You must log in or register to comment.
I knew as a child, i hated working and didn’t want to do it.
Come to find out as an adult, everyone is a slave to corporations who overcharge us and underpay us. It’s all rigged against the working class. So glad i didn’t waste more money on college for a job i couldn’t get.
On the other hand, if nobody would work, or even want to do the dirty jobs like trash removal, we wouldn’t be able to have a functioning society.
These sort of comments are almost a non sequitur as they just take ridiculous ideas from capitalism.
Capitalism is fine as long as it’s controlled well. Any system that doesn’t have the right laws in place to limit it would be abusive within minutes. Put laws in place to restrict how much wealth each single person can have, for example, that would be way more productive than writing up nonsense like this
You think that you personally ought to be threatened with starvation, illness, and homelessness?
or even want to do the dirty jobs like trash removal
Not to nitpick, but I don’t think that would be the case. We’re ultimately talking about building a society where everyone’s needs are met regardless of what they do, end game communism. And I think you’d still see people like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JahXgey1sK4
For the lazy, it’s a group called Pedal People. They go around collecting trash in their city on bicycles with bike trailers, and they haul a respectable quantity of trash, recyclables, compost, etc. They do get payed, around $33 an hour, and it’s a co-op.
Even in a true communist society with no money and all needs met, people like this would still exist. These people legitimately enjoy their jobs collecting trash on bikes, sustainably, even in the snow and heat. And it’s not the money that’s the only point for them. They’re doing a good service, getting exercise, have direct control over their labor, etc.
Replace that paycheck with a society that respects their work with ample food, shelter, healthcare, etc and they probably would still be doing this. People like to be useful and helpful, we’re social creatures that evolved to live in communities.
We just need communities that don’t threaten each other, and instead let people do what they can do to be useful.
I think yours is the non-sequitur, or at least whataboutism. You’re introducing a “counterexample” that isn’t actually all that related to the original point. The original comment is just pointing out how capitalism is based on coercion, which is just a statement of fact.
I don’t get why it’s so controversial that people should be able to survive without a job. It doesn’t need to be glamourous, but nobody should be unhoused or unfed. We are blessed with plenty and we should share. And before it sounds like I’m religious, no, I’m not saying churches should be responsible for that, government should. (Though obviously I have no problems with any religious groups feeding and housing people as well.)
You don’t sound religious at all, so I’m not sure why you mentioned that, but im completely against churches feeding and housing people because they impose rules upon the recipients. I don’t believe in charity, so that’s part of it.
The moderate(ish) Evangelical right will often agree no one should go hungry but believe it is the church’s responsibility, not the government.
I agree with this philosophy, but it does require you to admit that before civilization we were all slaves to nature. I think this is true, but some people might object that this meaning of “slave” is different from the conventional meaning.
They are also admitting they would happily live off the work of others and feel no need to contribute to society or make the world better in anyway if their needs were met.
The specific issue in the US is the exploitation of labor to serve the need for infinite profits. In an ideal state, the government (for the people, by the people) would stand between the needs of labor and the needs of profit by providing labor with legal protections from exploitation. When those in government become one with the needs of profits, the people lose.
What we are seeing now after Citizens United is that it becomes more profitable to lobby/capture the government to increase profits than it is to buy more productive labor. By extension, they use a portion of their profits to convince labor to vote against the interests of the many by identifying and focusing on divisive culture issues.
Now who is poised to protect labor? Used to be the news media holding the government accountable to the people, but now most influential news media organizations are held to the need for infinite profits. They have something to lose now if they report on an issue that interferes with their ad revenue.
The solution? Talk to your neighbors and engage in your local community. Invite others to the community. Support each other by sharing skills, knowledge, and resources locally. Serve your community rather than insatiable unidentifiable shareholders. Also be wary of organized religions that can be used to incite conflicts or division. Not saying religion is bad, just that large organizations dilute the accountability needed to prevent the reliance on infinite profits.
Claim is ok, the unspoken “so everything will collapse” is bullshit. In the end, Hampton is right: “work (do what someone else wants) or starve” is not how anyone should live
work (do what someone else wants) or starve" is not how anyone should live
That’s literally the bedrock of civilization… It has been this way since Sumerians.
And normies still can’t quite figure it out
All that history in school, nada
We done slavery for at least a long as there has been civilization. That doesn’t make it good.
Correct but it makes it the reality that people keep denying
No one is denying shit. We’re stating that our systems dont have to be based on coercion. It is possible to build a society off of cooperation instead. Denying that is denying that we made this shit up and it can be how we want.
