It Could Happen Here - Antiwork Part 1: The Great Resignation

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

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Welcome to America. It's not great. Here's a podcast. All right. This is It Could Happen Here, the podcast. Welcome to... If you're an international listener and you're not american that was really get the fuck off of our podcast just like you just left people out like that robert are you gonna do one for every other country i think they're being rude for barging in the internet

is clearly american soil um i would pay good money for a wacko sings but with robert saying all the countries of the world. Me too. Me too. Well, you know what you need to do in order to be able to pay good money for something, Garrison? Wow. You need to get money by working? Well, I was going to say you need to be born rich, but if you're not born rich, you have to work. And a lot of people are saying,

what if we didn't? And now they have a subreddit, and that's what we're talking about today. Anti-work, not just the subreddit, but that's why we're talking about it today, because the anti-work subreddit has grown hugely. It's gotten like a million, or it's like doubled, it's been around for years.

It's more than doubled. Yeah, in a month. It's almost quadrupled. In the space of a month. Yeah, it's grown. I'll have the numbers for later, yeah. Yeah, okay, great. So Garrison, why don't you kick us off now that

I've let everyone know what to expect and we'll stop working in solidarity with the anti-work movement. Thanks, Robert. You're welcome. So yeah, the past few months, if you're anything like us, and if you're online in the same ways that we are

you've probably seen like a flurry of of posts and screenshots depicting text conversations between like an employee and their boss uh typically the boss like asks them to come in when they said they were gonna have to have to be have to have having to have time off or something the employee uh objects the boss then gets mad and makes threats and demands the employee objects the boss then gets mad and makes threats and demands the employee be a better team player or some bullshit like that um and then like the employee says something like well you know what actually i quit good luck filling the shift now bye and then the boss like pleads that the now former employee comes back and offers like concessions and end of screenshot so pretty soon this type of like screenshotted text conversation became like a meme format with people joking and obviously like staging fake ones as well. You know, similar to the scene I just described.

But by all accounts, this trend started incredibly like sincerely with genuine text conversations showcasing like worker abuse and, you know, bosses being unreasonable and cruel, and some people quitting their jobs to stand up for themselves. And all this stuff is kind of tied up in the worker shortage kind of myths. The great resignation, as a lot of pundits are calling it. Yes, yeah, of people, of people resigning, and then, you know, a lot of like, big companies complaining about worker shortages. And and central to this like text conversation online kind of meme trend thing and and employee resignations is a subreddit called anti-work so the anti-work subreddit has been a growing place specifically the past year um their motto is unemployment for all not just for the rich uh it's a it's a good motto it is a good it is it is a solid it's a solid motto yeah of their their uh their own like a description

is uh a subreddit for those who want to end work are curious about ending work want to get the most out of a work-free life want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs slash work-related struggles. So back in February, the subreddit's been around since like 2013, but back in February, it had like 235,000 subs, and now it has over 1.1 million. It's grown.

Most of that growth has been in like the past two months. It has kind of exploded in popularity. And actually, it got so big and there's so many posts on it that now they have to restrict text message conversation screenshots to only being allowed to be

posted on one day a week just because of the intense influx of these posts you know some of them genuine others maybe not so much um and even though the subreddit may not be the biggest in terms of like subscribers um it's it has more like daily posts than something like the wall street bets subreddit has so even though it doesn't have as many subscribers, the amount of actual posting on it is higher than a lot of other subreddits as well. So it is growing in popularity in multiple ways. It feels a little bit right now like the social media equivalent of a sort

of Damocles. Like Wall Street Bets made a not insignificant splash earlier this year. It was quite a thing for the national economy for a little while there. And anti-work hasn't had that moment, but I kind of feel like it might be getting close to critical mass, like something might come out of this, which I think would be rad, for the record, I think would be rad. Absolutely. And, you know know it may not be one big thing but it could be a lot of smaller things right you know sometimes it's harder to see bigger change when you're like having more anarchist adjacent ideas and and and the and the anti-war subreddit does does try to keep itself being a radical subreddit and does try to fight off yeah

