Let's talk about not working

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Let's talk about not working

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skewetoo: Mar 30, 2003

Soaking up excess value itt

# ? Jun 1, 2021 16:10

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# ? May 2, 2024 19:40

Raiad: Feb 1, 2005; Without the law, there wouldn't be lawyers.

Crazypoops posted:

If I could work so less that it actually removed productivity I would

have you considered sabotage

it's not work if you enjoy it, think of it as engaging a hobby on company time

# ? Jun 1, 2021 16:24

CongoJack: Nov 5, 2009; Ask Why, Asshole

I feel like everyone should be allocated a small studio apartment and like $300 a month. That way if you don't want to work thats great, you can spend your money on drugs or whatever and sit in your apartment. If you want nicer things though you can seek work from the safety and security of your studio apartment. If you can't find work that's OK at least you have a place to live and some money to live off of. I feel like this would have good effects on bad jobs because many people would rather just not work than work at like a lovely restaurant and would force those places to create a better working environment in order to keep employees or go out of business which is fine, too.

Sorry starting to ramble a little thanks for reading.

# ? Jun 1, 2021 16:43

The Saucer Hovers: May 16, 2005

folks on anarres might have some disdain for those who choose not to work, but they also accept these folks as inevitable and they are protected as well as anyone else by the system

# ? Jun 1, 2021 17:06

romanowski: Nov 10, 2012

I would be happy if I could just go into an office at 11:00am and work for four hours then leave. I'd probably be a lot more productive honestly

# ? Jun 1, 2021 17:08

Victory Position: Mar 16, 2004

I'm going to work later, op

# ? Jun 1, 2021 17:10

Gorson: Aug 29, 2014

romanowski posted:

I would be happy if I could just go into an office at 11:00am and work for four hours then leave. I'd probably be a lot more productive honestly

Same. 4 hours is reasonable and actually what studies have shown to be optimal. Anything more hits huge diminishing returns.

# ? Jun 1, 2021 17:16

MLSM: Apr 3, 2021; by Azathoth

About a week ago i decided I�m going to save up for a van and just live on the beach

gently caress rent

# ? Jun 1, 2021 17:21

Wheeee: Mar 11, 2001; When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it's dry and hard, it dies.

Hardness and strength are death's companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life.

That which has become hard shall not triumph.

PeterCat posted:

I'm not working to support your lazy rear end.

the smallest brain

# ? Jun 1, 2021 17:40

tokin opposition: Apr 8, 2021; The dialectical struggle of history has always, essentially, been a question of how to apply justice to matter. Take away matter and what remains is justice.

I'm mentally unwell and unemployed, ama

# ? Jun 1, 2021 18:58

thalweg: Aug 26, 2019

If we had actual socialism or communism there would still be work to be done ofc. Like any hope of surviving the 21st century is going to require labor on a scale that i dont know has ever been seen in human history, to repair and build infrastructure, farm food, restore environmental degradation and damage. I imagine that living in a world where work wasnt pointless wage slavery, we'd have a much different relationship with labor. But under neolib capitalism where your time has been maximally exploited to siphon wealth into the upper class, and you are never allowed to come out ahead and every generation successively keeps getting sicker and poorer, i dont blame someone for not wanting to participate. It loving sucks and none of the work is making the world a better place for us to live in

# ? Jun 1, 2021 19:02

Grevling: Dec 18, 2016

How big will the lemon ration be in the post-work society of the future?

# ? Jun 1, 2021 20:02

Wheeee: Mar 11, 2001; When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it's dry and hard, it dies.

Hardness and strength are death's companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life.

That which has become hard shall not triumph.

humans must work to feel purpose, you should all be thankful for your heavily structured lives which revolve around meaningless service sector work or grinding away your will to live inside an insane bureaucratic machine, the wealthy who do not work truly live in states of ennui and despair, lost souls wandering without the guiding light of a 40-hour per week job

# ? Jun 1, 2021 20:14

Peanut President: Nov 5, 2008; by Athanatos
(and can't post for 30 hours!)

romanowski posted:

I would be happy if I could just go into an office at 11:00am and work for four hours then leave. I'd probably be a lot more productive honestly

I work at a big box store 4 hours a day. Its one of the home improvement ones so it's a lot of heavy lifting but i get a lot of free time and I make enough to pay rent and groceries and have a little luxury :shrug:

edit: for anyone who wants to do this I applied, told them I'm available to work nights and they literally hired me on the spot like the stories boomers used to tell of when they were young. thank you labor shortage

# ? Jun 1, 2021 20:35

HootTheOwl: May 13, 2012; Hootin and shootin

I am on the clock and collecting a paycheck whilst I post. This is truly the height of slacktivism.

