ReConsider

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"Another cause which kept the plebeians in as state of poverty was the unjust distribution of the public land (ager publicus) which had been acquired in war..."

William C. Morey, Outline of Roman History

The Optimates:

Represented the Elites in the run-up to, and the middle of, the Roman Civil Wars

Believe the mob wasn’t really fit to rule, wanted to rule for them

Also represented special interests who benefited personally from a lot of laws that led to unsustainable economic conditions -- such as the (not) Lex Agraria

(Lex Agraria: redistribution due to the landlessness of soldiers during the Punic Wars)

Who are the Optimates Today?

We might think they’re just the rich, or megacorporations (or sometimes, lobbyists). Those are certainly Optimates, but we forget that those with Special Interests are everywhere.

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Antiwork had a really bad day

Source Article

“Laziness is a virtue in this society” - r/antiwork moderator

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220126-the-rise-of-the-anti-work-movement

“Supporters of the anti-work movement believe people should self-organise and labour only as much as needed, rather than working longer hours to create excess capital or goods.”

USA is a tough crowd for this kind of pitch. See: bad branding.

What does Antiwork stand for?

Many people tried to give Erik the answer… and many were different

-Worker’s rights / labor unions

-Economic inequality

-Surplus Value

-Same standard of living for fewer hours

-4-day week

-Abolishing capitalism

-etc

Antiwork freaks out

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/se7b86/how_do_you_fuck_up_this_bad/

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/se59eu/can_be_overworked_to_exhaustion_if_you_sleep_on/ 

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/se4gfp/based_af/ 

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/se418m/i_didnt_think_this_sub_was_literally_antiwork/ 

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/se4nf9/mods_are_trash/ 

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/se5cit/im_glad_the_21_year_old_mod_has_the_funds_to_be/ 

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/se3v15/does_anyone_think_we_would_better_off_with_a/ 

An interesting conversation with my friend Austin

You have to stand for something if you want a movement… not just against

See: Civil Rights

See: Gay Marriage

See: Women’s Suffrage

Other problems:

1. Tea party rise-and-fall
2. Occupy Wall Street
3. BLM

This applies to our Revolutions episode, too -- being against something is only a short-term uniter.

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Today we talk about something I've reconsidered lately: Antiwork

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Erik’s initial take

-labor organization and rights are a great thing

-Not putting up with crappy work conditions, and forcing companies to compete, is a great thing (and this is my opinion as an employer)

-saying “I want stuff - someone has to make it- and I don't want to work in exchange” seems crazy

-”Ending work,” part of the motto, is very explicitly about not working, even though antiworkers will sometimes say they're not actually about that. At the very least it’s terrible marketing.

What do they say the’re about?

"A lot of people mistake antiwork for being lazy, and like nothing has to ever get done," one moderator of the subreddit, who goes by u/rockcellist, told Business Insider. 

"But the truth of the matter about antiwork — and everything surrounding it — is that obviously things have to get done, but the current structure in which things get done and the way that capital flows as they get done is unfair and should be nonexistent." 

Many posts are about pushing back against, or at least calling out, what seem like unfair or ridiculous practices by companies/management…

..but others get really weird. 

#3 post all time is a disgruntled employee, telling one side of the job, who went and deleted thousands of hours of work they did (they happened to still have access).

Erik sees…

Again among some stuff about labor organization, work standards, sharing some amazingly awful stuff that employers and managers have done, sharing pay rates, tips to negotiate, other stuff that actually seems pretty good:

1. The sense that money isn’t earned - it’s just this ritual/token task you have to do to be allowed to live/survive
2. The sense that suckering a company to get paid to do nothing is good
3. 40 hours is way too much work

So this doesn’t fit with my own model or experience or biases.

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Two kinds of revolutions:

1. Throwing off an external oppressor
2. Often violent, sometimes not
3. Forcing regime change in your own country through extra-political or violent means
4. Largely violent
5. Largely nonviolent

The outcomes tend to be very different.