neoliberal sentiments and stuff. And there have been, there have been some complaints I've seen of people being like, ah, the liberals have gotten in and people are talking about like, well, I just really want a life that's like, I'm not stressed all the time and I have enough money for,

for bills and stuff. Or like people have been talking about like, Oh, this job, like I left my old job and I got into a better situation. That's good. And there's complaints about that. And I, I think it is important to like, oh, this job, like I left my old job and I got into a better situation that's good. And there's complaints about that. And I think it is important to like push against de-radicalizing the subreddit. But I don't think it's bad that you're getting a lot of liberals in there who are

not turned off by the name anti-work. And I think that's, I think it's positive that they're, even if they're, you know, they're not coming at it from kind of a revolutionary perspective but, hey, it's okay to quit my job if the conditions are shit and try to find a place where I'm treated better. If that's their inroad to this kind of thought, I still think that's pretty awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it's not realistic for every single person. Well, actually, it is realistic for every single person to quit their job,

but it's not realistic for only a few people to, right? And sometimes, if everyone's not going to do it, like literally everyone, then you know some people can't afford to quit their job right now because they have kids to feed or whatever, or themselves. There's a lot of reasons which i'll kind of talk a little bit more about later so uh and so the term anti-work does does not does not come from the subreddit um and anti-work has been like a post-left term for a while now yes and it kind of kind of applies to a broad spectrum of like anarchist adjacent thought around hey, if we're going to question

capitalism and the state, we should probably also question just the idea of work itself and how it functions and how the state works only possible with the state and it's that specific line of thinking. A few examples of

seminal anti-work books. One of them is Bob Black's The Abolition of Work. Crime Think has a really good book just called Work, which is another another one that gets referenced a lot, even in the subreddit. And also Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. And Bullshit Jobs was also kind of partially inspired by Bob Black's The Abolition of Work. All of those are great resources. And specifically, Bullshit Jobs is great for a modern outlook on this.

Bob Black's book was written a while ago, and Bullshit Jobs is definitely very timely. And even Crime Thinks Work crime thinks workbook also, also addresses stuff. Or even though it's, wasn't not written within the past, I, I think it is maybe slightly older than,

than a decade, but I think they, they are updating it with more information about like the gig economy and stuff like that. Yeah. And it's, it's not as it's characterized and as, as anti-work is often characterized by critics.

It's not saying like nobody should have to do anything in a way. It's not as it's characterized and as anti-work is often characterized by critics. It's not saying like nobody should have to do anything. In a way, it's not actually. We'll talk about diogenes later. But it's not everyone should just like lay around and do nothing. your body or your mind or both uh most of your waking hours most of your life in the hope that you'll get 10 years as an old person uh to not do that like and and a little bit that that's bad that's a bad way to be a person like a bad way to have to be it's not bad to do that it's it's bad that you have to do that yeah yeah and i mean and and there is a there is a little bit of it that is about finding time to chill out.

Well, sure. Absolutely. Which is going to apply a lot of, you know, a lot of the ways if you have to keep a job, you know, the different ways you can you can go about that job that does that makes it so doesn't kill you. One of my favorite ways to think about anti-work is just like anti-capitalism put into actual practice. So instead of, you know, just debating online about anti-capitalism as some, you know, future thing. So instead of just debating online about anti-capitalism as some future thing, it's like, no, what can you do to actually make capitalism a less important part of how you live your life every day, which means not obsessing over careers and work's kind of a works like a it's it has a lot of definitions to been depending on what like you would depend depending on like what you mean by it right is is it just like wage labor is it just forced labor um you know is cooking for yourself or your family considered work not always but uh you know like at times when i when i'm like relaxed i can i quite enjoy cooking for friends and family but but certainly but certainly it can feel like work sometimes especially if you especially if you just got home from like a work shift so in a way like work creates more work um and it's it's not it's it kind of it's it isn't

