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In our civilized societies we are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses? Why, even to the best-paid workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of production, which could ensure comfort to all, in return for a few hours daily toil? - Peter Kropotkin (1892)
but people would have to work for you to maintain that lifestyle
Our system is so wasteful that we pproduce about 3x more than what we would need in order for every person on earth to have a "middle class" first world lifestyle. The system is even incredibly wasteful beyond that and throws away most produce, because it isn't profitable to sell, it ends up in a landfill.
Check out this blog by anthropologist and degrowth luminary, Jackson Hickel https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/10/27/degrowth-a-call-for-radical-abundance
I didnt say our system was the way to go
*Robots
That "lifestyle" of near poverty.
I think you're missing OP's point. Those basics of shelter and food can easily be covered by society, in the modern age, with our understanding of science allowing agriculture to be a piece of piss now-a-days compared with how it used to be. We have machines that can do the labour of hundreds, thousands, of people. We have computers that allow for the tracking of a million and one data points.
Yes, people would have to work to provide someone with bread and water. But it's such a minimal amount of work in the grand scheme of things, that why should we really care? Those that work will live better lifestyles, will reap greater rewards. But why should those that don't work be left to starve and die when for such a tiny percentage of society's expenditure they can have their basic needs covered?
Perhaps, after a year of not working and recovering from the rat race, they may even see the value in working again. If it benefits their community, instead of having to work 40+ hours a week just to cover their basic requirements. Work can, and should, be far more flexible than it currently is. If our basic necessities are met then that allows for flexibility, it allows for labour to adapt as society's needs change over time.
It prevents exploitation, as you no longer need to work but want to work to improve your situation or that of your community.
But the neccecities of life, the work of doctors, farmers, electricians is all work. Things people have to dedicate their lives to. To recieve the fruits of that work, the common person needs to work in their own way. Doctors dont want to work every day of their carreer. Plently of neccecary jobs are worked by people who never would want to do it, even once. To ask for their time and effort while giving nothing of your own is entitled.
Lol. Patient variant: once again, yes, all of it is also work. No, to do that one does not have to dedicate their whole lives to it. No, asking a miniscule of collective time and effort is not entitled
Normal variant: dude(ss), you seriously gonna complain about minimally covering survival of some folk while having families with wealth enough for several generations to live fucking awesome without any need to work a second in their life? Are you nuts or something?
Im not saying its perfect. But all people that can work should work, without exception and it should be a requirement for housing, food and medical care.
Interesting. Genuine question: how do you propose to compel to work those who are wealthy enough to live without working?
I dont know. But they should work.
Bullshit. If I can provide for someone without them needing to do a thing, I am fine with it. If I ever get a say in how things are done, never will I agree to what you propose
You are saying that doctors should work for free. Thats transparently stupid.
Lol. Explain how you got that idea from my words
I think we should all work towards having robots take our jobs
So you wish for indentured servitude? Sisyphean toil? Slavery? For the masses. What a prick.
That's quite a strawman you're fighting there!
Is it?
If this were the middle ages, then yeah, sure. But modern society is at the point where vast sums of wealth are hoarded by billionaires (who I must point out, do not work as you or I would generally know the word to mean). Huge swathes of land has been industrialised, producing more and more every year with the current system requiring infinite growth.
We are at the point where basic needs can be met with ease. My home is over a hundred years old, and new ones are made every day. Homelessness is not a supply issue, not truly. Homes are hoarded, left empty, left to rot, in the hope of making more profit in future. There's a supply issue only because humans have decided so, not because we don't have enough homes.
The same can be said for food. The main employ of the population used to be agriculture because all those people were needed to feed the population. Now a tractor can do in a few hours what would take many people many days. The amount of people working in agriculture now is a tiny tiny tiny percentage of what it once was.
Water, we have learned from industrialisation how to sanitise with ease. How to store enough with dams and reservoirs.
Food, shelter, and water. The basic necessities of life. Can all be provided by society to every person with ease now. And yet, under the current system, and what Sorgan is saying, is you must toil or die.
How is that really different from indentured servitude? From Sisyphean toil? From slavery? When all of these things are easily available to the population if those who controlled them wished it to be?
We have the means to provide these basic necessities, but they're artificially made scarce by those who wish to make money. Those who hoard wealth, live opulently, and care not one bit for their fellow human.
I'm not saying work is pointless, I'm not saying nobody should work. I'm saying work as we know it should change. We should work because we want not because we need. We should be able to survive without work, basic necessities. And those who do work, can thrive and live life more luxuriously, more to the full.
People don't have to work for someone else. They can run their own business, however small. They can move to the country and rent some land to farm. They could form a collective to do that. Or get investment to get going. Or help someone else doing the same for a fixed payment. Yes, a wage - whoops - is that slavery? Yes we should have some form of social safety net and the monopolies and billionaires shouldn't be allowed to hoard wealth and unfairly stifle competition. But without that competitive drive, our innovation would falter.
Nah. Innovation comes from within humans, not from some bullshit competition (no offense meant for you, as you are not the author of this idea)
Normally people should not have to work. We are well past the stage when it was simply undoable
There are other ways, of course, but capitalism is very good at incentivizing innovation. And the complexity of innovation as it typically is these days requires a lot of investment, infrastructure, large teams etc. it's a risk to do all that investment and work on some idea when one doesn't know for sure if it will work or be as useful /popular as you think. If we don't incentivize such investment and effort with a reward such as good remuneration, it won't happen, at least not at anywhere near the same speed. And all those people working on innovation aren't'slaves', they typically enjoy it to some degree. But they wouldn't put in all that effort if it wasn't a job that they needed to do to support themselves. And they wouldn't be able to coordinate such a project and collect required resources without it being through a company like entity. We know government sucks at this sort of thing precisely because there's no drive to push to make things better and marketable; it devolves to politics, and gaming any metrics. I think the main error of your thinking is that although we could reduce our work load and survive - so we could all work less or some lucky people wouldn't have to work, that would slow innovation. As a species, we can use the extra bandwidth that technological advancement has afforded us to make more technological advancements. This actually leads to a better quality of life for everyone. Now, there's still obviously a major problem with the way unfettered capitalism abuses minimum wage unskilled workers and billionaire owners hoard wealth - but I really don't see how we can effectively run a society where people don't have to work, where people just do what they want - and then expect things to keep functioning and even progress.