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The Philosophy of Work [pdf]
- robobro 5y agoAbolish work.
- throwawaythrow1 5y agoAnd replace it with? Perhaps we can create a system whereby one exchanges skills for products and services? But then how do we scale such a system... money might work, unless you're advocating for communism
- WHA8m 5y agoNo one said anything about replacing something. Fortunately our systems (assuming we're talking about the west) can evolve and change within, without throwing it off the boat. You can introduce public health care without abolishing capitalism. Same goes for paid maternity leave, supporting unions, etc. In my understanding we're having a political discussion here, not a theoretical one.
- jstx1 5y agoWhat about the people who want to work?
- justalanm 5y agoAbolish "mandatory" work. Now you can keep working if you want to. It was easy.
- burntoutfire 5y agoWork already is not mandatory. Anyone is free to figure out other ways to get food and shelter.
- justalanm 5y agoNot really, can I print money to get food? So, not free, it's just an illusion, at least for 99% of the people.
- burntoutfire 5y agoThere's free food in garbage bins, if you don't want to work for it. There are people who exclusively feed from large stores' garbage, it's totally doable. Although perhaps some people would consider going to the store and getting the food from the trash "work", and will settle for nothing less than a daily instacart delivery.
- WHA8m 5y agoYou can do it and it is illegal in some countries. In Germany for example. EDIT: Ok, so I fired the comment and thought about it more afterwards. What I said is true in most cases. If a store wants to take you to court, they definitely can. Question is, would they? In most cities (Germany), they lock the containers to prevent 'stealing' in the first place. What really puts me off - and aligns with the original discussion - is, that this system is definitely not set up for people to not work. Even so, that they say, eating other peoples trash is not okay. You HAVE to work.
- nefitty 5y agoTo follow your line of reasoning, no one is physically stopping you from printing money. No one is physically stopping you from committing crimes to gain wealth. White-collar crimes constitute 3% of federal prosecutions. Additionally, prosecutions have been on the decline for the past several years. Add "the fear of going to jail" to your list of illusions.
- tapas73 5y agoDepends on defintion of "can". Physically you can. Legally not.
- roenxi 5y agoWhat is the complaint here? If you had the power to print money, so would everyone else. And money would be worthless and you couldn't exchange it for food even if you had it. The issue you are identifying here might be physics and reality rather than a political problem. ironically food does grow on trees, but it is still "mandatory" to work to prepare it if you want to eat it. You can't escape that.
- janeroe 5y agoIronically, there's no mandatory work anywhere but in Communist paradises where by criminal code "parasitism" (not being enrolled to one of the organizations / skipping workdays without a valid reason) is prosecuted.
- WHA8m 5y agoI wonder what made you write that reply. Nobody was talking about communism. No one said we should abolish what we have completely. Edit: I see I'm getting down-voted. Same thread, different comment I say a bit more about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29934623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29934623
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoReplicators first. Then postscarcity economics. We can't get around physical reality by changing to an economic system that ignores it.
- broesl 5y agoDoes anyone have a good guess why on Prof. Appiahs homepage there is this hidden (via style="display: none;") paragraph? It's displayed when googling him. "Google has been a useful tool for internet browsing and searching since its inception. Professor Appiah, an Oxford professor of darknet in the College of Arts and Sciences Department who specializes in African intellectual history, is one such user. In his recent article on darknet published by The New York Times, he explained how he uses Google darknet to search for websites related to his field of study like <some link to catalog of darknet links>. Professor Appiah is a darknet user and darknet dealer, who was caught for using darknet in Oxford looking for websites on Google. He was sentenced to 1 year of community service with the National Cybercrime Unit at New Scotland Yard."
- m_a_g 5y agoIt looks like a good read, but it's a bit long for my attention span. Can anyone provide a TLDR?
- jokoon 5y agoI was again, arguing about work on reddit. Someone said that even animals "work" to survive. I found that the comparison was not really good. Food and shelter are abundant. Technology improved the human condition, but it made humans be much much less social, which is the main cause of inequalities. The individual car/kitchen/living room/bathroom generate exclusion. I'm an introvert, I want to have my safe space, but I don't need to cook alone, to eat alone, to work alone, or to be alone 99% of the time. I guess that's what people criticize about current capitalism. It's not only the inequalities (that always were always present in civilization), but it's rather the individualism, the atomization, the complex logistics and mechanization of how everything is turned into money, without limits. In earlier times, in hunter gatherer societies, food was scarce and work was important. But today, you cannot tell people that working in fast food or in customer support is mandatory to eat and have a roof on your head.
- agumonkey 5y agoWould you mind sharing the link. I often think about efforts of primitive~ survival vs efforts in societies. It seems there's something egotistic about survival (like animals) that satisfies a sense of self (nobody ever said no to hunting when they're hungry)
- e1g 5y agoI’m currently reading “Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots” [0] and it’s an anthropological exploration of these topics. I don’t know if I recommend it to all yet, but if you often think about the philosophy of labor, it might tickle your brain in the right way. [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0525561757/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr= https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0525561757/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch...
- antoniotorrez 5y ago"Because people typically spend eight hours or more of each weekday at work and another eight or so hours sleeping, it is where they spend about a third of their waking hours." Actually, half of their waking hours
- Underphil 5y agoTook me a while to get this.
- jonsen 5y agoA week has 7*24 = 168 hours. 40/168 ~= 1/4 Hours awake 7*16 = 112 40/112 ~= 1/3
- WHA8m 5y agoOne of you is talking about weekdays only and the other about a hole week. From the cited sentence, you can interpret it both ways, I guess.
- CraigJPerry 5y ago>> A week has 7*24 = 168 hours. Ahh, grandparent said weekday, you've added in weekend to your calc
- jstx1 5y agoI really like this line of investigation. The problem of work is much more complicated than thinking about what can be automated or just deciding to work as little as possible.
- yboris 5y agoRelated: 80,000 Hours - an organization promoting finding work / career that has a large positive impact on the world. Named after the rough amount of hours that a typical person will work over the course of their lives. Given that we'll spend this many hours on something, why not make it towards the goal of making the world a better place? https://80000hours.org/ https://80000hours.org/
- bobthechef 5y ago