Calling american wagie a slave, will get you kicked out of the party lol
Most people are denial. Fediverse is not reflective of modern American discourse.
I dont give a shit what most people think. Its a fact not an opinion. Our systems are built on coercion because we’re just making slight changes to them over time. Thats why they are that way. It has nothing to do with the thoughts that talking heads plant in the average Americans’ mind.
Edit: reading this after posting I would just like to clarify that I am not trying to be pointed or angry with you. It comes off that way tho. I really do mean we have the choice in how our societies operate.
I don’t take online discourse personal, all good.
really do mean we have the choice in how our societies operate.
I don’t even disagree here in theory… In practice, it is hard to explain it this way though.
We are ruled, and our opinions mean nothing and most people are unwilling to do any opposition.
So it is just few freedom enjoyer doing their lil direct action while scream into the fedi void while we are increasingly being subjugated by the owner class.
And the normie sees nothing wrong and thinks the freedom enjoyer is the weird one.
Lol. Aren’t you cold there, at the peak of mount of scholarship?
It hasn’t been like this around Ramana Maharshi, just to point one name you can look into. And human life and possibility have never been about just sustaining body till it drops dead.
Oh, my little know-it-all, you say plenty of people have been living like that for plenty of time? Good catch, take a candy, good boy
An obscure example does little disprove my thesis…
Bedrock of civilization my ass, lol. Did I ever say I was looking for a dispute with you?
Your thesis?
Civilization as we know exists due to slavery and violence.
Infinite profit is a capitalist feature not a “USA problem” the media never fought for the working class because it seeks profit as well, the capitalist can buy it the working class cannot
All animals need to work for food
I have a cat who lays down and uses her paw to pull dry food out of her bowl one at a time and eats them off the floor. Is that work?
Yes, her work is to entertain you.
Your description alone is exhausting
Work toward what? Because it isn’t just work to create the things they need.
There’s a fact that a lot of people commenting here are overlooking. Marx himself admitted that in the lower stage of communism, wages will have to exist until people’s mindset on labor changes. It’s simply not true that communism will not work because ‘people don’t like working’.
edit: grammar
Yep, every existing socialist society past and present requires labor, and paid for it. We can’t jump from A to Z, we have to build socialism and build communism, and we have to continue developing. Wage labor as the sole motivator for labor in society is something that gets phased out as work becomes more for satisfying needs than profits for the few.
Not really? Organization around mutual aid exemplifies time and time again people’s willingness to do all kinds of labor without pay as well as capital’s antagonistic response to the act.
Wages only have to exist until people are provided an alternative means of well being and self empowerment. That they can observe the value of labor is intrinsically tied to survival and well being, rather than extrinsically and arbitrarily.
Also, in the higher stage of communism, labor that is necessary but not preferred — cleaning the sewers, for example — could be done in turn.
Fuck I’d be happy to clean sewers if I had a stable high quality of life and I knew that my work was directly contributing to the community and its health. (In fact, most sanitation workers currently have that perspective - sanitation work is care work, and something to be very proud of).
This far in the future, you can find someone like me who would willingly design sewer-cleaning robots. My labor is being wasted on pointless billionaire projects.
Adam Smith “sold” capitalism on the virtue of “free and fair markets”. Capitalism, as a practical understanding today, is the supremacy of capital, oligarchist protectionism, and corporatism. Only fair markets (those without coercion and lies, including structural coercion) are free. Adam Smith did not define/sell capitalism as structural coercion of society to maximize ROI for those with capital. Actually the opposite, where “perfect competition” was supposed to result from free and fair markets. Monopoly/cartels generate higher ROI than competition.
UBI/freedom dividends is the path for free and fair markets for labour. It also naturally increases ROI, where investment includes work/time, where the freedom to refuse unfair work means higher pay for work, including higher returns on capital/management, if competition needs higher returns for their work too. But, most important to ROI, redistribution and high pay, means significant increase in demand/GDP, and more work available to satisfy that demand.
The reason UBI is resisted, is not that the rich cannot get much richer from UBI. It is that UBI redistributes power instead of wealth. Those in power, have more power under slavery than by giving away their power (freedom) to the people. Oligarchy needs control over power to protect their oligarchy. After your first $B, what is the point of more money if not to enforce harsher slavery to limit competition to your next $Bs.
Adam Smith didn’t conflate capitalism and free market which are two separate mechanisms
Capitalism is priavte ownership of key sectors of economy
Free makret is right to contract freely.
Idiots in america and westpid regimes will generally conflaw the two due to heavy regime propaganda that justifies the oligarchy which uses “free market” as justification for their status.
Yep. And idiots love to repeat the false and flawed interpretation of Smith. And ignore his critiques and analysis.
