Ah that is positive, in case you’re not aware - the community over there was started by bankers after the successful takedown of antiwork as a means of coopting the movement and deradicalising it. They were completely successful.
the community over there was started by bankers after the successful takedown of antiwork as a means of coopting the movement and deradicalising it
I’m not sure about that - I was part of the original antiwork sub, but it was clear that the sub consisted of a mix of folks - there were the “literal” antiwork folks who want to abolish paid labor, and people who wanted better wage equality. After the whole Doreen incident, the latter split off into workreform.
This is inaccurate. The founders of the workreform subreddit had absolutely nothing to do with the antiwork team, they were Canadian bankers. This was exposed and then a lot of fuckery occurred to hide it with usernames and moderator positions juggled around. Some people from antiwork’s team were either gullible(like doreen) or simply could not do without being in a “position” and got themselves added to it later added giving it credibility, that or they were collaborators all along, we will not find the truth.
I also have a very long list of posts about it that were removed for the following 6 months after its creation.
I also have the discussions I had with Belle and Kumquat about this at the time, as I was very much attempting to help in the power struggle that was occurring internally to takeover the subreddit and fill it with liberal powermods, helped along by Spez pushing them on the team presumably on the advice of Ashooh and the outside influence of the shits at Goldman Sachs that saw the subreddit as a threat.
What was your username on the antiwork team? Were you actually on the team at the time of these events or was that more or less before it? A person I shall not name also had an alt on the team when it all went down, all the discord comms and modmails were saved should they ever become useful.
You misunderstood me - when I said I was “part of antiwork”, what i meant was that I was a subscriber (and somewhat frequent) poster, but I was never a moderator of anything on reddit. And by “folks”, I meant people who participated in the sub, not the founders or mods.
I know about the whole debate with the founders being CIBC bankers. I honestly don’t know what’s the true story with the mods. What I do know is that the name, description and stated purpose of “work reform” is more in line with my personal views than “anti work”. antiwork started off as an anti-labor movement and as the sub grew, the mods didn’t really keep the discussion on track, so it became this weird hybrid sub that was supposed to be antiwork, but had 70% workreform and 30% antiwork posts. Admidst the discussion after the Doreen incident, it was clear from the comments within the sub (from users, not mods) that there were strong antiwork voices as well as strong workreform voices. It was just the catalyst that gave the workreform participants a chance to split off.
The only moderation experience I have on reddit was a few years ago, and I stepped down after the sub got past >25k subs because I just wasn’t interested in dealing with reports. I have no intention of becoming a “top mod” or whatever here, and I’m not that interested in admin/mod drama and shenanigans. Lemmy is a new start for many of us old-timey Redditors, and I created this community because I couldn’t find one that gels with my philosophy on work, and I believe it’s something that affects enough of us that we should talk about it.
If you believe in the stated goals of workreform (addressing wage inequality and capitalism, as opposed to abolishing labor altoghether), you’re welcome to participate here and mod if you want!
Ok I see my misunderstanding here. In that case, let me offer an explanation for why you should be more radical.
There’s a reason that the banks and ruling class were worried about antiwork. It’s not a coincidence that this came out and then not long after a coordinated attack between the billionaire media forces and wreckers in the community to heighten the drama happened alongside the creation of a space (by yet more financial bros) to coopt the split they created and deradicalise the movement.
The negotiating position of “workreform” is weak. They are very sophisticated at stringing workers along with reasons that workreform can’t happen, and it leaves workers in a weak position begging for change.
The negotiating position of “antiwork” on the other hand? It had no intent to negotiate. It terrified the ruling class because it showed a position that was essentially “we will abolish you”. It scared them because they knew that if such a movement continued they would be forced to make changes happen, or face the reality of that abolishment.
The fear here is significantly important. A movement that strikes fear into the opposition drives them to change, a movement that does not is unlikely to see much success beyond individual victories - and they like that.
Consider another scenario - which of these messages do you find to be more effective rhetoric for the urbanist movement? /r/fuckcars or /r/automotivereform ?
That’s a fair point, but antiwork as a brand is effectively a laughing stock now. Anybody who wants to discredit the movement now and in future will simply point to the Fox News interview. If the conspiracy theories were true, the false flag operation worked.
My original point still stands - the antiwork sub is a mix of people with different goals. That’s not sustainable. fuckcars as a movement is more homogenous, so it works.
Yeah I’m not suggesting antiwork can be rehabilitated. It can’t. Spinning off of /r/fuckcars into a “fuck work” direction could work, particularly because “fuck work” doesn’t have to mean abolishment of work, it works better than the original antiwork messaging for the average person while retaining its edginess. It can also more inclusively unite black and red aspects of the left, one of the major reasons antiwork collapsed was its anarchist team getting sectarian and kicking communists out of the subreddit. Kicking the people most invested in educating people leftwards out of a space effectively causes a space to move rightwards. They tried to U-turn on that when the crisis hit, and we tried to help, but there were so many forces pushing and pulling in different directions by that point as well as a completely contaminated modteam with several liberal powermods added by reddit, and on top of that reddit were clearly helping the takeover happen as they wouldn’t take action against obvious manipulation occurring. It all spun into a very losing battle.
