Reddit's antiwork sub and the online movement to end work
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We conquered the world already. We have enough technology to replace most human labor with automation and enable people to produce entertainment, media, and innovation of their own accord. Instead people run around anxious and impoverished for basically no reason. You would never know humans are at the top of the food chain looking from the outside.
Why not get UBI done, replace the humans with robots, and then actually enjoy our lives?
The same people also conflate "capitalism" with "democracy" and forget that it is actually possible to have the latter without the former.
Hollywood has 10 years or relevance and 20 years of existence as we know it.
Ask your kids who Chris Pratt is. Now ask them who Jeris Johnson is.
Productivity and other arguments aside. I think we still need a fair bit of advancement before this is possible.
We need to reach a point where robots can maintain themselves and all of our complex machinery. The maintenance required for a train engine or train tracks is non trivial for example.
We need advancements in energy. Solar is not enough at it's current state but I have hope it soon will be.
I do feel, we're at a point that, if we could focus a lot of resources, we can drive enough development to give everyone a very high quality of life for free.
At this point,the machinery we make the more machinery we have to maintain. And robots are not at the point where they can do this.
I hear what you're saying, and I agree it is very optimistic.
But is it really? You can fit an RMV into a Redbox machine. You can fit a Dunkins into a machine the size of a 15 yard dumpster.
Then you don't need the train to transport all those employees to work.
What you actually want in society is for as many people as possible to have the means and motivation to contribute to social progress, to keep it as fair as possible. You want more independence, not more dependence.
In my head, universal basic income is more like tax returns, but each month instead of each year. Like a tax refund for food and shelter.
You still need an army. If everyone stops working then our neighbors can just organize their guns together and steal our robots. Unless of course we had a fully autonomous military (techno dystopia "stop right there criminal scum"). But who oversees the military robots? Who oversees the UBI? Somebody has to do the dirty work, and those people will have power, and as we know, people who have power will ultimately abuse it.
Just because there is UBI and most people don't have to enslave themselves to eat doesn't mean people won't want to do something with their lives. Soldiers and officials get UBI plus salary and they are chosen the same way they are now.
It seems that you just want to setup a straw man argument that you can then knock down.
UBI doesn't replace all human labor. It just incentivizes automation and puts people first. You'll still be able to find a job as a mechanic or robot engineer or programmer if you want. Then you can take a paycheck and UBI. But it will be of your own accord instead of forcing you into compliance with wage slavery like we do now.
This is peak techbro arrogance. No, most jobs are not replaceable by code and "simple machines".
UBI by itself is basically a paycheck for doing what you love. Invent a new product. Make projects on github. Write a song. Be happy. Make other people happy.
Plenty of valuable contributions are made outside of traditional "work"
Call it work, call it art, call it whatever you want, but those people aren’t likely to bust their ass so you can enjoy the fruits of their labor while returning nothing.
Because people who owns the capital don't have to work and still hugely profit from society that's why.
Also we innovated and built machinery not capital. Don't confuse the abstraction we use to track ownership with what is actually owned.
Possibilities: Inexperienced young people are made to commit hard and fast to a career path. Once locked in, this choice (in the US at least) often comes with a large financial burden and time. Support is not there to pivot. Immediately after you leave (trade, academic institutions), the culture sets to weighing you down with more debt. By the time you extract yourself from that, it's still hard to pivot because now you're dealing with Ageism and sunk cost (will you recover this productivity and still put enough away to retire?). Even if you decide to bridge that gap, society provides you with absolutely no safety net. The punishment from making the wrong choice as a young dumb kid are harsh.
The "Endless possibilities" is part of the depressing trap. They're _there_, but they're so far out of reach and dangerous that unless you happen to live a charmed life with a deep-pocketed safety net, the risk-reward just doesn't make sense. This is why many in the US want tax-sponsored education and single-payer healthcare, so they can make these pivots and find happiness without having to retire at 80.
On being forced: There is really no sane way to disengage with exchanging labor. Say that I want to drop out and entirely disconnect myself. Say I fully agree to reject the products of society, be alone even unto death, and be self-sufficient. I can't buy a piece of land and sit on it. Eventually the Tax Man will come for me, and if I don't pay, he will take my land, with violence if need be. I cannot go hide in the woods. That land is the property of another or of the government - I will be chased by law enforcement and federal agents. I can't even just ghost through cities who are growing increasingly hostile to homeless populations. The system is powered by violence and coercion, and your only choice is to exchange labor for money. This could be a fair exchange if it lived up to promises. There is a rate where exchanging freedoms for perks makes sense. but a lot of people play entirely by the rules, do everything right, and still end up miserable, trapped and broken.
So yeah, it's forced. If you can't sit back and live on generational wealth or rent on your assets, every job you've ever taken has implicit threat of force behind it. You can make bad-faith arguments about the existence of choice, but choice is an illusion unless the choices presented have a reality where taking that choice makes sense. Cake or Death - what kind of sane person chooses death over cake?
I don't think anti-work is a pit of hopelessness. It's actually far more idealistic in its view that _the pieces are there_ and there are alternatives. Whether you believe that or not is really up you. That this briefly made it on to Hackernews surprised me - Hackernews continues to largely reflect the California Ideology, something that doesn't tend to breed a lot of solidarity outside of its own professions.
https://www.fairwork.gov.au/pay-and-wages/minimum-wages/juni...
It worked well for me. I loved the extra money and had no expenses of my own.
I now work in the upper tier of a similar factory. I discussed with our operations manager getting in some school aged workers to clean. It doesn't work out to be cost effective. We can just get the guys on the floor to clean up. As the guys on the floor cost the same and have already been trained and issued all the required safety equipment.