ROI exists/dominates investment decisions under private or social/communal ownership. Let’s say your country imposes a fixed price to pay you per bushel of wheat. The decision to buy a tractor is completely independent of how equal the ownership in the farm(s) is.
Adam Smith’s justification for capitalism relied on an imaginary “perfect information” mechanism. He did see some centralized governance need to prevent the market corruption of monopoly/cartels, but was relatively silent on need for regulation (say health inspections of restaurants) as a way to avoid food poisoning, or everyone magically knowing that a food poisoning victim was poisoned at a specific restaurant. Though, its possible to theorize that restaurant inspection can be done by multiple private/social organizations. none of the options are immune to corruption if there is a “free market” for politicians/bribery.
Serious question, how can we provide everyone’s basic needs without some work? Food doesn’t harvest itself. Tools don’t maintain themselves.
Labor will always be required on some level though it does not need to be exploited.
The point being raised is that the current wage system is oriented around profit alone. Systems designed to meet the needs of the people as the prime order for society would still pay for labor, at least initially, but wouldn’t threaten people into doing so via starvation.
And if we maintained a wage based system with some degree of inequality that comes with it I would expect people to do these jobs. The moment there is no personal benefit I doubt you will ever find people doing the dangerous critical work.
Not a single socialist system has ever had equal pay across the board. I’m not sure what strawman you’re trying to fight here.
They aren’t posing a socialist one. They are posing a communist or anarchist society which does not pay.
edit: whoops forgot who I was replying to and what you initially replied to. You are correct Cowbee in that this wouldnt be a problem under socialism. Others, not you, have proposed a purely volunteer system and that’s impossible.
Communism is a post-socialist society. When others speak of moving beyond wage labor, it’s a process that requires many steps and twisting roads, not just something we do outright. At least, that’s the Marxist viewpoint, and I’ll let anarchists speak for themselves.
Communist society that has sufficiently advanced and collectivized production will still require labor, but said labor will largely be either enjoyable or easy, and will be constantly automated even further, as the goal is to meet the needs of as many people as possible with as little labor as possible, as opposed to creating the most profits regardless of labor.
And the idea that this will magically be automated, pleasurable or volunteer based is why I believe many leftists have no real understanding of the work that needs to be done or how incredibly dangerous some of that is. Fir example It’s a fantasy to presume people will engage in underwater welding just because we need it.
It’s also a fantasy to presume jobs like underwater welding cannot and will not be automated, or that it can’t be compensated for by requiring fewer hours worked or other means than wage labor.
The premise is that without coercion people won’t work. Which is just not true, people will do the work they want to do. It’s just that the work people want to do isn’t necessarily the work capitalists want them to do. Which means less exploitation and profit for the capitalists.
Yeah the work people “want to do” and the work that needs to get done do not align IRL. Not enough people want to deal with waste systems or sanitation yet those are critical to any society.
This isn’t Star Trek. We don’t live in a magical future where all the dangerous yet necessary work is automated.
They’ll want to clean the sewer when the sewer needs cleaning, the same way that you “want” to vacuum your home even if you don’t want to do it.
That requires a ton of people who know how to maintain sewage systems from experience. You aren’t getting that from volunteers and you’ll need these people in every community.
You missing the point. People will do work when it is required whether or not they desire to do work. It doesn’t require a magic job creator to get work done.
YOU are missing the point. At no time have I cited the need for capitalist ownership of this system but rather an need for unequal and naturally higher payment for those that do these jobs. They cannot be volunteer positions as they require experienced people.
Do you have any idea how these systems function IRL?
Yea, I can fix a shitter if I have to.
have you met many people?
most people don’t want to clean their homes. they want to pay someone else to do it.
But I get 100% of the benefit of vacuuming my home; there’s no free rider problem.
You’re conflating work that needs to get done with work capitalists want done.
Yes, someone needs to deal with sanitation. But we don’t need a capitalist to own the sanitation system to address this. It can be done in turn, for instance; or volunteers can be rewarded with non-necessity items.
No, Im not. Do you think we can get enough volunteers who have the right skills to address sanitation issues?
In most places no one owns the sewage system other than the state.
There is a lot of work that no one would willingly do that is critical and requires a lot if hands on experience. The problem leftist ideologies face IRL is that so many require people who would choose to do extremely dangerous jobs with no realistic plan for how to account fir this.
Yes. Those jobs would provide more luxury lifestyle outside of the basic needs already. Keep rasing the pay until someone takes the job.
