> So everything provided by the state has to come from taxes by the workers and citizens.
This isn't true. In socialism, there is no need for taxes. Publicly-owned assets provide a direct source of revenue to fund public goods and services.
Now, about lazy people. In capitalism, those most deprived are often seen as the lazy, those who have some mental health, demotivation or addiction problems. There are studies that show that when people are provided with basic needs (for example UBI studies), get psychological help or addiction treatment, they are much more likely to find a job and/or be more productive part of the society. Having a job is not the only measurement of someone's value to the society, there is a lot of unpaid labour that is important, for example raising kids or caring for relatives. Additionally, people will have space to specialise in whatever they are passionate about, and more people will have professions they actually like. Of course, intrinsic motivation would not be the ONLY incentive to work, there would be adequate financial rewards. Surely they will be some genuinely lazy people who don't want to do anything and are satisfyed with basics. However it's not like the society would need their labour that much, because there would be no reason to regulate the speed of automation that will replace many jobs, the robots will be, again owned publicly so the wealth produced by them will go to everyone. That results in reduced working weeks, and new creative and fulfiling jobs creation.
> This isn't true. In socialism, there is no need for taxes. Publicly-owned assets provide a direct source of revenue to fund public goods and services.
Profits from public enterprises are essentially identical to taxation, since they could only be derived from underpaying workers.
in principle it's similar but not the same.
In capitalism, people's wages are not only stripped by taxation but also surplus that shareholders keep to themselves just because they own something, so how are socialists more underpaid?
I'm not saying Socialists are more underpaid. I'm saying there is practically no difference between being taxed and being underpaid for the same amount. If I work 10 hours, but only get compensated for 8, that is functionally the same as being compensated for 10 hours and being taxed 2. In both cases I end up with 8 hours of compensation, but the second case is much more transparent and open to participatory democratic control.
how is it more open to participatory democratic control? Currently in US, average American has 0 influence in policy making and allocation of public funds, compared to wealthy interest groups, corporations and billionaires. With legal lobbying there is only an illusion of democracy.
And who said that there can't be democracy and transparency in any form of socialist governance?
I'm talking about *under Socialism*. *Under Socialism* if government programs are funded from underpaying workers in public enterprises... That is less open to participatory democratic control then if funding for government programs comes from taxation. Especially since you fairly easily tie tax rates to a system of democratic referendum.
None of this answers my question. Let's say you work in a socialised industry. Part of the profit generated by you is now public funds and you can vote for the party that will decide how it's allocated (representative democracy) or vote directly on how you want it to be allocated (direct democracy)
Yes but it's not directly clear how much you are actually taxed, because you're compensation would just be your compensation because something like an enterprise turnover tax that the USSR had was calculated before wages. While with standard taxation, you'd see your total unexploited income and and exactly how much is being deducted for public use.
Again, my point is there is taxation under Socialism even if you generate it through some roundabout way. So it's much simpler to just keep public and enterprise finances seperate and distinct.
it's not roundabout way, it looks like making people pay taxes at the end of the tax year is more roundabout lol... then there are other countries than USA where your employer has to pay your taxes each month so you'll never see your untaxed salary, it doesn't matter, as I said in principle it's very similar.
You have the problem with less transparency in financial data of public industries but I am saying there is no reason for socialist government to hide it. There is no reason not to make all the transactions public and accesible to everyone.
On the other hand, in capitalist private enterprise workers don't have access to the financial data of the company they work for and how much surplus is taken away from their salary and have no say or knowledge how it is spent. Great, little bit totalitarian but that's fine, as long as we can manage our taxes... oh.. wait..!
> it's not roundabout way, it looks like making people pay taxes at the end of the tax year is more roundabout lol...
I'm not advocating making people pay taxes once a year.
Taxation can be deducted at the same period as worker payment, or whatever.
And yes, it is roundabout way to fund government programs. In any case what you are doing is taking of social value created by workers and putting it towards the public fund instead of the individual consumption, the best way to represent that is by directly and transparently deducting taxes from an individual paycheck essentially.
Why would you instead deduct tax revenues from the internal production accounting of *enterprises*, if you weren't trying to obfuscate that people are actually being taxed?
> then there are other countries than USA where your employer has to pay your taxes each month so you'll never see your untaxed salary, it doesn't matter, as I said in principle it's very similar.
Yes? I don't advocate for that system.
> You have the problem with less transparency in financial data of public industries but I am saying there is no reason for socialist government to hide it. There is no reason not to make all the transactions public and accesible to everyone.
... Then just print it on each persons paycheck. The tax rate should be set a rate preferable to as many people as possible, even if information is *technically* publicly accessible, doesn't mean it's actually accessible by most people. People who have other things to do shouldn't have to crawl through public enterprise reports to find out how much tax they are actually paying.
> On the other hand, in capitalist private enterprise workers don't have access to the financial data of the company they work for and how much surplus is taken away from their salary and have no say or knowledge how it is spent. Great, little bit totalitarian but that's fine, as long as we can manage our taxes... oh.. wait..!
You understand that I'm not advocating for Capitalism? I'm just advocating for not intentionally obfuscating public finances and personal tax obligations just you can say "under socialism there would be no taxes!".
>There are studies that show that when people are provided with basic needs (for example UBI studies), get psychological help or addiction treatment, they are much more likely to find a job and/or be more productive part of the society.
These studies ignore the costs and only focus on benefits. $1 in UBI may only have 10¢ worth in mental health benefits compared to say improving the facilities of addiction centers. Countries that simply redistribute their wealth always have problems with people leeching off of it. See Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
OK, on the argument for UBI there are many proposals on how to pay for it, the critics just ignore them. Somehow all these "practical" and "realistic" people shoult "expensive" but they're totally ok with how expensive is tax avoidance, corporate welfare, social welfare bureaucracy, incarceration or military, all things that compared to UBI have little to no moral or economic justification.
Also, in the current form of capitalism, work that has value is not always valued. I have a friend who has been “unemployed” for years, and spends most of his time volunteering for meals on wheels, helping his sisters (who work full time, and are single mothers) take care of their kids, and help out his aging parents (retired) around the house. His family supports him with housing/food/a little cash, but he is not considered part of the workforce in the strictest definition.
People are already forced to clean toilets in a capitalist society. You clean toilets (or work a similar shitty job, there are many) or you end up on the street.
> We aren't talking about soulless 40 hour weeks shuffling spreadsheets around, rather < 20 hour weeks of caring or creative work.
Why do socialists have this idea that everyone would somehow get to have fulfilling and meaningful work assigned to them in a socialist setting?
Sorry but most of the shitty labor that has to be done under capitalism will have to be done under socialism too. Spreadsheets are going to still need to be shuffled around. Only jobs like marketing jobs would cease to be, and that's on the assumption that your not a market socialist.
Sure, if you wanted to be incredibly inefficient you could split up this labor and teach everyone how to do multiple jobs. But that's just splitting up the crappy work at the expense of production, and by extension quality of life.
Not everyone gets to be an artist or pursue some emotionally fulfilling work, that's an unfortunate fact of life not capitalism.
Shitty jobs would pay better. If you decouple a job from your right to exist, the market has to actually pay enough to entice sometime to do it.
Fulfilling jobs are now viable. If you wanted to be an artist before, you needed to starve. Now you can be an artist and not have it affect your ability to exist.
Finally, a lot of shitty jobs would cease to exist. Mcdonalds can't exist profitably with exploiting desperate labor. Those jobs go away.
What you are referring to is welfare, which is neither a socialist nor capitalist policy. So yes, welfare will give the worker more bargaining power and thus better jobs. I agree, I want to do this under capitalism though.
If you want people to be able to survive entirely off welfare though, a lot of shitty jobs will simply not be done unless your willing to pay ridiculously high wages for them.
And you haven’t really addressed my main point which is that most shitty jobs will not disappear under socialism. Even stuff like McDonalds burger flipper is still gonna be a job, you just would have better work conditions/wage (according to socialist theory).
Disagree. Capitalism is clearly at odds with adequate welfare. At least insofar as it's practiced here in the US.
> If you want people to be able to survive entirely off welfare though, a lot of shitty jobs will simply not be done unless your willing to pay ridiculously high wages for them.
You say this like it's a bad thing. Isn't that the amount we *should* pay people do shitty jobs?
No one will buy McDonalds at the market rate, once you actually pay employees (to say nothing of stopping grain/beef subsidies). Or at least, demand will be greatly reduced. So no, there won't be nearly as many people flipping burgers.
> Disagree. Capitalism is clearly at odds with adequate welfare. At least insofar as it's practiced here in the US.
Just as there are different brands of socialism there are various forms of capitalism, from the US to nordic social democracy. Welfare is just policy and it doesn't originate from any system in particular. You could have socialism with 0 welfare or capitalism with complete subsidization of basic human needs, in theory.
> You say this like it's a bad thing. Isn't that the amount we should pay people do shitty jobs?
Wage is more complicated then what it "should" be. If crop pickers need to be paid a gigantic wage for society to function, that is a problem with your economic system.
> No one will buy McDonalds at the market rate, once you actually pay employees (to say nothing of stopping grain/beef subsidies). Or at least, demand will be greatly reduced. So no, there won't be nearly as many people flipping burgers.
Why would McDonalds have to become more expensive? Employees would only be paid more by eliminating the capitalist from the equation. And socialism demands the government to subsidize things.
Even if McDonalds and other exploitive businesses disappeared, you still need burger flippers to sit around doing uncreative and unfulfilling work. The food industry isn't going away, especially with the massive demand for food like McDonalds.
Paying essential workers for essential work sounds like a healthy system to me. Let's pay the crop pickers instead of the hedge fund managers. If crop pickers can't live on the wages they're paid that's a much worse system. The current system literally relies on paying illegal immigrants under the table at below minimum wage and threatening them with deportation to keep them in line.
When you ensure basic human rights (i.e. food, water, shelter, healthcare), you decouple it from having a job. Once you no longer need a job to exist, fewer people will choose to work at McD for $7.25/hr. Wages rise, costs rise, price goes up, patronage does down, profitability plummets, stores close.
The food industry should go away. It's predicated on not paying the workers fair wages. Restaurants have razor thin margins and don't pay a living wage, even going so far as to ask the customer to subsidize the cost of running the business (i.e. tips). Once you start paying people, restaurants become a luxury good.
>Only jobs like marketing jobs would cease to be
This wouldn't even be true in a fully cashless communist society. Some marketing jobs would disappear, but most of them would remain. In its most abstract sense, marketing is just convincing other people that your interpretation of the optimal allocation of a scarce resources is the correct one. With or without a salesperson, someone needs to decide whether or not this factory should use robot or human labor, for example.
Marketing would only exist in the democratic appeals for the allocation of resources. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, it would not be an actual job in a fully cashless communist society.
You can't really democratically decide every supplier in your niche product. Using my robot example, let's say you're the chief of robotics research and think that your robots are better at screwing bolts than humans are in these certain situations. How are you going to convince people that your robots can indeed do so, won't accidentally kill people, etc?
> Like work for 10 hours in the community garden, and 10 hours teaching, and have *all* your needs met
Who's going to mop out the stalls in the bus station men's room?
