TRASHFUTURE - *Unlocked* Work Sucks (We Know) feat. Will Stronge

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

Riley and Milo sit down with Will Stronge, director of Autonomy and one of the principal authors of the four day work week report (linked here) that’s been generating so much interest lately. Sing it loud and sing it proud: work sucks! This episode originally appeared on our bonus content feed. You can sign up for $5 a month on Patreon and get an episode like this each week: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture (this also will grant you access to our Discord server). Here's a link to the Autonomy report that Will references in the episode: http://autonomy.work/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Shorter-working-week-final.pdf *COMEDY KLAXON*: On March 13 at 8pm, Milo will host another Smoke Comedy at the Sekforde (34 Sekforde Street London EC1R 0HA). This show costs £5 and will feature all new material from Tania Edwards, Chloe Petts, Dimitri Bakanov, and Raph Wakefield. Get tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/smoke-comedy-with-tania-edwards-tickets-56285827425  Also: you can commodify your dissent with a t-shirt from http://www.lilcomrade.com/, and what’s more, it’s mandatory if you want to be taken seriously. Do you want a mug to hold your soup? Perhaps you want one with the Trashfuture logo, which is available here: https://teespring.com/what-if-phone-cops#pid=659&cid=102968&sid=front

And we are live yo, so we're recording How we're recording today recording no cans no headphones. We do have cans to the style of the besta Let's do a quick can check can check can check what have we got in cans? I'm uh, I'm rockin. I'm rockin a Heineken. Everyone's rockin a Heineken. We're all rockin a Heineken yo Heineken sponsor us Yeah No variety in the cans just no variety your hands pure Heineken once a year All other beer brands that are afraid of Heineken getting an edge in the sort of leftist podcast market sponsor us You know, we're a we're a free agent. We're not wedded to Heineken don't Heineken

Don't think you can lowball us so no a beer brand needs to sponsor us instead of phase one of trash futures So Heineken is you know, it's got a pictures phase two a phase well phase two is when we get sponsored by a beer brand and then Bear Margera who is in the UK right now. Yeah comes on the show. Although. I don't think he drinks and yo He's trying to kick his alcoholism. We'll get him back on it We've got we've got phase two two phase two phase two furious and then phase three phase banks Put the theme song in You guys had a theme song. Yeah, okay. It's just the call to prayer No with a theme song the theme song that you just heard it were event when we're going to replace it with the shahada

So that eventually who's saying the only reason who's saying agreed to be on this bad show was that so he could turn the entirety of Britain Muslim shahada twain a country singer who turns people Muslim Welcome to your bonus TF for the week folks It's me Riley and I'm in studio with his slimmed down cast including Milo. Yeah, man I've been I've been on just nothing but milkshakes for weeks. I've dropped some I'm caught. I'm lean as fuck Milo's on this new diet where you drink nothing but ice cream milkshakes for weeks for every meal. He's incredibly bloated He's perfectly spherical you drink nothing but your own cum, but at the end you're so strong So powerful speaking of strong

We are Joined by will strong of autonomy. Well, how are you doing? Very well. Thank you. How are you? That's so British Still very well still very well autonomy for those of you who do not know is a think tank that is trying to revolutionize the world of Work not in the way that most like you know dumb startups do it by being like hey if you come in early you get 10 points You can exchange for an Amazon voucher or whatever. No, they're trying to make us work less because as blink when 82 said work sucks I know Yeah, basically, that's it. So the reason you might have heard of autonomy as well recently from that website

Yeah, autonomy work sucks. See the reason you may have heard of autonomy is that they have been really pushing And they're one of the main intellectual forces behind the current sort of Let's say intellectual fight for like for men that is around the four-day work week And that's an idea that's actually currently being taken seriously by John McDonald's office in labor party And I can sure I speak for everyone when I say we need a four-day work week now So that we can eventually move to a no-day work week Yeah, long-term long-term goes long-term goes. Oh, yeah

long-term girls but of course as John McTernan mega genius said but a four-day work week that surely that will make everyone 25% poorer Yeah, that's that's what the heat would say and that's what every conservative says when they come face-to-face with this proposal. So and I don't know if you want to talk about that now. Do you want to talk about let's do that as the table setter Then we'll go into what dumb conservatives have said. This is for the audience. There's a little table of contents for your ass Well, let's do that. What dumb conservatives have said let's talk about the report itself And then let's do a little reading from one of the biggest brained magazines in the entire world that isn't the spectator

Amazing. So I actually recently listened to a radio phone-in debate about the four-day work week I mean, I say recently this could have been at any time in the past year. My brain is much like who knows And I think it was the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2 now if you're not familiar with the Jeremy Vine show what Jeremy Vine likes to do is take a very complex question and Throw it out to absolute morons to see what take they might have on it And but then often he like massively mismatches like the headline debaters who are calling in because like the public can call him But also you'll have some like go-to like, you know experts on both sides of the both sides of the issue, right? So he had someone in basically an academic and economist of some kind who was in favor of a four-day work week

I'm saying the very normal arguments that yes, this actually makes sense and then against them He just had some conservative MP or someone whose entire argument was like, well, but that's bollocks It was like well when you look at all of the data what you'll find is that actually in a four-day work week We can be just as productive as we are in the five-day work week now But with the added social benefits of people and they're trying to come might I just say though, that's bollocks Because we've always had a five-day work week. So this must be bollocks. Thank you. That went on for like half an hour Yes, but didn't you think that it might be bollocks? What I'm saying about that is that the bar for this episode is low So anything about that and we've beaten that so anything above bollocks

Yeah, I mean, I think most people do Most people's reactions straight away normally like it sounds awesome And then like the second reaction is I don't want to be poorer. I think that's like fair enough, right? I guess the point is not to do this kind of like let's reduce the work wheat because we can pay people less But more like let's look at history where we've moved from 11 hour day 10 hour day 9 hour day 8 hour day And let's just keep going because why have we stopped? That's basically the the just of it and that those reductions in hours have not meant reduction of wages in fact

When we went from 11 hour to a 9 hour day Wages are going up. So that's that's the main historical thing to point to so when people say we have to cut wages It's like yeah, but why yeah, we have to go with so that so that these so that growth can happen because growth We need growth endless growth growth Yeah, so I guess the other part of the report which we which we like draw attention to is this kind of they're both You got to talk about both the same breath is that actually, you know, let's let's have like investment in labor-saving tech Let's automate loads the economy. Let's reduce the working weeks

Like, you know manage that and that means that like we can have if you want growth I'll do that if you want growth you can have growth But why are we doing the work when we can get machines to do it like why are we why we not investing now? It's so it's one must can be epic on Twitter Well, can I throw in a counterpoint to that which is have you considered that all of that is bollocks Have you googled Venezuela? I've been I've been reading some very intellectual papers recently by people like Sir Chaffley cashmore MP for South South End who believes that that is in fact bollocks

And I mean look Amazon rolled out its new delivery robot today And I'm sure all of the workers wearing diapers because they're like well not because they're turning point USA fans But because they're they're basically what they're they're working in horrifying conditions, right? He would be so good at Amazon. He loves billionaires He he's really really into like the kind of genes that you order on Amazon. I think You could probably use some bigger teeth Maybe they have good dental and what it's a perfect fit. This is synergy. This is why the podcast works in stream Is bigger teeth for everyone

