Two anticareerists discuss basic income, compulsory wage labor, and the arts [Ed. note: This interview refers to “Earning a Living” and the Dilemma of Unpaid Work: On the Injustice of a World Without Unconditional Basic Income”. You’ll have more context if you’ve read that piece before this one, but the interview can stand on its
“Standard parenting/teaching/employment involves an external authority telling you to do stuff – and lots of it. Studying, to start with, and then work. Too much of it, and usually of the wrong sort (not your true calling). Laziness is the natural rebellion against that. “Unjobbing means ignoring that voice, and letting that voice slowly disappear.
[Ed. Note: With the author’s permission, I’m re-publishing essays from his former site asobinomics.net, as they originally appeared in 2012. Here’s the second in the series!] “We don’t want full employment, we want full lives!” — slogan from the 1968 uprising in France I wrote previously about how our use of the phrase “incentive to work”
Cultivating leisure. In a culture held in thrall to the Protestant work ethic, the concept of consciously cultivating a culture of leisure sounds suspect to many people, and conjures up images of frivolity and uselessness. One of the objections to unconditional basic income, for example, is the notion that too much leisure will lead to
What images and thoughts come to mind when you hear the word leisure? Many people automatically associate leisure with what people do in their ‘spare’ or ‘free’ time (i.e., time spent away from paid jobs), or with pursuits such as entertainment, vacations, or sports. I think we need to delve deeper when we think about
I am a radical unjobber because I believe people should have lives based on living, not on making a living. I am a radical unjobber because I believe that leisure is more than “free time”. I am a radical unjobber because I believe in an ecological ethic of service, interdependence, and care…not a “work ethic.”
[This essay, written in 2000, was never published on whywork.org nor anywhere else. It is not my best work, and I couldn’t figure out how to say what I actually wanted to say in it, so I set it aside and left it unattended for years. However, over the years many people wrote to me
