Anti-work Movement

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Jordan Fermanis and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing the anti-work movement. I sort of have no idea what we're talking about with this, I don't know what the anti-work movement is, I'm guessing it's somehow pandemic related and to do with people working from home more, am I right, am I wrong, I don't know, and also you claimed in our show notes that we do before that we predicted this. Well I mean you know. I can't even remember what it was. Okay well back

Speaker B: 00:00:47

in April: 2020

Speaker A: 00:01:34

you remember. I do remember. It wasn't like three out of every four people died or something. Yeah

Speaker B: 00:01:37

about 40 percent of the European population or something died and one of the interesting results was that peasants suddenly had a lot of power because lords needed to pay more. They had more bargaining power didn't they. Yeah and so hey presto you know peasants started saying things like you know what I'd like it if you didn't run me over with your horse all the time and I'd like another extra groat for farming and all of that. So you know and I think we said it might be that we'll see something like that happening. Lo and behold. Yeah go on. Lo and behold. Well so at roughly the beginning of the pandemic there's a Reddit, a subreddit called Anti-Work and it had about you know not none but about 90,000 subscribers on this Anti-Work subreddit and just about a month ago it had 1.6 million subscribers. Good lord. So during the course of the pandemic we'd got you know 160 times more no 16 times more people have joined that subreddit. It's been in the news again recently because there was a slightly embarrassing interview by one of the mods one of the people who runs that subreddit who was on Fox News and was basically arguing that Anti-Work is the future but everyone agreed that they kind of looked like someone who was a bit of a wastrel with an unmade bed in a dingy apartment and so it's been a bit I think it's been a bit embarrassing for that subreddit but we want to ignore that. You know we decided we were talking about this before that happened. Yeah. And the interesting question then is you know well first of all is is it real is there really are people is it feeding through into people's decisions about where to work but also you know is this is it a good thing that people are sort of questioning I suppose whither and how we work and then you know what could it mean for the future if we all sort of gradually decide we're not working anymore thanks.

Speaker A: 00:03:31

Yeah nice I like this. I mean one of the things I hope we'll cover is I'd be interested to see if we think of that established work pattern that we all feel familiar with it let's say you're sort of middle class and you know a middle income type person you go up and sit in an office somewhere maybe you commute there and that feels very normal for millions of us around the world even you know how normal is that really how long has that been around and we might talk about you know manual labour and things like that I'd be interested to see where we go with this. From what we've talked about so far Jordan what would you like to bound in with and contribute?

Speaker C: 00:04:07

Well yeah when I think that anti-work had a bit of a seminal moment with the with the pandemic I was looking at sort of this concept called the great resignation. Yeah. Where apparently millions of especially younger people.

Speaker A: 00:04:20

It's quite a prevalent term now you're hearing it a lot but yeah.

Speaker C: 00:04:22

Yeah in Europe and the US and sort of around the world really resigned from from their jobs during the pandemic for reasons such as they weren't adequate flexible working arrangements or they didn't offer sick pay or these sort of statutory things weren't included in their contracts and so they resigned and I think that is sort of a demonstration of anti-work in action and I think that the pandemic sort of probably made people re-evaluate their current working life and wanted to sort of question whether it was working for them and if something like a pandemic uprooted them quite drastically looking for other alternatives.

Speaker A: 00:05:04

Yeah I mean wasn't it sort of as you say you know I go into my job every day is you know selling life insurance or whatever and you know schlepping the way into office and dreary hanging out with people I don't like and then suddenly when you're stuck at home in your bedroom you go actually this is all right I quite like this and you know it turns out in my interview when I said I was passionate about you know calculating insurance premiums whatever no turns out no I actually just like sitting at home playing xbox I don't like work this is good.

