Why mandatory work is quietly being allowed to become a cult.

We’ve got work to do. I’m done waiting for others to say it. I know this will polarize and I don’t give a fuck. Join me or fight me. Either way, I love you, love the human family of Earth. I got you.

I wasn’t going to post this, but I’m tired of the slippery, paternalistic bullshit around “work as purpose.”

Every time someone raises the question of UBI or post-scarcity labor, someone else floats this line:

“But people need jobs. They’d fall apart without them.”

Oh, shut up. That line is not just sloppy, it’s dangerous. It confuses cause and effect, disguises power as care, and keeps millions trapped in lives they’d escape if given the chance.

So yeah, this is a rant. I’ll probably edit it in days ahead so get it while it’s hot. It’s long, it’s angry, but it’s precise. And it’s time someone said it straight. If Sam Harris won’t, I will.

Here’s what I mean:

Let’s say we are part of a tribe that makes exercise mandatory because it’s the only way the tribe survives battles. Without mandatory exercise, the person can’t survive, can’t help in battle, and they become a liability to themselves and the tribe. People waste time protecting that person, and it just becomes a drag on everyone. So it’s mandatory.

Now imagine battle becomes obsolete. And the topic of mandatory exercise comes up. No longer do people need to be fit in the field to vanquish, protect, or carry their own weight. Battle is no longer a thing. Peace covers the land. Even if you were in fighting shape, there’s nothing to fight.

For all intents and purposes, the initial reason for mandatory exercise (survival and self-sufficiency in battle, and winning battles as a tribe) is off the table.

People can finally take a breath, stop training nine hours a day, and do other things for once.

But then some asshole comes along and says,

“Wait, hold up, who said you can relax? Mandatory exercise is part of our CULTURE. And if we stop, people will get fat. And besides, what else will they do all day?”

In that moment, it’s obvious to a percentage of the tribe that the guy who said this is not right in the head, and is dangerous. That somehow, for reasons he’s not in touch with himself, he wants to keep everyone training all day for a war that no longer exists.

That is where we currently are, at least in terms of the talk around hypotheticals concerning AI and work.

Talk matters. And Sam Harris needs to lean in NOW instead of pussyfooting and gently dignifying the comment by asking a few questions and moving on.

And now add to it that the general saying it HIMSELF doesn’t have to work out nine hours a day. He’s a general. He doesn’t DO infantry because he’s “special.” He distinguished himself by being smarter, of a higher status, more valuable as a mind than a mere fighter.

And this mandatory training he’s saying people need? He wouldn’t even be doing it himself. Because he never had to anyway.

But he knows that if people stop training all day, his identity as general really starts to fade away. People will have more energy to do other things.

He doesn’t like the thought of that. So instead, he argues that the soldiers NEED the training. It’s GOOD for them. So we should keep MAKING them do it.

Think about that.

MAKING them do it.

Not suggesting it, not offering it. Not waiting to see who gets fat and who uses the time to become something more. But instead FORCING it, so that nobody gets to find out what would have happened.

And even if some did get fat (in this analogy), what business is it of HIS? Don’t people have a right to get fat if it doesn’t hurt anyone?

Isn’t that the whole point of freedom: the right to pursue happiness and make choices about what that means to you? Isn’t that why we have a free market, because people can decide what to invest in, what to do with what they have, and buy things that help them along their journey?

If being fat is so BAD, won’t some people find ways on their own to not be fat?

All of this is lost in the conversation.

Nobody has figured out how to call out all this awkward energy around the mere suggestion that we keep work mandatory for reasons other than we need it to fucking survive.

This is a terrifying time.

Powerful majorities are insinuating that we keep work around—mandatory work—for reasons OTHER than why it was decreed mandatory by nature itself.

Men, welcome to the SALAD DAYS of watching other, richer men grasp for ways to justify forcing YOU to work, and pointing to:

“It’s good for them and they have nothing else to do.”

Are you fucking KIDDING ME?

Like, I’m a girl, and I’m sort of wondering how you guys are taking this on the chin.

Do I have to save men from themselves? Is this whole argument embarrassing to make when you’re a member of the scrotal persuasion? Does that explain the silence? I’m seriously asking.

Because aside from being massively insulting to you MALES, treating you like shallow idiots with no volition, imagination, or depth, it’s a massive breach of basic sovereignty.

We don’t loosely force people to do shit because it’s “good for them.” We make good paths available, but we are not the MOMMY and DADDY of people. We don’t force grown-ass men to “eat their broccoli.”

Some countries do that, maybe theocratic totalitarian countries. That’s not American.

Not to mention the massive IGNORANCE on display about how minds and bodies even work.

Or the defeatist attitude that meaning is hard to come by if you’re not grinding away to survive. As if there’s nothing else.

Of course there is!

Life is a vast, beautiful, challenging-as-fuck thing full of possibilities for the brave and the bold. It always will be, sweets. ❤️ We still need men. More than ever. Most of all, we need you to be FREE.

Your heroes journey is not something to be held together by having a “job.” That argument is an assault on the value of life itself. It’s preempting emptiness when it should be encouraging expansiveness.

Speaking of men, this all seems like the EXACT SHIT Sam Harris loves to unpack, and yet he refuses to lean in and do what he did with religion. Or free will. Or lying. Or morals.

Sam. PHUCKHING LEAN IN MY DUDE.

You’re up, buddy. Go. Here are some provisional titles:

Work.

Leisure.

Productive Leisure.