Also the issue is that we think we’re too good to do those jobs, but we’re not above lowering everyone’s standards of living to the point that people have to jump in shit to survive? We can get people to take those jobs, but do we also need to stop judging people based on their career path. That’ll go a long way to fixing our nation.
If you are talking about higher pay you are talking about a different system than the one proposed. Their system has no economic inequality so no higher pay.
Not enough people want to deal with waste systems or sanitation
No one has “shit purger” as their favorite way of passing their time. That doesn’t mean that no one would pick the job and leave themselves and everyone else waddling in two inches of it
You don’t need volunteers to maintan sewer systems. you need trained experts. You aren’t getting this from volunteers.
I know all labor is skilled labor. That doesn’t contradict what I’ve described
No it isn’t. Skilled labor has a real definition and it is useful. Unskilled labor doesn’t mean you have no skills it just means you don’t have a proven specific set of skills that your job title implies. For example you know a mason can build a brick wall whereas a contractor might be able to do the same but you wouldn’t know that from the job title.
The emotional response people have to skilled labor vs unskilled is always weird to me. It’s as if none of you read the definition and thought about it for a second.
The people that want waste systems do
Not enough people want to deal with waste systems or sanitation yet those are critical to any society.
These are often highly paid, highly desirable, union jobs. Many have missed OP’s point that the coercive slavery that exists in our society is that the threat of starvation/homelessness means less power for individual labour vs employers or vs competing with employers. There is some $ offer that will get me to unclog your toilet.
ITT a bunch of unwitting capitulants who seem to think they wouldn’t flip burgers for $300k/yr
It’s so hard to get people out of that mindset, man…
I’d flip burgers for a living if it paid for that. This is about critical jobs that they propose shouldn pay
They are posing anticapitalist solutions so better pay wasn’t an option.
UBI removes the slavery. If you, or strawman, insists on a labour supremacist society, rather than a shortage of willing linemen, there might be a shortage of employers investing in a working power distribution system. There are many policies in between our current supremacist slavery that eliminate the structural slavery.
“ It can be done in turn, for instance; or volunteers can be rewarded with non-necessity items.”
this is the part of 5Too’s post Im replying to. There’s no strawman here. You just seem to not get that people won’t justdo the work of a lineman without an added benefit given how much more dangerous working with power lines can be.
I’m not speaking for anyone else, just solving OP’s truth with UBI/Freedom dividends as the solution. Free and fair markets are not evil. Complex systems to have random people enslaved to be linemen for a day seem categorically unworkable. A system that ensures enough linemen willing to receive great pay to be linemen is workable.
UBI/Freedom dividends means minarchism power redistribution. People need to be well below idiocracy intelligence to not prefer higher dividend to demonic warmongering budget. I disapprove of ultra centralized allocations, if only that any socialist, or other idealist, win to implement it, in an Israel first fascist media environment, leads to right wing fascist takeover of the centralization. US corrupt political/media system requires disempowerment. UBI/Freedom dividend only election platform is only possibility of ending the corruption. It’s much more important than voting itself.
I had breakfast this morning, and my fridge is full for the week. That doesn’t mean I will refuse all wage offers for my time. If there is no slavery, then workers will get 5 recruiter calls per day begging them to take their clients’ money.
This right here! When people’s basic needs are met, they’ll work for luxury needs. The DS9 baseball card episode comes to mind.
Ok now how do critical systems work that are not pleasant or dangerous to maintain and require skilled workers? Do we hope every community has people capable of being linemen or engaging in underwater welding?
How much IRL practical thought have you really put into this notion because it seems unlikely to work out at all.
You need linemen? Call enough people to train them with promised starting salary when they complete training. Or pay them some salary during training. Or increase the promised starting salary. Enough people will say yes if you keep improving offer.
Your examples are already “good jobs” relative to say roofing (statistically most dangerous occupation).
If we are talking about payment then we aren’t talking about the situation proposed.
you can’t. becuase you can’t define their basic needs for them. they define those for themselves.
Lol sure gradpa.
I disagree that “labor” can never be voluntary. But I also fully agree that labor in a Capitalist system is fundamentally based on coercion.
The thing to me is that “labor” and “doing work” are two fundamentally different things. You can accept a role that someone else needs done in exchange for something, or you can work on things you find important or interesting, or that just needs doing, to maintain yourself and your environment in a broad sense.
You should look up the feminist definition of labor. It includes everything you’re talking about and draws a line between public and private labor. Labor =/= work.
Maybe I’m ignorant but this feels like a stretch. You have to work to survive, that’s just how it is
You don’t have to work if you’re wealthy. Give me $5 million and I’ll never work again, and live a happy life. Even as little as $2mil is doable
