this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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Under capitalism, a lot of the time, highly dangerous jobs are also highly paid. Kind of a balance that the individual decides to engage with. Same idea behind getting an advanced degree in STEM or law. I think of my job by example, I'm a power plant operator at a large combined cycle plant. No fucking shot I'd be doing this if the pay wasn't good. I'm around explosive and deadly hot shit all day.

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[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago

Sorry, I figured if people were asking questions that maybe they would have done some reading beforehand and gotten some contexts.

A communist society is an academic or theoretical concept, much like a capitalist society is. Every country in the world that has implemented capitalism has done it with different specific characteristics.

No one has yet made a communist country, only communist parties that set building communism as their goal.

It's not about "trust me" or "have faith". You can look at every country ever run by a communist party and the incentives for dangerous work have always been more salary. The incentive for more difficult or rarified work have always been more salary.

But that's not that useful of an answer because obviously there has to be difference between capitalist and communist countries.

So I tried to explain how we think of it theoretically. Difficult and dangerous work has always existed as it has always been socially necessary. Solving for how this work gets done is the job of a society. It has been solved through collectivism (primitive society), physical violence (feudal and slave society), and wage slavery (capitalist society). Communism will solve it through collectivism, because that's what it definitionally means, and so long as it's solved through wage slavery or physical violence, it doesn't meet the definition of communism.

No one knew what capitalism would look like before it emerged either. Capitalism in its current form took centuries to develop in fits and starts all over Europe. And while it tried to emerge, monarchs and feudal lords fought against it, hard and violently.

So when I say no one knows what communism looks like, I am not saying "trust me". I'm saying it's a problem to be solved through the process of building society. Just like there were new problems to be solved under capitalism that not only did people not understand but many problems emerged that people could never have predicted.