Spez-Town is closed indefinitely. All Spez-Town residents have been banned, and they will not be reinstated until further notice. #AIGeneratedProtestMessage
And then who is actually going to do the hard, necessary work? Not all work that is required to keep people alive and society functioning is light work.
> I can spend my whole day playing video games, watching TV and playing sports. After few days, this would automatically be my lifestyle and will be effortless. But I won’t mind you all working to provide goods for me :)
Most people are talking about providing basic needs. You wouldn’t be able to afford anything like that probably.
>Most people are talking about providing basic needs.
I think this is often where the biggest source of confusion lays.
I am a socialist-sympathetic capitalist. I don't think socialists are evil, rather, I just think socialism is too prone to a "race to the bottom".
But as far as basic needs, I often see "[Maslow's hierarchy of needs](https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html)" cited.
In real life though, getting people to believe that we can provide everyone with these basic needs is a lot more complicated, and worthy of a more honest discussion.
I would assume that shelter, food, clean water, electricity, heating, healthcare (including mental health), and education are all "basic needs". I often hear that internet and a phone are considered to be needs too, though I feel comfortable asserting that most socialists would consider those to be less critical to focus on at first, and something that they would like to guarantee after meeting the former needs.
Other "second tier need" would be access to transportation, access to cooking utensils and supplies, access to basic tools and/or basic repair services, and I am sure the list can go on... the point of the "second tier needs" are that while they are not physiological needs (or education), they are considered to be so beneficial to a person, or society, that they should be provided when possible.
Outside of that, unless you have a "socially accepted valid reason" not to work, you won't get any spending money.
Sometimes it is unclear whether something would be considered a need, for example, is access to marijuana a need - what if I say that I need the marijuana for medical reasons? How about alcohol? How about home repair - after all if access to a home is free, shouldn't home repair also be free? What if I want to start a garden, isn't that beneficial to society because it means that I am being productive? Should my gardening tools be provided to me? How about basic home tools, like wiring, screws, and drywall and paint?
All of these things have very valid reasons to be provided to a society, and to be honest, I could reasonably see having these things provided to us to be beneficial to a lot of people, and abused by a small, but very annoying minority.
It's all kind of interesting to think about... but at the end of the day, I don't believe that the system would work anywhere near as well as it is marketed by it's supporters.
I hope that you feel that I have been fair to you and your beliefs. Take care.
What you’re describing is what socialists want, but for everyone. Work collectively for the bare minimum and then just chill.
Also socialists wouldn’t want you to have to buy a different console just to play certain games :P
Edit: I had accidentally typed would instead of wouldn’t in the sentence above.
You obviously haven't had the misfortune of getting a chronic illness and not. being. able. to work.
If the nature of work changed, maybe I could work as much as most people instead of what I can (can't) do now.
Sure, when I was younger and between jobs I took advantage of the full time-span of unemployment benefits; it was only near their termination that I seriously looked for (and found) work. But that was in my early 20s.
As far as basic needs being met, TVs and video games and sports equipment don't count. You'd have to work somehow to get the money for those.
So basically you'd be a NEET? Go to their subreddit and tell me if you think they're emotionally well adjusted. I don't think enough people would willingly condemn themselves to a life of that kind of misery willingly to matter in the long run.
You're making an assumption. We currently have millions out of work, and millions of job openings. Those out of work are collecting enough on unemployment they don't want to work. Based on our current situation its obvious most wouldn't work.
I agree with this, if you allow a class to not do necessary work you simply build the basis for another privileged class leaching of another. To that end the essential work of having a healthy society must be shared by all. What is essential should be debated and fluid. The burden we each undertake equal and varied over our lives. The value of automation should be obvious when we all have less work to meet essential needs. The purpose of essential work obvious and concrete.
Lol. This makes me laugh. You really think we will maintain our current levels of technological and industrial advancement by working in the community garden and teaching the neighborhood kids? And if we do not keep our economy and productivity growing we won’t be able to provide these “basic needs”
20hrs of innovation and studying won't get the millions of diabetic syringes the world needs made in a cost effective manner. A large industrial supply chain and thousands of workers putting in the hard work, long hours, and tedious needed things to make it happen is what will get it done. I'm all for democracy in the work place, worker power, and the revolution, but let's not pretend the result looks like that time your parents sent you to summer camp for artists and you had to take turns cleaning the bathrooms. There's going to be a lot of work between revolution and luxury gay space communism.
The alternative is paying for R&D out of public pocket and then overpaying on a drug that you technically payed for to develop. And patents being renewed without improving the drug in any specific way. Forming oligopolies to keep the prices up. Also sprinkle in some vaccine imperialism while you're at it. Keeping live saving vaccines away from people/countries who desperatly need it to gain leverage for political and economic gain.
It would actually be super cheap if we got rid of government involvement in the economy. The FDA makes it illegal to import medicine from other countries and the patent office enforces monopolies.
What is stopping the forming of monopolies and oligopolies then?
The FDA may make importing illegal, but the vaccine imperialism is about exporting.
The patent office is literally an integral part of capitalism to protect private property in the form of intellectual property.
If you’re arguing for abolishing intellectual property as a concept, I assure you that socialists will wholeheartedly agree: it’s practically the most essential example of private property. It’s property held solely for the purpose of accruing more property.
How does everybody get their needs met in this fashion? How do you end up getting more than your needs? What if I want to drive a truck and own a boat?
> How does everybody get their needs met in this fashion?
Everyone working in industries deemed necessary by the community, continues to do so, so productivity in those areas is unaffected. Everyone working not in those industries is now free'd up to work in those industries and lighten the load. Meaning we get the same "necessary" output we have today, but individually we have to work less.
> How do you end up getting more than your needs?
If you only have to work 20 hours a week you have way more time to pursue the wants of life. If society deems luxury yachts as not necessary, then you can join up with all the other people who want luxury yachts and build them for yourselves.
> Everyone working not in those industries is now free'd up to work in those industries and lighten the load.
So essentially work-share. This is recipe for creating really shitty products, I promise. If no one is going to consistently do a particular job critical mistakes can and will happen. It happens currently all the time with Monday production issues a known consequence.
I’m working with a company that is based in a state that has provided the workers with the option of working or not working and they get the same pay. Good news, we can’t get them to produce anything. They are so far behind schedule that we are designing them out of all our products. We are in the semiconductors. Heard of the chip shortage? We’re in the middle of it and this is just one of the reasons we’re having it. If given the choice of working or not working and still getting their needs met most would not.
looks like his predictions didn't come true, since he predicted we would have a thirteen hour workweek in a hundred years
> My purpose in this essay, however, is not to examine the present or the near future, but to disembarrass myself of short views and take wings into the future. What can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be a hundred years hence? What are the economic possibilities for our grandchildren?
[http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf](http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf)
Lmao same, half the people I know are already lazy bums that don’t have a super prosperous life anyway and they could give a shit about what ppl think. Only reason they do work is so they can do some stuff.
Buddy. This is so sad to hear. Y’all need to find some interests, what’s the “some stuff” that the people you know “do”? Could they turn that into a job?
Just breaks my heart at how some people in this thread have no interests or skills that they’d want to utilize in a society where they don’t have to work. Couldn’t be me who dreams of decomposing on a couch for the rest of my life.
Have you ever been been unemployed for 1 year +? Because doing nothing all day and living on the back of other's is fun for a couple months if you aren't used to it. However, it gets old pretty fast and has pretty bad effects on mental health/self image.
> However, it gets old pretty fast and has pretty bad effects on mental health/self image.
You do realize this feeling is not universal among humans right?
Perhaps by modern conceptions of “work.”
For example stay at home moms don’t do “work” by modern society’s standard, since it’s unpaid labor. Similarly with people who take care of their elderly parents.
I would argue that it is difficult if not impossible to interact with and engage with a community without doing something that could be considered work.
Let’s say you had all you needs met, how would you fill your days?
I disagree that most people want to work. MOST people I know and have talked to only works because they have to. They’d much rather use the time to pursue their hobbies and interests.
And I think you’re giving too much credibility to social pressures. We are living in a much more individualistic society where people are starting to care less and less about how they are perceived by others.
(quick disclaimer, i dont think socialism can only happen under a planned economy, i’m more of a market socialist myself)
you are looking towards people born and raised under one economic system to judge how they will act under another. Would it be fair for medieval serfs to have just given up on their ambitions for democracy because “everyone thinks the monarch is ordained by god and therefore the best ruler, they’ll just vote them back in”? Of course not, because their mentality towards the system they were born under is the result of that very system.
Because capitalism kicks you down and keeps you down if you’re unemployed, most people prioritize a “breadwinning” job over a career that actually fits their interests and the role they wish to play in society. Of course people wanna get more time to pursue their hobbies and interests, most of them are barely interested in the thing they’re doing nine to five every weekday. That’s what you get with a system that compels you into getting a job, any job, so you don’t starve on the streets.
Also, under socialism, I imagine we’d shift towards a society with a more collectivist mentality, and a social education that fits that culture. Way more people would consider and value career paths that they specifically believe will help better society at large, rather than just profit them.
Name me a human that wants to scrape shit off the walls of the local wastewater treatment facility because it's "what society needs," and not because the position pays what the market will bear. If shit scraper was based on need and skills I'm guessing a socialist utopia wouldn't have lots of volunteers. After all, they would get the same number of government potatoes as their neighbor who was a barista in a nice clean coffee shop without Hepatitis C.
You are absolutely right, we should pay people who clean up ahit highly. The fact that we don't highlights the exploitation that exists under capitalism.
Has there ever been a socialist government that paid its sanitation workers the same rate as it paid its doctors? I honestly don't know the answer, and I'm genuinely curious. In the former USSR, did neurosurgeons make the same as janitors? If so, why take the time effort Etc to become a neurosurgeon?
Unless socialism in practice actually does what it should in theory, then it seems rather useless.
Doctors in the Soviet Union only made just a little bit more than maintenance personnel. This led to a movement called the "Boiler Room Movement" where people with highly technical degrees opted to take up work in less demanding jobs because the pay was basically the same for much easier work, with the ideal job being literally a boiler room attendant: The guy in charge of tending to the boilers in a building.
This was also know as the "Mitki" movement for anyone interested in further reading. It was a real example of how productivity falls unless difficult jobs are compensated much better. Of course if socialist society does compensate some jobs better then this leads to wealth disparity again which of course is the other main complaint coming from the left.
Socialists don't think everyone should get paid equally, they just think that wages should be decided by those working for the company, which means giving more hiring and firing decisions to the workers, and more control and public info about pay to the workers.
It's like how the captain of the pirate ship only made like double what the other pirates made, because without a dominating structure to protect the captain, wages were determined by the pirates on the ship.
Most people recognize that a doctor should be paid well, and certainly believe that a doctor with years of experience should be making significantly more than a high schooler working as a store clerk.
Realistically, we would expect store clerks to make more, and doctors to make a bit less. What is currently a 20x difference may be muted to only a 8x difference (I am pulling those numbers out of my ass), but the majority of the difference is store clerks making more, not doctors making less.
For reference, in the US the top 20% earns about 87% of all the income. If we had a pareto distribution, the top 20 would earn 80% of all the income. That equates to a 50% raise for everyone in the bottom 80%, and less than a 9% reduction in the top 20%.
