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how would that be different without capitalism?
A lot less crime for one. We funnel people into prison because of how currency functions. If Basic Needs were met like not charging for food or other necesseities people wouldn’t be nearly as miserable. Shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to understand this. Complain about where the money comes from all you want but keeping things status quoe means we are okay with all the cruelty in our world.
Is misery really the only factor? I know a lot of people who are doing well or really well that are complete assholes and steal shit
Stealing for necessities is really rare. People are just selfish assholes
Non-capitalism doesn’t magically make people rich. Don’t know what you’re thinking. If anything, you consume less
If you meet people’s basic needs, they do not cease to care or aspire.
A lot of the issue is “bullshit jobs” and being forced to do one. Work needs to be done, but we could be just as productive and maintain higher quality of life if we all worked less or for a shorter part of our lifespan.
Folks are happy to do a job that helps others, but they’re less inclined to do a job to make a few bastards rich.
Bullshit jobs (=> jobs that are doing unnecessary work) are certainly part of that, but shit jobs (=> jobs that you would really not want to work) are another part of the equation.
Shit jobs make up a huge amount of the jobs that actually do stuff we depend on (e.g. food industry, retail, agricultural, garbage, …). So the question is how do you get people to do these jobs? Without some form of coercion, that might be difficult.
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.)
The argument is mostly that if nobody has to work, too few people will choose to work, and then the quality of life for all will deteriorate. It is still true that our modern society requires an enormous amount of upkeep just to keep the quality of life where it is now. That’s work and if nobody does it then services will stop functioning.
Technically speaking, one could theoretically survive solely on homeless shelters and soup kitchens right now in the modern day, without the need to work. This would keep you biologically alive, but for most people, this is a degrading, unfulfilling existence. Which motivates people to work (or steal).
Technically speaking, one could theoretically survive solely on a single job right now in the modern day. This would keep you biologically alive, but for most people, this is a degrading, unfulfilling existence. Which
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.
It’s also just not true. Most people will find work to do if they have none. That’s pretty much what hobbies are. And all of the people I know who lived very long lives stayed active volunteering the whole time. My grandmother was like that, and died at 97 shortly after she had to stop for health reasons.
Not to mention that if your basic necessities are covered, you could still work to buy things that aren’t necessities.
Okay but you won’t do stupid bullshit in inefficient ways that keep me in 5000$ wine and a gilded skull throne of all the kids who hit puberty and became too old for me to fuck. So nothing of actual value to society.
so is it even really ‘work’?
this tweet is philosophical junk
Are you saying that it’s bad philosophy or that philosophy is bad?
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…
Your thesis?
Civilization as we know exists due to slavery and violence.
How do you know it’s “due to slavery and violence” rather then “despite slavery and violence”? It seems more likely to me that civilisation is rooted in cooperation and solidarity, while slavery and violence is a cancer that grows on top of it, and hurts almost everyone involved.
List an example of a civilization that was not build by force and labour extraction from the under class.
Cooperation was achieved at a gun point. There is no solidarity even in communist regimes.
Bedrock of civilization my ass, lol. Did I ever say I was looking for a dispute with you?
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.
why does feminism have its own definition of labor?
i get that women have unique challenges in the workforce but this seems like it should be a universal
It’s not about a women’s labor it’s about everyone, it’s just a feminist concept. It’s about acknowledging that house work, paid work, unpaid work, are all work. They’re all forms of labor. Taking care of a house, kids, aging parents, disabled people are forms of private labor, which feminism goes on to say as a society we value less than public forms of labor. Public forms of labor are jobs. Now I’d rather not discuss the value of private vs. public labor in this forum. Even though this is Lemmy there are still a ton of misogynists here.
My point being that forms of labor aren’t as simple as voluntary and involuntary. There are many forms of labor. Most of which I agree with you are involuntary. It’s just like every a much more nuanced concept. Which sucks, cause why can’t everything be simple?!
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.
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 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.
Tell that to your kids.
The people that want waste systems do
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.
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.
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.
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.
Even in a post scarcity world those who provide more for to society do receive greater accommodations. Captains and officers get larger rooms and houses. But until that reality is possible those who provide more for society should receive greater financial support. Not CEOs.
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.
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 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.