Just to make everyone bugs bunny you might have poverty wages, but look how huge your teeth are Yeah, but like right they've automated all of their delivery and that means that you know That's great perfect a bunch of people who like sacrifice their lives in like this physical integrity of their bodies get thanked and then fired Yeah, that's the current model we're working on right like you either like if companies do automate It's it's in no way to improve the lives of these those gives the charity How would he give the charity if he didn't have an enormous amount of wealth to begin so we run that clip from Rooka breakman at Davos That's pretty much what you should do now Every time we talk about philanthropy run the run the breakman clip and we're away

You know, you've mistaken the nature of our podcast This is where we run the episode of it's always sunny in Philadelphia where Charlie tries to say he's a philanthropist We can't say the word very enough. Yeah, fine that do that to do that So first let's talk about some dumbass politicians who are trying to talk about the nature of work and what it means to people Remember the only correct interpretation of work is the blink 182 is school But let's let's let's talk about two of the biggest sort of like cartoon villains in sort of a transatlantic political recent history Of course, these are domestic policy villains not like Henry Kissinger who's in the league of his own

Yeah, we should make a sequel to a league of their own instead of He's starring Henry Kissinger one man show just getting polite on it. It's just Henry Kissinger We're just getting pelted with baseballs a version of Takeshi's castle, but Henry Kissinger is the only contestant Who's the general in that? Okay, so this is an excerpt from the remarks made by Paul Ryan at the 2014 CPAC conservative political action committee conference or conservative political action conference some conservative shit in the United States What the left is offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul The American people want more than that

He went on to talk about a young boy who got a government provided free lunch at school every day But the boy said he quote didn't want to free lunch He wanted his own lunch won the brown paper bag just like the other kids because he knew a kid with a brown paper bag Had someone who cared for him Brown paper bag and she's got a bottle of whiskey Okay, come on junior hobos, that's a hilarious idea that I would like to park man I fucking love Paul Ryan. He's got such a powerful brain like it for a man who was you know made It was like a playmobil model turned sentient. He's done remarkably well for himself

But like the thing that's amazing about this is like the full stomach empty soul thing is like imagine this kid Who's eating their free lunch and otherwise they wouldn't have had a lunch and then they're just going yeah But did I really earn this? Solution isn't that like he would like go down there and make that kid's mom make them a loving homemade lunch like Paul Ryan's view It's like I know he just wouldn't have a lunch, but that would teach him a valuable lesson about the market Yeah, I feel like it's just I don't know he's conceding a lot of ground right he's basically saying like oh Socialism sucks. It gives everyone a full stomach It's like not even admitting that basically like you know the austere kind of image of socialism instead of saying

Socialism only offers people full stomachs and like it's a kind of like what sounds kind of fine And I guess like this idea that the paperback thing is like he wanted his own lunch It's like it's not his own lunch his parents bought it and made it for him and just given it to it's like It's the same thing has been given a lunch from school like yeah He doesn't own the lunch if his parents give it to him Also like lots of kids pay to have lunch at school. It's not like if your parents love you They definitely make you a lunch some parents just give you money to buy lunch at school. That's true Yeah, well, it's it's the whole and I think this really gets to the core of the conservative

I have conservative ideas around work and ownership and why they would object to something like a four-day work week Where it's like no you have to earn it where the idea is that You have to keep transforming yourself So you're always useful to Jeff Bezos so that when he automates your bit of the workforce You're still useful to him in some other way. Yeah, I think I don't know It's obviously it's quite it's like a long-standing tactic to basically say to go for the soul basically So basically like not only is it, you know, you materially well off actually something deeply embedded in your soul Which means that even if you are automated you your soul still wants to work

So you have to still be desperate to find the next job you need and then also this idea of basically You it's got a religious overtome which comes straight from the Protestant work ethic Yeah, like the idea that like we getting Weber up in this shit Exactly rather You know, I don't even know it kind of his his analogy kind of trails off to think about like getting a lunch And it's about care, but it's also about his empty soul. I don't really yeah I'll carry on. Here's what Paul Ryan carries on to say. This is what the left does not understand

Because he is he is then basically this is all arguments about Obamacare, right? This the this is what the left does not understand and he's talking about how this means that the people will leave work If they have Obamacare because they won't be forced to work on their pain of death. Basically people don't want a life of comfort They want a life called motivation People don't want a life of comfort. They want a life of dignity and self-determination Why the fuck are those things juxtaposed? Yeah, I mean, this is just this is the typical kind of rhetoric you get when anyone talks about work You get this kind of typical Dignity comes with work. You don't just want comfort material goods because don't worry. We're not gonna give you those anyway

But but and also you want self-determination It's like this idea of putting yourself up for your own bootstrap with your own bootstraps But actually, I mean if you look at for example the kind of work that we have to do these days or like as you talk about Bezos Amazon work for example and Do we say that's got dignity and I mean should we say that should we say that it's about self-determination when you have a little page? It tells you when you have to get to the next like Box which is being shipped up to Riley like that's not dignified I mean, I know I'm not not dignified

But I basically I don't think the people who are doing that think man This is like the most dignified part of my life right now Exactly they have like lives outside of that which they'd rather be doing rather than like running around with a manager on a page Yeah, you know, yeah, I feel like most people so I recently had an argument with And at sort of an employer I guess which I feel like encapsulates this where like I was being pop for some work by tutoring agency And I happen to know the guy at the tutoring agency who's like yeah This kid's kind of a shithead like but you know, they need someone to like do this And I'm like fine

But then the person who was like managing this client didn't want to put me up for it because they felt that like my heart wasn't in it And I'm like whose heart is in teaching like the incredibly privileged shithead kid of like some oligarchs So that they can get an advantage over like a poorer but smarter kid Like how much of a Rube would you have to be to be like no? I just believe in the good of education like you would have to be so dumb that there would be nothing you could teach that child And in that way you would be the perfect client because you would the perfect tutor rather kids You would just be stealing money from the family Accidentally doing radical praxis by being really stupid redistributing wealth, baby

Redistributing wealth by accident, but that's the knit this is I think gets the core of what the right thinks about work Which is that they think that there is Which is that if you're left to your own device, especially the working class is left to its own devices Then it will sort of without the discipline and structure of a boss who's educated and from the middle or upper classes The working class will come to the end of a level We'll just drift into vice and indolence and we'll sort of cry out for meaning and structure It's a way of looking at the working class as children. I think yeah It's like a total lack of faith or trust in other people

But I think also there's a fear there's a fear that if basically you give material kind of it's like sustainability and comfort and you also give people access to doing other stuff rather than jobs then basically like your Time's up. I think there was a certain fear to it like I There's way more people who are under the cosh of like a manager than those who are doing the managing if you soundly allow those people to have a choice Oh, yeah, this is like this goes back to something and I think we'll we'll transition on across the Atlantic to Ian Duncan Smith on universal credit Right when this goes back to something that Michael Walker said on an episode of ours a few months ago Which is that none of these reforms about none of these benefit cuts or whatever none of it's to save money In fact, it costs more to aggressively means test this much