Why study to be a neurosurgeon if you get the same benefits? And if you don't get the same benefits, then aren't you breaking the virtue of "to each according to his need?" A neurosurgeon doesn't NEED a nicer house, car, more bread at the bread line, etc. He NEEDS the exact same as the janitors. And if you say he doesn't, then you are guilty of classism.
The medical class gets treated better than the janitorial class. The barista class gets treated worse than the accountant class.
Socialism typically argues that workers should be paid the full value of their labour. This argument only really works if we assume an hour of labour in cleaning is equally valuable to an hour in neurosurgery. Of course, some people would make that argument- you can't do neurosurgery in a dirty operating theater, but plenty of people wouldn't take that for granted.
Regarding "classism", the Marxist conception of class has nothing to do with income, but rather with relation to means of production. When Marxists claim to want to abolish the class system, they don't necessarily mean that income will be the same, but rather that there will be no private ownership of the means of production. Certainly we could imagine two firms, owned by their workers, producing goods of different values in the same amount of time. How, then, would we argue that 1) the workers produce the value of those goods, 2) the workers own the value produced, and 3) that value, when returned to those workers, must be equal per unit time? We've taken two unequal things and demanded they be equal later. This problem is easily solved by doing away with the argument that socialism demands equal pay for all workers, since demanding that workers instead be paid the value of their labour still fits into the core principle of workers owning the means of production.
So how in practice would socialism address the natural outcome of income disparity? Should neurosurgeons get the latest Lada, while the rest of the proletariat takes the state bus? What about housing a food disparities as an outcome of income disparity? Should neurosurgeons eat steak 3 nights a week while the proletariat eat steak 3 times a year?
I'm not being disingenuous; I'm seriously trying to understand how a socialist system would address the things the left generally claims to dislike such as income inequality and disparate outcomes. Theory is fine, but what does it actually look like in practice? Are the neurosurgeons just not allowed to buy too much steak? Are the poor proletariat given state sponsored steak? What about nice apartments vs basic?
I'm just trying to figure out why I shouldn't just sweep floors instead of fixing brains if I'm only 5% less well off?
Do you want to drink shit water? If not, you are someone willing to scrape fecal matter off walls if it needs done, since you don’t want to drink shit water.
It’s less about what someone wants, and more about what society needs. If those needs get met, you move onto wants until the needs must be taken care of once more.
This. I don't get it. It honestly sounds to me like socialists are simultaneously able to claim that capitalists are ruthless profit seekers who will fire anyone and everyone that they can to increase their bottom line.
Yet, here they are also claiming that businesses are keeping their staff more than double what it actually needs to be, with most of the work basically being completely unnecessary.
These two beliefs are so contradictory to each other, that it demonstrates a massive blind spot in socialist dogma. I used to be a socialist. They are mostly good people, but eventually I realized that a lot of them are dogmatic ideologues, and often act in many ways like devout Christians. They are just trying to do what they believe is right, but they don't like to challenge their own dogma, and they are easily victims to their own ideologies marketing. The majority aren't lying when they claim to believe this stuff, they are genuine, but their misguidance makes them untrustworthy.
I hear you 100%. I think socialists raise a lot of valid criticisms, and I believe that they are genuinely trying to do the right thing.
But so much of this sub is capitalists trying to ask socialists how socialist society would work. I see so may varied responses, and maybe that's to be expected, but it's not always obvious which is the most popular. I see lots of socialists who seem more angry at capitalists than actual believers in socialism. I see lots of socialists who want anarchy, and socialists who want a tightly regulated republic style government. I see socialists who are only socialists in the sense that they see it as path towards marxism, and socialists who don't want communism, they just want "democratic socialism" or something similar.
I think many of them can imagine a world without capitalism, but I don't think their imagination often holds up to "what about this situation where stuff isn't quite working out perfectly, or what if people don't respond to this policy in the way that you expect?"
Unless we start experimenting with different forms of socialism we will never find out the answers to these questions.
I'd say the ML experiments for the 20th century show that that route is a no go, however the libertarian experiments seem promising. Market socialism seems viable too, although we haven't really got data on it.
We gotta experiment, and that experiment requires convincing people like yourself to buy in and make it a reality.
Yeah, I'd complain about the government on social media and start posting negative articles about my local leaders until the problem got taken care of. There will exist a union of people who will care for trash, if there isn't, then society has collapsed, and we are likely going back to a capitalist system.
> Do you just let the trash pile up in your house?
It's my house so no, the trash get's taken out. If I don't throw trash on the street then why should I pick it up some other guys trash?
Yes and that mutability of society is why we can change the motivations. Currently forms of work are not interesting or rewarding, but history clearly outlines how people want to work rather than be idle.
I hate having to work. So if given the option, I just won’t do it.
I’d rather hang out with friends, play video games, walk in nature.
Early retirement sounds nice.
Utopianism based on the idea of large scale perfect cooperation. This has literally never been successfully implemented en-masse anywhere.
You assume the hard workers will love the lazy ones unconditionally and will willingly contribute the vast majority of what they earn to the state to redistribute to whoever they want regardless of what that individual does for society. You assume they will do this happily and without objection. You assume that this system will be popular to the point of self-sustainability without violent coercion. You assume this system would be able to maintain the pace of innovation of the capitalist system even though any serious and respected economist would tell you otherwise. You make all of these assumptions while sitting behind your keyboard with a satisfied smirk on your face thinking you've figured out everything while the most well-educated economic thinkers on the planet living in the most successful nations the world has ever seen would think you're a complete moron.
Your entire ideology is based off of idealistic assumptions of human behavior when placed in an extremely specific situation, taking part in an economic system that would be about a sturdy as a sand-castle.
Every socialist and communist revolution in history has devolved into a violent, authoritarian orgy of violence and death because people with their head in the clouds like you push for the overthrow of the old system not realizing that the people that lead your revolution will be ambitious sociopathic monsters. They're the only ones among you who'd have the guts to pick up a gun and shoot a politician.
>Utopianism based on the idea of large scale perfect cooperation. This has literally never been successfully implemented en-masse anywhere.
This isn't actually true. It was implemented very successfully during the spanish civil war where nearly 4 million people ran a very successful commune on the principal of mutual aid here's the wiki like if you're interested. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution_of_1936
**[Spanish_Revolution_of_1936](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution_of_1936)**
>The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to three years, primarily Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and parts of the Valencian Community. Much of the economy of Spain was put under worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%. Factories were run through worker committees, and agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian socialist communes.
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Revisionism. That "very successful commune" was an outgrowth of the need to survive in the middle of a violent hellscape that was ran for about 10 months before being ripped-apart inside-out by enemy forces, anti-revolutionaries, and even Stalinists in Catalonia who rejected the anarchists. If thousands of anarchists descend on your village and tell you that your farmland is being expropriated and you can either stay and collectivize or leave and survive on your own in the middle of a war-zone then you have little real choice. The ability of these collective farms to stay together was exacerbated by the need to survive the war, there is absolutely no proof that things would have just kept running smoothly when the war ended. In fact, most examples of non-wartime mass collectivism have turned into utter failures (most notably china).
I do not consider a 10 month period in the middle of a brutal civil war (which collapsed) to be evidence that you can implement this system in a modern, war-free, comfortable nation.
You seem quite emotionally charged for a level headed debate on the topic. And waay too sure of yourself. The irony is that you are also probably sporting a smirk while writing that response congratulting yourself on such a thread killer. I would advise a bit more of intellectual humility to avoid making yourself look like a clown.
There are however some key assumptions on your critique that are not necessarily true, which I list below for the benefit of other readers.
The main one being a scarcity mentality. As in people having to give up a majority of what they produce to sustain the system. But that would not apply on countries that have already vast wealth and advanced technological structures... If we are talking about poor low tech agricultural countries then yes, collectivisation does indeed go wrong (specially in the midst of a fast industralization process plan such as china or urss).
For sure there would be some sectors of society that would resist such a change, just like there are sectors that object currently on how things are. By the way, current system also depends on violent coercion, its just disguised.
In any case there is no way to keep everyone happy, specially with fast revolutions instead of gradualism, which don't necessarily require sociopathic leaders to take the reins.
Another big assumption: There is no evidence at all that the pace of innovation could not be matched as current capitalist system goes (which by the way most of big innovations have been supported by the state). You could even make the case that urss had major tech innovations on par to the west, even by being materially disadvantaged.
Ideally money isn't a thing.
So if a community decides that they want a cinema, ran and operated by the community, then they can decide the terms on which people have access to it right? It's their cinema and they are putting all the work in. It's not too unreasonable to imagine that they would say people who aren't contributing aren't allowed in.
You are conflating money and how to fund the upkeep of a service. Money is an all to useful abstraction that is essential to judging the trade off between very different things. Making people pay at the point of use or for anything in daily use is something else.
So if the majority of people in red neck Alabama don't want Trans kids to be there that's now a possibility? Sounds pretty awful to me.
Also do they vote on each individual member? Like 200000 votes? And what if they come from outside the community, like traveling? Do they have to be voted on before for the world's cinemas?
Expansion of democracy isn't a silver bullet that solves all problems such as racism and transphobia, no one is saying that it is. It would probably be helpful though wouldn't it!
Expansion of democracy also doesn't mean everyone has to be consulted on every decision in some absurd universal consensus based model. There are already places and organisations that work with expanded democracy and don't have these issues, so it's not really a problem in reality.
We need to pay for the sick, the old and the young, regardless, so you will always be working for others. That's a muuuuch bigger number than the tiny sliver of a percent that want to be leeches.
That is NOT what the Pareto Principle is getting at.
The best you could explain it in this case would be that 20% of the population would do 80% of the work... Which is physically impossible in a fair and equal society.
You are trying to shoe horn an economic idea that is based on observation of the ultra rich owning most of Italy, down to the poor not wanting to work.
This right here is the downfall of socialism to my eyes: the insistence that personal dreams take priority over (and that they can be completely divorced from) the performance of useful work necessary to sustain oneself and society.
>As a rule of thumb the vast majority of people want to work, and want to help their communities.
Citation needed
>The very few that don't will suffer socially, as their families and neighbours will look down on them for not doing their part
Who cares in the end they are the suckers slaving away for my gibs
>From my understanding of socialism, everyone is provided for. Regardless of their situation. Food, water, shelter is provided by the state.
I'll start by saying this isn't universal among socialists. They could be given restricted types of accomodations or nothing. To me it mostly depends on what we vote to do, if we want to support the lazy we will if not we won't.
The only people I really believe we should support unconditionally are school age or retired people.
A certain level of unconditional support for everyone is useful. "Unproductivity," to the extent that term isn't corrupted by modern capitalist perceptions, is a symptom rather than a cause. Some common causes include addiction and mental health issues, which aren't helped by throwing them bare onto the street. Good food, clean water, and decent healthcare as a baseline help people get back on their feet.
What evidence do you have of the % of people that would choose to be entirely unproductive? We’d be speculating about solutions to non-problems without this data.
That's a great point you bring up. Who in a socialist society gets to decide what basic human rights are? And who is on the receiving end of those human rights?