(Focusing on outcomes where they win -- turns out most revolutions fail militarily)

Those throwing off an outsider tend to work out pretty well!

1. US revolution
2. Spanish-American independence
3. Haitian slave revolt (note unlike many slave revolts, the Haitians were the natives)
4. Indian revolution (mostly)
5. Greek & Balkan revolutions, generally the revolutions of Nationalism of the 19th century
6. Generally the anticolonial revolutions

Those forcing internal change through violence tend to lead to brutal dictatorships

1. Russian revolution
2. French revolution
3. Chinese revolution
4. English revolution
5. Cuban revolution
6. Iranian revolution
7. Roman Republic revolutions / civil wars

GENERALLY:

-Kicking people out works out pretty well

-Civil wars don’t: they lead to dictatorships

OK why?

-Kicking people out: you use tribalism to your advantage

Your people are united against an outsider

Once it’s over, the outsiders can generally leave

-Regime change: tribalism works against you

Your people are divided because you’re using violence to create winners and losers

Once it’s over, the defeated folks stick around (see: the Iraq war and the Baath party)

But there’s a second bit: 

When you have an internal revolution, you’re using violence not just against the current system, but at the very idea of legitimacy of any given system. You set a precedent: if I don’t like it, I can use violence to change it.

Any regime, or system of government, relies on legitimacy. Building that legitimacy is hard. Lots of people study this. It usually relies on traditions, taught and shared belief systems, propaganda, and enough of a track record that people feel they have some means of getting their needs met through the system some reasonable amount of the time.

So you end up reverting to using raw power, secret police, fear, etc. You don’t have unity or legitimacy so you can only resort to violence.

When that doesn’t work, you end up losing the revolution and either the old regime comes back pretty quickly (English revolution) or you have ongoing violent anarchy where everyone is getting beheaded, including the children of the revolution, until a strongman comes in and restores order and people are generally OK with this (French, Roman Republic revolutions)

See: Machiavelli’s Prince

We must be wary in our own democracies of escalating rhetoric and actions that chip away at the legitimacy of the liberal system. Liberal systems are designed to solve problems through a process: when you eschew that process to get what you need, you erode that legitimacy and bring about its downfall, and what’s going to come next will be ugly.

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This is probably going to get me a lot of flak but I realized that I’d be shying away from a commitment to challenge how we think about stuff if I didn’t talk about this out of fear.

Disclaimer:

1. I actually have a very underdeveloped political position on transgenderism and generally just stay out of it, the way I do about abortiton (but for different reasons--with abortion I am just morally conflicted), and I tend to default to, “you do you” and thus away from restrictions on what people can do with their gender
2. I have a number of delightful friends who are trans and my emotional position is that I feel very supportive and loving of them and their transition seems to “make sense” to my gut in some deep way that being transracial doesn’t really seem to make quite so much sense… but I couldn’t explain to a martian why I think this.
3. The way we argue about trans stuff is totally unproductive and drives me batty

Confession: I cannot for the life of me understand why being transgender is totally a real thing that is 100% cool and being transracial or transethnic is totally not a real thing and is 0% cool. 

I have honestly put years of thought into this and talked with a ton of people about it (both people who feel like they have a good answer to the difference and those that don’t) and I have gotten NOWHERE.

But I want to do better than just throwing up my hands, I want to provide my own framework of thought here.

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I think a lot of the societal breakdown we are seeing is a matter of human psychology -- designed for pre-historical humans by evolution -- running up against technology that it can’t handle and goes kindof crazy trying to confront.

-This is probably why social media is so harmful for teenagers -- social dynamics on steroids that you can’t ever really win

-Also talked about this a lot with bubbling behavior and learning things from people who look like me rather than people who seem smart

-I think one form - social shaming - is leading to an unintended acceleration of radicalization 

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