Then it does to just give people benefits, right? Yeah It's about Fendo, but what it does is it disciplines the labor? What sort of is it disciplines the labor market because it means you can't just leave your job Yeah, it means you can't agitate for better conditions because if you if you lose your job you get cast into The unemployment industry basically where you're sort of churned into mush and have to take the first job you're given Yeah, exactly. I think like I mean just to come in on that like I think We should always remember that like universal credit for us like in a huge long line of basically

reforms for the last 200 years around what our work benefits are for so basically like if you look at the workhouse system and the Poor laws the 1834 and onwards like explicitly politicians are debating in Parliament around Wait a second. We have to make life out. They literally are saying we have to make life outside of work And the workhouse worse than it is in work and the reason why that system failed is because life In work was so poor that it to make it worse and the workhouse is literally making letting people die So it became a crisis So you think about that and you get to the point where we're starting creating job centers and labor exchanges in 1999 1910 Churchill and beverage are debating in Parliament saying stuff like okay

We need to move like we need to like actually like distinguish between The deserving poor and the undeserving poor that the person who wants to work the man who wants to work and the man who was just idle And so it's like a whole history like it's never changed really even up until now and as you were saying right like that The recent stuff around universal credit of being like we to make work pay and people need to be better off and work than outside of Where it's exactly the same trajectory and we look in horror at the poor laws and the workhouses and all of the twists and all that stuff But like it's it's basically the same now but on a larger scale because the workhouse gave you a full belly, but an empty soul That was the problem Free lunch

For any of the workhouse had more soul the workhouse is now Brown in the work the workhouse is now distributed It's everywhere because the workhouse gets to you through sort of laws that touch everything and it gets to you through your computer It gets to you through constantly having to be available for like what job coaching meetings or do it engaging in job searching? Have you ever done DMT? Joe Rogan work house. What if I told you that this is we're in the system What if I told you that society is real? So this is Ian Duncan Smith on universal credit

The government's welfare reforms have saved the taxpayer 50 billion pounds and I italicized this restored fairness to the system as the And this plays into the idea that when people are not working what they're doing is they're Skyping off the productivity of people who are as opposed to what's really happening Which is that there was a class of capitalists that is skiving off the productivity of everybody Yes, I think like yeah, and also it doesn't make much sense to me to talk about like are you taking taxpayers money? But it's like welfare cuts like some point in everyone's life statistically you'll you will use welfare So ultimately like the same people you're saying you're stealing from but also the people who can be using the system anyway So it's like yeah, this idea that you're like there's some people who just will never use it

Etc. There's like tiny percentage of people who never use it and they're from like pre-capitalist aristocratic tradition That's that's like a breeze mug. Yeah, for example the mugs. Yeah, I'm a man who may up with some point where two monocles Absolutely. Yeah, I mean he's a worrying he's a worrying man Is it's like it's like the fucking like a turning point turning point UK today who were like, you know There will always be a fundamental struggle between people who work for what they earn and people who earn again What they get unearned because those the people who work for they earn a paying for the income of people who don't earn the money That they get and it's like yeah My rent is 2,000 pounds a month like yes

Yes, there's a huge class of people Labor to fund their lives and it's a good thing We have all five days that we can really make sure that we can nurture our souls by like making by Making sure Jacob Rees-Mogg has enough money for a second monocle or like a dick-sucking machine or whatever How high do you have to be to regard taxation as more of a theft than rent? Like how high because I I've been high, but I've never been that high What is it? I mean, this is like this is perhaps a slightly more serious point but what is interesting about that turning point thing is to basically say that like the same critique that that

The growing bourgeoisie were making to the aristocracy which is basically like hey We're making stuff and you guys just sit there with your land We're productive is then also used by certain strands of the labor movement to say look the bourgeoisie We're doing the work like more like it's a more legitimate critique We're doing the work you guys are kind of like shaving off our income But then at some point and this is the question that's more about a bit more philosophical is to be like well Should we stop making that same critique because basically it's kind of being like I work harder than you Yeah, I work harder than you like if you don't work as hard as me

You don't deserve stuff which is like so that I think the end game of that argument is pretty problematic But it's still useful to say hey, you're just a renter like right like rent is bullshit It's not productive anyway, but you know what I mean Let's say with with with by combating Rentism instead of by instead of saying that work is good and everyone should take the product of what they of what they work for We can make the converse argument and just combat rentism Yeah, which is to say that taking advantage of other people is bad Yeah, and so instead of instead of valorizing work we can demonize the taking of the taking advantage of yeah

And I think really that's what that's a critique the left should be advancing more than the one that is sort of pure workerism Yeah, yeah, righty. There is no more potent slur than landlord There I let the landlords association. I think really I think did say that that's so good They're amazing like if you've not come across them they have They recently boycotted be in queue because be in queue donates a percentage of his profits to shelter Which they regard as an anti landlord organization. Oh my god Really, it's so funny Literally fuck the homeless official position is basically to be in a high-back chair stroking a cat

They're like they're like imagine if someone went a step further than saying like we should ban boycotting Israel And was like we should boycott Palestine like that So we've talked about some of the the climate that this report is entering into but let's talk about the report So what I've got here is I've just sort of got the outline of the report We're gonna sort of talk through the skeleton So you say that the shorter working week is a powerful and practical response to the trends of Growing inequalities gendered inequalities precarious work stagnating productivity growth and the idea of Capital replacing labor through automation. Can you talk a little bit about how that is?

Yeah, so I guess when we we looked at we started looking at the research around The state of the UK economy. It was kind of it's it was a bad. It wasn't pretty, you know, so we kind of what things aren't good Yeah, I mean, well really was like I mean, it's the it's the top. Well, can I put it to you that's bollocks? I excuse me It sounds to me like you're talking down Britain I have four properties and the rent is pretty high. So it's going pretty well and Britain's in our prime She's an Instagram thought she's about to hit a peak your beard add Britain's premium snap John-claw Junker is just jealous that he never got to fuck Britain. Sorry carry on please. Yeah, I mean that we should just written that and

So we had like with the yeah, all these trends are all pretty worrying and this a lot of them are like long-term and not Like they're not amenable to quick fixes. So job polarization, for example It's the idea that basically over like 40 years Like middle-income jobs are hollowing out and we've got like some high-income jobs coming about and obviously a lot of tech jobs things like that, but also loads of low-wage jobs and that's been like That's been like a tendency for ages and and some of the Causes are like low worker voice so trade unions, but also like yeah investment in capital rather than investing in labor So we looked at stuff like that. We looked at the wealth inequalities

I mean some of these stats around income inequality is crazy I mean wealth inequality is worse like ten nine Nine percent of the of the population in the UK own 45 percent of wealth which is insane and in America's way worse But I mean it in the UK it's like it's what I think it's probably the worst in Europe I have to check the report, but income inequality is crazy like there's like you have the average CEO And 145 times more than the average employee on the FTSE 100 companies So that's like and you know the high-pay centers done some really good work on this basically it would take an Employee earning median average UK wages

167 years to earn the average yearly income of the average CEO in this country, which is like if you tell the people that like Even if whatever part of spectrum you're from like I even told my mom that and she was like She was like oh no, that's that's wrong like she was like like she was like okay If someone earns four million as a CEO, they should earn one million and spread the rest out to the workers And I was like, I mean that's kind of crazy. My mom's like like she's vote conservatism alive But like I think that those kind of facts are really important and to make you think well Actually like what would a new deal for for for working people be which is kind of combats these so to answer a question Like we basically think a shorter working week, you know as a continuum a continuance of like the trend of reducing hours over the last