just it isn't just about like wage labor or something it can kind of apply to a lot of ways about how you live your life um you know There's a lot of- Fucking laying down wood chips or sod, if that's like your job every day, can be like a miserable backbreaking process. If you actually have a huge yard or like own a little bit of land and you're making your own garden, that can be an intensely, like the best part of your week. It can be a great form of play. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not, the problem is not the individual tasks necessarily. It's what work is as a platonic kind of concept in our society. Yeah. And again, one of the things – and I think this is one of the things speaking of – you talked about David Graeber earlier who's an anarchist anthropologist and widely seen to be like one of the most brilliant anthropologists of his generation. He recently deceased. But a book that he wrote before he died with another fellow came out recently called The Dawn of Everything that talks a lot about how, yeah, these ideas that kind of capitalism has a vested interest in you believing that the world was always hard in the way that it's hard, by which I mean, like, in order to get basic necessities, you have to make somebody else rich or find some grift of your own. And as opposed to like, yeah, life is always hard, but life

didn't always involve labor the way we think about it. Labor has not been a constant in human civilization. And in fact, most of human about it labor has not been a constant in human civilization in fact most of human civilization people have not done a thing that we would recognize as labor and i think also even if you go towards things that like look more like labor to us right like i don't know like look like if you look at like feudal levies right you're a peasant you have to give some amount of grain to your lord but like okay we work way longer than medieval peasants did and not only do we work longer it's something graber and david wenger talk about in that book it's like yeah like not only do we work much longer like the amount that we work would have been considered absolutely

like even even a feudal lord would look at that much work and go no like this is this is this is like yeah and you know and i think there's there's another graver has another point um he wrote a piece called uh turning modes of production inside out where he has this argument that like okay so if if you take you know if you take like plato right you're like you take any of the greek philosophers even the conservative ones and you show them this the thing the thing that we do every day right you're you know you have you you're you're completely under the command of another person for like at least a third probably more of your day yeah i monitor you and garrison's bathroom breaks um i look at your texts with family and friends um it's it's really not a good situation yeah it's an incredibly strict

surveillance state yeah robert evans yeah yeah this is like like you know if you show a greek person that this is like this is the apocalypse to them this is this is the worst thing that could possibly happen is every single person in society has like essentially been reduced to a slave and you know that's bad and it doesn't have to be like that. It's not that they've been – because I want to push back on that terminology because it can go to some uncomfortable places. It's not that they are treated as a slave. It's that in the hours in which they are expected to labor, there's a societal expectation that they act as the property of whoever owns the business or manages them. The idea of like – if it – like that attitude from like working in a kitchen or working in a fast food restaurant, like if you lean – if you can lean, you can clean.

Like that attitude is saying you do not have any autonomy when you are at work. You are the property of the employer while you are at work. I think that's – property of the of the employer while you are at work um i think yeah and and i think and i think you know but i think the specific thing with greece is that like you know you the only way you could do that to someone in greece is if you owned them yeah like you know i'm like the greece has wage labor right but the only people who like it has wage labor but it has wage labor for slaves and that's like it right like this you know and this is this is like obviously not to say that like you know we're like having a job is the same thing as this is like obviously not to say that like you know we're like

having a job is the same thing as slavery but it's just to say that like the kinds of things that we think of as normal like are things that like the people who you know the people who run the system the people who you know get cited all the time justify stuff would have looked at as like the worst thing that could possibly have happened to a society yeah sure for sure like daily life for a very substantial chunk of of the american workforce is a would be a nightmare to large percentages of the the human population prior to the modern period like it's it's and and if you think about it that way like one of the things graber does a good job of going into um is like the way in which uh and this is also something that comes up in in tribe by younger the way in which like during the early period of uh colonization of north america

um it was very common for you know europeans Europeans to leave the cities and towns being established behind and join up with indigenous groups. And join with the tribes, yeah. The reverse never happened. Not willingly, not without kidnapping being a part of it. And it's because their attitude was they were looking at the lives these people were living in these cities and like, well, why would you agree to do that? And this is turning – anyway, Garrison, you should take us back on the rails.

