Really, I just want a 9-to-5, instead of a 9-to-8 + "oh hey quick question" notification from Slack at 11.
Second consideration, no one opts in to capitalism. You are simply born into a situation with scarce access to natural resources (fenced off by the rich and powerful). Now, it only seems fair to me that a person has to ability to opt out, if we wanted to level the playing field between workers and owners. That is the price of civilization.
However, you cannot opt out of socialism. "Not having a job" is illegal in socialist countries. Don't like the job that was assigned to you by some bureaucrat? Want to start a mini-free market with your friends? Too bad, the alternative is the labor camps.
The border guards in capitalist countries are there to prevent illegal immigration into the country. The border guards in socialist countries are there to keep people from escaping.
Socialism at its core is simply the social ownership and democratic control of the means of production.
It's pretty common to consider social democracy a form or derivative of socialism, and personally I think its the form of government that has come closest to the socialist ideals, even though they didn't fully implement it the way classical socialists or communists imagined.
Communism just replaced the capitalists with a political elite. There's no difference between communism in practice, and simply one big corporation running everything. The people didn't gain social ownership, and certainly not democratic control.
Planned economy was naive. But having a democratic state have majority ownership in large, key corporations that compete in an otherwise free market gets to the social ownership/democratic control part, but without the oppressive government part that inevitably results from the naive approach to achieving socialist ideals.
> you can get some likeminded people together and start a commune
You still have to buy the land. Probably you wouldn't have too much trouble finding relatively cheap and fertile land still, but it might be getting harder. It's not like you can just settle down wherever and live off the land.
I think the main problem here is that if you'd like to grow a non-capitalist economy, you have absolutely no state support. All laws are written with capitalism assumed. So non-capitalist approaches have little chance to grow beyond a single commune. In fact, even if you tried to grow a new capitalist economy (in the sense of doing trade, not in the sense of Marx' definition), which isn't the state sanctioned variety of capitalism, you'd probably get jailed. Try starting a set of communes that trade goods with your own gold-standard currency, see what happens.
So no, you can't opt out. You, personally, if you have enough money, can perhaps do a big one-time purchase which will let you partly opt out for just you and maybe a few other people. But you don't really get to have any economic activity with more than a handful of people.
> or you can go sleep on a park bench and panhandle
I don't think that's what the parent post had in mind. That's not really opting out at all. You're completely dependent on capitalism for surviving that way, even if you don't have a job yourself.
This is patently false. If I go find a nearby piece of unused arable land to farm the police will arrest me and throw me in jail. If I try to trade milk for bread with my neighbor the police will arrest me and throw me in jail. If I build a house using indigenous materials the police will arrest me and throw me in jail.
Not immediately, but if I stick to my guns in any of these practices the legal path ends with me in jail. Maybe I can avoid enforcement through secrecy, but that doesn't make it any less illegal.
Many counties in the U.S. have made it illegal to live outside the capitalist system.
And your suggestion that no one will hassle you for sleeping on a park bench is completely absurd. People sleeping on park benches are perhaps the biggest target of police harassment of anyone.
That does not mean you are not part of the capitalist society anymore. You have to get enough capital to get land and you will have to continue paying taxes.
It's more akin to playing socialism than actually living in it.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS
Employment in agriculture (% of total employment) of the USA: %2.
If we could provide shelter and clothing with similar efficencies, the question of having to work just to survive ends up in a very different place than it has done historically.
Also: shameless plug for my blog post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467783
I'm a staunch free market supporter, but OP is right: you're lucky if you like this competitive society we were born in. If you don't like our rules, we screw you. You can't just up and move to a fertile plot of land without anyone bothering you, anymore. The least we can do is recognize that.
We have the resources as a society, so scarcity is not a compelling retort. Secondly, the resources are being used anyway (welfare, prison, police), arguably inefficiently and can be done without needless suffering and waste of human potential.
If the owner class is going to close access to resources we need to live, it is the right of the worker class to break the social order. Your assertion that people who recognize this hierarchy of power as "childish" seems unfair. And the real reason why basic income is untenable for the rich is that it gives too much negotiating power to those who work for a living, because they would not die in the streets if they were to opt out. That reality greatly undermines any notion of freedom in the economic sense. Time is money and it seems the rich get to take both from the poor with impunity.
edit since I can't reply: Did you read my comment? Somehow you are under the strange perception that the rich people, who own literally almost everything are at the worse end of the deal wrt to subsidizing sustenance living for the poor. To answer your question: anyone can grow the food, but no one will be forced to.
