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Comment by Datenstrom | Hacker News Reader

The personal attacks and especially acting like dog walking is some lowly profession is just disgusting. Anyone doing anything "ambitious" is only being held up by the support of many others making just as meaningful contributions. A dog walker provides a great service to a community that impacts many peoples lives by keeping their companions, which provide emotional support and boost their productivity, healthy and happy. IMHO this is exactly the toxic attitude causing the movement.

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It's not so much that the problem is being a dog walker, it's that she's a dog walker who only works 20-25 hours a week and believes people should work even less. And that her response to Fox News's question about whether they were being lazy was "Laziness is a virtue". This mod made previous posts about how she literally sleeps on the job[1], so this isn't about a noble career choice, it's just about laziness. She was unprepared, wouldn't look at the camera, showed up disheveled, and didn't even make her bed before the interview. Multiple times the mods had polled the community about who should give interviews, and the response was overwhelmingly that no one should. The mods thought they knew better, and this was the result.

Essentially the issue here is that the subreddit started years ago not as a discussion of worker rights reforms, but of people wanting to figure out how to work as little as possible, period. The meaning was literally on the tin. As the pandemic wore on redditors joined the sub to complain about their jobs, their burnout, and advocate for worker rights and reforms. But a look at the sub's about section or the sub's mods made it clear those posts weren't what the sub was originally about. And all it took was an interview with the longest standing mod to make that clear.

Now the sub is private, and /r/WorkReform will hopefully actually stand for something.

1. https://i.imgur.com/XsHDFFN.jpg

Thanks for the missing context I haven't been following the news around this in any detail. Also, I agree it was politically a bad move and she should have expected it and prepared better. Just him mocking aspiring to be a dog walker really revolted me. I deeply appreciate everyone who does things for me so I can be doing other things that interest me no matter what they might be.

walking dogs for living is surely a valid life choice, it's just not a type of career you would expect from leader of a movement.

As far as I can see, this person didn't act like a leader of the movement at all except by founding the subreddit and deleting the inevitable spam and porn links. Does they have any posts where they is acting like a leader?

No, but I think that's part of the problem. The movement to abolish or reform work (it's a big tent and I don't agree with everyone or everything about it) is a leaderless movement, but in taking this interview, Doreen set herself up to be perceived as a leader by the movement's enemies (I say "enemies" because the Fox audience is surely hostile to the idea).

I'm not sure why it's not a reasonable career for someone leading a movement. Unless/until the movement can pay them to be full time, they have to do something to eat. I would imagine people leading a movement would prioritize a lower number of work hours to distract from that and a flexible schedule.

That said, this appears to be a mod of a subreddit, not the leader of a movement.

If someone like this individual is your ideal of a leader, more power to you. And one _can_ really be a leader while doing something menial (look at Buddha for example), but there has to be something more to a person than walking dogs. And that is what reporter tried hard to uncover, but of course it was interpreted as him trolling. But he was really onto something. You might want to work something minimal, but that's not the end goal. Remember the guy who was promoting the "4 hour work week"? He was not advocating to just sit and do nothing, he was saying - work less so that you can do things you like. And that is what reporter tried to uncover - ok, so one works 20 hours a week - why? what's the purpose? Have any hobbies? Do something exciting remaining time? Raising children, boating, hiking, playing sports, meditating, flying a kite, partying, travelling - WHAT is it that you do now that you have so much extra time? And it turned out that this individual has no answer, which likely means that the answer is "wasting". And that's the most damaging revelation in the whole interview - you cheat your employer, you are a parasite on society, and is that for some higher purpose? Nope, not at all. People working 90 hours a week have more exciting and fulfilling lives

I specifically said that this person wasn't a leader - I said that walking dogs while leading a movement was a reasonable choice. That is, this person isn't a leader, but it's unrelated to the fact that they are a dogwalker.

You seem to have watched a different interview than I did. I don't recall seeing the interviewer ask about what else they did with their time off. I saw the interviewer accuse the person of being lazy and ask if they had higher career aspirations.

> And it turned out that this individual has no answer, which likely means that the answer is "wasting"

I have no idea how hard it is to be the starting mod of a 1.4 million person subreddit, but I guess it requires some amount of work.

> you are a parasite on society,

I don't even understand what that means.

”Essentially the issue here is that the subreddit started years ago not as a discussion of worker rights reforms, but of people wanting to figure out how to work as little as possible, period”

What else are worker rights in the 2020s? We only have one life, why not enjoy it like the men in suits?