# ? Jun 1, 2021 23:05

Impkins Patootie: Apr 20, 2017

"if you don't have a job and you are not smoking weed then I don't know what the gently caress you are doing with your life" - Kat Williams

# ? Jun 1, 2021 23:08

Butter Activities: May 4, 2018; Can't post for 22 minutes!

PeterCat posted:

I'm not working to support your lazy rear end.

congrats on donating your surplus value to billionaires idiot

# ? Jun 1, 2021 23:42

Tiler Kiwi: Feb 26, 2011

they could be just saying that by not working, they are being supportive of us all

# ? Jun 1, 2021 23:44

lil poopendorfer: Nov 13, 2014; by the sex ghost

Working is cool, jobs are the problem

# ? Jun 1, 2021 23:53

Caithness: Nov 10, 2012; HEY!!!
YOU CAN SEE ME, CAN'T YOU? THEN WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME!?

Impkins Patootie posted:

"if you don't have a job and you are not smoking weed then I don't know what the gently caress you are doing with your life" - Kat Williams

Mostly video games

# ? Jun 1, 2021 23:55

tokin opposition: Apr 8, 2021; The dialectical struggle of history has always, essentially, been a question of how to apply justice to matter. Take away matter and what remains is justice.

I'm not unemployable, I'm boycotting the labor market

# ? Jun 1, 2021 23:56

Fortaleza: Feb 21, 2008

I work all the time and love it. Mostly outside of my paying job but always getting something done. We're constantly surrounded by things to do and learn and make better as best we can, I can't imagine having such low levels of self esteem or worth to just sit around and be completely useless for days on end as a matter of lifestyle and my heart goes out to people that do. I've had roommates like that and they're thoroughly unreliable people and boring as poo poo to boot.

Whenever this sort of thing comes up around here people like to throw around the "protestant work ethic" as if it meant "working hard is an old religious thing and the source of capitalism and therefore bad" but that's not what Weber meant at all! There was a good article on this and Weber himself in the NYRB last year:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/06/11/max-weber-fatalist/

quote:

The theme of a calling (or vocation) is central to what is surely his most famous text, The Protestant Ethic and the �Spirit� of Capitalism, first published in two installments in 1904�1905. Like other books that have suffered from an excess of fame, The Protestant Ethic is often cited but frequently misunderstood, beginning with Weber�s contemporaries, some of whom faulted him for promoting the notion that capitalism had been �caused by� Protestantism, though he never said anything of the kind.

His thesis was far more subtle. Modern capitalism had first arisen in the early-modern era in Northern Europe, within the distinctive setting of a Christian culture that traditionally looked upon economic life with mistrust and saw the pursuit of wealth as a sin. (This view found its biblical authorization in Matthew 19-24: �It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.�) Throughout the medieval era the church also imposed restrictions on moneylending that frequently consigned it to Jews and other outsiders, which fed poisonous stereotypes that persisted well into modern times. Even Martin Luther, an Augustinian by training before his revolutionary break with Catholicism, nourished the old prejudice that financial activity was a sign of cupiditas.

Weber now posed a question: How, given such patterns of Christian belief, could entrepreneurial habits have taken hold, and how, by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, could capitalist trade have flourished in Europe to such a degree that countries like the Dutch Republic and England, along with their colonies in North America, could effect fundamental transformations in all areas of modern life? His answer was ingenious. Capitalism, he argued, was not merely a set of institutions or transactions; it was also a behavior or cultural style, carried along by a host of attitudes and dispositions that made it singular and perhaps unprecedented. In Northern Europe its unusual strength was due in part to the spirit of methodical deliberation and restraint that merchants brought to their work. They amassed great fortunes but avoided all hedonism, conducting themselves with a sense of duty that drove them onward to further success.

