Starvation is the natural state of the individual. Society separates us from that. You will find that other things are also fairly natural, such as death, disease, and exposure.
Unfortunately, for the support that manages to feed people, work must be done, and not every job can find enough people that want to do it sincerely to avoid some people hating their job.
That doesn’t mean employers should get away with being exploitative and abusive, or that reform isn’t needed. But the philosophy “no one should ever have to do something they don’t want to do” is unrealistic.
Agreed. Now imagine if the people doing the work they don’t enjoy, do it because the compensation outweighs the hardship. Rather than creating systems that both compensate disproportionately less for some roles in society AND ensure there is enough labour through coercive means.
Lets say everyone gets free college education, and there is no bias in the system for who gets to work where. No one wants to be lets say… a technician for utility lines, or work in maintaining sewage systems because there are easier jobs.
Should we a) increase compensation or b) make it difficult for people who work there transition to other work.
Universal healthcare, unemployment income, free education, universal child care, universal housing etc. all undermine the societal ability to keep people at work that is difficult but underfunded.
I’m on board with the reforms that properly recognize jobs people are inclined to hate as deserving of being some of the highest paid rather than lowest paid. I think health insurance should not be tied to employment (universal ideally, but at least decoupled from employment benefits). Free education to a point. I think universities need to be held more accountable for efficiency, rather than anything resembling a blank check (the well-intended student loan system has caused unintended badness without any accountability for actually managing expense). I’ll accept that universal ‘housing’ can be difficult when you get into the minutia (a fine line to walk between providing universal housing and appearance of just packing away undesirables out of sight, and auditing the living conditions)
You listed power line technician, but Linemen (as they are called) make crazy good money. I believe they deserve more, because the job is insane, but it’s a skilled, union job that pays very well.
Also they commonly only work 4 days per week.
I agree that there should be rewards for doing undesirable jobs. It would improve coordination.
We could have a society without employers. Everyone could be individually or jointly self-employed as in a worker coop. Such a society would give workers control rights over the fruits of their labor, which employer-employee relationships inherently deny. This denial makes being an employer by itself exploitative and abusive. We need to abolish the property relationships of work not reform
Starvation is the natural state of the individual. Society separates us from that.
How so? Isn’t the point of this meme that you have to work in society (in general) to not starve?
Some societies have figured out how to care for people better than other societies.
work in society (in general) to not starve
No. Capitalism requires that we ‘work’. I.e. provide output that is valuable to the capitalists. In a normal society, there are other forms of value that merit the person existing.
But also, we’re human. One of the reasons I want people to not starve is that I’m not a sociopath. So sometimes the value a person provides to society is that they’re not starving in the middle of the street. There’s value in that.
In a normal society
What’s a normal society? Is this a no true scottsman argument? It’d be my perspective that in the vast majority of societies people generally have to work to live.
output that is valuable to capital (owners)
This is false. You need to provide output that is valuable to your consumers
Morally, everyone has an equal claim to products of nature and the value they add to production. Today’s economic system denies people their equal claim. If society secured people’s equal right to natural resources and their value, the notion of coercion in the post would be reduced. Therefore, the economic system’s structure causes this coercion not just nature