This is getting more and more – But first – But first – It's time for products and services. that human beings are forced to labor for basic necessities in order to keep up a system that steals the freedom of the many in order to provide impossible liberty to the few. You know what isn't related to that? You sure?

The advertising industrial complex. It has nothing to do with it. Totally unrelated. Why would you say that, Garrison? By the way, did you know that McDonald's egg muffin is turning 50 years old and it's giving the breakfast sandwich a price to match? Stop it. Stop it. They're selling it for its original price of 63 cents during breakfast hour, 6 a.m. to 10.30 a.m., exclusively on the McDonald's app. Isn't that cool?

I can't. I can't. Do you guys want egg McMuffins for 63 cents? That's the original price. I wonder what else the McDonald's app is looking at on my phone. Anyway, here's some ads. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Duda Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit. The podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom and refuge between the chapters. Thank you. behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse

and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. oh we're back and we're talking about anti-work we're talking about how work's kind of bullshit for our jobs um yeah yeah we sure are we sure are so you know like there is there there's a lot of people who who like enjoy stuff like gardening fishing carpentry cooking and even like you know fist like there is there's a lot of people who like enjoy stuff like gardening, fishing, carpentry, cooking and even like, you know, fist fighting, fist fighting, computer programming just for their own sake.

Like a lot of the stuff that we like, quote unquote, needs need for society to function. A lot of those things people like doing as hobbies in their spare time. For example, if you're a police officer gunning down a man in cold blood might be kind of of like your day job and like frustrating and there's a lot of shit you have to deal with. If you're a mass shooter, though, you just love it. You know, you're just doing it for the pure love. And it's not work. It's not work for a mass shooter. That is exactly what the Kyle Rittenhouse thing is, though.

Like, like, like, like, like, like, literally that. Yes. This is we I mean, we're not going to get the verdict today it doesn't look like not today which isn't a bad sign by the time this airs it may already be done um but anyway like a lot of people like doing those things without getting paid and sometimes you know often like costing themselves money right a lot of these hobbies are you know are costly in their own in their own right um and i think it's interesting to you know, are costly in their own right. And I think it's interesting to, you know, think of a society where you're free to do those things when you feel like it,

and you don't need to drag yourself out of bed at, you know, early in the morning to work a 10-hour shift as like a cash register. And it's not just even when you feel like it, because there will be things that you have to do, even if you don't necessarily want to do. I will discuss this later, yes. Yeah, yeah, in any, like...

Yes, there is other things. It's not work. If you're, if you're going out and harvesting food that feeds you in your community, that's not like work in the sense that we talk about modern work, the amount of extra energy we have by not having 10 hour horrible shifts that drain ourselves mentally and physically. And more with,

you know, with the amount of most of the work that we people do as shown shown in David Graeber's bullshit jobs, is like not necessary. Like a lot of like a lot of the work that we do as a whole is not. Yeah, there's like there's some quibbling about because the book was based off of a study, like a survey that kind of showed a lot of very significant chunk of the labor workforce thinks their job is like pointless and doesn't do anything. a very significant chunk of the labor workforce thinks their job is like pointless and doesn't do anything and there's been some criticisms of that but it is undoubted that a very significant amount of total labor time spent is stuff that isn't necessary for any like reason of like making people's lives better and another part of like anti-work theory is looking is looking at our society as it's built you know because it is it is tied to anarchism, be like, how much of this is actually necessary?

Like, do we really need a McRib? Like, do we? Do we, guys? No, we don't. What are you? Garrison, Sophie. We do not. Sophie, call HR.

