this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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Late Stage Capitalism
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Serious question, how can we provide everyone's basic needs without some work? Food doesn't harvest itself. Tools don't maintain themselves.
Labor will always be required on some level though it does not need to be exploited.
The premise is that without coercion people won't work. Which is just not true, people will do the work they want to do. It's just that the work people want to do isn't necessarily the work capitalists want them to do. Which means less exploitation and profit for the capitalists.
Yeah the work people "want to do" and the work that needs to get done do not align IRL. Not enough people want to deal with waste systems or sanitation yet those are critical to any society.
This isn't Star Trek. We don't live in a magical future where all the dangerous yet necessary work is automated.
They'll want to clean the sewer when the sewer needs cleaning, the same way that you "want" to vacuum your home even if you don't want to do it.
That requires a ton of people who know how to maintain sewage systems from experience. You aren’t getting that from volunteers and you’ll need these people in every community.
You missing the point. People will do work when it is required whether or not they desire to do work. It doesn't require a magic job creator to get work done.
YOU are missing the point. At no time have I cited the need for capitalist ownership of this system but rather an need for unequal and naturally higher payment for those that do these jobs. They cannot be volunteer positions as they require experienced people.
Do you have any idea how these systems function IRL?
Yea, I can fix a shitter if I have to.
That is irrelevant to understanding sewage systems. Your skill set isn’t fixing water-main problems around electrical equipment for example.
Anarchism is a field dream for artists who couldn’t understand civil engineering.
have you met many people?
most people don't want to clean their homes. they want to pay someone else to do it.
But I get 100% of the benefit of vacuuming my home; there's no free rider problem.
Tell that to your kids.
The people that want waste systems do
These are often highly paid, highly desirable, union jobs. Many have missed OP's point that the coercive slavery that exists in our society is that the threat of starvation/homelessness means less power for individual labour vs employers or vs competing with employers. There is some $ offer that will get me to unclog your toilet.
ITT a bunch of unwitting capitulants who seem to think they wouldn't flip burgers for $300k/yr
It's so hard to get people out of that mindset, man...
I’d flip burgers for a living if it paid for that. This is about critical jobs that they propose shouldn pay
They are posing anticapitalist solutions so better pay wasn’t an option.
UBI removes the slavery. If you, or strawman, insists on a labour supremacist society, rather than a shortage of willing linemen, there might be a shortage of employers investing in a working power distribution system. There are many policies in between our current supremacist slavery that eliminate the structural slavery.
“ It can be done in turn, for instance; or volunteers can be rewarded with non-necessity items.”
this is the part of 5Too’s post Im replying to. There’s no strawman here. You just seem to not get that people won’t justdo the work of a lineman without an added benefit given how much more dangerous working with power lines can be.
I'm not speaking for anyone else, just solving OP's truth with UBI/Freedom dividends as the solution. Free and fair markets are not evil. Complex systems to have random people enslaved to be linemen for a day seem categorically unworkable. A system that ensures enough linemen willing to receive great pay to be linemen is workable.
UBI/Freedom dividends means minarchism power redistribution. People need to be well below idiocracy intelligence to not prefer higher dividend to demonic warmongering budget. I disapprove of ultra centralized allocations, if only that any socialist, or other idealist, win to implement it, in an Israel first fascist media environment, leads to right wing fascist takeover of the centralization. US corrupt political/media system requires disempowerment. UBI/Freedom dividend only election platform is only possibility of ending the corruption. It's much more important than voting itself.
Again if we are paying them better that won't work for theor "solution". Paying them better makes sense given the risks.
No one has "shit purger" as their favorite way of passing their time. That doesn't mean that no one would pick the job and leave themselves and everyone else waddling in two inches of it
You don’t need volunteers to maintan sewer systems. you need trained experts. You aren't getting this from volunteers.
I know all labor is skilled labor. That doesn't contradict what I've described
No it isn’t. Skilled labor has a real definition and it is useful. Unskilled labor doesn’t mean you have no skills it just means you don’t have a proven specific set of skills that your job title implies. For example you know a mason can build a brick wall whereas a contractor might be able to do the same but you wouldn’t know that from the job title.
The emotional response people have to skilled labor vs unskilled is always weird to me. It’s as if none of you read the definition and thought about it for a second.
there are absolutely people who really like maintaining waste systems
You're conflating work that needs to get done with work capitalists want done.
Yes, someone needs to deal with sanitation. But we don't need a capitalist to own the sanitation system to address this. It can be done in turn, for instance; or volunteers can be rewarded with non-necessity items.
No, Im not. Do you think we can get enough volunteers who have the right skills to address sanitation issues?
In most places no one owns the sewage system other than the state.
There is a lot of work that no one would willingly do that is critical and requires a lot if hands on experience. The problem leftist ideologies face IRL is that so many require people who would choose to do extremely dangerous jobs with no realistic plan for how to account fir this.
Yes. Those jobs would provide more luxury lifestyle outside of the basic needs already. Keep rasing the pay until someone takes the job.
Also the issue is that we think we're too good to do those jobs, but we're not above lowering everyone's standards of living to the point that people have to jump in shit to survive? We can get people to take those jobs, but do we also need to stop judging people based on their career path. That'll go a long way to fixing our nation.
If you are talking about higher pay you are talking about a different system than the one proposed. Their system has no economic inequality so no higher pay.
Even in a post scarcity world those who provide more for to society do receive greater accommodations. Captains and officers get larger rooms and houses. But until that reality is possible those who provide more for society should receive greater financial support. Not CEOs.
I had breakfast this morning, and my fridge is full for the week. That doesn't mean I will refuse all wage offers for my time. If there is no slavery, then workers will get 5 recruiter calls per day begging them to take their clients' money.
This right here! When people's basic needs are met, they'll work for luxury needs. The DS9 baseball card episode comes to mind.
Ok now how do critical systems work that are not pleasant or dangerous to maintain and require skilled workers? Do we hope every community has people capable of being linemen or engaging in underwater welding?
How much IRL practical thought have you really put into this notion because it seems unlikely to work out at all.
You need linemen? Call enough people to train them with promised starting salary when they complete training. Or pay them some salary during training. Or increase the promised starting salary. Enough people will say yes if you keep improving offer.
Your examples are already "good jobs" relative to say roofing (statistically most dangerous occupation).
If we are talking about payment then we aren’t talking about the situation proposed.
you can't. becuase you can't define their basic needs for them. they define those for themselves.
Lol sure gradpa.