Degrowth

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Discussions about degrowth and all sorts of related topics. This includes UBI, economic democracy, the economics of green technologies, enviromental legislation and many more intressting economic topics.

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Can We Imagine a World Without Work? | Boston Review (www.bostonreview.net)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by ProdigalFrog to c/degrowth

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Sorry if this doesn't quite fit this community, feel free to remove if deemed off-topic (I figured the topic of working less fit in with Degrowth).

There is a discussion of this article on Hacker News, as well.

The top comment on hackernews really nailed it: most people cannot, as they have effectively been institutionalized. They cannot imagine a world without extrinsic motivation.

I suspect most would adapt if it became reality, as that's what the Spanish anarchists during the Spanish civil war said happened when they abolished money in some areas.

There was still plenty of work to do (they were at war after all) but people were able to adapt to self motivate fairly quickly, even those with traditional worldviews.

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[–] AccountMaker 2 points 9 months ago

A very interesting read, thanks for sharing it. It is worth pointing out how most areas where we focus on automation are driving, production, summarizing and writing articles etc, while housework gets minimal attention.

This ties in very nicely with the other discusion held in the solarpunk community about how we have a lot of solutions already developed for a lot of problems, just not the political and societal will to implement them. And I do think that alienation is a major contributor to this, because it shapes people's worldview that that's just how life is. You do things you don't care about, and then you mind your own business because you essentially paid off your debt to society by being stressed or bored to death at work for 8 or more hours. People should care about what they do, and that work should have some meaning. What's the point of the economy, having a job and living in a society if it's not for the benefit of everyone? One could give a cynical Hobbsian answer and say that you're slaving away because the alternative is dread and chaos, but that's just not true when we look at societies from before industrialization (medieval guilds, ancient tribes, Greek city-states etc).

As a sidenote about public canteens, the Spartans in ancient times always ate their meals together in a communal place, never in their homes (except on very very special occasions).