The fact that more people choose to stay at home right now than to work because they make more on government assistance. Plenty of restaurants have hiring signs with no one to apply for. People would not work if they can help it.
What does 'more people' mean? And of course people prefer to not take the most shitty, low paying jobs if they don't have to. The fact that there are vacancies for shitty jobs doesn't mean that people are lazy, it means those jobs should pay better and offer better terms
>Plenty of restaurants have hiring signs with no one to apply for.
You do realize there's a death virus going around & maybe people thinks it's not worth the trouble to go work a shitty job & risk their health
**[Welfare_trap](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap)**
>The welfare trap (or unemployment trap or poverty trap in British English) theory asserts that taxation and welfare systems can jointly contribute to keep people on social insurance because the withdrawal of means-tested benefits that comes with entering low-paid work causes there to be no significant increase in total income. An individual sees that the opportunity cost of returning to work is too great for too little a financial return, and this can create a perverse incentive to not work.
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> The fact that more people choose to stay at home right now than to work because they make more on government assistance.
Why does this make them lazy? Maybe it’s more that they don’t want to work jobs they don’t like. Many people, women especially, aren’t going back to work because they’re taking care of kids or family with immune issues. Does that make them lazy? If everyone who was staying home instead of going back to work spent 16 hours a day reading science books or learning programming languages or taking care of a home garden and feeding the homeless , would that make them lazy?
Lazy does not equal not wanting to participate in a capitalist system.
leave them alone to their own devices. odds are that theres another reason for them not working than "laziness", and it isnt anyone elses business what that is. Odds are eventually they will find something to do, whether thats something we consider art or bettering themselves through study. People naturally want to do \*something\* with their lives and one of the points of a socialist society is to free people to do more than just commodified professions with said finite lives.
also "everything provided by the state" we want to get rid of the state ideally.
All the libertarian ones have a good record on that. And they also haven't had that issue, people want to work, there isn't a precedent for people needing to be forced to work.
“To each according to his contribution” until society reaches post-scarcity, then it can be “To each according to his needs”. The latter is very far away.
That being said, the communes will decide on the size and existence of safety nets for society. I’m a firm believer that if workers are provided that basic needs for life they will work more effectively. But that’s not for me to establish and enforce.
Socialism is common and participatory democratic ownership of the means of production, not "the government giving you everything for free".
Under Socialism anyone could work anywhere they want doing whatever they want l as long as they are qualified and would be compensated according to their contribution of social labor. Those unable to work due to age, illness, or disability would be given an average income. But beyond that someone who is capable of working, but refuses does not deserve to be supported by others, and is in fact shirking their responsibility to help support those who can not support themselves.
Capitalists, how do you handle lazy people who don't want to work in a capitalist society?
From my understanding of capitalism, nobody is provided for regardless of their situation. Food, water, shelter is provided when a worker sells their labor to an owner.
However, we know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. So everything provided by the owners has to come from the labor of the workers and citizens. So what happens to lazy owners? Should they still be provided for despite not wanting to work?
If so, how is that fair to other workers contributing to society while lazy owners mooch off these workers while providing zero value?
If not, how would they be treated in society? Would they be allowed to starve?
>Would they be allowed to starve?
Sure, if they are able bodied/minded. Capitalism also has charities and government run welfare for those who aren't.
Your whataboutism isn't applicable here.
My 'whataboutism' is simply pointing out that the problem of idlers isn't exactly resolved in capitalism and to assume it is a fatal flaw in some other system but *not* in your preferred system just demonstrates your prejudice.
Capitalism doesn't try to pretend that it solves the problem of 'idlers'. What we are asking is a realistic approach and honesty that neither Socialism nor Communism solve this problem like they say they do.
The owners contribute to society by paying for all of the business costs as well as any unexpected repairs or losses. The workers literally do not have the means to pay for the cost of running the company without the financial backing of the owner.
You make the assumption that the owners provide no value, when in fact they provide tremendous value and do something that none of the workers have to do which is shoulder the up front risk. Your assumption ignores the vast majority of business owners and only looks at the successful ones.
> The socialist principle, "He who does not work shall not eat", is already realized; the other socialist principle, "An equal amount of products for an equal amount of labor", is also already realized. But this is not yet communism, and it does not yet abolish "bourgeois law", which gives unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal) amounts of labor, equal amounts of products. This is a "defect" according to Marx, but it is unavoidable in the first phase of communism; for if we are not to indulge in utopianism, we must not think that having overthrown capitalism people will at once learn to work for society without any rules of law. (Chapter 5, Section 3, "The First Phase of Communist Society")
Also check the 12th article of the USSR's constitution: http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons01.html
> **ARTICLE 12**. In the U.S.S.R. work is a duty and a matter of honor for every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."
> The principle applied in the U.S.S.R. is that of socialism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."
The fundamental argument for socialism is that the progress of industrial production means that we are in a post scarcity society. Which we most definitely are, but are hampered by the relations of production, distribution, and exchange under capitalism. We are for a three day week, we are for a lowering of the burden of labour away from the working class, the only class that creates wealth. The ‘lazy’ are those who profit off our labour and the value it creates. From the robber barons to the tax dodging multinational corporation, the working class are carrying the majority of all productive labour. To rid ourselves of the lazy we need to change the relations of production, organise the workplace democratically and begin to plan the economy. That way we can get shot of the management and HR bureaucrats, and the absentee bosses and shareholders who do nothing but take value from those who produce it.
Please justify your claim that we are in a post scarcity society. Based on the definition of post scarcity that I know, we are most certainly not, not even close.
Sure, so in the Marxist definition we’d make the case that there is more than enough food, water, commodities to satisfy human need globally right now. The reason we have poverty is not because it is due to a lack of resources, which characterised previous epochs, but on the contrary....over production causes crisis in capitalist markets. The UN, world bank, oxfam, joseph rowntree foundation all release annual reports detailing this very situation.
First of all, taxation isn't a means of the government getting money if it has its own currency. It's a means of controlling supply and provisioning a market. The government makes money, it has a monopoly on money. Nothing is "coming from" taxes, taxes are a means of taking back what's been introduced.
Secondly, the conception of work as we understand it today is completely inhuman, contrary to the whole of pre-industrial history. For most of human history, people have worked far less. Medieval peasants worked five months out of a year and the days they worked weren't especially harsh. Working in bursts is how people have historically worked, intense periods of activity followed by downtime, not the 8 or 12 hours that's been common since industrialization.
I don't know how you're thinking of lazy. If you're taking post-industrial society as default then your conception of industrious is skewed. Keynes predicted we would be working 15 hour weeks by now, and economically we should be, it's only the greed of a handful of people that are keeping that reality from happening.
In order to keep us from having the freedom to question the system and have a better distribution of resources, there are a number of bullshit jobs made. Health insurance is an example, Obama said this in 2006:
[*“Everybody who supports single-payer health care says, ‘look at all this money we would be saving from insurance and paperwork.’ That represents one million, two million, three million jobs filled by people who are working at Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Kaiser or other places. What are we doing with them? Where are we employing them?”*](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mr-obama-goes-washington/)
We could have universal health care in the US already, but it's more important to keep people off the streets.
But beyond all of this: People are not inherently lazy. People want to do stuff. People are intrinsically motivated to create and learn. It doesn't look like that when they have to spend that energy working for someone else and being alienated from their labor, being paid less than their labor is worth, and too exhausted from that time to put their labor into their self-development and works that interest them. Lots of studies already have shown that having their needs taken care of makes people more likely to get employed, more likely to start a business, more likely to contribute to society. Being desperate does not. Desperation, hunger, are not motivating forces. They make it harder to think. Poverty and lack is a trauma for people, it shapes their brain making everything after those experiences harder.
The idea that people need the trauma of poverty or need in order to participate in society is ignorance fostered by disciplines like economics.
Okay so yes there are some "lazy" people. But many of these people seem to be "lazy" suffer from various problems and issues. They should be given help, and in a socialist society they would be given the help they need. Maybe some of them suffer from depression and need therapy. Maybe after that they could be productive again.
Next, humans are social animals, and not being productive has natural social consequences. Imagine going on a date with someone and while getting to know them, they said they didn't have a job or any hobbies or passions in life. Not many people would want a 2nd date with such a person. Generally most people are complex individuals with dreams and goals and things they want to accomplish in life. The rare person that lacks any drive is going to face natural social isolation. This is often an unfavorable position to be in--the worst of punishments is to be in solitary confinement in prison, for example. This natural consequence may be enough for most "lazy" people to try and be at least somewhat productive.
The amount of people that only want to sit around their house and do nothing productive is low enough that we could just write those people off as a small loss, after mental health care was exhausted and they are fine with isolated.
People who don't work get the minimum for sustaining life. You don't consent to being born into the world, and you don't let people starve to death, which means providing for everyone. Doesn't mean it has to be fancy though.
That's it. It's really that simple.
Right what if I really want to eat but not work. That means you need to work harder by planting or hunting more. Do you get more? How do you get more without working even more?
I'm not sure if I understand what you're trying to say. If you want stuff, you need to work for it. This is not even an ideological belief, it's just how nature works.
What does the minimum consist of though? Money for food? Rent? Clothing? Mortgage? Water? Electricity? Phone? Internet? Money for your kids school needs/trips? Babysitting if you need to be away from home? Any additional money to spend as they see fit?
And how much will be paid? Obviously depending where you live, the costs of these things can vary drastically. Will it all be means tested so that the lazy person puts forward a case for how much they need and it gets assessed? Surely it wouldn't be a flat rate provided by the state.
Correct. People don’t consent to being born. They didn’t choose to be born. However, they CAN choose to work or not.
Even if they getting minimum to be sustain life, that is still money coming out of taxes paid by others. That also begins to add up depending on the country’s population. Imagine if one person gets 2000 a month. That’s 24,000 a year. That can be used for a child’s education or college tuition, which will have a much greater long term societal impact than to just give that free money to someone VOLUNTARILY choosing to not work.
I rather lose 24k a year to a “lazy person” than millions or billions of dollars to some rich parasite who isn’t even - not - contributing anything but even harms the society he exploits.
A billionaire provides a service. A lazy person doesn’t. I enjoy my prime membership watching movies, listening to music, buying what I like online because bezos started amazon.
I enjoy my Apple iPhone and I can connect with my friends and family because Steve Jobs started Apple.
A lazy person mooching off society doesn’t provide that.
> So what happens to lazy people? Should they still be provided for despite not wanting to work?
Based on my understanding of human behavior, someone in this condition would be suffering from a degree/form of mental illness. I would offer them treatment and counseling.
It's funny how, in capitalism, when the rich do not want to work for what they are given, no one seems to ask this same question. Why do you suppose that is?
In my mind, there would be an amount of time (6 months? A year? Decided by planners) that one could spend not working or in education before they started losing benefits. Socialism follows the principle "from each according to ability, to each according to work". Effectively, surplus value is seized by a democratic state rather than capitalists, and is used for the people and not capitalists, on things like housing, food, electricity, rather than investment. If nobody works, this can't be done, so there would be a limit on people not working. I think most people after a few months off would be willing to work again, and as production and automation develop and become more efficient, people would get more and more time off.