150 years, but also as part of like a new Kind of economic settlement which shows that actually the economy works for people not just for the CEOs of the FTSE 100 companies But also works for just the people who are working for them So that was like a test go employee or whatever like actually shows it works them I mean what better way to do it than give you a Friday off basically yeah Well, it's that there is the the classic like the classic economics problem like when it goes back to like Smith Basically, is that you is that in a wage labor system? Everyone has to weigh up the how much of their of their time is spent on leisure and how much of the time is spent on paid work and

Anything short of a legislated shorter week will mean that They're their their masters their managers whoever can force can basically force them to To work more for less money because like if you give people extra vacation days, for example It's very easy for a company to just pressure them not to take them You know, so this kind of structural level change It seems to me is the only thing that could actually Effect a real improvement in most people's lives Yeah, and basically every time as I was saying before every time we've moved from an 11 hour day to a 10 hour day

So nine hour day basically if you look at the documents at the time for businesses They're like this is gonna ruin the economy and like my company's gonna go bust and like like, you know I think actually in in the in the first volume of capital marks points to He spanks that British economy guys like in the eleventh hour We earn all our profits. So like we need to like have the eleventh hour. It's like, yeah, that's not true And also the eleventh hours when all the gollywags get made Do you want to live in a society with no gollywags? We do the jam industry would collapse Like that's perhaps not out of place that some people might be saying that today. It's like

The pressing thing. Yeah, me model in the jacobry smog podcast We're not saying he said that we're just saying two unconnected statements. Yeah, I mean, you know talking about monocles probably We this is in fact, you're you're the next point in the outline where it's like there is this still this persistent myth that productivity in the number of hours worked by him by employees per day Produces the outcome of a business, but this is not true No So I guess what we did was you looked at other countries around the world where you know If it was true that the amount of hours you put in like working workers to the bone every day

if that meant that you'd have a greater output more productivity and greater GDP output then Then that then we expect to see in countries with work more We expect them to be having a great like a more productive economy greater GDP and those that work less to have Kind of like a greater that's what a lower output, but that's just not true at all So Japan for example Japan has a punitive working culture where you can never get there After the boss you must always leave after the boss leaves It's routine to have like a 12 or 13 hour day and you take one day off a week Maybe and they've been in a low GD low GDP trap for like two decades. Yeah, amazing Logan Paul documentary about that

And they've all I mean the worst thing about Japan is they have a name for death by overwork Karoshi Which basically it's a huge basically it's an epidemic of of of you know Thousands of people each year die from overwork because the working culture is so punitive. You're right So what we did was we looked at for example, Greece and Mexico who work a lot more than we do in the UK And their GDP and that their economies are performing a much worse and then we looked at Germany for example who work Effectively enough so that they could down tools on Thursday Be as productive as we are while we're still working through Friday So that was a really good example to look at something where it's like

Well, doesn't really mean you're more successful if you work harder and so That comes down to a number of factors and this is really important to stress again that when we talk about productivity and talk about You know hours of people working well Let's look at our investment in machinery and like the UK is really really low investing in robots and machinery Whereas things like people like people countries like America and China and Japan they they spend so much money investing in robotics that you know It's kind of that's a really important factor to kind of tag in it's not just lazy workers basically Also, they think the thing that you can't sort of ignore also is that the UK has an almost exclude

I mean most of our GDP now comes from like third sector, right? Sort of certain like services either sort of the more blue collar services like like waiters and stuff sectors of the third Card the more sort of white collar services like consultants and bankers and so on and I mean most of those of course okay And most of the most white collar service of all white national services. Yeah, the whitest of the white services Most of those of those workers would have probably what David Graber calls bullshit jobs, right? So, I mean, yeah, I think I think the bullshit jobs thesis is quite useful as a kind of provocative Kind of idea. I mean, I think what what strikes me most about the bullshit jobs thing is basically when people say People's response to automation is we just create more jobs no matter what and I think actually it's like well

Let's just think about the content of these jobs like do they do we want to have I mean people say it Don't worry if automation comes there's gonna be growth in other sectors things like catering hospitality You know restaurants things like that. It's like well these professions are typically like the least popular amongst the work The workers who in them so if you look at some of the stats around, you know Like your enjoyment on the job hospitality is like pretty low not like being a waiter being a chef And I was a chef and in in in like a fake famous chain and it was awful You know, it was one of the worst jobs ever had you kill the scribble guy. You had a full belly Yes, an empty soul

We had no empty stomachs. Everyone else in full stomachs and we're cooking all the food anyway So the point is the bullshit jobs thesis really should make us think well Actually, what kind of jobs should we will be should we be creating and I guess like what jobs? We what jobs should we revalue? Yeah, so I think like that's really what it's I mean aside from the fact that like a lot of people think they're in a bullshit job Which is interesting in itself like actually it should make us think well not any any jobs not a good job Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And it's there there seems to be this drive to be like we cannot Distribute the benefits of like cooperation and industry except through employment

There is no other way to make it so that people living in industrial society can continue to survive except by wage It's never been any it's because we have had an industrial wage society forever and we'll continue to forever But not for us, of course we I do we don't survive on wage. We survive on our investments No, you well, this is almost the Edmund Burke argument where he says look if there weren't Idol rich working like like just consuming the labor of everybody else then how would beautiful art get commissioned Yeah, I guess like this is the sublime object of Bercology and no, but I think it sucks I mean, I could go back in time. I would just fucking sack tap Edmund

No, I would send Ryan Dunn back in time to sack tap Edmund Burke I'd have to go back in time to a point where Ryan Dunn was alive. Yeah, that's explain No, I think what I see on that point was interesting is that no I you know, I do a lot of research into into this is the stuff in the workhouse stuff as well And if you look at some of the debates going on at the time The grim thing is that being poor was identical with working So some of the politicians at the time and some intellectuals of the 19th century 8th 17th century 18th 17th century was basically saying

The definition of being poor is to labor and vice versa Whereas like now if you say with a working poor, that's a scandal quite rightly because if you're gonna work You should be able to be successful and like look after yourself and your friends and family whatever But actually that was the grim reality that I wonder if basically behind some of these ideologies Is particularly those who have a rental income particularly those who are well off and come from aristocratic families if basically If you're poor and you're working or if you're working your poor, that's kind of the natural order of things And that is that's something which I think we should all be scared of particularly, you know our generation

Which is I mean I assume one same generation You know, that's you know, that's Becoming more and more reality. That's us us thinking actually wait our previous generations are better off than us And now maybe we're declining in a way. It's that we it's that we we're we're If I if you listen to our last episode of the Owen Hatherley, it's that we're all fans of coal dust now We highly are smear artisanal coal dust on our faces because we want to get in touch with something more honest and real They want to be elected to be governor of Virginia And so you also talk about here's I want to sort of go into the next sort of

Um next point here. Also, you say that you consider that the importance of non work time for our mental and physical health And just our sense of well-being and happiness in general is crucial Yeah, I mean like that it's partly it sounds like an obvious point, right? I mean, I think like we all recognize that but it's also there's a whole range of benefits from having um Having more time for ourselves. Basically. I mean that like there's a great book by um It's called rest by it's published by penguin Um, and it talks about all of like it takes a very much kind of great men of history view in a way But ultimately there's some really interesting stories around Darwin and Dickens and marks and other people and what were their working days like and like

