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The quote that stands out to me the most is: Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfor

The quote that stands out to me the most is: Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren’t free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or-else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing. And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace.

starkd 6y ago
"work makes a mockery of freedom" I don't think he gets what freedom really is. He's confusing it with volition. Very different things.
roenxi 6y ago
> Work makes a mockery of freedom Being embedded in a flimsy sack of meat controlled largely by deterministic chemicals makes a mockery of freedom. And yet here we are, embodied. Makes a mockery of fairness too. That paragraph is taking a stand against large organised bodies, without taking a sufficiently nuanced opinion on what 'freedom' means. If we take part in a larger body than ourselves, we lose a bit of ourselves (quite a lot, really) to the larger body. That is forced upon us by the inescapable fact that individual humans are delicate and feeble, so there need to be a lot of us to get things done. It is impossible to gain freedom from that. We don't get sewerage systems, international trade or defence forces by people acting individually. The only point of contention is whether joining specific groups is mandatory or not (eg, opting out of the control of a state bureaucrat is largely impossible). Even the most hardened individualist has to admit a company gets a lot more done than an individual.
- trevyn 6y ago
  >Even the most hardened individualist has to admit a company gets a lot more done than an individual. I think a big part of the argument is that "getting a lot done" may not be as valuable as we have been led to believe, and the things that we give up may be more valuable than we have been led to believe. If we assume that a human often does what is in the best interest of that human, it is not at all surprising that we may have been misled by our fellow humans about where value lies.
- pfalcon 6y ago
  > controlled largely by deterministic chemicals I wonder if that's a typo, but there's no determinism all the way up from position of an electron in the core, and thru protein binding, which is also non-deterministic. That's why they run that COVID Folding@Home stuff - to assess how well vaccine particles can bind to a virus thru variations - lone "hit" or "non-hit" don't matter much. That non-determinism alone is a great source of suffering, even before we get to "embodiment" and "need to feed that embodiment". ;-)
- jancsika 6y ago
  > It is impossible to gain freedom from that. Your sudden shift to such a low-level critique makes it impossible to, say, distinguish a c-corp from a coop (or even c-corps of different sizes, for that matter). Both are merely "impossible to gain freedom from" in your sense. It's like a submitter defending a spaghetti patchset by talking about the complexity of modern chipsets.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    Paragraph says work makes a mockery of freedom - it doesn't distinguish between working for a coop or working for a c-corp either. Neither does the article as far as I can tell, although it is a bit complicated for me.
baud147258 6y ago
it looks like a shitty workplace.
jariel 6y ago
It 'stands out' for it's dystopian naivete. 'Work' is an essential ingredient in the continued creation (and improvement) of the machine form which we develop our standard of living. While we can strive for 'free as in liberty' - nothing material in this universe is 'free as in beer' - we still must make do with 'work' - which means an intelligent and conscientious choice to do it. We actually are 'free as in liberty' to chose to live in material poverty, or to make the effort to improve our condition. Let us radically simplify: 1) Your household will become 'messy' as you live in it. 2) Nobody is going to 'clean it' but you. 3) 'Cleaning' is 'work'. So you can chose to A) live in an ever dirtier and dysfunctional household or B) clean it (i.e. work) and enjoy the fruits of your labour. In other words, there is basically no 'magical cleaning robot, that doesn't require fuel or maintenance'.
andrewjl 6y ago
Anarchism is akin to that annoying team member who wants to do a ground up rewrite of a crufty yet more or less functional codebase whilst insisting on repeating every mistake possible and developing a case of excess earwax when someone tries to talk some sense into them. One point that I do agree with is that play is better than work as it's currently conceived for our long-term wellbeing. We should strive to make work more play-like by focusing on creativity, autonomy, and linking both to accountability for results and automating drudgery as much as we can. That's how many parts of the tech industry function and it can be carried over into other sectors of the economy too. There's no need to "abolish" work in order to do this.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Someone who confuses a workplace with a police state is someone who almost certainly has never lived in a police state.
- mordae 6y ago
  You are probably privileged enough so that you don't have a camera looking at you your whole workday. Some of the people who processed your food or sewn your garments might not have been that lucky. Also, their breaks are timed and there is no playstation.
  - Jochim 6y ago
    You don't even need to look that far away, anyone you've interacted with in a bar or supermarket is most likely having their actions timed and watched by a security camera.