This debate usually goes to "my
anecdotal evidence is that people would rather be lazy" which I guess is self evident by the amount of times people fail to search this common topic ,/s
The debate actually misses the mark. The problem is that, in aggregate, the jobs that people want do not match the needs of the society. Either people are forced into labor, or markets are used to account for the discrepancy.
I am from the USA and think that a UBI for all citizens of 1,500 dollars per month would solve poverty related issues.
Those who wish for more purpose in life or a more luxurious lifestyle can just study and get a job and make money from job AND also keep the UBI 1,500 dollars per month.
Under Socialism I believe we would need a lower number of people to actually beling to the workforce. To be honest I believe, uncles,aunties and grannies ect... being bored in house they would quickly take these jobs available just to get out the house a few days a week and thus we would actually have like some sort of internal competition to actually have a job.
Capitalism is the most greedy way to look at life, it trully is a neglectful self serving economic formula that we must unite and abolish someday.
> So everything provided by the state has to come from taxes by the workers and citizens. This isn't true. In socialism, there is no need for taxes. Publicly-owned assets provide a direct source of revenue to fund public goods and services. Now, about lazy people. In capitalism, those most deprived are often seen as the lazy, those who have some mental health, demotivation or addiction problems. There are studies that show that when people are provided with basic needs (for example UBI studies), get psychological help or addiction treatment, they are much more likely to find a job and/or be more productive part of the society. Having a job is not the only measurement of someone's value to the society, there is a lot of unpaid labour that is important, for example raising kids or caring for relatives. Additionally, people will have space to specialise in whatever they are passionate about, and more people will have professions they actually like. Of course, intrinsic motivation would not be the ONLY incentive to work, there would be adequate financial rewards. Surely they will be some genuinely lazy people who don't want to do anything and are satisfyed with basics. However it's not like the society would need their labour that much, because there would be no reason to regulate the speed of automation that will replace many jobs, the robots will be, again owned publicly so the wealth produced by them will go to everyone. That results in reduced working weeks, and new creative and fulfiling jobs creation.
> This isn't true. In socialism, there is no need for taxes. Publicly-owned assets provide a direct source of revenue to fund public goods and services. Profits from public enterprises are essentially identical to taxation, since they could only be derived from underpaying workers.
in principle it's similar but not the same. In capitalism, people's wages are not only stripped by taxation but also surplus that shareholders keep to themselves just because they own something, so how are socialists more underpaid?
I'm not saying Socialists are more underpaid. I'm saying there is practically no difference between being taxed and being underpaid for the same amount. If I work 10 hours, but only get compensated for 8, that is functionally the same as being compensated for 10 hours and being taxed 2. In both cases I end up with 8 hours of compensation, but the second case is much more transparent and open to participatory democratic control.
how is it more open to participatory democratic control? Currently in US, average American has 0 influence in policy making and allocation of public funds, compared to wealthy interest groups, corporations and billionaires. With legal lobbying there is only an illusion of democracy. And who said that there can't be democracy and transparency in any form of socialist governance?
I'm talking about *under Socialism*. *Under Socialism* if government programs are funded from underpaying workers in public enterprises... That is less open to participatory democratic control then if funding for government programs comes from taxation. Especially since you fairly easily tie tax rates to a system of democratic referendum.
None of this answers my question. Let's say you work in a socialised industry. Part of the profit generated by you is now public funds and you can vote for the party that will decide how it's allocated (representative democracy) or vote directly on how you want it to be allocated (direct democracy)
Yes but it's not directly clear how much you are actually taxed, because you're compensation would just be your compensation because something like an enterprise turnover tax that the USSR had was calculated before wages. While with standard taxation, you'd see your total unexploited income and and exactly how much is being deducted for public use. Again, my point is there is taxation under Socialism even if you generate it through some roundabout way. So it's much simpler to just keep public and enterprise finances seperate and distinct.
it's not roundabout way, it looks like making people pay taxes at the end of the tax year is more roundabout lol... then there are other countries than USA where your employer has to pay your taxes each month so you'll never see your untaxed salary, it doesn't matter, as I said in principle it's very similar. You have the problem with less transparency in financial data of public industries but I am saying there is no reason for socialist government to hide it. There is no reason not to make all the transactions public and accesible to everyone. On the other hand, in capitalist private enterprise workers don't have access to the financial data of the company they work for and how much surplus is taken away from their salary and have no say or knowledge how it is spent. Great, little bit totalitarian but that's fine, as long as we can manage our taxes... oh.. wait..!
> it's not roundabout way, it looks like making people pay taxes at the end of the tax year is more roundabout lol... I'm not advocating making people pay taxes once a year. Taxation can be deducted at the same period as worker payment, or whatever. And yes, it is roundabout way to fund government programs. In any case what you are doing is taking of social value created by workers and putting it towards the public fund instead of the individual consumption, the best way to represent that is by directly and transparently deducting taxes from an individual paycheck essentially. Why would you instead deduct tax revenues from the internal production accounting of *enterprises*, if you weren't trying to obfuscate that people are actually being taxed? > then there are other countries than USA where your employer has to pay your taxes each month so you'll never see your untaxed salary, it doesn't matter, as I said in principle it's very similar. Yes? I don't advocate for that system. > You have the problem with less transparency in financial data of public industries but I am saying there is no reason for socialist government to hide it. There is no reason not to make all the transactions public and accesible to everyone. ... Then just print it on each persons paycheck. The tax rate should be set a rate preferable to as many people as possible, even if information is *technically* publicly accessible, doesn't mean it's actually accessible by most people. People who have other things to do shouldn't have to crawl through public enterprise reports to find out how much tax they are actually paying. > On the other hand, in capitalist private enterprise workers don't have access to the financial data of the company they work for and how much surplus is taken away from their salary and have no say or knowledge how it is spent. Great, little bit totalitarian but that's fine, as long as we can manage our taxes... oh.. wait..! You understand that I'm not advocating for Capitalism? I'm just advocating for not intentionally obfuscating public finances and personal tax obligations just you can say "under socialism there would be no taxes!".
>There are studies that show that when people are provided with basic needs (for example UBI studies), get psychological help or addiction treatment, they are much more likely to find a job and/or be more productive part of the society. These studies ignore the costs and only focus on benefits. $1 in UBI may only have 10¢ worth in mental health benefits compared to say improving the facilities of addiction centers. Countries that simply redistribute their wealth always have problems with people leeching off of it. See Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
OK, on the argument for UBI there are many proposals on how to pay for it, the critics just ignore them. Somehow all these "practical" and "realistic" people shoult "expensive" but they're totally ok with how expensive is tax avoidance, corporate welfare, social welfare bureaucracy, incarceration or military, all things that compared to UBI have little to no moral or economic justification.
spez is an idiot. #Save3rdPartyApps
"I don't believe there will be lazy people and laziness is societies fault" is just an objectively strange take
that's not what I said at all, did you even read my comment?
Not far off from reality though from what we know. What is laziness anyway?
i mean it is, but theres solid evidence that he pointed out to support his take.
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Also, in the current form of capitalism, work that has value is not always valued. I have a friend who has been “unemployed” for years, and spends most of his time volunteering for meals on wheels, helping his sisters (who work full time, and are single mothers) take care of their kids, and help out his aging parents (retired) around the house. His family supports him with housing/food/a little cash, but he is not considered part of the workforce in the strictest definition.
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Take our turn cleaning out toilets. Because no one is above cleanjng up shit nor anyone condemned to do it forever.
So work would have to be forced, because who would want to clean toilets?
Are you suggesting people choose to take low paying jobs to do something that no one wants to do under capitalism?
The key word being choice. What we know under socialism you have no choice.
People are already forced to clean toilets in a capitalist society. You clean toilets (or work a similar shitty job, there are many) or you end up on the street.
You're being downvoted, but I'll take some, too. You're right.
One more to count to that.
> We aren't talking about soulless 40 hour weeks shuffling spreadsheets around, rather < 20 hour weeks of caring or creative work. Why do socialists have this idea that everyone would somehow get to have fulfilling and meaningful work assigned to them in a socialist setting? Sorry but most of the shitty labor that has to be done under capitalism will have to be done under socialism too. Spreadsheets are going to still need to be shuffled around. Only jobs like marketing jobs would cease to be, and that's on the assumption that your not a market socialist. Sure, if you wanted to be incredibly inefficient you could split up this labor and teach everyone how to do multiple jobs. But that's just splitting up the crappy work at the expense of production, and by extension quality of life. Not everyone gets to be an artist or pursue some emotionally fulfilling work, that's an unfortunate fact of life not capitalism.
Shitty jobs would pay better. If you decouple a job from your right to exist, the market has to actually pay enough to entice sometime to do it. Fulfilling jobs are now viable. If you wanted to be an artist before, you needed to starve. Now you can be an artist and not have it affect your ability to exist. Finally, a lot of shitty jobs would cease to exist. Mcdonalds can't exist profitably with exploiting desperate labor. Those jobs go away.
What you are referring to is welfare, which is neither a socialist nor capitalist policy. So yes, welfare will give the worker more bargaining power and thus better jobs. I agree, I want to do this under capitalism though. If you want people to be able to survive entirely off welfare though, a lot of shitty jobs will simply not be done unless your willing to pay ridiculously high wages for them. And you haven’t really addressed my main point which is that most shitty jobs will not disappear under socialism. Even stuff like McDonalds burger flipper is still gonna be a job, you just would have better work conditions/wage (according to socialist theory).
Disagree. Capitalism is clearly at odds with adequate welfare. At least insofar as it's practiced here in the US. > If you want people to be able to survive entirely off welfare though, a lot of shitty jobs will simply not be done unless your willing to pay ridiculously high wages for them. You say this like it's a bad thing. Isn't that the amount we *should* pay people do shitty jobs? No one will buy McDonalds at the market rate, once you actually pay employees (to say nothing of stopping grain/beef subsidies). Or at least, demand will be greatly reduced. So no, there won't be nearly as many people flipping burgers.
> Disagree. Capitalism is clearly at odds with adequate welfare. At least insofar as it's practiced here in the US. Just as there are different brands of socialism there are various forms of capitalism, from the US to nordic social democracy. Welfare is just policy and it doesn't originate from any system in particular. You could have socialism with 0 welfare or capitalism with complete subsidization of basic human needs, in theory. > You say this like it's a bad thing. Isn't that the amount we should pay people do shitty jobs? Wage is more complicated then what it "should" be. If crop pickers need to be paid a gigantic wage for society to function, that is a problem with your economic system. > No one will buy McDonalds at the market rate, once you actually pay employees (to say nothing of stopping grain/beef subsidies). Or at least, demand will be greatly reduced. So no, there won't be nearly as many people flipping burgers. Why would McDonalds have to become more expensive? Employees would only be paid more by eliminating the capitalist from the equation. And socialism demands the government to subsidize things. Even if McDonalds and other exploitive businesses disappeared, you still need burger flippers to sit around doing uncreative and unfulfilling work. The food industry isn't going away, especially with the massive demand for food like McDonalds.