Ultimately the thesis is that you're more creative Like there's much more kind of interesting things going on when you work in the morning go for a walk in the afternoon things like that I mean, that's just one example, but I think I mean the way I put it when I wrote about the report in in in news is basically to say something like Can we afford to not make this change because we have a huge mental health epidemic and A quarter of all sick absences are from work related from workload alone So nearly half of work absences are work related things like stress anxiety depression But a quarter of work absences just from having too much workload

And I think that's stress on the on the NHS or like Deloitte's a Deloitte, you know Even not exactly the bastion of left-wing thought Wait what? Quickly quickly google's Deloitte. Oh my god. Oh my god. I've been sending them money every month I thought they were Leninist So, yeah, so like Deloitte are They they study who showed that basically like millions millions of pounds each year are Spent by the NHS to basically, you know, cater to these kind of work related strains

And I think let's think about it that way It's rather than like are we going to lose money by people working less Well, actually we're already losing money by people working too much In fact, again the more we work the more the more we sort of are facilitating our own exploitation And so that's where like the whole we like the we work hustle culture thing is like no you've got to do 16 hours a day So you can and it's less about fulfilling their soul now and more about proving you're better than everyone else At how relentlessly you can exploit yourself for like Mark Zuckerberg I feel like that's always fulfilling your soul is always about basically making your soul look better

Like like it was like work loads of forms of work are never really fulfilling of the soul to the extent that basically You say to someone There's a do you love your work? Yes. Do you want to work four days instead of five at the same pay? Absolutely It's like oh so like like fine You like to say that you know often people like to say they love their work But you know a day off they can think of like a million things they'd rather do You know, I mean the we work thing is interesting though because I think the we work thing

Um, it's a small amount of the population who are going to use these spaces But ultimately it's like it is the ultimate kind of work life blurring is free beer There's free food everywhere like everyone's there kind of they're in a slippers and stuff And I feel like it's like beaver labam We're at work, but really we're a family you thought you thought beaver labam went away, but it was just investing in the future First first is beaver labam then as we work history repeats itself we will abam versus tragedy then First is tragedy then as beaver labam then as we work play hang on a minute. No beaver labam was first as far Then then ultimately a tragedy

R.p. Rhondon is gonna say Yep, everybody listening if you're carrying a drink, please pour a small amount out for ryan dun Yeah, and in the class cheers to it now. Yeah Hey, yeah, ryan dun everything in the ancient greek style to ryan dun to ryan dun So oh go while we're at it you also talk about um waged and we're a family No You cook up the one like the fast and the soprano. No, what's that? Oh, no, oh I would say oh it's a and and hold on jackass

Skate park in bambo jarra's house. You kick flip till philly leotardo I told you before you kick flip up to johnny sack and no one else Okay, so going back to the report Going back to the Fuck me. What's what's the woman's name in the soprano? She gets murdered lorraine Lorraine lorraine. Oh my god. She's sick as fuck Just kick flipping up to little godmine okay

Let's all let's all recover from the from the jackass sopranos riff. They're all blending into one now Yeah, it's it's alarming So you go on also to say there's a there's is a profoundly gendered element to this as well, right? We talk about waged work and unwaged work like specifically housework that's sort of more feminized And they should be considered two sides of the same coin that would benefit from a four-day week Yeah, so I think you know It's always important to when we talk about work Often we're just talking about employment, right? Like we normally just use the same word to talk about your job

And but I think it's really important to stress. I think the report tried to make this Clear that basically we talk about work and we're talking about toil. Basically I'm talking about stuff we have to do whether it's to earn money for a job or the unpaid stuff in the home as you said so The short to working week won't necessarily Like end patriarchy in one fell swoop, but it will give more time for an equal equal sharing so You know at the moment, you know women basically take on a

Double shift where they often, you know, most households are dual income households. They're both working, but also come women come home and um Basically, you know look after the kids or prepare the meals like the vast majority of the time So it's like something like 60 you have to check the report 60 of housework food prep things like that done by women And so I guess we want to use the opportunity to talk about the short to working week and talk in in terms of talking about reducing that kind of work as well and So if you reduce the wage working week and each partner has a day extra

um We want to encourage more um gender equal time use So for example, sweden sweden has a really good record on paternity leave Um, and in the uk we could probably do a lot better. So extend paternity leave Um, so that you can have an equal sharing of that kind of that kind of work. I think um, it's really important So to some extent the report speaks to other issues a lot more, but I think that the chapter on um gender and work actually Should be used as a jumping off point visiting Really, I think the whole thing can kind of be summed up with

Most of the time you are spent working as far as the things that actually benefit you Most of that time you spend working is basically wasted The things that are good for you that are good for your family that are just good for the people close to you That will allow you to have a full flourishing life where you can just have the time to take care of yourself and people around you Every second you spend at a job is a waste of that time Yeah, because I guess the idea is like I have a strict calculation here most people's jobs Well, I would say the majority people's jobs are there like to earn an income to do other stuff Like as a means to an end and I think sometimes we want to accommodate ourselves to a job to some extent

I want to be like, look, I want to enjoy this what I'm at here because otherwise it will be torture But I'd say the the primary aim is to is to earn an income. So I think means to an end Let's let's you know, we earn income to go do stuff other stuff. So reducing that time I would say is in most people's interests to do but at the same time I think a useful concept is discretionary time so the idea is that like when you're if you're Looking after the kids or preparing meals. You're still not quite doing your discretionary time stuff Like some people love cooking but some people don't they're just doing it to feed to feed their family So I think another distinction must be made between like necessary time and discretionary time

I think Like actually what would be the end game of the next 20 30 years of you know, what we should be doing as a society What we should be increasing people's discretionary time so they can actually like do other stuff basically Well, you know what I remember actually that's basically uh, that's that's that's marks talking to the realm of necessity Um, but you know what I remember remember the Jetsons Yes, the Jetsons is a world of full full automation. We talk about fully automated luxury communism Well, the Jetsons is basically fully automated luxury 1950s capitalism Where in the Jetsons you still have even though like things just appear in front of you should you want them

George we can George still is working at a job. Yeah And is his and remember actually this really sticks with me that um, Is what I can't remember his wife's name um in the Jetsons, but regardless typical typical man on the left Erasing the why exactly Jetsons who's the subject in this story that is Mr. Jetsons and his wife Because it's Jane his wife. Yeah, it's me George Jetson His boy Elroy. Yeah, it's Jane's wife. Oh the boys so far A guardian long read about how the wife is really the important bit of the Jetsons

No, I remember but there was there was one we could we let that this in post there was one episode where uh, I remember it was yeah, she was like Jane was like going to buy a new a new kitchen and she was like well my push button finger is just so worn out That's that no that goes that is capitalist realism right there folks Well, I think that's actually Jetsons now we look back it actually looks like some kind of it's like the contradiction of capital Right in one show it's like 1950s lifestyle We can't imagine a world outside of wage labor at the same time We have all the technologies to enable it at the same time. We can't really jump out of that

So I think it's kind of that's really interesting. No Yeah, doesn't George Jetson carry like a briefcase as well Like it's like what like what? Who would yeah, I think he has a he hands. I know it's all coming floating back This is like this this beer and crisps has been my metal and dipped in tea Who carries a briefcase even now let alone in like the insane imaginary future everyone just carries backpacks Even at my unspecified, uh day job people always carry backpacks at every level Specified day job at the backpack factory My my dad's a pretty big wheel down at the backpack factory now. I'm joking. Roddy's a soldier