No, we don't need a McRib. We do not need a McRib. Garrison is 100% right. Listen to them. No, I did the company training, and they said you can't they the company training says you can't attack someone for their religion and garrison just attacked the mcrib so that actually is you know it is a religion for a lot of people

did you see that they're there they or they they did sell a mcrib nft a few weeks ago um don't tell me that shit that is so upsetting god damn it yeah oh yeah just saying society with no money would not have nfts yeah so anyway gosh you know thinking of like anti-work as as the theory you know it's about cutting down those those unnecessary things that fill people's time um and you a more forward-looking sense, it's a general kind of abolition of the producer and consumer-based society. So life is not dedicated to the production

and consumption of goods and commodities. So this applies not just to capitalism, but also to state socialism, where work is still a big part of state socialism. And I think it posits a future that humans can be way more free when they can reclaim their time from jobs and employment instead of spending a lot of their time doing that and spending spending a lot of like not not just time but also just like their energy right because even if you work you know eight hours a day you still have majority of the day to yourself but you're exhausted you can't do it you can't do much right it it drains you of everything so you know the the the main point one of the main points of like of the abolition of work essay by Bob Black is about no one should work because work is as defined as a forced labor practice.

You can kind of track this to being the source of most of the misery in the world from individual people who are forced to do this. This is where a lot of their pain comes from um is is this is this is this forced labor concept um i think i think a good a good way you know there is you know the point that robert brought up earlier is like you know what about the tasks that aren't fun you know what about what about the stuff that isn't isn't maybe as as enjoyable

um you know there's this there's there's a list of things that I could go through. The standard response is, who's going to clean up the poop? Who's going to clean the poop? That's the thing. So, you know, I kind of look at this as like the I kind of look at this as like whenever I have to turn the compost, which

is not my favorite thing to do. I don't look forward to having to turn over our massive, shitty, rotting compost pile. Not my favorite thing to do i i don't look forward to having to turn over our massive shitty rotting compost pile not not my favorite thing uh yeah that's why we have the whip oh no but no like if there's if if there's like friends around and we're playing music and we're all we have like some like i have i have like an iced tea or a dr pepper and we're all we have like some like have i have some have like an iced tea or a dr pepper and we're like talking as we're turning the compost it's a lot more doable you know it's it's this yeah it's it's one task that's going to help all of us in the future um and i'm not getting watched over by a boss to fill a certain quota so i can pay my rent right it's it's this it's this

it's this thing that helps everybody and And I do it because I want the goal of it to succeed. So there's always going to be tasks that are less pleasant than others. Now, what we can do is imagine a world where the amount of work actually needed to be done is greatly reduced so that the tasks that are necessary, and some of them unpleasant, can be spread out among more people because less people will be wasting upwards of eight hours a day, five days a week, doing

mostly pointless, time-filling work. Because, yeah, there's going to be things that suck, and we'll be able to do those a lot better if there's more people and we don't have to waste our times doing stuff that is is honestly a lot more bullshit than actually scooping bullshit wow what a good joke speaking of scooping

bullshit it's time it's time to scoop up some more ads wait really haven't we done two no we no we only only only did one. Oh, alright. We went a while without doing one. Guys, listen to the products because everyone loves a service. It's not like the thing we're talking about is bad. It's different than that, so it's fine. Welcome.

I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts

dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, Thank you. that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming.

This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at

iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them

to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Yep, we're back and we're still talking about anti-work. This is something that the Crimethink workbook points out. And, you know, it's a pretty obvious thing.

I've certainly thought of this before, is that, you know, we've been told that technological progress will soon liberate humanity from the need to do work or from, you know, having to do work as much. And today we have the capabilities that, you know, our ancestors couldn't have even imagined for the amount of work that we could get done. But these predictions still, like, aren't true.

We're still working more than ever. Even though we have developed so much technologically, we're still working more than ever. And I think it's silly to think that we'll reach a magic threshold where somehow now we have less work to do because we'll have robots being a server at a McDonald's or whatever. There still is forcing people into this thing because this is the only way that we can live right this is we've built

our whole society around getting work for money so this is the only the only thing that we can do yeah david creeper one of the things he's argues in bullshit jobs is that basically you know okay so so if if you have like you have the soviet economy right okay so the soviet economy has has a policy of full employment and for a little bit they were like okay what if we make everyone work less and then they stopped and then like everything went to shit so you know okay but if you can't make people work less hours and everyone has to work what do you do it's like okay well you pay a bunch of people to like stand at a doorway right now we also do this and then one of what graber is like funniest points that he brings up is that the the total number of bureaucrats in the ex-ussr