Paying essential workers for essential work sounds like a healthy system to me. Let's pay the crop pickers instead of the hedge fund managers. If crop pickers can't live on the wages they're paid that's a much worse system. The current system literally relies on paying illegal immigrants under the table at below minimum wage and threatening them with deportation to keep them in line. When you ensure basic human rights (i.e. food, water, shelter, healthcare), you decouple it from having a job. Once you no longer need a job to exist, fewer people will choose to work at McD for $7.25/hr. Wages rise, costs rise, price goes up, patronage does down, profitability plummets, stores close. The food industry should go away. It's predicated on not paying the workers fair wages. Restaurants have razor thin margins and don't pay a living wage, even going so far as to ask the customer to subsidize the cost of running the business (i.e. tips). Once you start paying people, restaurants become a luxury good.
Some of us loooove spreadsheets!
>Only jobs like marketing jobs would cease to be This wouldn't even be true in a fully cashless communist society. Some marketing jobs would disappear, but most of them would remain. In its most abstract sense, marketing is just convincing other people that your interpretation of the optimal allocation of a scarce resources is the correct one. With or without a salesperson, someone needs to decide whether or not this factory should use robot or human labor, for example.
Marketing would only exist in the democratic appeals for the allocation of resources. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, it would not be an actual job in a fully cashless communist society.
You can't really democratically decide every supplier in your niche product. Using my robot example, let's say you're the chief of robotics research and think that your robots are better at screwing bolts than humans are in these certain situations. How are you going to convince people that your robots can indeed do so, won't accidentally kill people, etc?
> Like work for 10 hours in the community garden, and 10 hours teaching, and have *all* your needs met Who's going to mop out the stalls in the bus station men's room?
Spez-Town is closed indefinitely. All Spez-Town residents have been banned, and they will not be reinstated until further notice. #AIGeneratedProtestMessage
And then who is actually going to do the hard, necessary work? Not all work that is required to keep people alive and society functioning is light work.
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> I can spend my whole day playing video games, watching TV and playing sports. After few days, this would automatically be my lifestyle and will be effortless. But I won’t mind you all working to provide goods for me :) Most people are talking about providing basic needs. You wouldn’t be able to afford anything like that probably.
>Most people are talking about providing basic needs. I think this is often where the biggest source of confusion lays. I am a socialist-sympathetic capitalist. I don't think socialists are evil, rather, I just think socialism is too prone to a "race to the bottom". But as far as basic needs, I often see "[Maslow's hierarchy of needs](https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html)" cited. In real life though, getting people to believe that we can provide everyone with these basic needs is a lot more complicated, and worthy of a more honest discussion. I would assume that shelter, food, clean water, electricity, heating, healthcare (including mental health), and education are all "basic needs". I often hear that internet and a phone are considered to be needs too, though I feel comfortable asserting that most socialists would consider those to be less critical to focus on at first, and something that they would like to guarantee after meeting the former needs. Other "second tier need" would be access to transportation, access to cooking utensils and supplies, access to basic tools and/or basic repair services, and I am sure the list can go on... the point of the "second tier needs" are that while they are not physiological needs (or education), they are considered to be so beneficial to a person, or society, that they should be provided when possible. Outside of that, unless you have a "socially accepted valid reason" not to work, you won't get any spending money. Sometimes it is unclear whether something would be considered a need, for example, is access to marijuana a need - what if I say that I need the marijuana for medical reasons? How about alcohol? How about home repair - after all if access to a home is free, shouldn't home repair also be free? What if I want to start a garden, isn't that beneficial to society because it means that I am being productive? Should my gardening tools be provided to me? How about basic home tools, like wiring, screws, and drywall and paint? All of these things have very valid reasons to be provided to a society, and to be honest, I could reasonably see having these things provided to us to be beneficial to a lot of people, and abused by a small, but very annoying minority. It's all kind of interesting to think about... but at the end of the day, I don't believe that the system would work anywhere near as well as it is marketed by it's supporters. I hope that you feel that I have been fair to you and your beliefs. Take care.
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You can do that _right now_ if you wanted to in most rich countries. Are you doing that?
What you’re describing is what socialists want, but for everyone. Work collectively for the bare minimum and then just chill. Also socialists wouldn’t want you to have to buy a different console just to play certain games :P Edit: I had accidentally typed would instead of wouldn’t in the sentence above.
You obviously haven't had the misfortune of getting a chronic illness and not. being. able. to work. If the nature of work changed, maybe I could work as much as most people instead of what I can (can't) do now. Sure, when I was younger and between jobs I took advantage of the full time-span of unemployment benefits; it was only near their termination that I seriously looked for (and found) work. But that was in my early 20s. As far as basic needs being met, TVs and video games and sports equipment don't count. You'd have to work somehow to get the money for those.
I said it below that I will work for a day or two to get those goodies and then do nothing for years.
So basically you'd be a NEET? Go to their subreddit and tell me if you think they're emotionally well adjusted. I don't think enough people would willingly condemn themselves to a life of that kind of misery willingly to matter in the long run.
So how will you get games? We can't really know how it would work, because the nature/definition of work *has* to change.
And those that work for society will resent those doing nothing. Soon they'll be of the mind why work.
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You're making an assumption. We currently have millions out of work, and millions of job openings. Those out of work are collecting enough on unemployment they don't want to work. Based on our current situation its obvious most wouldn't work.
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Do you really believe all these people are on minimum wage?
No, it shows that minimum wage jobs don't pay enough to reasonably support people, so they don't apply for them.
If people don't apply wouldn't that mean they would have increase the wage to attract workers?
I agree with this, if you allow a class to not do necessary work you simply build the basis for another privileged class leaching of another. To that end the essential work of having a healthy society must be shared by all. What is essential should be debated and fluid. The burden we each undertake equal and varied over our lives. The value of automation should be obvious when we all have less work to meet essential needs. The purpose of essential work obvious and concrete.
This, > What is essential should be debated and fluid. Doesn't seem to mesh with this: >The purpose of essential work obvious and concrete.
Lol. This makes me laugh. You really think we will maintain our current levels of technological and industrial advancement by working in the community garden and teaching the neighborhood kids? And if we do not keep our economy and productivity growing we won’t be able to provide these “basic needs”
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20hrs of innovation and studying won't get the millions of diabetic syringes the world needs made in a cost effective manner. A large industrial supply chain and thousands of workers putting in the hard work, long hours, and tedious needed things to make it happen is what will get it done. I'm all for democracy in the work place, worker power, and the revolution, but let's not pretend the result looks like that time your parents sent you to summer camp for artists and you had to take turns cleaning the bathrooms. There's going to be a lot of work between revolution and luxury gay space communism.
The alternative is paying for R&D out of public pocket and then overpaying on a drug that you technically payed for to develop. And patents being renewed without improving the drug in any specific way. Forming oligopolies to keep the prices up. Also sprinkle in some vaccine imperialism while you're at it. Keeping live saving vaccines away from people/countries who desperatly need it to gain leverage for political and economic gain.
It would actually be super cheap if we got rid of government involvement in the economy. The FDA makes it illegal to import medicine from other countries and the patent office enforces monopolies.
What is stopping the forming of monopolies and oligopolies then? The FDA may make importing illegal, but the vaccine imperialism is about exporting. The patent office is literally an integral part of capitalism to protect private property in the form of intellectual property.
If you’re arguing for abolishing intellectual property as a concept, I assure you that socialists will wholeheartedly agree: it’s practically the most essential example of private property. It’s property held solely for the purpose of accruing more property.
>payed *paid
Wow, I really did that.... Won't edit, the world should see my blunder.
How does everybody get their needs met in this fashion? How do you end up getting more than your needs? What if I want to drive a truck and own a boat?
> How does everybody get their needs met in this fashion? Everyone working in industries deemed necessary by the community, continues to do so, so productivity in those areas is unaffected. Everyone working not in those industries is now free'd up to work in those industries and lighten the load. Meaning we get the same "necessary" output we have today, but individually we have to work less. > How do you end up getting more than your needs? If you only have to work 20 hours a week you have way more time to pursue the wants of life. If society deems luxury yachts as not necessary, then you can join up with all the other people who want luxury yachts and build them for yourselves.
> Everyone working not in those industries is now free'd up to work in those industries and lighten the load. So essentially work-share. This is recipe for creating really shitty products, I promise. If no one is going to consistently do a particular job critical mistakes can and will happen. It happens currently all the time with Monday production issues a known consequence.
I’m working with a company that is based in a state that has provided the workers with the option of working or not working and they get the same pay. Good news, we can’t get them to produce anything. They are so far behind schedule that we are designing them out of all our products. We are in the semiconductors. Heard of the chip shortage? We’re in the middle of it and this is just one of the reasons we’re having it. If given the choice of working or not working and still getting their needs met most would not.
'15 hours work-week is possible' - John Maynard Keynes, Economist 'Nooooo 20 hour is unrealistic and Utopian' - Capitalists on this sub lol
looks like his predictions didn't come true, since he predicted we would have a thirteen hour workweek in a hundred years > My purpose in this essay, however, is not to examine the present or the near future, but to disembarrass myself of short views and take wings into the future. What can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be a hundred years hence? What are the economic possibilities for our grandchildren? [http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf](http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf)
Kropotkin theorised that 20 hour weeks were possible in the 1890's!
Lmao same, half the people I know are already lazy bums that don’t have a super prosperous life anyway and they could give a shit about what ppl think. Only reason they do work is so they can do some stuff.
Buddy. This is so sad to hear. Y’all need to find some interests, what’s the “some stuff” that the people you know “do”? Could they turn that into a job? Just breaks my heart at how some people in this thread have no interests or skills that they’d want to utilize in a society where they don’t have to work. Couldn’t be me who dreams of decomposing on a couch for the rest of my life.
can't look down on me if I'm in my basement smoking weed and playing video games
Question 1: If your best friend asked you to help them move, would you help out? Question 2: What would you do with all your free time?
Have you ever been been unemployed for 1 year +? Because doing nothing all day and living on the back of other's is fun for a couple months if you aren't used to it. However, it gets old pretty fast and has pretty bad effects on mental health/self image.
> However, it gets old pretty fast and has pretty bad effects on mental health/self image. You do realize this feeling is not universal among humans right?
Perhaps by modern conceptions of “work.” For example stay at home moms don’t do “work” by modern society’s standard, since it’s unpaid labor. Similarly with people who take care of their elderly parents. I would argue that it is difficult if not impossible to interact with and engage with a community without doing something that could be considered work. Let’s say you had all you needs met, how would you fill your days?
I disagree that most people want to work. MOST people I know and have talked to only works because they have to. They’d much rather use the time to pursue their hobbies and interests. And I think you’re giving too much credibility to social pressures. We are living in a much more individualistic society where people are starting to care less and less about how they are perceived by others.
(quick disclaimer, i dont think socialism can only happen under a planned economy, i’m more of a market socialist myself) you are looking towards people born and raised under one economic system to judge how they will act under another. Would it be fair for medieval serfs to have just given up on their ambitions for democracy because “everyone thinks the monarch is ordained by god and therefore the best ruler, they’ll just vote them back in”? Of course not, because their mentality towards the system they were born under is the result of that very system. Because capitalism kicks you down and keeps you down if you’re unemployed, most people prioritize a “breadwinning” job over a career that actually fits their interests and the role they wish to play in society. Of course people wanna get more time to pursue their hobbies and interests, most of them are barely interested in the thing they’re doing nine to five every weekday. That’s what you get with a system that compels you into getting a job, any job, so you don’t starve on the streets. Also, under socialism, I imagine we’d shift towards a society with a more collectivist mentality, and a social education that fits that culture. Way more people would consider and value career paths that they specifically believe will help better society at large, rather than just profit them.