Even if you wanted to opt out of capitalism, I can’t even think of how a poor person would manage to live legally in the US. You basically have to be a hobo constantly in fear of being arrested (and then in prison you’re definitely a slave). You can’t just go out into nature and build your own homestead like people used to do.
You’re describing slavery.
I can see why you think it’s similar, but it’s assuredly not the same as slavery. As a hobo, you still have rights and cannot be purchased or treated a literal property.
Friend, have you paid attention to where we are at right now?
Homeless Funding Was Limited to Groups Aligned With Trump Policies, Suit Says
A federal lawsuit filed on Thursday in Rhode Island by two organizations that support the homeless claims that, with $75 million in homelessness grants about to expire, the Department of Housing and Urban Development illegally coerced applicants into embracing President Trump’s positions on immigration enforcement, transgender rights and other charged issues.
They literally tried to buy homeless care.
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.
That also assumes that once people have what they need to survive they would give up on the things that they want. I’d love to have things like the necessities taken care of but I wouldn’t expect them to pay for my video games and movie tickets, so I’d need a job to pay for that. Not only that, but I’d be able to work towards a career that I actually want instead of being forced to work a dead end job because I have to be constantly employed or else be homeless. The way the system works now makes it difficult to change careers or go to school later in life because any risk of being unemployed or lapse of time in our income could literally ruin our lives in a matter of weeks.
People are going to work for pleasure. That’s how we’re wired. What I find interesting is that people don’t get this. They also never see any motive to work beyond the profit motive. I guess that what a system designed to squeeze all the blood out of you does… you have none left to wander your mind.
Betterment of yourself and your part of society, human connection, just fucking around with curiosity and silliness. That’s what I know deep down I want to guide me, but I’m also fighting against an internal system that had me hearing “you have to work if you want to eat” since I was a child.
You have to eat food to eat. That’s it. It’s literally the basis of life. I don’t see birds commuting and paying taxes on their food
Birds commute all the time. If they aren’t where the food/nesting material/mating partner is, they commute there.
Yes, they follow their basic needs. Migrating and commuting are not the same thing. They don’t have to deal with made up “you have to work from the office” situations was my point
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You have to eat food to eat. That’s it.
…and that food has to come from somewhere. Someone has to work so you can eat.
Surprise, it comes out of the fucking ground! Of course if you want to eat something that is not native to your region it’s a whole thing with exploitation and whatnot. I just find the disconnection with nature/life jarring
I think your observation is valid even though labor and planning are needed to produce enough and consistently enough to sustain a big population. Reconnection with nature, some autonomy in culture, I also think are necessary
Food doesn’t simply erupt out of the ground on its own, not in quantities necessary to feed any kind of significant population. Farmers do in fact have to do labor to produce crops.
The bit about food not simply erupting from the ground on its own in quantities sufficient to feed a significant population goes double for cities where you have lots more people and lots less growing land.
Of course that was hyperbole. I am not saying that growing food is effortless or easy. I’m just saying that food is natural (duh), while coerced farmers aren’t natural, but rather a product of capitalism allowing you to buy any kind of food known to man, fresh, in a huge supermarket, and throw it away if it is not sold. Or any another authoritarian system for that matter, it would just happen in different ways. As my other comments show, I’m talking about different scales. Cities provided an advantage not long ago in many ways - infrastructure, culture, economy, opportunities etc -, but as modern technology shortened distances, I feel less and less people can find a compelling reason to live surrounded by miles and miles of cement and smog. High-density and high-volume communities/housing are two different things.
You started with a rejection of “you have to work if you want to eat”, my whole point was someone has to work if you want to eat, and if that someone isn’t you they probably need some kind of incentive for why they are working so you can eat.
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
I get this sentiment, but why would anyone want to farm then? Who does the work? Hell, in the US we need immigrants to do it because nobody else will. I guess my response to this will always be ok if nobody has to work, then who will, and why? And if nobody decides to work, then there won’t be the resources to make it so that nobody has to work. Nobody has ever replied with a solution to that aside from “well if we’re in a post-scarcity world then we don’t need people to work…” but we’re not. Not even close.
It’s kind of like libertarianism in my mind. If there are no rules and everyone is self sufficient, then who’s to stop the people who don’t want to earn their keep from just using force against those who do?