like increased dramatically after uh the ussr fell which is incredible yeah and you know what it points to is that like yeah you know graber called this total bureaucratization which is incredible. Yeah. And, you know, what it points to is that, like, yeah, you know, Graeber called this total bureaucratization, which is that, you know, what we did, instead of, like, giving ourselves more free time, is created this just, like, endless, enormous, incredibly violent bureaucracy that all of us have to spend all of our time, like, dealing with bullshit from our insurance companies and, like, fighting with, like, the Comcast service person

and all of this just like you know incredibly violent dehumanizing stuff that you know it it's it's a make work program right but it's a make work program that just the work that it makes is everyone is making everyone's lives miserable and we could just not do this yeah i-hmm. Yeah, I mean, we could. It's always more complicated than that, right? Because the thing that is, when we talk about anti-work, the thing that's on the other side of this is like, okay, well, what if you get a kid?

How are you going to feed that kid? Yeah, how are you going to keep them in a house? Not just if you have a kid, but like, yeah, people die in our society when they do not have access to adequate resources and the only way to have access to adequate resources is to be born rich or to work those are your options yeah this is why without without robust mutual aid and a commitment by a lot of people to try to make sure that a lifestyle is sustainable outside of you know this system like it's not impossible but it

it's somewhere along the line there has to be input i mean yeah like we've been talking about squat and be a freegan but yeah we've been talking about anti-work as like as kind of like a broad hopeful like future goal and some other you know post scarcity well not not post scarcity but like it's post like a post crumbling post kind of-collapse future. But I think for us now, as the anti-work sub-brand is about people now, right? The anti-work sub-brand is not about a future world. I think the anti-work now is like an alternative to the obsession with living your life with the goal of a career. Yes. It's like a project to radically reframe how we think of work and leisure. Yes. resign from their job for whatever reason, whatever moment. The anti-work is about like thinking of this movement as like the antithesis to the mainstream

capitalist hustle culture. You know, that includes like slacking off more, finding ways to waste time, possibly even finding ways to steal or scam your boss. I've read certain certain alleged ways of doing this inside the anti-work. Yeah. Garrison's had my car for days. I don't even know where they got it from, but yeah. No, but there is ways to scam

whatever corporation you work for, right? There's been examples shared in the anti-work subreddit. So it's about actually making sure that you hate your work, because you should, and then figuring out how to live your life with that in mind. And I think one of the really hard parts about this is for people who like kind of like their job people who are like you think like either like their job or think it's like kind of important

or like they're special to have it right it's like oh you're like i'm lucky to have such a good job because like when you're stuck in that mindset you can often put in like a lot of extra unpaid labor because you think it's important. Because you're like, oh no, this is worth doing because it's going to have some benefits to the world. So you end up putting in actually more work that you don't actually get paid for. It's about trying to kill that instinct as well.

That's a whole way to think about working because we're going to be stuck. A lot of people are going to be stuck doing it for a while. So how can we reframe what we do on the job and how kind of jobs live in our minds when we are at home and and i think the best thing about what you've said in my opinion is the idea that like this is not the importance is not on whether or not this this it causes everyone to stop having to work immediately like whether or not it leads to you know having to work immediately, like whether or not it leads to, you know, directly to,

like the measure of success of this movement isn't that nobody ever has to work again. That's a long-term goal. The measure of the success of this movement is that people accept en masse that, no, the American dream as it's sold to people is not a good thing. It's not a thing to aspire to. Work is bullshit and we should aspire to a society that doesn't do it. It's getting back, honestly, like it's getting back to some of the shit that people were talking about in like when the Jetsons was on TV.