But what could explain such peculiar conduct? It was Weber�s great insight to propose that capitalism�s �this-worldly asceticism�� might have found its initial warrant in Protestant teaching. The Calvinist doctrine of predestination had made divine favor into something unknowable�a gift bestowed upon the elect. The effect was to elevate God�s sovereignty beyond all possible appeal, but for the believer this could be psychologically devastating, since human agency itself seemed stripped of meaning. The official teaching proved so intolerable that Calvinist preachers introduced a subtle modification that allowed worldly success to serve as a sign of divine election. From Luther and from Catholicism they adopted the idea of a vocatio or �calling,� namely, that one is summoned by God to the priesthood. (The German word for �calling� is Beruf, which derives from the verb rufen, to call.) In Calvinism, however, the idea of a calling was now applied to worldly pursuits that Christianity had once condemned. Election, of course, remained uncertain, since there could be no salvation through works. But a bond was reestablished between God and the world: if one conducted oneself in the proper spirit of piety and restraint, one�s good fortune in this world might serve as a sign of one�s ultimate fortune in the world to come.

For Weber this seemingly minor shift in Calvinist doctrine had dramatic consequences. Protestantism could now license a plunge into this-worldly action, while capitalist entrepreneurs could see in their conduct a spiritual significance it would otherwise have lacked. As Weber noted, there had been something irrational about this conduct: it required a readiness to defer gratification, to save and reinvest for the sake of an uncertain future. It was the religious ethic of the ambient Protestant culture that infused commercial activity with a higher meaning. Clearly, this argument was not causal. Rather, it illustrated an �elective affinity,� a term Weber borrowed from Goethe�s 1809 novel of romantic liaisons. Capitalism and Protestantism were two historically independent formations that joined to create a uniquely powerful bond, and in concert they revolutionized the modern world.

In the United States today one often encounters the boastful claim that its citizens are beneficiaries of a �Protestant work ethic,� as if this explained the power of American capitalism. But Weber offered a more tragic view. In his estimation the religiously inspired ethic of a calling had died out long ago, a casualty of the rationalization process it helped to set in motion. Capitalism, Weber argued, now runs on its own, with machine-like indifference to all spiritual values, while the idea of a calling �haunts our lives like the ghost of once-held religious beliefs.� Meanwhile, those who are caught in its mechanism are left with little more than a sense of mindless compulsion. �The Puritans wanted to be men of the calling,� Weber wrote; �we, on the other hand, must be.� In the US in particular, the pursuit of wealth had been �divested of its metaphysical significance� and was now linked with �purely elemental passions.�

In the closing lines of The Protestant Ethic, Weber described the typical capitalists of his own time as mediocrities much like the stunted creatures that Nietzsche had called �the last men.� A world populated by such soulless beings ran not on individual initiative but on the imperatives of the system: �Today,� Weber wrote,

this mighty cosmos determines, with overwhelming coercion, the style of life not only of those directly involved in business but of every individual who is born into this mechanism, and may well continue to do so until the day when the last ton of fossil fuel has been consumed.

Those final lines were prescient. Although Weber could not have anticipated the unfolding catastrophe of climate change or the environmental ravages that have attended the process of industrialization, he understood that capitalism�s unrestrained expansion across the planet could hardly be taken as a sign of social betterment or historical progress. In documenting the rise of the modern world, he sustained an attitude of cool skepticism. The purpose of sociology was not to discover general laws but to understand human action in all its complexity. This emphasis on the unique rather than the universal made his work difficult to categorize. Not a few of his colleagues were tripped up by his arguments�errors he attacked in print with lacerating criticism. Especially common was the mistaken view that he had written The Protestant Ethic as an idealistic corrective to Marxism, as if he had meant to suggest that religious ideas rather than the forces of production were the primary engines of historical change. Weber dismissed this as rubbish. Replacing a �one-sided� and �materialist� explanation of historical causality with a �one-sided� and �spiritual� explanation would only exchange one fallacy for another.

There's a lot more but you should click the link and read it and if it's behind a paywall you should give NYRB money because they're great.

# ? Jun 1, 2021 23:57

Tiler Kiwi: Feb 26, 2011

lol respecting a paywall, i say on something awful dot com

# ? Jun 2, 2021 00:09

Hot Karl Marx: Mar 16, 2009; Politburo regulations about social distancing require to downgrade your Karlmarxing to cold, and sorry about the dnc primaries, please enjoy!