Speaker B: 00:05:34

I mean what we've discovered is working isn't fun perhaps and you know that's why they pay us to do it if it was fun we'd be doing it for free right so you know well why didn't we know that before but the other thing I want to say actually is I don't think it's totally clear from the stats that this great resignation is necessarily a thing there's some really weird stuff as you'd expect happening with job market data over the last two years but I think partly what we've seen is people not move it from their jobs right so there has been for the last couple of years you know people haven't been looking for new jobs and if you look at like job leavers in the US as a percentage of the unemployed it's plummeted at the beginning of the lockdown and it's hard to know exactly what's going on there but there is a hypothesis I think that this is pent up job movement so basically people have sat there they've had their you know their what was that thing called that they had uh coronavirus no the thing which where they get paid for two-thirds of furlough furlough so you know they're happy to get the furlough and also hold on to your job during uncertain times so you don't want to go and now and now I think it could simply be that everyone is all the movement that would have been spread out over two years is kind of all happening at once you're much like you and I you know inflation's rising as well very could be a similar thing you know pent up demand for all kinds of consumer goods um and uh and you know things like holidays you can imagine they're going to be hugely oversubscribed so I think that might be it but I don't want to distract you know I don't get bogged down in a discussion about whether that's true because I think what is undeniable is that this the pandemic has given people a new perspective on work uh and so you know I think that's what I just want to flag up I think that it's not a given that this is some big permanent shift it might be we suddenly see freelance

Speaker A: 00:07:28

yoga teachers everywhere who used to be insurance salesmen then we know that maybe it is a thing but until that time let's let's let's wait right yeah yeah I mean we want to talk about I don't like this phrase anti-work it just it sounds okay let me just think I just want to draw a distinction

Speaker B: 00:07:44

yeah so work as production and work as a job right so let's just you know almost like what it is you're doing and how it is you're doing it so I think work as production is part of the human condition we cannot yet just have free stuff we have to make that stuff I'm gonna go and get it hunter gatherers still have to do the hunter hunting and gathering um I think this maybe is more about this whole structure of you have a big employer you all go and work for the employer you turn up at a certain time you go home at a certain time yes you you you know you've got very little control over yes by and large um is that how could we fundamentally I mean would we want to fundamentally change that is that is that is that bad or is it you know is it the case that actually we've evolved that that lifestyle because in some ways it's better you know we get guaranteed income you know we've got no don't we have free time that we can spend we're certainly richer as a result of having this sort of structure probably uh so you know does it have hidden benefits gotcha yeah

Speaker A: 00:08:43

thank you I feel that you've brought us back on track there that's nice uh Jordan pick that up

Speaker C: 00:08:48

yeah I um I came across this concept of bullshit jobs um which is anthropologist David Graeber identified as jobs that are sort of meaningless or unnecessary wage labor um and he sort of talks about the bullshit ization of certain jobs um through corporatization um or just through changes in the development of a certain profession so he talks about how academia has become more managerial and administrative and how it's sort of it's sucked out it's the meaning from sort of what the job used to entail and so I think that is sort of also an indication of this kind of changing idea of uh how we see how we see work and what we sort of what we want to get out of work and how how we sort of participate in society um through work

Speaker B: 00:09:40

as well yeah I think it's interesting the bullshit jobs uh idea because uh it really resonated with people I think he died recently actually died like last year or something but he uh you know it was quite uh it was sort of like he was writing down something that everyone agreed it was like there's all these jobs in my company which had you know called things like you know uh communications uh advisory consultants and all of these things and nobody all people do is sit there at their desk you know filling in spreadsheets and emailing and no one is doing anything like what are we doing what are most people in the company actually creating but it seems that that had resonance with people sure recognize that from their own jobs and from the

Speaker A: 00:10:21

jobs of the people around them but doesn't this tie into what we don't didn't want to talk about which is um you're the economist it's where you know in an efficient job market let's say that um all the jobs that exist in a competitive market have to exist or something like is am I on the right track there and shouldn't that have been um sort of shouldn't have been washed out right in in in when loads of people get made redundant and that the right jobs get made

Speaker B: 00:10:47

redundant yeah I mean I mean the question is is the labour market like super ultra efficient and I think the answer is clearly no from a I mean it's a messy sort of market it's not like the market for baked beans where you have hundreds of baked beans and they're all the same and you just pick the brand you like and you buy it and you know what you're getting the job market is every person is different and every job is different and every company is different and it's a bit more like the housing market and the housing market is a bit of a mess and the trends you know will work but there's a lot of friction and um and so and so it's perfectly possible I think for there to be long-term uh disequilibrium in in the labour market you know that actually every everyone might be doing things that are inefficient and it's very hard or very slow to drag that towards an outcome which is efficient but yeah so that means that there must be these

Speaker A: 00:11:39

jobs out there um and keep keep going Jordan so develop that no I just think um let me say this