There are I come and hate me tankies. Yeah in a more tragic register There are as people I know of particularly anecdotally my friend works in a library And there's a guy who's come in every day with a briefcase And they'd be like nothing in it But like a sandwich and he like he pretend to be looking for jobs and things like that And ultimately they were like you'd like you're not a student here You but you kind of pretending to be a kind of thing and like be suited and booted and wearing it and like And like that that's that I've heard similar stories as well

Where basically is kind of that is the performance of like being employable that work as a religion at this point and it is Yeah, like but it's so tragic like I really can't literally was an empty briefcase. It's like a sandwich in and that yeah But an empty soul Again, I hate to say that everything goes back to the simpsons But that's just Lionel hutz trying to prepare a case against mr. Burns A briefcase is just a sandwich in there. Exactly. Is that that is true? This is something I talked to um

Peter Fleming about the guy who wrote the death of homo economicus and the worst is yet to come On uh some unlock kami book clubs Where it's like, yeah, it's this is just a religion at this point where we sort of perform these sort of painful and repetitive rituals of work That are sort of soul deadening at best Um, and we're pretty convinced that they don't actually have any real life output But we have this boundless faith that they will somehow make stuff just sort of better In a non-specified way and that we can't stop doing them. This reminds me of when I was at a well-known university Um, and I there were a lot. Yeah, absolutely

There were a lot of um, there were a lot of recruitment events which one could attend in order to meet potential employers And uh, I wrote an article for a well-known sheet newspaper Um about how I hated these recruitment events because I felt like everyone at them Was just trying to be as much of a wanker as possible and like talking to people who are only like three years older than them about How much they just loved mergers and acquisitions and how much it was their life passion and by god They'd murd they'd merge and acquire for free if they had to because it was just the one thing they were born to do Meanwhile, the actual graduates who'd been sent back to talk to like the potential the potential graduates were all like Dead behind the eyes like kind of like guys who like they peaked when they were eating and now just like yeah

I love mergers and acquisitions. It's great. We've got a water polo team. You should you should do it I worked 400 hours in the last day Like I know just like watching it. I'm like why why is everyone like falling over themselves to pretend that they love spreadsheets? Like no one there's not even anyone they're going like, okay, look I want money like I don't love spreadsheets because no one loves spreadsheets But like I'm prepared to do the requisite amount of spreadsheets for the money No one is even saying that everyone's like I love spreadsheets. I want to fuck spreadsheets. Can you put your dick in clippy? Let's find out On on this subject actually the economist noted extremely smart newspaper

um the the voice of the voice of liberals who love puns and um brutally right repressive right wing dictatorships in south america Liberals just fucking love those two things. They just loves puns and penis. Yeah Punish a Yo, can someone can netflix, please make the punnish a which is about a day in the life of the economist And his decision is a decision without that today just like hey, can you get that funding done? Yeah Can you get that filing tip? But um, we need to make a new pun about how bolson aro has to bolster brazil's economy Can you work on that for the day?

He's gonna round up and put all the gays in cat. Yeah, but uh, he's gonna reform the pensions. So, you know I love the pun, please I love the idea of like the the grinding admin that goes on behind the punishers schedule of punishing people Is like everyone here is about the punishing but no one knows about the admin team Without sondra on the books, none of this will be possible. I just can you can you get back to that guy about the quote we had? I just I just I just love working on the punisher schedule and helping him make spreadsheets We need a we need a tender on those hammers You'll come work

Yo, uh going to cambridge telling people to come work for the punisher so you can schedule who needs to be punished Like the punisher is doing hot desking now The punisher is that a we work we punish riding a hoverboard around Okay, yo, so The economist remember how we got onto this riff. Yeah, the economist recently published a piece Um talking about uh finland's experiment with universal basic income where people don't know basically what finland did was they said We're gonna trial in some areas just giving people money Like it's like unemployment benefits that you get whether or not you're employed

And it's like it's not enough to like It's not it wasn't enough to like live on solely but it was basically enough to alleviate a lot of financial pressure Yeah, they couldn't do that because then in finland everyone would spend 24 hours a day in the sauna and they'd die That would be this. Yeah, sounds like a good love to me. I mean like absolutely. I'd love to spend a lot I'd love to just go into it. I mean that's gonna be an allegory. I'm gonna die sweaty. Okay. Thank you That's just the earth in 24 years or so. Maybe less the earth's gonna die sweaty Yeah, but the lawn will be intact. Oh god. Stay tuned for the live show um

So basically what the economist writes is that uh boosters of ubi argue that a minimum income would be a safety net for people in precarious jobs Like those bet risk of being displaced by the kinds of automation. We've been talking about I kind of went away from their wording there They didn't say that we've been talking about um others see it as a way of eliminating complex Social security bureaucracies that end up costing more than just non-means testing benefits naysayers horrified by the potential cost of ubi um naysayers tories and also horses an unlikely alliance Yeah, unless the horses or subs conservatives say is They just say stuff. They're sayers of nay

Yeah, they're sayabolic sayers horrified by the potential cost of ubi fret that state handouts will put recipients off work entirely Early results from not so sure about this work thing anymore Early results from finland's basic income experiment released february 8th suggest that such fears are overdone But that the income doesn't resolve much else that is to say um Ubi supporters will be disappointed that the scheme did not increase time worked Yeah, so I like just to be clear here. No one in the ubi movement

No one who's seriously advocating basic income from a progressive perspective ever said um That the point of basic income is to get more people into work What they said sometimes is that if you look at the experience in kenya and stuff kenya india and elsewhere That basically like employment levels didn't really change that much people were like, you know They'd find they'd they had jobs but they also had this natural security So it's just really strange that all the coverage including the bbc's coverage

pretty much unanimously has been like Failure because there hasn't been more employment. It's like what do you're mixing this up with a job guarantee scheme? Like or like some kind of like employment. It's not it's like you're giving people money to like make their lives better And it's kind of worked and employment hasn't tanked. That's that's a success They're like outside of school going so your stomach's full with this universal baking. It's like yes, but your soul your science speaks volumes. Thank you No, mr. Simpson, please Please don't continue having an empty soul Right way, it's it's it's the the the article concludes with like they will be cheered by the fact

They'll be cheered by the fact that participants merely reported being happier. Yeah, so like it's this is what we're talking about We're talking about like pussies. Yeah, like Like you know, it's what we're talking about like welfare systems and not like it's surprising to see that they're designed to make people happier That's that that's what we're getting from this which is crazy. It's interesting welfare makes people have shocking Yeah, I mean like it's like imagine if but do you ever watch benefit street? No, it's a program in the uk where they it's like a really stigmatizing program where it shows people who are on benefits And what they do all day. It's like poverty porn. It was like it was like it was a dark version of richard scarry's busy town But like lazy town a different show

Well, yeah, I remember that was a different show. I used to post about that on forums when I was 13 I was home with like the weird the weird italian Guided the moustache Remember that one the cake song from lazy town I sounded like an ira bomb threat phone call. Yeah, because we No, that was like that was like premium early 2000s internet content was to distort the cake song from lazy town Oh, you guys are all philistines. We all learned something new today. Um, right? Truly that was the toll story of its day indeed, but benefit street

