I often daydream about how society would be if we were not forced by society to pigeon hole ourselves into a specialized career for maximizing the profits of capitalists, and sell most of our time for it.
The idea of creating an entire identity for you around your “career” and only specializing in one thing would be ridiculous in another universe. Humans have so much natural potential for breadth, but that is just not compatible with capitalism.
This is evident with how most people develop “hobbies” outside of work, like wood working, gardening, electronics, music, etc. This idea of separating “hobbies” and the thing we do most of our lives (work) is ridiculous.
Here’s how my world could be different if I owned my time and dedicated it to the benefit of my own and my community instead of capitalists:
- more reading, learning and excusing knowledge with others.
- learn more handy work, like plumbing and wood working. I love customizing my own home!
- more gardening
- participate in the transportation system (picking up shifts to drive a bus for example)
- become a tour guide for my city
- cook and bake for my neighbors
- academic research
- open source software (and non-software) contributions
- pick up shifts at a café and make coffee, tea and smoothies for people
- pick up shifts to clean up public spaces, such as parks or my own neighborhood
- participate in more than one “professions”. I studied one type of engineering but work in a completely different engineering. This already proves I can do both, so why not do both and others?
Humans do not like the same thing over and over every day. It’s unnatural. But somehow we revolve our whole livelihood around if.
Let’s not be confused here. Specialization is what allows for free time. If everyone has to farm and hunt, that’s all you’d do. Specialization is a good thing for humanity and diverse institutions and industries to arise.
Yes, but if we only have to work on our specializations for 16 hours a week each instead of 40+, we would have a lot more time for other good stuff, whether it’s personal development, supporting other specialists, or just hanging out.
People are entitled to their preferences. They should also be entitled to overtime after some amount of hours per week that’s lower than forty, I think whatever it takes to bring the rate of unemployment to practically zero.
Think about if you had a flat tire in your car. You go to get another tire to replace the one with a hole in it.
But the tire factory only manufactures 300 tires a day. Because they only have a handful of employees who feel like making tires and they only really want to work around 10 hours a week.
Now tires are pretty rare. And that means they are difficult to find. Also, rarity is a supply and demand thing, so now tires are also incredibly expensive. People want a lot of them, but the tire manufacturing plant doesn’t make enough.
Oh, and while you were inside the shop being surprised at the 22 month wait for your replacement tire, and the $3,500 price tag for just the single tire, the other 3 tires were stolen off your car in the parking lot.
Cause people don’t want to pay those prices, or wait that amount of time, which has lead to a massive car tire black market
Why do we need tire factories working employees 40+ hours a week to make enough tires for everyone? Just hire enough workers so that they all have enough time for a life outside of work. Maybe with a little bit of central planning, we could also reduce the demand for tires by figuring out how to get people to drive less.
World War II is a working example of your hypothetical. The country (USA*) had to ration food, shoes, metal, paper, and rubber - so therefore even tires - to name a few. This all happened under capitalism. The country complied and to even make up for the loss of product women joined the workforce - i.e. Rosie the Riveter. I’m not trying to get into an argument but I wanted to point out your example already came and went and the country responded as it would under either economic system.
First of all, I will start with saying that this is a highly unlikely scenario, because modern technology already allows us way way more tires that we need with a fraction of the labor time we put. But let us assume not and entertain this a bit.
This is a perfect example where members of society will find themselves in a situation where there is a big need for tires that is not being met. Instead of hand wavingly complaining and hoping the government or corporations ramp up production, we remember we don’t live under capitalism anymore. We are masters of our own destiny! society is now oriented around human need and wants, not profits! Our prime motivation for working is not to please capitalists in exchange for earning enough to live and a little more. It is to serve the interests of ourselves and our communities, and this is a prime example of a need of ourselves and communities.
So because we are unhappy with the state of tires, we decide to contribute more of the large amount of free time we have to produce more tires (and you only need a tiny fraction of humanity to do this. Consider how many people work in the tire industry right now). The fluidity afforded to us by having both free time and the control over production is a lot greater than you think. We do not even have to imagine this. Many historical civilizations did this already. We can only do better because technology grants us a million times the ability they had to produce.
actually, hunter-gatherer communities ‘work’ significantly less time than we do in our corporate jobs. farming is a different story: here’s one study: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190520115646.htm
You can read that study and see that it only represents one instance where hunter gathers were more efficient than farmers in the same region. You cant use that to say to our current system is less efficient. I hate pop science so much its unreal.
How about this then?
https://www.ft.com/content/dd71dc3-4566-48e0-a1d9-3e8bd2b3f60f
reminds me of this project https://farm.bot/ .
but a project like this is so slow or nonexistant development ( i would argue: this is because we put all our hope and time into specialization.) this is only maintained by a few people.
it doesn’t compete or compare with the size and scale of modern industrial farms so nobody really cares and its not deemed to be important.
i suppose thats a good thing. its not worthwhile to persue agriculture anymore. food is cheap.
i’m more worried about paying my landlord.