Tiler Kiwi posted:

work sounds like a lot of work

# ? Jun 2, 2021 00:09

Tiler Kiwi: Feb 26, 2011

anyways i do envy people that can work hard constantly but i also got the adhd real bad so it is not my destiny

# ? Jun 2, 2021 00:10

Hot Karl Marx: Mar 16, 2009; Politburo regulations about social distancing require to downgrade your Karlmarxing to cold, and sorry about the dnc primaries, please enjoy!

i just play with joysticks all day on my drill or im running the box and just walking around all day giving orders to the driller, its nice

the whole culture around construction loving sucks though and everyone i work with are racist poo poo heels who just want to work all day cause they hate their kids/wife

# ? Jun 2, 2021 00:12

Dolphin: Dec 5, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

lil poopendorfer posted:

Working is cool, jobs are the problem

i guess this is true. i do all kinds of work like fix poo poo around my house and such

those are two separate tasks

# ? Jun 2, 2021 00:17

Tiler Kiwi: Feb 26, 2011

also that article makes weber sound like a bigger dipshit than i thought before, being super honest. like, drat.

# ? Jun 2, 2021 00:20

DarkEuphoria: Nov 7, 2012

Demon Semen posted:

About a week ago i decided I�m going to save up for a van and just live on the beach

gently caress rent

I did this several years ago, and despite the downsides, of which there are some, it actually rules to not pay rent. it�s one of the most radical things you can do intentionally in the US. now I get to keep all the money I�d usually give to scum landlords

e: living this way is actually a lot of work, lol

DarkEuphoria has issued a correction as of 00:43 on Jun 2, 2021

# ? Jun 2, 2021 00:41

Smythe: Oct 12, 2003

i like to work and like my job & coworkers.

# ? Jun 2, 2021 02:31

Smythe: Oct 12, 2003

work is cool. the gently caress else u do n talk about? vidya? lol

# ? Jun 2, 2021 02:31

The Saucer Hovers: May 16, 2005

Fortaleza posted:

I work all the time and love it. Mostly outside of my paying job but always getting something done. We're constantly surrounded by things to do and learn and make better as best we can, I can't imagine having such low levels of self esteem or worth to just sit around and be completely useless for days on end as a matter of lifestyle and my heart goes out to people that do. I've had roommates like that and they're thoroughly unreliable people and boring as poo poo to boot.

Whenever this sort of thing comes up around here people like to throw around the "protestant work ethic" as if it meant "working hard is an old religious thing and the source of capitalism and therefore bad" but that's not what Weber meant at all! There was a good article on this and Weber himself in the NYRB last year:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/06/11/max-weber-fatalist/
There's a lot more but you should click the link and read it and if it's behind a paywall you should give NYRB money because they're great.

you sound wealthy

# ? Jun 2, 2021 02:34

roomforthetuna: Mar 22, 2005; I don't need to know anything about virii! My CUSTOM PROGRAM keeps me protected! It's not like they'll try to come in through the Internet or something!

Dolphin posted:

What if we give 'not working' a job title. Like "Individual human fulfillment manager" and pay it whatever the minimum basic living wage is. There, now you're not paying anyone to be lazy, you're just paying another government employee.

And it's even better than many government employees, because the job isn't to actively make other people's lives unnecessarily more difficult.

# ? Jun 2, 2021 02:59

The Saucer Hovers: May 16, 2005

if you dont like me not workin why dont you give me a job about it?

# ? Jun 2, 2021 04:43

Fortaleza: Feb 21, 2008

The Saucer Hovers posted:

if you dont like me not workin why dont you give me a job about it?

Strap on your helmet!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbq571QME2Y

# ? Jun 2, 2021 04:53

The Saucer Hovers: May 16, 2005

i may be wrong but i think ive just been told to bootstrap it with an always sunny embed

all because i said you sounded monied?

# ? Jun 2, 2021 05:06

Fortaleza: Feb 21, 2008

you�re wrong, bootstrap folks can eat poo poo I just love that scene and think of it whenever getting a job comes up

We helped each other last summer during the riots, you�re always cool in my book. Go blazers, Lillard for Mayor

Fortaleza has issued a correction as of 05:10 on Jun 2, 2021

# ? Jun 2, 2021 05:07