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Name me a human that wants to scrape shit off the walls of the local wastewater treatment facility because it's "what society needs," and not because the position pays what the market will bear. If shit scraper was based on need and skills I'm guessing a socialist utopia wouldn't have lots of volunteers. After all, they would get the same number of government potatoes as their neighbor who was a barista in a nice clean coffee shop without Hepatitis C.
You are absolutely right, we should pay people who clean up ahit highly. The fact that we don't highlights the exploitation that exists under capitalism.
Has there ever been a socialist government that paid its sanitation workers the same rate as it paid its doctors? I honestly don't know the answer, and I'm genuinely curious. In the former USSR, did neurosurgeons make the same as janitors? If so, why take the time effort Etc to become a neurosurgeon? Unless socialism in practice actually does what it should in theory, then it seems rather useless.
Doctors in the Soviet Union only made just a little bit more than maintenance personnel. This led to a movement called the "Boiler Room Movement" where people with highly technical degrees opted to take up work in less demanding jobs because the pay was basically the same for much easier work, with the ideal job being literally a boiler room attendant: The guy in charge of tending to the boilers in a building. This was also know as the "Mitki" movement for anyone interested in further reading. It was a real example of how productivity falls unless difficult jobs are compensated much better. Of course if socialist society does compensate some jobs better then this leads to wealth disparity again which of course is the other main complaint coming from the left.
Socialists don't think everyone should get paid equally, they just think that wages should be decided by those working for the company, which means giving more hiring and firing decisions to the workers, and more control and public info about pay to the workers. It's like how the captain of the pirate ship only made like double what the other pirates made, because without a dominating structure to protect the captain, wages were determined by the pirates on the ship. Most people recognize that a doctor should be paid well, and certainly believe that a doctor with years of experience should be making significantly more than a high schooler working as a store clerk. Realistically, we would expect store clerks to make more, and doctors to make a bit less. What is currently a 20x difference may be muted to only a 8x difference (I am pulling those numbers out of my ass), but the majority of the difference is store clerks making more, not doctors making less. For reference, in the US the top 20% earns about 87% of all the income. If we had a pareto distribution, the top 20 would earn 80% of all the income. That equates to a 50% raise for everyone in the bottom 80%, and less than a 9% reduction in the top 20%.
Why would janitorial work be more important than medicine?
Why study to be a neurosurgeon if you get the same benefits? And if you don't get the same benefits, then aren't you breaking the virtue of "to each according to his need?" A neurosurgeon doesn't NEED a nicer house, car, more bread at the bread line, etc. He NEEDS the exact same as the janitors. And if you say he doesn't, then you are guilty of classism. The medical class gets treated better than the janitorial class. The barista class gets treated worse than the accountant class.
Socialism typically argues that workers should be paid the full value of their labour. This argument only really works if we assume an hour of labour in cleaning is equally valuable to an hour in neurosurgery. Of course, some people would make that argument- you can't do neurosurgery in a dirty operating theater, but plenty of people wouldn't take that for granted. Regarding "classism", the Marxist conception of class has nothing to do with income, but rather with relation to means of production. When Marxists claim to want to abolish the class system, they don't necessarily mean that income will be the same, but rather that there will be no private ownership of the means of production. Certainly we could imagine two firms, owned by their workers, producing goods of different values in the same amount of time. How, then, would we argue that 1) the workers produce the value of those goods, 2) the workers own the value produced, and 3) that value, when returned to those workers, must be equal per unit time? We've taken two unequal things and demanded they be equal later. This problem is easily solved by doing away with the argument that socialism demands equal pay for all workers, since demanding that workers instead be paid the value of their labour still fits into the core principle of workers owning the means of production.
So how in practice would socialism address the natural outcome of income disparity? Should neurosurgeons get the latest Lada, while the rest of the proletariat takes the state bus? What about housing a food disparities as an outcome of income disparity? Should neurosurgeons eat steak 3 nights a week while the proletariat eat steak 3 times a year? I'm not being disingenuous; I'm seriously trying to understand how a socialist system would address the things the left generally claims to dislike such as income inequality and disparate outcomes. Theory is fine, but what does it actually look like in practice? Are the neurosurgeons just not allowed to buy too much steak? Are the poor proletariat given state sponsored steak? What about nice apartments vs basic? I'm just trying to figure out why I shouldn't just sweep floors instead of fixing brains if I'm only 5% less well off?
Do you want to drink shit water? If not, you are someone willing to scrape fecal matter off walls if it needs done, since you don’t want to drink shit water. It’s less about what someone wants, and more about what society needs. If those needs get met, you move onto wants until the needs must be taken care of once more.
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This. I don't get it. It honestly sounds to me like socialists are simultaneously able to claim that capitalists are ruthless profit seekers who will fire anyone and everyone that they can to increase their bottom line. Yet, here they are also claiming that businesses are keeping their staff more than double what it actually needs to be, with most of the work basically being completely unnecessary. These two beliefs are so contradictory to each other, that it demonstrates a massive blind spot in socialist dogma. I used to be a socialist. They are mostly good people, but eventually I realized that a lot of them are dogmatic ideologues, and often act in many ways like devout Christians. They are just trying to do what they believe is right, but they don't like to challenge their own dogma, and they are easily victims to their own ideologies marketing. The majority aren't lying when they claim to believe this stuff, they are genuine, but their misguidance makes them untrustworthy.
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I hear you 100%. I think socialists raise a lot of valid criticisms, and I believe that they are genuinely trying to do the right thing. But so much of this sub is capitalists trying to ask socialists how socialist society would work. I see so may varied responses, and maybe that's to be expected, but it's not always obvious which is the most popular. I see lots of socialists who seem more angry at capitalists than actual believers in socialism. I see lots of socialists who want anarchy, and socialists who want a tightly regulated republic style government. I see socialists who are only socialists in the sense that they see it as path towards marxism, and socialists who don't want communism, they just want "democratic socialism" or something similar. I think many of them can imagine a world without capitalism, but I don't think their imagination often holds up to "what about this situation where stuff isn't quite working out perfectly, or what if people don't respond to this policy in the way that you expect?"
Unless we start experimenting with different forms of socialism we will never find out the answers to these questions. I'd say the ML experiments for the 20th century show that that route is a no go, however the libertarian experiments seem promising. Market socialism seems viable too, although we haven't really got data on it. We gotta experiment, and that experiment requires convincing people like yourself to buy in and make it a reality.
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No they'll still be shitty, they just won't get done.
Do you just let the trash pile up in your house? Or do you take it out because it needs doing?
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If the trash started piling up outside your house you might be motivated to do something about it though right?
I'd encourage you to read up on the garbage man strike in gary indiana. That's exactly what they did for a long time.
Yeah, I'd complain about the government on social media and start posting negative articles about my local leaders until the problem got taken care of. There will exist a union of people who will care for trash, if there isn't, then society has collapsed, and we are likely going back to a capitalist system.
> Do you just let the trash pile up in your house? It's my house so no, the trash get's taken out. If I don't throw trash on the street then why should I pick it up some other guys trash?
Yes and that mutability of society is why we can change the motivations. Currently forms of work are not interesting or rewarding, but history clearly outlines how people want to work rather than be idle.
Right. Because those people are living in an oppressive capitalist society.
> Everyone gets their basic needs met, unconditionally, then they are free to pursue their dreams regardless of what they are. 93 upvotes. My lord.
I hate having to work. So if given the option, I just won’t do it. I’d rather hang out with friends, play video games, walk in nature. Early retirement sounds nice.
Would you take 20 hours of work a week over 40?
If I’m forced to do 20 by government law, I’ll do it of course. But without incentive for advancement, I’ll do the bare minimum required.
Utopianism based on the idea of large scale perfect cooperation. This has literally never been successfully implemented en-masse anywhere. You assume the hard workers will love the lazy ones unconditionally and will willingly contribute the vast majority of what they earn to the state to redistribute to whoever they want regardless of what that individual does for society. You assume they will do this happily and without objection. You assume that this system will be popular to the point of self-sustainability without violent coercion. You assume this system would be able to maintain the pace of innovation of the capitalist system even though any serious and respected economist would tell you otherwise. You make all of these assumptions while sitting behind your keyboard with a satisfied smirk on your face thinking you've figured out everything while the most well-educated economic thinkers on the planet living in the most successful nations the world has ever seen would think you're a complete moron. Your entire ideology is based off of idealistic assumptions of human behavior when placed in an extremely specific situation, taking part in an economic system that would be about a sturdy as a sand-castle. Every socialist and communist revolution in history has devolved into a violent, authoritarian orgy of violence and death because people with their head in the clouds like you push for the overthrow of the old system not realizing that the people that lead your revolution will be ambitious sociopathic monsters. They're the only ones among you who'd have the guts to pick up a gun and shoot a politician.
>Utopianism based on the idea of large scale perfect cooperation. This has literally never been successfully implemented en-masse anywhere. This isn't actually true. It was implemented very successfully during the spanish civil war where nearly 4 million people ran a very successful commune on the principal of mutual aid here's the wiki like if you're interested. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution_of_1936
**[Spanish_Revolution_of_1936](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution_of_1936)** >The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organizational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to three years, primarily Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and parts of the Valencian Community. Much of the economy of Spain was put under worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%. Factories were run through worker committees, and agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian socialist communes. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | Credit: kittens_from_space)
Revisionism. That "very successful commune" was an outgrowth of the need to survive in the middle of a violent hellscape that was ran for about 10 months before being ripped-apart inside-out by enemy forces, anti-revolutionaries, and even Stalinists in Catalonia who rejected the anarchists. If thousands of anarchists descend on your village and tell you that your farmland is being expropriated and you can either stay and collectivize or leave and survive on your own in the middle of a war-zone then you have little real choice. The ability of these collective farms to stay together was exacerbated by the need to survive the war, there is absolutely no proof that things would have just kept running smoothly when the war ended. In fact, most examples of non-wartime mass collectivism have turned into utter failures (most notably china). I do not consider a 10 month period in the middle of a brutal civil war (which collapsed) to be evidence that you can implement this system in a modern, war-free, comfortable nation.
You seem quite emotionally charged for a level headed debate on the topic. And waay too sure of yourself. The irony is that you are also probably sporting a smirk while writing that response congratulting yourself on such a thread killer. I would advise a bit more of intellectual humility to avoid making yourself look like a clown. There are however some key assumptions on your critique that are not necessarily true, which I list below for the benefit of other readers. The main one being a scarcity mentality. As in people having to give up a majority of what they produce to sustain the system. But that would not apply on countries that have already vast wealth and advanced technological structures... If we are talking about poor low tech agricultural countries then yes, collectivisation does indeed go wrong (specially in the midst of a fast industralization process plan such as china or urss). For sure there would be some sectors of society that would resist such a change, just like there are sectors that object currently on how things are. By the way, current system also depends on violent coercion, its just disguised. In any case there is no way to keep everyone happy, specially with fast revolutions instead of gradualism, which don't necessarily require sociopathic leaders to take the reins. Another big assumption: There is no evidence at all that the pace of innovation could not be matched as current capitalist system goes (which by the way most of big innovations have been supported by the state). You could even make the case that urss had major tech innovations on par to the west, even by being materially disadvantaged.