Life Without Jobs.

Effort.

Meaning.

Fuck Jobs.

And my personal favorite:

The Stillwell Effect

All of those hint at the point, which is that we’ve lost our ability to separate the concept of job from the concept of purpose, or work.

Life already IS work. We all have to work. When we get up and go to the kitchen, instead of having an IV pump in nutrition, that already IS work.

Humans have to move, think, talk, relate, interact, love, create, tell the truth, die well, and perform upkeep, endlessly.

We are all busy BEING PEOPLE.

We’re at grave risk of losing this obvious point: A “job” is not needed for being human. A “job” more often gets IN THE WAY of being human.

Unless you have Stockholm syndrome or a chronic lack of imagination, you don’t need FORCED WORK to feel whole. If you do, that’s YOUR issue. Don’t force it on everyone else. Get help.

People are currently trying to muddy the water about this. Offhand comments about compulsory work-or-die models are not just lighthearted oddities. They are the MAIN COURSE, Sam.

When someone suggests forced work:

“I really think people need work for purpose…”

That’s Sam’s cue to drop a clarity bomb on some very asinine and irrelevant shit, just like he did for certain religious statements in the aughts. Early and often. Teach others how to do it. Get it going.

Not because jobs don’t give purpose (they sometimes do) but because whether or not they do has ZERO TO DO WITH whether we keep it mandatory or have a UBI option.

And yet people are commingling these concepts without any pushback. I feel that Ross Douthat (guest on Sam’s recent episode of Making Sense) just did it multiple times. Almost everyone holding a mic these days does it.

I’m wondering if there’s a toxic set of truisms out there that are every bit as bad and stupid as the other things Sam punctures on a routine basis.

Things like:

Peasants don’t know how to turn free time into meaning; into a purposeful life.

Rich people are special—THEY can turn free time into productivity and meaning. Nobody else can.

Heirs and spouses are special in this way by extension.

Absent a “job,” life has little to offer in terms of purpose.

Absent mandatory work, there will be a public mental health crisis.

Some people “want” jobs, so we should continue making them mandatory for all people (?!)

That last one is INSANE.

🚨 Again, REMINDER: this isn’t about feasibility.

We can have a WHOLE OTHER DISCUSSION about that. And we will, because people LOVE to move the goalpost when this desirability part of the argument gets heavy. They love to switch and say,

“Well it’s moot, because who’s going to pay for it?”

Good point! For a different discussion.

THAT’S why we need Sam’s stay-on-the-dime clarity desperately. To say:

“Look guys, you can’t switch from the desirability discussion to the economic feasibility one. One at a time.”

As we close the gap on the feasibility argument (simply Google Scott Santens, dude has done the work, deserves a Nobel prize and genius grant) and basic income studies and pilots show only good things across the board, the desirability argument will take center stage. It’s already happening.

This conversation has not been adequate for YEARS now. Too much bullshit and deflection. I’m tired of hearing scholars and guests of all stripes saying,

“Well, so I really do think, you know, people get purpose from jobs, and…”

🛑 STOP.

NO.

Just no.

That line is wrongheaded for 12 reasons.

First: It’s dangerous precisely because it carries TRUTH.

But it’s truth being smuggled in as a much bigger lie. A dangerous one, teeing up justification for work-or-die meat grinder bloodsport economics to be EMULATED, stretched out, operationalized, post scarcity. Without consent of the governed. Because the governed will be the boiled frog that doesn’t know it’s happening.

(This isn’t a conspiracy theory btw; it’s a stupidity theory.)

It’s a lie of confusion, capable of putting off an important discussion for YEARS.

Only Sam can make this madness stop.

I know that sounds ridiculous, like hero worship. “Only Sam.” But he’s got the skill, the platform, and he gets it. So why not Sam?

The tech bros have a love-hate thing going with UBI. They are not coming to this party. Not until shit gets real. So let’s make it real.

And I get that part of the sexiness of the U.S. is to make things hard and be a FORGE. That’s where the big, turgid GDP comes from. And the war machines. The innovations. Fine.

But try to realize that most people in the U.S. don’t really know that’s the plan. We’re born here, and things just seem really HARD.

They’re good, sure, but also HARD in a weird way that’s hard to talk about and is KILLING US. And that’s why we’re the only modern liberal democracy without public healthcare. We don’t even make the top twenty in world happiness rankings.

Because America is not a country. It’s a game. A bloodsport game that most of us were born into and didn’t sign up for.

UBI threatens to change that. It removes the spinning blades of death and acid bath at the bottom of the hard-mode game board that keeps us scrambling ever upward, providing dirty fuel to turn the top into billionaires and make the country the richest, and therefore the safest from attack.

But America is also gross. Banal. Full of confusion and primitive beliefs. It rewards mean-spirited stupidity. It lies about merit and deservedness and what people actually ARE.

And nothing reveals this lie more than the flirting that intellectuals are doing with compulsory work-or-die models even after scarcity around basics is solved.

SAM HAS TO DO SOMETHING.

If he won’t, I will. I’ll write the book. But since there’s no UBI, writing this book will destroy my life. I’d be putting it all on the line. The death blades will get me. Social death. Blame, shame, friends and family judge and turn on me. Call me a selfish, entitled delusional narcissist.

That’s what happens if I dare look up from the grindstone.

You think that’s good for the country?

Pfft. There are MILLIONS like me who could be contributing more—but can’t.

That’s stupid. And if that’s what you want, you’re stupid.