. That is because in my humble opinion it is. If you don't treat physical labor like top sports, if you don't make an effort to adapt all parts of your lifestyle to it, then it you will destroy your body which will bring down productivity dramatically. The average worker is pretty used up.
In many such jobs not going insane also takes a huge effort. Its not as black and white as it seems. Most of us are partially nuts and make a constant effort to preserve sanity. Long before one jumps down the foxcon stairwell the insanity starts eating you.
If we didn't need them we wouldn't have weekends. You would just hire someone willing to work 7 days? Take it or leave it? 15 hour shifts anyone?
Who is the average worker anyway? Are we grouping 20 year olds with 60 year olds here? Your average 60 year old manual laborer (besides the insanity) has a laundry list of permanent injuries that prevent him from doing cardio. The have (besides experience) a high pain tolerance to work with.
Then there is quality. Focus isn't exactly equally divided among men.
Motivation. Besides from ability one can often chose to do less work or chose to do more. The difference between wanting to dot all the i's and waiting for the big bell to ring is huge.
People are also extremely different in how they think about tools and methods. For some they just are, for others they are a half baked work in progress. Everything can potentially be improved. What better time to think about it than during usage? The more mindless the grind the greater the opportunity. You don't have to be a genius, you get 40 hours per week to think about it.
Communication and social skills! I'm pretty good at this if everyone has his eyes on the ball. If everyone else is just waiting for the bell to ring I'm toxic, useless and I hate life. I want to marvel at my accomplishments regardless what the job is.
Ill do one funny story that can only be told in full: While wiring houses I got to see many companies build walls and ceilings. One day a team of 4 showed up that came in running with the largest size plasterboard that one can buy. They carried it inside slapped the first one onto the ceiling in less than 1 minute then ran off to get the second one. The secret of the formula was that the boss was 6.9 and the 3 employees were all over 7 feet tall.
The same day I worked on a different project where 6 old short carpenters with a thousand years of experience between them spend the better part of a week filling up a floor with scaffolding to do exactly the same job. (It was a pain moving my materials and equipment around.) They [had to] use small more manageable plasterboard which requires a lot more wood framing, a lot of sawing and a lot more screws. It took them 4 more days to put in the plasterboard, after that it was the usual patch work of seams that has to be plastered to be presentable.
I didn't see them put in the framing but it was simple by comparison. In 20 min the fast team covered a giant living room. It was surreal to look at. 4 pushed the plate against the ceiling, the 5th guy measured and cut it while they yell at him to work faster. Afterwards they spend 10 min laughing. I ask the entrepreneur among them how he found those giants. In the pub he said, I look over all the heads and point at the tall guy then yell, you should come work for me! What is the work? Well, we drive a lot!
I didn't see them do the wood frame but I wouldn't be surprised if it took them 1 hour. Lets say 2 hours for the whole job: 6 men 8 days vs 4 men 2 hours = 48 days vs 1 day. Almost 50 times more productive.
They are actually for work, just a better kind. It's basically a corporation and capitalist friendly activism and as such is harmless.
Then they seriously need a better slogan than "anti-work".
To extend a metaphor, I think the sales pitch was: "I am offering you liberation, redemption, freedom, and transformation, and all you need to do to achieve it is to be brave and heroic and tug on your leash! What's that you say? You don't have one? Well I have some right here! Just put one on and tug at it, and with enough suffering and blood, you shall overcome! Step right up! This work is guaranteed to set you free, or your money back!" Nobody wants to accept they've been swindled by a deceptive carnival barker working for the leash maker, but in a metaphysical comic book sort of way, I have come to suspect that's precisely what happened.