On the plus side sectarianism across the site pretty much stopped afterwards, it only continued in spaces like 196 where the vast majority are liberals or socdems (and children) rather than actual leftists. Everywhere else on the site it ended and basically every mod team joined one server together to agree on anti-sectarianism needing to be a key pillar. So I guess that’s a positive.
Here’s the full interview - you can see the Fox news host get nicer and nicer as he realises that this is going to be a slam dunk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUMIFYBMnc
The IFF offer included the company being able to change benefits (like health coverage and retirement) with a 30-day notice and take away contract language of overtime pay after 8 hours, among other takeaways. IFF has already increased benefits costs and made multiple attempts to reduce union rights in many matters that would rob members of personal and family time.
That’s just despicable… I wish the workers success.
All Income earned in USA was 21.8 trillion dollars in 2022. The U.S. labor force is projected to reach 153.5 million in 2022. That means there was enough income for every worker to make $133,333.33. United States population will be 332,403,650 on Jan. 1, 2022. Or $65,582.91 income for every person in usa. GDP in 2022 was $25.46 trillion. Gdp is all things produced in America. So all those numbers could be higher. According to the calculator below if you made $65,582.91 67% of Americans make more less than you. If you make $133,333.33 90% of Americans make less than you. In the United States, median individual income was $46,001 in 2022. That means 50% of Americans make less than $46,000. In a country where every worker is producing over $133,333.33 of value or ever person is producing over $65,582.91 of value. The wealth is being hoarded 67% of American workers don't even see a half of the value they are producing for the economy.
All other information is from quick Google searches
My wife is deaf. She gets given batteries for her free hearing aid plus an assessment from the audiology department once a year.
My daughter was born 5 weeks premature. She was in the ante natal care unit for three weeks.
My daughter also had open heart surgery when she was 9 years old. Full medical team at a world-famous teaching hospital, 2 days in the paediatric cardiology intensive care (nurse to patient ratio 1:1, 24/7) and 2 days in the post-op ward (ratio 2:1).
None of this has ever cost us anything.
America needs to fix its health "service". While you're at it, fix your gun laws too (children practising hiding from gunmen in schools? Really??). And your legal system. And women's rights. And police corruption. Once you get those sorted, the rest of the civilised world has a long list of other suggestions.
fix your gun laws too (children practising hiding from gunmen in schools? Really??). And your legal system. And women’s rights. And police corruption.
I’d say they are all symptoms of the same problem, economic insecurity and misaligned incentives. People like to blame communism and praise capitalism for the results of the cold war, but I see the US making the same mistake that lost the USSR the cold war, but inflexibility and misaligned incentives. The US in the 20th century went from almost unregulated capitalism to a regulated market economy. IMO, it was that ability to change that brought the US ahead, not some magic of capitalism or brokenness of communism. Now we are stubbornly stuck on the ideology that could very well could have led to the collapse of the US in the 1930s.
Take the freight rail strike fiasco and recent train wrecks. Capitalism creates an incentive for the companies to reduce costs as much as possible. The rail unions are practically useless due to a terrible federal law. What we need is a more pragmatic government and population that will allow them to be and pass legislation that deals with it. One reasonable approach is to deregulate the unions a bit to ensure a quality workforce. Another is regulations that micromanage operations. Maybe fine companies in key industries for both preventable environmental disasters and failure operate under the threat of forced liquidation if they can’t get their act together. Another is professionalizing rail workers so no worker will risk personal liability or loss of licensure for cutting corners. Something else?
At the scales we are talking about, there is so much complexity that it is almost impossible to predict the outcome of a policy, so I am a big advocate for flexibility.
Millennials and Gen-Z are truly the lost generation.
Imagine still living with parents in your late twenties or even early thirties because you simply cannot afford to even rent your own place. Now imagine that work pays like shit and you are busting your ass working long hours to chase an eternal pipe dream of economic prosperity. You can’t even seek psychiatric help for your ailing mental health because it’s expensive, inaccessible and oversubscribed.
For a man, being in that situation makes you downright undateable so it’s not like you can rely on the joint incomes that couples do either.
And we wonder why toxic masculinity is on the rise…
The rich have done a smash & grab on the economy and made everybody poorer as a result of their own greed. It’s a dangerous game.
If you wanted the younger generation to continue producing workers for the capitalist machine, you should have made sure that potential parents had enough resources to actually maintain a family if they started one.
But yeah, that would have slightly reduced quarterly profits, and we can’t have that kind of long-sightedness messing with the short-term returns of our shareholders.
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