The idea that like, well, with labor saving devices, like a hard work week will be four hours and like that's the way life will be for everybody. And like, and it's the acceptance that like no a better future involves me not having involves no one having to spend 40 hours a week of their limited human life working at a fucking sonic or like listening to some middle manager berate them for not answering phones fast enough um that doesn't exist for any human being in a world that is achievable and better than the one that we live in. Like convincing people of that and getting that to be widely accepted is I think what I would consider the terms of victory in this particular struggle.

Yeah. Kind of moving on from this side of things into like the great resignation and the other kind of things that people are doing. So in August alone, 4.3 million americans voluntarily left their jobs um and the rate of people quitting increased to a uh a decent a decent record high of like 2.9 percent according to the bureau of labor and statistics so and this this this has been a growing trend. You can look at, like, I think June was, like, a little under 4 million. August was 4.3. So, like, it was, you know, it's ramping.

I don't know if we have data for September or October yet. This was the most recent one I could find. So, yeah, like, stuff is going up. Because people are, like, a big part of the anti-work sidebar is like, yeah, if your job sucks, you can quit it and probably find another one that pays better in decent time, especially, especially, especially right now. Like right now, if your job is really terrible, you have a decent chance of finding a better one. Um, this wasn't the case like two years ago.

Um, it is the case at, at, at this moment. So a lot of the anti-work sidebar,dits are like, yeah, quit your job, say fuck you to your boss, and leave. Because if they're being shitty, they don't deserve to have you. So resigning has been a big part of this. There has been attempts

at other kind of organized stuff. And this kind of falls into, in my opinion, this kind of falls into the same kind of traps as sole internet organizing kind of always does. So the big thing that they're organizing for is called Black Friday Blackout, which is about kind of trying to get everyone to, as many people as possible, to not work Black Friday and not buy anything on Black Friday. So like a post from the subreddit here is like, spread the word. Call in sick if you're forced to work on Black Friday. Spend a post from the subreddit here is like, spread the word. Call in sick if you're forced to work on Black Friday. Spend time with your family instead.

Remain at home and participate in your favorite activity on Friday, November 26th. Talk to your family and friends about your work-life struggles. Pass out flyers. Join r slash anti-work. So this is, you know, I think this kind of falls into the same like,

you know, general strike organized online stuff that we talked about before. How kind of like a lack of like real like in-person solidarity and like non-internet, you know, networking and organizing results and stuff like this. Just, you know, like proposed like one day strikes or actions that are ultimately kind of non-effectual, right? Like they can be like a good symbol sometimes, but like, you know, they're not, it's not, it's not really going to matter that much, even if it works. Would I think it'd be cool if literally no store was open on Black Friday because everyone quit? Yeah, that would be rad. But that's not going to really happen.

It would be fun if it did, but realistically, it's not going to happen. And there is people on the subreddit who also point this out. There was a reply to this post that was like, Oh look, another online call for a general strike with no union support whatsoever don't worry y'all this one's this one's definitely going to work um so it's like yeah like a lot of people in the sub

also recognize that like without like actual like organizing support um and in-person stuff and you know networks to support people on like you know lengthy, these types of things are mostly symbolic actions that will have, in the end, little impact. They may make you feel powerful as you're doing them, which is good. That is, a lot of activism is actually just about you feeling powerful in that moment. But as an end goal,

it's important to remember to think that this isn't going to reach whatever anti-work utopia, which I know people organizing it aren't thinking that. But it's important to keep this within context of the limits of online organizing. So a lot of people like recommend you know focusing on organizing your own workplace and community um discussing you know discussing having discussions with with unions kind of in in your area um and yeah a part part of part of kind of the part of

the reply to to this original like a black friday blackout post that someone wrote was... Seriously, though, I would love for an actual general strike to kick off, but these online calls for general strikes with no union involvement, no demands, no supports for strikers of any kind, no nothing whatsoever beyond social media hashtags don't do anything.

Focus on organizing your workplace and your community. Discuss with unions, which might be sympathetic to what criteria they might need from such a drastic action. There's a lot of unions on strike right now. So if there ever was a time to kick one off, it's now. Most general strikes in the past started off with specific strikes that started pulling in other unions and solidarity than anything else. Focus on that and we might get somewhere. Focus on that and we might get somewhere.