Speaker C: 00:11:47

refusal to work this sort of anti-work movement kind of takes different shapes and forms and probably stretches back further than we sort of realize I came across a book by this French Cuban socialist called Paul Lefargue called the right to be lazy yeah um and he was sort of he was arguing that wage labour was tantamount to slavery and that we should all just sort of stop working indulge in our pleasures have time for play family passions interests that sort of thing similar to something that the techno utopiasts of today would say with um automation that maybe machines can do all the work that we don't want to do in the future and that we'll just be left to enjoy ourselves I think there is sort of like there's a latent kind of feeling amongst people to have more leisure time and free time and there are sort of different concepts out there and different movements that people attach themselves to to try and sort of push for that what's your personal response to that I agree what do you think well yeah in a way I do have sympathy with the movement in the sense that um I think yeah there are sort of sometimes you do feel constrained by having to work like you know just a five five day work week or having to put in some out and there are other things you would probably like to be pursuing that you don't have time for um so I do sort of sympathize with them in that way but I think it becomes a bit of a problem in some instance because I think there's dignity in work as well and I think you also need money to function so you need to go to work for that reason as well um so I think it yeah it's a complicated thing but I there's a kind of nice sort of sense of uh freedom I guess that comes from

Speaker A: 00:13:32

maybe the idea of not working yeah okay that's good that's fine that's good and

Speaker B: 00:13:36

Nick yeah no I totally get it I completely understand this uh I mean one of the reasons I left the MOD is because it just became increasingly incompatible with my kind of you know mental state really of feeling that um and your side hustle as a skateboard designer exactly uh the the uh the just the the sense of not having the power or the control to be able to say look I don't like I'm just I'm not going to work this afternoon just you can say well you could have said that but no I wouldn't have done and the point is that that you know it ought to be the case that people should feel like well you know I I'm the best at optimizing my lifestyle if I want to work you know between three and seven in the morning um you know and take the afternoon off why why can't I do that um and so I I I totally get where people are coming from what I'm not sure about is this question of whether or not actually it turns out that that actually there is some hidden benefit in doing that you know and I think one of the interesting things about which we we've all learned from the pandemic is that there are lots of hidden benefits to being in the office for example um well let's talk about those yeah uh well so being if we were all if we go into the office at the same time nine to five uh you know there are there are things that you learn and relationships you develop and um you know a culture that you can follow which just this dissipates you know if you're doing it um if you're doing it entirely virtually I mean that's just an isolated example where there might be some benefit that you know to to that nine to five um work pattern but you know I feel like the alternative hasn't really been tried en masse you know perhaps this is a chance to try and reform the way that you know the kinds of relationships you have with your employer um to say you know well maybe I you know it's easier more people might say well I want to work part-time want to work a certain number of hours a day uh but not necessarily when you tell me that you know they get and those things are sort of priced in but that there isn't really that flexibility you know employers aren't trying out new kinds of employment contracts at scale not so sure it might be happening and I think that might be part of it but yeah yeah the other thing I think uh it is worth um I think it is interesting drilling into Jordan's point there about um is you know let's let's assume that the techno utopians are right and we can end up in a world where robots are doing everything well is would that be better like let's imagine a world where literally you don't have and I want to know if this Paul Lafargue had wealthy parents I'd like to know that but uh but I you know

Speaker A: 00:16:17

whether or not a life without work would be in some way worse well let let's there's a couple things I want to say so first of all I've had lots of bullshit jobs and without fail they all become utterly soul destroying destroying if not on day one certainly by you know six months and god knows I've been through a few um however what I can say is I do have at least a couple of friends from certainly from one of my positions that I was when I was a country risk analyst a couple of them are still really good mates and I see quite regularly so it's you know it was that all together meeting people and actually looking back in some ways it was quite a fun time although it was a bit of a pain in the backside going to the office every day that was miles away it did feel odd um so I think there is something said for that sort of that feeling of friendship and community but hey wouldn't it be nice if if you know hey we all need to build a barn together my community my tribe and we go off and build that barn together with our