No, so I think like basically the the point of the show implicitly as I saw it was basically you either Laugh at people who are have to struggle to get by or you're outraged by them having kind of an okay life sitting on You know like on the street just to kind of receive their benefits now If you imagine the ubi experiment of finland on the with a similar Position then the show would be like it show people being happy I think people would be some people would feel outraged because actually that's not what welfare is supposed to be and that's like that's really shocking like basically

We're starting to be able to imagine a welfare system in which People are happier it works for people's happiness well-being like some of the stats on this thing were kind of amazing Like the trust in the government's gone up like 20 percent from all the survey people like because trust in other people The idea that actually, you know, this is kind of amazing But obvious that if you give people material stability and an okay life, they kind of become nicer people I mean, whoa. Yeah That's going to be a great excuse for me to use in future given what a horrible person I am and how little material stability I am

Subscribe to the patreon I'm so poor buy a ticket to my comedy night Okay Right so it's it's this whole and the thing is right like what this I think this shows us what that shows us is that The idea that we are necessarily competitive that we must suffer In order to live has basically been a gigantic scam that has been pulled on most people for like Hundreds of years and we're finally beginning to realize it's not true And there is a certain segment of our society that loves to suffer and make others suffer

Tories that are basically pissed off that we're slowly beginning to realize that fact Yeah, I think like basically the pressure like this is it's about pressure, isn't it? Like if you if you relieve pressure from people then in order for that material sustainability their self reproduction, whatever Then you're basically like you start giving people options and like options for voice options for you know kind of You're taking some kind of political action things like that which like ultimately Does not do it doesn't support employers who want to put pressure on wages Who want to imply people employ people on like bad working conditions? The point is This is again this comes down to kind of politics really like it's a political question

You know, do we want the majority of people to have a certain amount of autonomy? and So kind of control over their lives In order to kind of thrive and allow, you know, again like a friendlier more trustful or this kind of Civic value kind of society or do we want basically supreme pressure scramble race to the bottom for any any jobs? A good job type society, which is basically what we have now. Well, I mean obviously the second one I mean That having that society relieves pressure

But it relieves the pressure that builds up in the forehead veins of like 50 year old guys from maiden head Who just want to like punish everyone? But maybe they should just explore their kinks instead of Convoting torii and making everyone's lives shit iron maiden head pay your own bills The state shouldn't do it for you. So I've got I've got a reading. I've got a reading for the for the to close this out here um, which is from a fast company magazine, which I'm going to be honest has a couple of actually very good writers who will who will write about Like who will write write actually critiques of like to dumb ass corporate culture

Uh, and that's kale weissman and then friend of the show maya costoff has written for them before as well They're both and they're both quite good, but everyone else who works there I know I suck out fucking tear I I make no I make no motions in any way whatsoever, but make no mistake if you work at fast company You're not Carl weissman or maya costoff. You have been you have been shown up You've been called out. Yeah, so this is an article on I guess there is I think the the brought the corporate culture of the business school types They've also sort of understood that burnout is basically bad and that working people to the bone isn't productive Um, but so they have a pro business solution that isn't a four-day work week

Oh, yeah, I love a pro business solution Shall we like to hear about it? Yes, I do. I do. I want to hear what this is. Maybe we should put in the report Here's the title discriminated against group business Here's the title. Here's the title Why work life integration trumps work life balance Oh, Jesus wanked strap in. Are we ready folks? Yeah, please hit me Rumor day one ceo makes the case for why integrating work into your life and vice versa is the future of the working world With this one weird trick have they heard of capitalism?

Yeah In today's ever updating ever mobile workforces a professional's time is precious And he or she wants to optimize it as effectively as possible. These people can't even write There's just like gibberish sentences. They're just like lists of words They've been slammed together. No Uh professionals in all industries are casting out the notions of work life balance in order to build better work life integration practices Where work and life are intertwined by leveraging technology to make it happen You know what I find interesting about the work life balance like or to me is that like someone I think Adam Cotsko

Put this on today. He's like saying work life balance basically makes work death So it basically is like saying let's have a death life balance and in this one the work life integration is like Let's integrate death into your daily life. Let's be a zombie Let's be a zombie. Yeah, exactly. Kill your soul Yeah, because it's like like as most things goes back to marks that capital is dead labor that sucks the life out of living labor And this is saying no mix the death in with your life. Yeah tango with which one of the labor factions is dead labor Uh And so in 2007 netflix ceo read Hastings lived in italy with his family while netflix based in las gatos california

continued to soar He melded business acceleration with living and working remotely in europe Read Hastings. It was his workers. They made the business soar. He didn't do fucking anything So good. Yeah, I feel like I mean this is this is why we think it's more important than ever to talk about the distinction between Work and then also like autonomous time. There's a great, you know, andre ghoul said a great distinction Heteronymous time where you're determined by other needs other people You know your boss and then autonomous time and I think the work life integration The blur emitting work and life is basically who does who succeeds in that?

Is it the is it the people who need work from you or is it you who need a life? I don't think I think that's the question we should be asking there. I think I mean making I talked to in dale and lbc about this and it's kind of It basically it rings true of anyone who puts in unpaid overtime, which is most people That basically having hard lines as to when you should when you should start I mean the tc got a good calculator if you if you go on tc's website They go calculate for overtime and everyone who puts in the amount of time they work the amount of time They're contracted for like has a seizure or something like it's yeah

It's it's incredible. I also love how in all these examples of like, oh the the work life integration It worked for this guy and this guy always turns out to be rich as fuck like it never it's ever like Oh, it worked for this single mother. It's always like, oh, you know, if you're a billionaire, this is great Like why can't you just be more like a billionaire like why? Why can't everyone just be a billionaire? Has anyone thought of that? I mean, you know, that's that's some incredible thinking too Where you're such a capitalist that you accidentally become a Marxist Yeah, yeah, yeah

But I also think it's notable that they mention this guy read Hastings from netflix because netflix has this model Where they have like no set work hours no set vacation time you can you quote unquote? Can take however many vacation days you want But what it ends up with is every reported outcome of like employee satisfaction at netflix is they're all fucking miserable Because they all feel like they have to be available all the time and they never take vacations Or if they do they're like, i'm just going to go work from italy and then they stay in the hotel room the entire time Because they need to be able to like make a new powerpoint presentation. Yeah How else would you make great programming like tidying up with marie connor?

