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The End of Work, The Start of Us: How AI Proved Work Was Always Fucked—and What We Can Build Instead
What if the greatest threat of AI isn't that it will take your job—but that it will expose how pointless that job always was?For decades, a quiet rebellion has been brewing in cubicles, factory floors, and Zoom meetings. It’s in the "quiet quitting," the side hustles that feel more real than the 9-to-5, and the silent scream of burnout. For millions flocking to communities like Reddit’s /r/antiwork, the feeling that our labor is unfulfilling, performative, and fundamentally broken isn't a new revelation; it's a shared, lived reality.
Now, AI has entered the room. But it isn't the villain of the story. It's the messenger.
In The End of Work, The Start of Us, writer, community organizer, and political activist Nathan Colquhoun delivers an unflinching critique of modern labor, arguing that AI’s greatest power isn't in its ability to replace us, but in its capacity to expose the hollowness of the systems we already serve. It’s the tool that finally reveals “Capitalism’s Biggest Lie”: that our value is tied to our productivity.
With the clarity and fire of a kitchen-table conversation, Colquhoun dismantles the myths of the hustle culture and the professional performance, revealing how we were trained to be as efficient, compliant, and predictable as the machines now threatening to outperform us.
But this book is more than a diagnosis; it’s a roadmap out of the wreckage. Moving beyond critique, Colquhoun lays out a powerful and hopeful vision for what comes next. If AI can free us from the burden of “bullshit jobs,” what can we build in their place? What does a society rooted not in profit, but in presence, care, and genuine human connection look like? This is "The Start of Us."
A provocative and deeply personal call to action, The End of Work, The Start of Us is for anyone who has ever felt their soul shrink in an office chair, questioned the endless cycle of the "grind," or dared to believe that our lives are worth more than our labor. It's for those who know the system is broken and are ready to start building something new, together.
Now, AI has entered the room. But it isn't the villain of the story. It's the messenger.
In The End of Work, The Start of Us, writer, community organizer, and political activist Nathan Colquhoun delivers an unflinching critique of modern labor, arguing that AI’s greatest power isn't in its ability to replace us, but in its capacity to expose the hollowness of the systems we already serve. It’s the tool that finally reveals “Capitalism’s Biggest Lie”: that our value is tied to our productivity.
With the clarity and fire of a kitchen-table conversation, Colquhoun dismantles the myths of the hustle culture and the professional performance, revealing how we were trained to be as efficient, compliant, and predictable as the machines now threatening to outperform us.
But this book is more than a diagnosis; it’s a roadmap out of the wreckage. Moving beyond critique, Colquhoun lays out a powerful and hopeful vision for what comes next. If AI can free us from the burden of “bullshit jobs,” what can we build in their place? What does a society rooted not in profit, but in presence, care, and genuine human connection look like? This is "The Start of Us."
A provocative and deeply personal call to action, The End of Work, The Start of Us is for anyone who has ever felt their soul shrink in an office chair, questioned the endless cycle of the "grind," or dared to believe that our lives are worth more than our labor. It's for those who know the system is broken and are ready to start building something new, together.
115 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 8, 2025
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