starkd 6y ago

"work makes a mockery of freedom" I don't think he gets what freedom really is. He's confusing it with volition. Very different things.

roenxi 6y ago

> Work makes a mockery of freedom Being embedded in a flimsy sack of meat controlled largely by deterministic chemicals makes a mockery of freedom. And yet here we are, embodied. Makes a mockery of fairness too. That paragraph is taking a stand against large organised bodies, without taking a sufficiently nuanced opinion on what 'freedom' means. If we take part in a larger body than ourselves, we lose a bit of ourselves (quite a lot, really) to the larger body. That is forced upon us by the inescapable fact that individual humans are delicate and feeble, so there need to be a lot of us to get things done. It is impossible to gain freedom from that. We don't get sewerage systems, international trade or defence forces by people acting individually. The only point of contention is whether joining specific groups is mandatory or not (eg, opting out of the control of a state bureaucrat is largely impossible). Even the most hardened individualist has to admit a company gets a lot more done than an individual.

trevyn 6y ago
>Even the most hardened individualist has to admit a company gets a lot more done than an individual. I think a big part of the argument is that "getting a lot done" may not be as valuable as we have been led to believe, and the things that we give up may be more valuable than we have been led to believe. If we assume that a human often does what is in the best interest of that human, it is not at all surprising that we may have been misled by our fellow humans about where value lies.
pfalcon 6y ago
> controlled largely by deterministic chemicals I wonder if that's a typo, but there's no determinism all the way up from position of an electron in the core, and thru protein binding, which is also non-deterministic. That's why they run that COVID Folding@Home stuff - to assess how well vaccine particles can bind to a virus thru variations - lone "hit" or "non-hit" don't matter much. That non-determinism alone is a great source of suffering, even before we get to "embodiment" and "need to feed that embodiment". ;-)
jancsika 6y ago
> It is impossible to gain freedom from that. Your sudden shift to such a low-level critique makes it impossible to, say, distinguish a c-corp from a coop (or even c-corps of different sizes, for that matter). Both are merely "impossible to gain freedom from" in your sense. It's like a submitter defending a spaghetti patchset by talking about the complexity of modern chipsets.
- roenxi 6y ago
  Paragraph says work makes a mockery of freedom - it doesn't distinguish between working for a coop or working for a c-corp either. Neither does the article as far as I can tell, although it is a bit complicated for me.

baud147258 6y ago

it looks like a shitty workplace.

jariel 6y ago

It 'stands out' for it's dystopian naivete. 'Work' is an essential ingredient in the continued creation (and improvement) of the machine form which we develop our standard of living. While we can strive for 'free as in liberty' - nothing material in this universe is 'free as in beer' - we still must make do with 'work' - which means an intelligent and conscientious choice to do it. We actually are 'free as in liberty' to chose to live in material poverty, or to make the effort to improve our condition. Let us radically simplify: 1) Your household will become 'messy' as you live in it. 2) Nobody is going to 'clean it' but you. 3) 'Cleaning' is 'work'. So you can chose to A) live in an ever dirtier and dysfunctional household or B) clean it (i.e. work) and enjoy the fruits of your labour. In other words, there is basically no 'magical cleaning robot, that doesn't require fuel or maintenance'.

andrewjl 6y ago

Anarchism is akin to that annoying team member who wants to do a ground up rewrite of a crufty yet more or less functional codebase whilst insisting on repeating every mistake possible and developing a case of excess earwax when someone tries to talk some sense into them. One point that I do agree with is that play is better than work as it's currently conceived for our long-term wellbeing. We should strive to make work more play-like by focusing on creativity, autonomy, and linking both to accountability for results and automating drudgery as much as we can. That's how many parts of the tech industry function and it can be carried over into other sectors of the economy too. There's no need to "abolish" work in order to do this.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

Someone who confuses a workplace with a police state is someone who almost certainly has never lived in a police state.

mordae 6y ago
You are probably privileged enough so that you don't have a camera looking at you your whole workday. Some of the people who processed your food or sewn your garments might not have been that lucky. Also, their breaks are timed and there is no playstation.
- Jochim 6y ago
  You don't even need to look that far away, anyone you've interacted with in a bar or supermarket is most likely having their actions timed and watched by a security camera.