That would then mean we would have to support the entire food supply on hunting rather than farming for this to be true, so basically 90% of the population would have to die
Are you thinking that OP is proposing we go back to hunting? I can guarantee that is not what was meant here.
Yeah, OPs got the spirit but misses the point. We are being pressured to sell our time at a minimum of 40 hours every week. It’s thanks to specialization (and the technology that developed from it) that this quantity of of time is grossly over-allocated. Trade and travel allowed people to create better products in less time, so people were no longer very literally working to live, day-in, day-out. Unfortunately wages are kept low, wealth is kept centralized and culture continues to place value on excess so that we’re continually convinced that we “have” to work as many hours as we can find.
I don’t understand what you think I missed. When I said “specialization”, I meant the idea of just doing one thing and one thing only as a “career”. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t specialize or that people won’t. But if I specialize in construction labor, with the extra time awarded to me I could also participate in design if I wanted.
heres what wikipedia has to say:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour
historically it seems to have been beneficial… and led us to where we are currently.
Not everyone has to farm and hunt. It was more than 200,000 years ago that humanity figured out how not to get all of us to farm and hunt, way before capitalism ever was a thing.
Speicalization in the context I used does not mean “be an expert at a thing”. It means “Spend most of your time doing just that one thing”. I can see why you were confused, I think my use of “pigeon-holed” was probably better than specializetion.
Specialization has always been a thing. Probably more so before. A carpenter wouldn’t just wake up and “nah, I’d rather work with pottery today”. The carpenter probably became a carpenter because their parents passed on their carpentering skills to them, so that’s what they do until they die.
Money was invented before written history began.[1][2] Consequently, any story of how money first developed is mostly based on conjecture and logical inference.
We don’t actually know when money started so it’s hard to say.
But even before money the person with more stuff could acquire more stuff through barter. Even if they weren’t using money it’s still basically capitalism.
Barter being the predecessor of money is actually false, and has never been supported with sufficient evidence.
From what anthropology tells us, money was introduced by force, not by a natural tendency for humans to barter, and wanting a better way to do it.
And no, that isn’t “basically capitalism”. No “capital” involved here in the sense of capitalism.
Yes we do, money started around temple societies in the fertile crescent to control people and keep them centrally located.
Also, there is no known historical example of a purely barter economy. What’s known now is everything tended to work on an informal gift/reputation economy.
Until money came along, was typically forced upon people, and then if the money system failed, people fell back to a barter system. Neither money or barter are natural for the vast majority of human time and society
The invention of currency basically just introduced universal fungibility to a communities barter system by adding 1 additional step.
But the same result would occur in socialism. Even communism. I don’t know what you expect to happen in any societal economic structure that would suddenly give you the freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want. Jobs existed the same way all the way back then as they do now. And that was the birth of capitalism, not before it. Most didn’t own their land. It belonged to a king or emperor. Sure there are exceptions and caveats, but to say capitalism didn’t exist back then isn’t accurate. Capitalism isn’t bad. It’s how it’s implemented that makes it awful. I think we need to migrate to socialism via capitalism. But it requires winning of the minds of the populace and that won’t happen until folks have an accurate understanding of both capitalism and whatever system you want them to transition to. I don’t even know what system you’re supporting with your question. It sounds like you’re trying to describe some sort of star trek utopia that supposedly is advanced beyond economic systems (yet how many episodes revolved around trade deals between planets and races… but I digress).
Jobs existed the same way all the way back then as they do now.
Are you arguing that ancient societies had “jobs”, and in the same way that we do nowadays? I don’t intend to be rude (and sorry if I come off that way), but a simple Google search will tell you that’s false, but I’d be glad to cite you exact resources as well.
And that was the birth of capitalism
While the exact beginning of capitalism may be a subject of a little debate, no expert on the matter believes it goes that far back. Again, simple Google search reveals it, and I’ll be glad to cite you resources if you want.
Most didn’t own their land. It belonged to a king or emperor.
This wasn’t always true. There was a time that preceded class society. And not all class society is capitalism.
but to say capitalism didn’t exist back then isn’t accurate.
It is the scientific consensus that it did not.
I think we need to migrate to socialism via capitalism
Not sure what you mean here. Can you please elaborate?
whatever system you want them to transition to
It is simple. Instead of orienting society around profits and capital, we orient it around bettering the human condition. Instead of working our days to generate more profit for capitalists in exchange for money to buy necessities, we work to serve our interests and our own communities. So much wasted labor is suddenly removed.