Speaker B: 00:17:12

mates that's yeah is that the same thing there's that there's the whole thing what are we you know what are we doing are we how do we know we're doing something valuable if someone isn't paying us for it kind of thing but just looking at the lifestyle for a moment the lifestyle of a working person we have you have to conclude it's pretty unnatural for us for humans to be you know all going into the same big room together and all sitting at a desk and typing it looks nothing like the environment we've evolved in but hunter-gatherers don't build computers because they can't because the only way you can get a economy of scale big enough that you know it becomes possible to manufacture um complicated uh electronics cheaply is by having a sort of economic structure like that so until the robots take over I don't see an alternative we can't build artisan computers you know the computers have to be built in big factories with lots of you know people working together at the same enterprise um but yes I know so I just I'm just but I totally get I mean one of the few things I agree with Karl Marx on is this alienation you know that the modern day worker is not really you know they're doing something but they're not enjoying the efforts of their labor and I mean they get paid but they're not they're doing something they're they're detached from whereas someone who as you said when you all get together and build a shed well it's your shed now you've got a shed hooray I built that it's my shed um you know the modern the modern industrials or post-industrial economy doesn't give you that you know you're going and doing something abstractly which produces somewhere you imagine a product but um you know but you it's not your thing that you made and and and you know that's a that's an inevitable trade-off to get the benefits I want to come to Jordan but maybe

Speaker A: 00:19:00

there's an aspect here an element here of uh deferred gratification and compromise which you do your bullshitty job um for a couple of decades and you buy a house which rises in value disproportionately and then you hit your sort of middle age and you retire early and then you go off and sit on some island with with your hammock and it's just you know it's just a trade-off there and you get to have the best of both worlds because you get to have penicillin and your flights and stuff but you also get to sort of flounce around your flip-flops all day

Speaker B: 00:19:28

yeah well the problem if you're a policeman in a film then you die two days before you're about to retire that's the downside of just going on that one last call yeah yeah yeah yeah Jordan

Speaker C: 00:19:41

um it sort of also reminds me of like the debates around universal basic income as well and how wealth how the sort of inbuilt wealth of the system should be distributed to people and whether we should sort of give people a living wage that they can just have without having to work um as a way of sort of creating a more sort of equitable society as well so i think yeah it's also there's something about work that is sort of fundamental to like our whole system of society and it's sort of it questions sort of every part of it i think which is which is quite interesting

Speaker B: 00:20:17

i just wondered if we yeah i feel like we should just try and answer this question of what would happen if you know let's imagine that we've got a situation where um you know robots so efficient that um you know and jeff bezos is so preposterously rich uh that he just says okay well i'll tell you what i'll just pay for everyone to have you know i'll give everyone a hundred thousand pounds a year um i'll keep a bit more than that myself he might say but you know let's take that you've got you've got enough income now that you don't have to work at all what what would you do what

Speaker A: 00:20:50

would we do yeah i mean are we going to become a society of super fit poets and artists and yeah um it reminds me i've mentioned this before on on a on an episode where it's a bit like um in um with judge dread where essentially that's what society is like um everything is provided for if you want it and we all just turn into a bunch of um blubby soft-skinned lazy sloth type i don't

Speaker B: 00:21:18

want to offend anyone but what's that thing that thing about the robot isn't there living on post-apocalyptic earth what's it called it's an animation oh yeah i know what you're talking about people need to say finding nemo but it's not wall-e wall-e that's it okay humans are living in a spaceship and they're all obese and they just watch screens all day yeah so unlike our current nothing like today um yeah i know i so i that's my worry is that actually in real life you know i i have all i have a list of projects that i'll never finish and i keep thinking you know when i when i have some magic time to pursue them then that'll be great you know when i when there aren't things i have to do there's all these things i want to do but maybe that won't happen like maybe when i don't have to do them i might just play board games all day and uh even worse than that when you're not really when there's nothing you can do that a robot can't do better in some sense yeah maybe you could write a poem but we'll probably have ais for that you know what and you're just existing you can't even create something useful because everything

Speaker A: 00:22:17

just 3d print anything you want and and you could play chess but you'd feel a bit what's the point in that because yeah i'm just like a performing dog yeah yeah yeah um okay this has implications for what it's like in heaven as well actually that's always bothered me doesn't it it's like if you've read uh julian barnes the history of the world in 10 and a half chapters i think it might be the final chapter where he wakes up in essentially what is heaven and um and inevitably you know it's it's have you read it are you familiar with it oh it's wonderful so he starts out having this breakfast and the egg is just cooked beautifully and you know it's delivered by this really saucy maid and and and he goes out and plays golf and just gets you know by the time he's been heaven and wise he gets 18 hole-in-ones sort of thing yes but his his caddy is that what they're called the yeah is just equally enthusiastic the hundredth time that he's done the 18 hole-in-ones as he was the first time you know and of course inevitably it's all a bit and i think it's a good point actually if everything's amazing and wonderful and beautiful isn't it life a bit boring um i can't believe i'm here arguing for work but um yeah look where do we go with this we're sort of close we need to kind of wrap up in a way um what do we need to say that hasn't been said why don't we why don't we speculate about what we do if we exactly let's go into that so i think you've actually already hit upon it there with your board gaming nick but we'll come to that in a second um jordan so let's take a moment we're all going to answer this um here's our kind of round off question what would you do i guess if work was not a necessity you know what would your life look like where would be what would fermanis be up to traveling