I personally agree that our goal should be not having to work to live. Making a "living" should not be a thing. People should work because they want to work, or because they want a higher amount of resources and comfort than the basic level provides. That said, that position is one that Fox News would be happy to make a field day of for their viewers, especially if they get someone who can't coherently argue for it, and that's exactly what they got.

Where does the 'basic level' of resources and comfort come from, if one does not work ? I agree that life shouldn't be all about work, surely some form of work is essential to be able to provide the basics, even if that work is farming your own land to grow your own food.

Anyone expecting even a basic level of anything without being willing to contribute at all is not demonstrating good behaviour within society.

According to a random source, in 1991 some 44% of the world population worked in agriculture, and 28% did in 2018. That's 16% of the world that doesn't have to do anything to ensure the 'basic level' of food resources. I'm sure other resources have seen a (smaller) drop. We could have 20 hour workweeks in the 2000's like predicted in early 1900's, 'we' just didn't 'chose' to do so. That or retirement at 45 instead of 65.

> Anyone expecting even a basic level of anything without being willing to contribute at all is not demonstrating good behaviour within society.

Philosophically, why is that? Second question, what should we do about trust fund babies who never contribute anything other than a demand for yachts?

Who's stopping you?

I'm anti-work in the sense, that there are too many bullshit jobs, income discrepancy is way too high and across the board, jobs require a large amount of in my opinion unreasonable things of their workers, like believing in the vision on the surface, showing up everyday at specific hours etc. Nonetheless, I like working, even in the range of 50+ hours a week, I just also think that our society would be much better if I and others weren't forced to do so to survive. The thing is that lazy people are exactly on of the biggest inhibitors of reforms in that direction.

A smart engineer is a lazy engineer. This isn't a statement about how laziness isn't a vice. It is about having a sensible goal.

I believe we have enough useless productivity enhancers that really lack perspective.

A safe and healthy workplace is one thing. Also, a stable schedule (which may actually involve advocating for more working hours). To say that workers' only concern is that they have to actually work is a rather blinkered perspective I think.

Separately, I'm not sure who you are referring to by "the men in suits" but the large majority of men in suits I know (lawyers, accountants, finance professionals) work crazy hours.

Here's the thing though: Our social and economic systems are founded on RIGHTS. The person saying "I don't wanna work bullshit jobs to afford a decent life and following my passion" relies on the exact same rights as the person saying "I refuse working at all towards any goal simply because I can."

These specific anti-work people may literally be just lazy, but by pushing that agenda, they are naturally advocating for workers' rights. It doesn't actually matter what their motivations (or lacks thereof) are; Only the rights matter.

Similarily, with Universal Basic Income you will surely get some people who simply engage in indefinite hedonism, but it is absolutely worth it for the effects of UBI on everybody else.

I think that's the whole point that any amount of work that is obligatory to survive is too much.

Showing a person who opposes work in current mainstream culture will only end up with mixture of laughter, indignation and branding him as lazy.

It's very similar to the reaction you'd get few decades ago if you showed a black man who thinks he's people.

Evereybody in our culture was brainwashed with supposed virtues of being compelled to work. Noble struggle of providing.

All while 99% of our goods are made by machines and chemistry, with rich fully allowed to capture as much of the value produced by those machines and processes as they can.

All of that is just a modern version of feudalism. Better than any earlier system (same way feudalism was for its time) but still crap.

In the future anti-work in the style "I don't care, fu, where's my robot that covers all the work I don't freely choose to do" will be a mainstream view. And working people of today will just be a bunch of grumpy boomers lamenting that youngsters have no ethics.

I'm 42 but I know where the wind blows.

> In the future, anti-work in the style of "where's my robot that does all work I don't freely choose to do"

Maybe someday. This was one of the common optimistic promises of the space age (along with "power too cheap to meter") that the 70s smothered like a wet blanket.

This promise is already overdue as much as global warming action.

It won't happen until people demand it.

If everyone worked 25 hours a week, dog walking would not even exist as a job. Literally anyone can do it as long as they can walk. Let's not pretend it's a noble contribution to society here, it's objectively speaking something a 15 year old teenager can do.

Agreed. I am almost happy that CS has an increasingly bad reputation because I detest the hype and the impact of parts of the industry. To be honest I smiled a bit at the thought that dog walker is an occupation in the US, but why the heck not. You are right that it is toxic to condemn it. Perhaps it is even jealously of office terrorists.

Still, the judgement will come anyway, even if you believe being a dog walker is much better than being a slimy Fox News anchor.

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