Yeah, I think like basically the platform economy Up your integrated work life balance Yeah, I think basically, you know labor and the platform economy whether it's like the workers in the in amazon factories or the people doing that horrible Um, kind of video work for facebook and youtube where they have to distinct like take out all the bad content before against to us somewhere in southeast asia All these people in netflix like platform labor is never really get that good apart from like a tiny percentage of people Um, yeah, I don't think it should be valorized basically. I don't think yeah That's what work life in this this because this is a stupid ass concept that a business school came up with of course Because business business schools are just like it's the preschool of university

It's it's where you go if you never left if you conceptually never left preschool Speaking of someone who went to business school. Yes It was an incredibly went to business school to extend his time at cambridge because he was bored and didn't know what to do Yeah, and literally half the people there were doing exactly what I was doing which is like fuck the world of work We're gonna stay right here in the cuddly place And then the other half of people were like dudes who wanted to work at jp morgan's so bad that they'd kind of like Destroyed their own mind and would like show up to lectures in a suit Or are you impressing yeah in order to listen to a guy called eric levi who was actually an associate lecturer

But referred himself as professor levi Oh my god And I used to write him emails like dear eric and he would like passive aggressively reply prof levi And then I started addressing him as dear assistant lecturer levi Oh So back to the article We can attribute the success of these leaders to their their ability to integrate and optimize their talents time And their abilities cool writing

Usability twice to leverage technology to yield their best productivity Wow, that's what we're doing right now. Is it not? I mean, you know, it's like we can attribute the success again We can attribute the success of these leaders to their ability to like tyrannize their workforce Yeah, I mean also the story is not about the workforce. It's about how you've managed to like get the motor running So you can basically take some time off. That's not the same thing. It's basically, you know Letting everyone in the company or even more than just you have a better work life balance Like it's like valorizing one guy or normally it's normally a guy Basically, like I take more vacation now like look how clever I am basically

I take more vacation now Everyone at my company shits in diapers because they're terrified of what I might do to them from my and I can fire them from my Vacation it's work life integration everybody It's all of Charlie Kirk's an amazing guy all of these articles like every single article about like these in business Intelligence or ones are all like we're gonna look at the behavior of ceo's as those ceo behavior can't just be whatever the fuck it wants Because they're so powerful Yeah, I think like I mean that's what you get like and after the report came out you get a range of articles Some are like this could be this is great. Like we could all work less. We need to work less

And hit this report tells you how other articles were just like You know say something similar and then go like take a right turn and basically say Yeah, look at the ceo who does this or like look at this one one neat trick where you can basically work 40 hours in four days And it's fine. Yeah, because it's like no, you know, you're just working. You've just you've just moved the pieces around Yeah, Tony Soprano was able to relocate Managing his business to a coma of half of season six and yeah, those dream episodes were weird things continue to run well Probably post work dreams for He was hanging out with buddhist monks inside his own mind while his business continued to run

Incredible. Yeah, um the anywhere worker of today would say that work life balance is out the window and work life integration is the future Work life balance is out the window that you've just jumped out of because you hate your life Productivity isn't about the setting. It's about the mindset work life Ah Work life integration starts with analyzing how you work the best take a self inventory on your work style Ask yourself where when and how by email in person or video conferencing. For example You perform to your highest caliber the anywhere worker weaves these considerations with professional priorities and lifestyle choices I mean if we all had these jobs

Maybe we could talk about how we could do it better, but most people don't have these kind of jobs We can do that like this idea that you can like How many people have jobs where you're like, do I perform better in video conference calls or in person? Is my handshake firm enough to make like close those deals? Skype me into my job at Sainsbury's. Yeah, exactly. The voice of the automated checkout. Exactly. Exactly. No, like people don't ask these questions there's like like, you know High tech sectors are like maximum five percent of of employment in in one country as a whole But mostly countries have less than that. So it's like these questions are such a nice or niche audience

Also, for reference, uh, Hussain tried to video conference into this episode and it did not work Um, yeah, that's the that that is the thing like all of these discussions about the ways in which people work and Trying to get to a place even if it's this dumb bullshit that just is totally meaningless about work life integration It's still pitched to a professional class that almost nobody works in like the real people who need to be like Who basically need like all of our solidarity to be rescued from their shitty ass jobs that they hate Are people who are like working on zero hours contracts or whatever and the right always be like, oh you profess to save these people That's so condescending. It's like it's not condescending to save someone who's drowning

I'm not insulting them by inferring that they can't swim. Yeah, it's like how dare you throw a life preserver to me Do you think I can't swim? They're right. They're right respects these people by allowing them to die with dignity Self-determined death. No, I think like I think ultimately as well the good thing about Um, or strategically quite good thing about work is that basically we all Uh, have some relation to it other we do it or we don't we either have a job or don't have a job And it's like has a universal effect and unless you have a serious amount of savings or you've got a rental income Um, then saying we should improve working life. We should all work less more or less

We'll have traction I think people those who are Say, oh it's condescending. It's like either. What's your working life like and if you're a journalist? I mean journalism has been screwed for years So you should probably get on board with like better working conditions or this should be in favor of ubi because they're at a high risk of being laid off Unless of course, you're like david iranovich and you've like basically supported the iraq war for long enough that you've got the journalist equivalent of tenure Well, then you all you have to go to australia I just Like barry wise just wandering around australia looking directly at the sun for a month being overworked is a and wait

Listen to this everyone uh in the room and listening to die instantly Being overworked is a global pastime Wow I mean it's true for the last 300 years before that like, you know, in this country we had like all sorts of festivals We're like we're like it's the witch thing. Then there's like a dragon thing and then it's constantly Stop having feasts. David graywood talks about this the whole time. There's like we had so many like Festivals are like right guys. What week is it this week? Is it like pagan like kind of like, you know, whatever week? Um, we're like, yeah fine. Sorry. I can't make the saturday. I'm video conferencing into my job as a surf

Exactly getting an iPad on like a like a like a little robot wheel to go until the field Yeah, um, yeah being overworked is a global pastime that works against our success Work fatigue always leads to being less effective and efficient over the years We've identified the value of working smarter rather than working harder But how we considered the third option which is to work in a more integrated way. No work less Yeah, basically like this. I think what's interesting is that we'll have loads more of this We'll get in the next five ten years when The solutions are coming thick and fast. Hopefully from autonomy and others

We'll get more people being like no wait the solution is just like Like work should be your whole entire life and it's not about working less all these Naysayers about work what it is is making work better and ultimately I think we should make work better But I don't think that's possible for the majority of jobs And I don't think anyone anyone is working these jobs would will feel like the trade-off Like is a good one. I think they'll want to say we should probably work less and maybe yeah We'll have better management, but like let's we should probably work less like yeah

So I think that's important that you bring this up. I think so That's the official trash feature stands If you're listening to this you should have been listening at your job You should have been listening to it on the toilet because they're paying you to be there and yet you're not working This is how we're gonna strike the first blow for the four-day work week spend all day on the toilet You should have been listening to it on the toilet. Well, bam. Roger beats the shit out of you And you're going come on bam Will thank you very much for coming out today. No worries. It's been a lot of fun. It's been a real pleasure. It's been great. Um,

Otherwise, uh, we do have to add though that everything you said was bollocks. Unfortunately, that is You know that is a disclaimer. We do have to I'm obliged by the end game of the tour We we don't have anything. Um, we don't have any live shows coming up to plug, but Milo, you do Yeah, I do. I have a smoke comedy on the 27th of february. It's featuring elf lions. It's going to be great Please buy a ticket. There'll be a link in the description. It's me your boy hosting. What could go wrong? I'm doing my work. So make it better for me. That's dick. Um, otherwise What if you could just get the word bollocks printed on a t-shirt by eddie? I'm sure she'd love to do that, uh, for you Otherwise, otherwise, otherwise god, I've caught bad writing disease from this article. Fuck. I'm fucked

Um You should also listen to our theme song. It's called here we go. It's by jin sang. You can find it on spotify Uh, and with that listen to it instead of doing your work Yeah, there we go replace your labor with with with spotify list specifically jin sang specifically. Here we go It's our theme song listen to it. He told us we could use it if we tell you to listen to it Absolutely. All right. Uh, well, thank you very much again for coming out Bye everybody. Bye Oh