This week, I stepped a bit in a hornets nest over at the r\antiwork community.

I published the following article on Reddit Pensions Are a Scam — We Could Retire After 12 Years and was surprised at the backlash. Around 60% of the community was supportive - but the others responded with borderline hatred. I'm still not sure what the root cause is.

The gist of the post is that we could be working less - based on an estimate I've made.

I think the major issue was misunderstanding - it seems some people thought I was anti-modernity and promoting a primitive-like society. In actuality, I actually believe we can't go back: we are reliant on synthetic fertilizers to feed ourselves and around 3.5 billion people will die if we stop using them without a replacement.¹

Anyway, there were some useful comments that have served as food for thought. For example, I have double-checked the math behind the claim that 41% of GDP represents a living-income for everyone in the US population. (Which I claim in the text describing the underlying estimate A 10-hour Workweek is Enough (To Satisfy Everyone’s Needs).

I see it as a learning experience.

Anyway, here is the post if you want to check it out. Note that it eventually got banned by the mods.

¹Our World in Data estimates that 3.5 billion people would have died in 2015 if we stopped using synthetic (nitrogen) fertilizers. Source: Ritchie, Hannah. “How Many People Does Synthetic Fertilizer Feed?” Our World in Data, November 7, 2017. https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-people-does-synthetic-fertilizer-feed.

Part of my roadmap is to analyze the work that is "necessary."

To this end, I'm working on texts about what's necessary for health. The ideas are relatively developed - but it's always a challenge to put them in words in a way that 1) is interesting, and 2) analytically correct.

This week I managed to publish the following:

- We Must Do What’s Necessary, But We Can Often Choose How

I have more in the works, but I admittedly got a bit sidetracked this week due to the hornet nest.

When governments say they want to "reduce inflation," it doesn't mean reducing prices - it means reducing the rate of price increases. For example, instead of prices rising at 6-7% per year they "only" want them to increase say ~3% per year.

That’s it for this week.

In the meantime, vive la résistance!

And vive la liberté!