Literally a modern serfdom
See, it’s not the working that’s the issue. It’s the lack of control over our surplus value. It’s the lack of control over the means of production.
Can’t forget the terrible consequences of failing to meet “quota” (make enough to pay the bills).
But thanks for pointing this out, it really is similar, just with enough layers of abstraction to make the structure hard to see.
Is there anyone who genuinely believes that working for basic needs is freedom?
I imagine the people who actually think about how they are working just for basic needs are mostly a different group of people than those yelling about freedom.
I don’t know how many conservatives wake up in the morning with the feeling that everything they do is just to make some rich guy richer until they eventually die. Because why would they be a conservative at that point?
You should tell this to subsistence farmers living in Sub-saharan Africa that farm nearly every calorie they consume. It’s a negotiation between them, the earth, and the uncaring sky. Same as its been for millennia. No rich people necessarily involved.
Are they free because no rich people are involved?
We live in an economically connected world. An argument can be made that they’re forced to subsistence farm in a backbreaking and cruel way due to the natural resources of their country extracted by oligarchs that don’t even live in Africa.
Wherever poverty exists, rich people are involved by their sheer unwillness to share enough to meet everyone’s basic needs.
I thought bill gates cured poverty in Africa because he’s such a nice guy.
Pretty sure you’re thinking of AIDS, not poverty.
Rich people are very likely at fault, too, given that shitty countries are handy for cheap labour and materials, like coltan…
Is every person in those communities required to work to eat and have shelter, or does the community take care of those that are unable to contribute labor due to health conditions/old age?
I can imagine by some stretch you can still blame the rich, maybe without the rich people they’d have more access to better farmland, cheap water, etc.
If you want to simplify the thought experiment, imagine being the only person in existence. You would still need to struggle just to meet the basic needs of survival, but you would definitely not be oppressed.
Nature is oppressive, so are billionaires. Working together helps overcome that, both when combatting nature and the asset class
I think that those are different meanings of the word “oppressive”, which has a moral component when referring to human actions but not when referring to natural phenomena. You can only be wronged by another person, not by nature.
Imagine the following scenarios:
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You’re alone on the planet. You struggle to survive.
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Now there’s a wealthy person on the other side of the planet, where his lifestyle has no effect on you. He could rescue you but he chooses not to.
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The wealthy person offers to rescue you on the condition that you must work for him. He would get most of the products of your labor but survival would still be easier than it was when you were alone.
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Now you have no choice except to accept the wealthy person’s offer. Survival is still easier than it would be if you were alone, but there isn’t anywhere left where you could survive alone.
Your life is oppressive in each of these scenarios in the sense that simply surviving is difficult and there’s no possibility of improvement. However, there’s clearly no moral component to that in (1) because you are alone, and (4) seems like it almost certainly has a moral component. However, in every steps from (1) to (4) you’re either better off or not worse off than you were before. Where does the moral component come from?
At step 3. Where the rich person forces conditions onto you and takes most of your production. That is immoral. Especially if he has the resources for both to survive with less effort just by not being selfish
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I do wonder what the alternative is… Would that be growing/hunting your own food and making your own clothes and building your own shelter? I don’t know about anyone else, but I would not live long in that scenario.
Surely there isn’t an economic system in which people don’t work for a top 1%, but for everyone, you could say a communal, or a social, economic system…
I mean, that experiment has been run and it is wildly difficult to manage (humans are quite wily!).
People said the same thing about not having kings
It’s called democratic socialism.
The context is that there is enough wealth in most western countries that not everyone must work to survive. Working should be for having access to more things that just surviving, and not everyone should be required to work all the time just to survive.
Basic needs are basic, like food, shelter, and healthcare. If everyone had access to those basic things they would be free even if they need to work to attain more.
Someone still has to work for those things to be produced.
True, but how many people actually work to make that happen?
Most people I know work for a company that works for a company to increase the profit of another company.
Also, at what point do you tip into you-dont-get-choose-your-job land? Is it still considered freedom if you are required to have a job to serve basic needs of the larger community? For example, we need more doctors even without universal healthcare in the US. If we covered the basic needs of everyone, wouldn’t we have to require some people to become doctors, who are not on that trajectory today?
A lot of those businesses still need to exist for society to function. They could be restructured into non-profits, but they’ll still exist.
There will always be a need for jobs that people aren’t going to just do for the hell of it. No one enjoys breaking their back harvesting crops or digging ditches.
I’m not saying the current system is any good, but the idea of no one having to work if they don’t want to is not obtainable without some serious advances in robotics.
I specifically mean those companies that do not directly add to the jobs that “need” to be done.
My feeling is that more people work bullshit jobs because they pay better than e.g. harvesting crops or driving a bus.
If harvesting crops would pay six figures, I’m sure there’d be enough willing people
Where’s that money going to come from?
The point of UBI isn’t to allow anyone to not work if they don’t want to. It’s so that everyone can live securely while still contributing to keeping society running, and allow those who can’t work to live without worry about survival.
You can’t have UBI without workers. It’s still working to survive, just with a massive safety net.
From net worth of all millionaires and billionaires, where it’s not currently being used for anything worthwhile.
UBI is only the first step towards actual redistribution of wealth
While I don’t disagree. there don’t have to be dragons hoarding all the wealth making us fight among ourselves to survive
An asset appreciating in value does not deprive anyone else of money in their wallet.
If you bought a rookie baseball card for $5, the player had a great year and now the card’s worth $100, your net worth increased by $95. But who is down $95 as a result of your card becoming more valuable?
Nobody. Wealth is not zero sum. And the vast majority of increases in wealth among the wealthiest is newly-created wealth. You literally can’t become a billionaire in a human lifetime simply by short-changing your workers. A linear increase like that just will not get you there.
Also, wealth in the form of purchased investments into businesses that run within the economy, is literally the opposite of hoarding. If you buy things with your money, you’re not hoarding your money.
but an asset appreciating in value off the back of another persons labor deprives the laborer of their fair share
There is a vast gap between “most people need to work for everyone in society to live comfortably” and “every individual needs their own personal income to survive”.
The amount of brainwashing and propaganda is incredible. People actually just can’t imagine a world where they’re not toiling for their bosses.
The alternative is all the wealth and resources hoarded by top 1% are shared among people so that everyone has access to basic stuff like food, shelter and healthcare regardless of whether they’re able to work.
Which isn’t to say this would be easy to achieve, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Taxing people appropriately is obviously the right way to go. But it actually doesn’t change the dynamic identified in the meme substantially. Rich people still hoard resources (albeit less after taxes). And basic needs are only met if enough people keep working to pay taxes or enrich their employers who pay taxes.
If people are taxed appropriately, there will be no hoarding
Maybe… Is saving considered hoarding? Is leaving a small inheritance to your kids considered hoarding?
Even without the semantic confusion or disagreement, it doesn’t change the fundamental dynamic identified in the post.
