this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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Related: the idea that everyone needs to work all the time isn't really true anymore. If we were in like 3000 bce in a small farming village outside Ur, yeah, people gotta pitch in so we don't get eaten by wildlife, the neighboring tribe, or whatever.
But in 2025ce, where so many jobs have so much filler nonsense? And when the rich can just live on investment income? No, the whole "work or starve" thing isn't needed anymore.
We should have basic income for all and public housing. Let people pursue what they want. Maybe it's art. Maybe they just want to take care of the local library. Maybe they just want to be a local barfly that keeps the tavern interesting. Who knows? But wage slavery needs to go.
Man that's bullshit and you know it. Yeah a rich class is not exactly directly subject to work or starve, but people who write stuff like this don't realize they are in that rich class. I guarantee you've never met or heard of anyone starving ain't an anorexic or lost in the barrens. There has to be people doing the actual work, and people like you doing what amounts to fancy book keeping and service industries for the next class of people it's very plain you're envious of.
Cost of living differs across the world. While you may think that someone living in the US is "rich", and that might be true compared to the rest of the world, within the US it may mean middle class or borderline lower class depending on the living context.
Say you make $60,000 USD per year as a single adult with no dependents. You'd do ok in Chicago, but would be scraping by in New York City.
Compare that same $60,000 to somewhere outside the US like Rio de Janiero in Brazil, and you'll see that the you'll make over 12 times the average living wage there. Conversely, if you took Brazil's yearly living wage of ~$4,700 and applied it to the US, then you'd be below the average poverty line.
It does us no good to debate how good we have it vs you, or vice versa. (Almost) all of us live under capitalism, and although costs of living vary across the world, this isn't an argument against UBI. The same issues the US experiences likely are also felt by citizens of many other countries, unless you live somewhere that has already introduced these sorts of safety nets.
Your point about "hard" labor (work done with body) vs "soft" labor (work done with mind and/or little body) doesn't argue against this either. The economy is greatly stratified. We all don't have to do the agriculture anymore, like when humans first transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farmers. There are many other things to do and things we can provide for each other, some good some bad. And this also isn't to say that hard labor is worse than soft labor, or vice versa. They are mainly different kinds of experiences. No judgement need be applied, although many cultures tend to do so. This is one of many reasons why you see and have seen across history labor unions stick up for hard laborers against the "soft laboring" wealthy. This prejudice needs to be uprooted across the world imo.
I 100% agree with you that many formulations of "rich countries" depends on colonizing and extracting wealth from "poor countries". That is not right. Every country should be able to produce for its own, with help offered in the form of imports/exports of goods & labor to every country. It is not fair that the Global South essentially funds the Global North.
Instead of pointing that out and blaming an entire hemisphere of people for that, we should instead be looking to those in our countries that wield power and make this system the way it is. A farmer in the US Is no different than a farmer in Brazil, at least in terms of the class struggle. It would all benefit us if we see that class divide everywhere in the world, and join together to try to defeat it.
I'm not sure I follow. What do you think is bullshit?
Someone still needs to do work, but not everyone needs to work all the time.
If not everyone needs to work, then who needs it? Why should you work while others don't?
We would probably be fine if people who wanted to work just kept working. Or if we had universal basic income, so people could more freely choose if they wanted to trade their time+labor for something else.
Like, if absolutely no one wants to tend the fields then that's going to be a problem for food. I think there are enough people who would do it because they want to, especially for jobs that are local. But even if not, you could still offer money. Having basic income (or some other mechanism to assure basic needs are met) in place means it's much less coercive, because it's no longer a question of labor or suffer
And what if we wouldn’t? Is there a statistics on how many people work just for the sake of work?
Not a lot of money, bc taxes are gonna be hella high to sustain universal income.
Yeah, it's a question of labor or just chilling. Who tf is gonna choose labor? Seems like your ideal society's gonna be supported by useful idiots.
Most people like to be productive.
There is enough money and resources. It's mostly just consolidated in the hands of the rich. You've probably seen https://eattherichtextformat.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ . If you spread that around, you get more economic activity.
Lots of people choose to do stuff instead of just chilling. Go look at all the open source projects that are just made by hobbyists, or community gardens, or any number of other self organized projects. Capitalism with all the profit is theft bits isn't the only way.
How do you think they make that money? Primarily off of consumerism. If we all collectively decided to share what we have and stop buying what we don't need, there could be no passive income, not at the scale it exists today, anyways.
We also need to outlaw landlords. Owning land is not a job and it's certainly not a business.
Only raccoons could be owners of land :D
Hard Agree.
I think landlords make a lot of sense for commercially-zoned property, and for residentially there needs to be some way to live somewhere even if you can't afford the mortgage deposit. So there's nuance here that needs addressing IMO.
We could just... give everyone a place to live. Then there's no such thing as "can't afford a mortgage."
Do people get to choose where they live in this scenario, or do we just allocate housing based on where's currently unoccupied?
People don't really get to choose where they live now. If you mean choosing from a list of vacancies, then sure, I don't see why not.
People do kinda pick where they are though? If there's some unoccupied housing in Denver, but you're living in Austin it's not necessarily useful, that's what I meant. I agree in principle on social housing, but there would probably need to be some kind of associated projects -- either new construction or housing where ppl live but there isn't enough accommodation, or new jobs created in areas with surplus, or both... And then you also need to think about local amenities (shops, hospitals, parks, schools, that sort of SimCity thing)
Sorry, I might have come across as if I fully disagreed with the notion, but I really don't - I just think that the idea only works with a more integrated policy.
Oh, sure, If you're just talking about stuff like which city to live in, I would think that these services would be available in every city. Although it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a system in place to encourage people to relocate, but it wouldn't be forced.
I think under a UBI scenario, people should get to pick the city they want to reside in, then get assigned a public housing unit(s) for their immediate family. They can also be provided free public transport, and a basic UBI vehicle with free fuel.
Ideally, people would have a bedrock of UBI services to rely upon for their wellbeing, and money is turned into something solely used for lifestyle upgrades: Buying a house of the quality, size, and location you want, a fancier non-UBI car, brand-name food or supplies, private school, ect.
Consumerism is used for wealth redistribution.
Real wealth production occurs when machines create work, saving time. Work = money.
I guess? With enough money you can just buy bonds, which sort of depend on consumerism but indirectly. Some municipal bonds return like 5%. 5% of a shit load of money is enough to live on.
Recommendation: the book Bullshit Jobs
I've heard of this one. Maybe I'll check it out.
The downside of reading a lot of depressing non fiction is I increasingly feel like I'm living in a cuckoo clock, and get frustrated with how everyone else seems oblivious and uncaring.
If you want an understanding of the cuckoo clock and how it came to be, I highly recommend you watch the BBC documentary HyperNormalisation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation
I want the inside of my house to look like the outside of an insane asylum
Also Graeber’s Debt.
So many of Graeber’s ideas are right on the dot. Those two books helped me understand economics better than fucking Milton Friedman ever could.
We haven't needed to work since the early 1900s. The labor movement was all about getting people to work less and ensuring everyone is taken care of. Consumerism was invented to fight back and has been winning ever since. People are animals and animals can be manipulated.