Speaker C: 00:23:54

i think i'd travel a lot more um i'd probably just go on a worldwide adventure um and just try and get to as many sort of places of interest as i could yeah i think i would just be traveling probably reading more writing doing those sort of things um but yeah travel would be a big one

Speaker A: 00:24:14

what's the big one place that you want to go to what's your dream it's difficult when you come

Speaker C: 00:24:19

from australia right china i haven't been to china i'd like to spend a bit of time in china

Speaker A: 00:24:23

i think being there it's rubbish don't bother um okay so traveling yeah uh nick actually no i think we should come on to yours last because i think yours will be better than mine no i don't think actually very similar to yours uh jordan i think um and i've long been pestering my wife about this sensibly she keeps refusing because we don't have the money but i would i would just get all the family together disappear off around the world i want to go and have adventures i want to go places and actually um the i've got a bee in my bonnet and have done for years about the south pacific i just i want to go to the south pacific and um yeah it would be kind of um laser laser round while away my time but have lovely times with the kids and my wife and just relax maybe find a community of people but my problem is like with finding communities yeah but the only problem with like cults and communities is is invariably the sorts of people who want to form sort of that kind of community are just like unbearable yeah and so so uh yeah but anyway just sort of but i'd like to find a tribe find a tribe or found a tribe that's what i'd like and sometimes when i go camping um in the summer there's um a group of families with whom we go camping and it's lovely because each and i tell this at the times the people they get bored of me saying this but um unlike yourselves who i know are not bored by hearing this right now which is it is that cliche because when we go there i do a lot of cooking okay um and it's because i love cooking but what's great is i don't have to bother with any of the child care right or washing the plates i all i do is cook and tell tell stories you know and it's that i'd like to find that so that's what i'd like to find a tribe that was not unbearable and that i could be the washing up for

Speaker B: 00:26:12

you yeah that's it there must be one somewhere somewhere in the amazon a tribe of people who

Speaker A: 00:26:18

worship uh washing up yes exactly exactly uh nick yeah i think the activity that gives me the most

Speaker B: 00:26:25

like sense of satisfaction is is coding stuff that works oh really uh there's nothing like it like nothing else you do you know when you write a piece of even a piece of writing that you're happy with you there's always that sense of this could be better but when you want to make a piece of code that does something and it does it it's like that's it i've done i have done that and and it's very it's very few activities we can go right i've completed the thing i set out to do so i think i'd like to create computer games uh you know learn how to how to make computer games and do that uh that it's not much i don't have it in what environment in sitting in north london yeah oh yeah yeah but possibly the pub yeah i'd go down to the Salisbury get a pint of ipa and sit there and make my dream computer game which would be a bit like it'd be a a bit like civilization but with more realistic economics i mean how good are you at coding not not very good i i mean i've got i think i've got the right mentality for it i'm just not very experienced

Speaker A: 00:27:26

because i don't even really understand what coding is but it's basically writing computer code right making computers that is another way of phrasing what coding is yeah making programs

Speaker B: 00:27:34

do stuff yeah you've got a computer you want it to do something and you write the code that makes

Speaker A: 00:27:38

it do that hey presto got an idea go on we should combine our dreams right yeah now you

Speaker B: 00:27:45

do the cooking i do the coding yeah he's off somewhere jordan is going off and saying right

Speaker A: 00:27:51

i found this thing maybe hey i think we'd be a bit like sort of native americans before the arrival of europeans right except with more computer coding yeah because we kind of want to know what's along the you know what's what's like what's over that horizon we've got jordan going off you know figuring that's that was the data doing a recce yeah you're designing all the cool games yeah um and quite happy sitting there and every now and again we bring you some fermented yak milk or something even though yaks are in asia it doesn't matter but buffalo milk yeah there you go um and i'm just doing the cooking yeah honestly i'm well up for that okay right on that on that note i think we should stop there um thank you as always for listening to the cognitive engineering podcast i'm fraser mcgrew we've been here with jordan fermanis and nick hare of aleph insights until next time goodbye