I think it's a decent advice for the people who are really dedicated onto this kind of like general strike thing is, yeah, that is pretty good advice in my opinion. I want to say something kind of briefly just in general about general strikes because I think we've talked about it a lot on here, but they're really, really hard. I mean, there's an an example like just to get a picture of like how how actually hard it is to pull off um there was there was one in sudan in in summer of 2019 and you know i mean this is this is in the middle of a revolution right the the

sudan is incredibly highly organized it's incredibly militant people have been like you know i mean people like the the like the chant. People have been like, you know, I mean, like the, the, the, like the chant in the street is like, you cannot kill us. We already dead. Like,

you know, they, and, you know, and, and it's the, the whole revolution is being led by the Sydney professional association, which is an association of like 17 trade unions.

Right. So this, this is a population that is enormously better organized than like anything really that exists in the u.s and you know in in the middle of the summer the army opens fire and starts killing protesters and so they call general strike and you know the turnout is massive right they have millions millions upon millions of people show up to the strike and on day one it's successful and then on day two of the strike people start having to pull out especially people in the informal sector because even with the level of organization they have

they can't support everyone and by about day three most of the strike has collapsed because even even with levels of organization they had even with you know the coordination even with the fact that they're in the middle of a revolution they just they couldn't support particularly the people in the informal sector so So this stuff is really, really, really hard. Yeah, it is. It is definitely hard. Even highly organized, highly motivated people who are

literally willing to fight to the death will lose. And that's something that you have to keep in mind when you're talking about this. A lot of people are more focused on kind of their individual resignations, finding other ways of making money, and just slacking off at work in general because those are a lot easier than trying to organize a mass general strike right now. And I think one of the really optimistic things about this whole anti-work thing, including the subreddit, is that it has made some bank executives kind of nervous. There was a fantastic article by Yahoo Finance.

Now, by fantastic, I mean funny for me. They did not think it was as funny. They talked with the Golden Sacks CEO, and they pointed to the anti-work subreddit of being – what was the phrase? A long-run risk to labor force participation. Good. This is – see, that – when I first read that in the article, I just like flashed to my head – in my head to that scene from Stars starship troopers where uh neil patrick harris puts his hand on the brain bug and goes it's afraid it's afraid yeah yeah he he said um uh

we see some risk that workers were elected will elect to maintain out of the workforce for longer provided they can afford to do so um pretty pretty good stuff and and i think good stuff and everything that's worth mentioning that hasn't been talked about very much is that so this is actually kind of working in some sense like the the the last few months or 2020 in general last few months in particular have seen basically like the highest levels of wage increases that we've seen in decades so you know like yeah we haven't overthrown capitalism yet but like if you can keep quitting your job keep quitting your job at at your regular job work less keep doing it it's working yeah this is stuff i wish we need to in the future i would like us to be focusing more on

stuff like that like this that is a legitimately as you point out chris there's a lot of reasons to be very optimistic about about some of the numbers that we're getting from what is happening to labor right now um and it is important as we all like right now we're all miserable because we're sweating through the written house case it is important to talk about stuff like that that like yeah some shit people's doing is is is hitting home some motherfuckers have found the glowy, vulnerable spot on the boss monster, and it's doing the weird... Turns out it's just not working.

Yeah, it's just not working. Yeah, like, again, as we started the series with, like, yeah, General Strike is kind of the best available solution. Yeah. Or path to a solution that I can find.

But anyway, what else we got, Garrison? Are we good? I think that does it for us today. Is that a soad? Have we casted? Chris has some special sequel stuff happening.

So tune in tomorrow for our listeners. For anti-work in China. And like all of the best sequels, this one will be directed by James Cameron. So we're all very excited. To bring our pal James onto the pod.

To bring our pal James and the reanimated corpse of Stan Winston. It's going to be amazing. So check it out. Bye. Bye, everybody. It Could Happen Here is a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at

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