Does it occur to you that the owners are actually doing nothing (if they choose) while everyone else grows THEIR food and provides an endless list of goods and services? I see you don't have a problem with this system, which is strange since you are so insistent that everyone must work for their food.
This line of reasoning isn't very useful, since it doesn't matter what is "right" or "just", only what's realistic or at least possible. The "worker class" can't break the social order, or at least not in a way that improves their situation.
It's far too soon to say how Brexit and Trump will ultimately play out. Scrapping the TPP for example (the TTIP already having been killed by the same forces).
Torches, gasoline, and guns do wonders to motivate social change.
suppose for a moment that everybody has fulfilling work in their lives, or they are independently wealthy. suddenly, nobody wants to be garbage men, or work the counter at mcdonalds, and so on. in the case of the garbage men, local communities won't have much choice: they will either have to pay more, or make the job more attractive somehow: better trucks, better working hours, and so on. and maybe fast food places just won't be economically viable anymore, if you can't get high school kids to work for you for practically nothing. no big loss. and if it turns out that some people do perceive that as a big loss, then prices are going to go up, instead.
there doesn't have to be soul-crushing jobs. that's just a consequence of the societal rules we live under right now.
Actually, the only reason that there are crap jobs is that someone needs to do the crap job. If that wasn't the case, no one would pay you to do it. The whole point of money is to make people do things they wouldn't normally want to do - like farm, clean toilets, kill a cow, or build buildings in the rain. And it's a good thing that money does that, it keeps us fed. It keeps society moving.
Well, of course it has to be full of complexities and life melodrama; this is Bukowski after all. It is his trademark.
But his life story has a beautiful twist, which unfortunately is not covered in OP's piece. From the interview[1] with John Martin, his longtime friend and editor, and the guy who paid the $100 per month:
"We sat down with a little piece of paper. I sat there with a pen, and he listed out all of his monthly expenses—and you've got to remember, this was 1965, when his rent was $35 a month. He had $15 in child support, $3 for cigarettes, $10 for liquor, and another $15 for food. And yet, even though that sounds pitifully small, at the time he was feeding himself and had nice clothes, drove a very old car, and lived in this completely or partially destroyed unit in East Hollywood. He could get along on $100 a month. I was only earning $400 a month, so I was giving him 25 percent of my income. But as soon as the thing took off we did much better.
At the very end, I paid him a retainer so I wouldn't owe him some horrible amount of money. Eventually I paid him $10,000 every two weeks. So he went from $100 every month to $10,000 every two weeks, and then, at the end of the year, I'd make up whatever I still owed him. Later, the really big money came in when we started to sell his books for movies and stuff like that."
[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bukowskis-longtime-publis...
If you disable notifications you won't feel the urge to reply to messages. You can't reply to what you can't see.
If anyone questions your loyalty, explain that jobs come and go, but you [and your family etc] are forever. If they keep pushing, explain that you will gladly behave like a cofounder in exchange for a paltry 20% stake in the company.
They usually leave you alone after that.
Caveat: this only works if you're good at what you do and difficult to replace.
So it only works for a minority of people then. I'd also say "or difficult to replace", the ones that are good at what they do tend to make themselves replaceable.
But if you're just stacking boxes, you might not have enough leverage.
Everyone who reads HN probably has enough leverage to set boundaries.
I'm reading this at work while installing windows updates on a desktop PC for a client, don't be so sure.
Being a scapegoat can be very profitable.
How does the saying go again? Nobody ever got fired fot buying IBM? Something like that.
Being the scapegoat is a valuable service if you do it well.
Employers, customers, and coworkers tend to overestimate the importance of their issue. Employees tend to underestimate how much they can push back, prioritize, or say "no". The answer is not long working hours.
If everyone is accustomed to your 9-8 work hours, it might take time to roll back... but it can be done.
And if your company refuses to give you a reasonable work-life balance? Leave.
Works like a charm.
In my case, my personal and work mobile phones are one the same (company pays for data), so I'm expected to be at least Slack-responsive during business hours.