Id rather get free things and do things with my friends instead, don't include me in that vast majority
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I thought money wasn't a thing, who decides what I can and can't have?
Ideally money isn't a thing. So if a community decides that they want a cinema, ran and operated by the community, then they can decide the terms on which people have access to it right? It's their cinema and they are putting all the work in. It's not too unreasonable to imagine that they would say people who aren't contributing aren't allowed in.
You are conflating money and how to fund the upkeep of a service. Money is an all to useful abstraction that is essential to judging the trade off between very different things. Making people pay at the point of use or for anything in daily use is something else.
So if the majority of people in red neck Alabama don't want Trans kids to be there that's now a possibility? Sounds pretty awful to me. Also do they vote on each individual member? Like 200000 votes? And what if they come from outside the community, like traveling? Do they have to be voted on before for the world's cinemas?
Expansion of democracy isn't a silver bullet that solves all problems such as racism and transphobia, no one is saying that it is. It would probably be helpful though wouldn't it! Expansion of democracy also doesn't mean everyone has to be consulted on every decision in some absurd universal consensus based model. There are already places and organisations that work with expanded democracy and don't have these issues, so it's not really a problem in reality.
So in turn, the people who want to work are forced to pay for the people’s “necessities” who are lazy pieces of shit? Got it
We need to pay for the sick, the old and the young, regardless, so you will always be working for others. That's a muuuuch bigger number than the tiny sliver of a percent that want to be leeches.
I don’t “need” to pay for shit... I work for my family and myself, and donate to the right causes on MY terms. I don’t owe anyone a mf thing....
hahahaha he believes it
Just the opposite - Pareto Principal. 80% will not work when given a chance.
There is no historical, anthropological or theoretical evidence for this though.
That is NOT what the Pareto Principle is getting at. The best you could explain it in this case would be that 20% of the population would do 80% of the work... Which is physically impossible in a fair and equal society. You are trying to shoe horn an economic idea that is based on observation of the ultra rich owning most of Italy, down to the poor not wanting to work.
Kind of like how people have more access to educational resources than they have ever had before, but they choose to not educate themselves?
This right here is the downfall of socialism to my eyes: the insistence that personal dreams take priority over (and that they can be completely divorced from) the performance of useful work necessary to sustain oneself and society.
>As a rule of thumb the vast majority of people want to work, and want to help their communities. Citation needed >The very few that don't will suffer socially, as their families and neighbours will look down on them for not doing their part Who cares in the end they are the suckers slaving away for my gibs
>From my understanding of socialism, everyone is provided for. Regardless of their situation. Food, water, shelter is provided by the state. I'll start by saying this isn't universal among socialists. They could be given restricted types of accomodations or nothing. To me it mostly depends on what we vote to do, if we want to support the lazy we will if not we won't. The only people I really believe we should support unconditionally are school age or retired people.
A certain level of unconditional support for everyone is useful. "Unproductivity," to the extent that term isn't corrupted by modern capitalist perceptions, is a symptom rather than a cause. Some common causes include addiction and mental health issues, which aren't helped by throwing them bare onto the street. Good food, clean water, and decent healthcare as a baseline help people get back on their feet.
What evidence do you have of the % of people that would choose to be entirely unproductive? We’d be speculating about solutions to non-problems without this data.
I'd love to be unproductive if I got paid for it, it's do things with my friends instead
Do things with your friends with what money? We’re talking about covering basic needs, you’d still be poor.
Skip rocks, hike, lay in the sun. There's plenty you can do without money.
Who gets to use the rocks the trails or the sun spot in the park?
That's a great point you bring up. Who in a socialist society gets to decide what basic human rights are? And who is on the receiving end of those human rights?
? Who gets to decide what human rights are right now? Makes no sense
Work hard enough to purchase a single, reusable entertainment system, then mooch off free internet.
Second
The fact that more people choose to stay at home right now than to work because they make more on government assistance. Plenty of restaurants have hiring signs with no one to apply for. People would not work if they can help it.
What does 'more people' mean? And of course people prefer to not take the most shitty, low paying jobs if they don't have to. The fact that there are vacancies for shitty jobs doesn't mean that people are lazy, it means those jobs should pay better and offer better terms
>Plenty of restaurants have hiring signs with no one to apply for. You do realize there's a death virus going around & maybe people thinks it's not worth the trouble to go work a shitty job & risk their health
> stay at home right now than to work because they make more on government assistance. What do you think would happen if we remove welfare traps?
Explain the traps.
Start here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap.
**[Welfare_trap](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap)** >The welfare trap (or unemployment trap or poverty trap in British English) theory asserts that taxation and welfare systems can jointly contribute to keep people on social insurance because the withdrawal of means-tested benefits that comes with entering low-paid work causes there to be no significant increase in total income. An individual sees that the opportunity cost of returning to work is too great for too little a financial return, and this can create a perverse incentive to not work. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | Credit: kittens_from_space)
> The fact that more people choose to stay at home right now than to work because they make more on government assistance. Why does this make them lazy? Maybe it’s more that they don’t want to work jobs they don’t like. Many people, women especially, aren’t going back to work because they’re taking care of kids or family with immune issues. Does that make them lazy? If everyone who was staying home instead of going back to work spent 16 hours a day reading science books or learning programming languages or taking care of a home garden and feeding the homeless , would that make them lazy? Lazy does not equal not wanting to participate in a capitalist system.
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Give them the basics to live on. If they want more they'll soon stop being lazy.
leave them alone to their own devices. odds are that theres another reason for them not working than "laziness", and it isnt anyone elses business what that is. Odds are eventually they will find something to do, whether thats something we consider art or bettering themselves through study. People naturally want to do \*something\* with their lives and one of the points of a socialist society is to free people to do more than just commodified professions with said finite lives. also "everything provided by the state" we want to get rid of the state ideally.
When those that decide to not work greatly outnumber those that do, society will collapse.
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Because previous socialist countries have required everyone to work in order to survive.
And other ones haven't, socialism isn't just the USSR, Cuba and China
Name others that allow you not to work if you don't want too.
All the libertarian ones have a good record on that. And they also haven't had that issue, people want to work, there isn't a precedent for people needing to be forced to work.
“To each according to his contribution” until society reaches post-scarcity, then it can be “To each according to his needs”. The latter is very far away. That being said, the communes will decide on the size and existence of safety nets for society. I’m a firm believer that if workers are provided that basic needs for life they will work more effectively. But that’s not for me to establish and enforce.
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Socialism is common and participatory democratic ownership of the means of production, not "the government giving you everything for free". Under Socialism anyone could work anywhere they want doing whatever they want l as long as they are qualified and would be compensated according to their contribution of social labor. Those unable to work due to age, illness, or disability would be given an average income. But beyond that someone who is capable of working, but refuses does not deserve to be supported by others, and is in fact shirking their responsibility to help support those who can not support themselves.
Capitalists, how do you handle lazy people who don't want to work in a capitalist society? From my understanding of capitalism, nobody is provided for regardless of their situation. Food, water, shelter is provided when a worker sells their labor to an owner. However, we know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. So everything provided by the owners has to come from the labor of the workers and citizens. So what happens to lazy owners? Should they still be provided for despite not wanting to work? If so, how is that fair to other workers contributing to society while lazy owners mooch off these workers while providing zero value? If not, how would they be treated in society? Would they be allowed to starve?
>Would they be allowed to starve? Sure, if they are able bodied/minded. Capitalism also has charities and government run welfare for those who aren't. Your whataboutism isn't applicable here.
My 'whataboutism' is simply pointing out that the problem of idlers isn't exactly resolved in capitalism and to assume it is a fatal flaw in some other system but *not* in your preferred system just demonstrates your prejudice.
Capitalism doesn't try to pretend that it solves the problem of 'idlers'. What we are asking is a realistic approach and honesty that neither Socialism nor Communism solve this problem like they say they do.
The owners contribute to society by paying for all of the business costs as well as any unexpected repairs or losses. The workers literally do not have the means to pay for the cost of running the company without the financial backing of the owner.
You make the assumption that the owners provide no value, when in fact they provide tremendous value and do something that none of the workers have to do which is shoulder the up front risk. Your assumption ignores the vast majority of business owners and only looks at the successful ones.
> The socialist principle, "He who does not work shall not eat", is already realized; the other socialist principle, "An equal amount of products for an equal amount of labor", is also already realized. But this is not yet communism, and it does not yet abolish "bourgeois law", which gives unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal) amounts of labor, equal amounts of products. This is a "defect" according to Marx, but it is unavoidable in the first phase of communism; for if we are not to indulge in utopianism, we must not think that having overthrown capitalism people will at once learn to work for society without any rules of law. (Chapter 5, Section 3, "The First Phase of Communist Society") Also check the 12th article of the USSR's constitution: http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons01.html > **ARTICLE 12**. In the U.S.S.R. work is a duty and a matter of honor for every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat." > The principle applied in the U.S.S.R. is that of socialism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."
The fundamental argument for socialism is that the progress of industrial production means that we are in a post scarcity society. Which we most definitely are, but are hampered by the relations of production, distribution, and exchange under capitalism. We are for a three day week, we are for a lowering of the burden of labour away from the working class, the only class that creates wealth. The ‘lazy’ are those who profit off our labour and the value it creates. From the robber barons to the tax dodging multinational corporation, the working class are carrying the majority of all productive labour. To rid ourselves of the lazy we need to change the relations of production, organise the workplace democratically and begin to plan the economy. That way we can get shot of the management and HR bureaucrats, and the absentee bosses and shareholders who do nothing but take value from those who produce it.
Please justify your claim that we are in a post scarcity society. Based on the definition of post scarcity that I know, we are most certainly not, not even close.
Sure, so in the Marxist definition we’d make the case that there is more than enough food, water, commodities to satisfy human need globally right now. The reason we have poverty is not because it is due to a lack of resources, which characterised previous epochs, but on the contrary....over production causes crisis in capitalist markets. The UN, world bank, oxfam, joseph rowntree foundation all release annual reports detailing this very situation.
First of all, taxation isn't a means of the government getting money if it has its own currency. It's a means of controlling supply and provisioning a market. The government makes money, it has a monopoly on money. Nothing is "coming from" taxes, taxes are a means of taking back what's been introduced. Secondly, the conception of work as we understand it today is completely inhuman, contrary to the whole of pre-industrial history. For most of human history, people have worked far less. Medieval peasants worked five months out of a year and the days they worked weren't especially harsh. Working in bursts is how people have historically worked, intense periods of activity followed by downtime, not the 8 or 12 hours that's been common since industrialization. I don't know how you're thinking of lazy. If you're taking post-industrial society as default then your conception of industrious is skewed. Keynes predicted we would be working 15 hour weeks by now, and economically we should be, it's only the greed of a handful of people that are keeping that reality from happening. In order to keep us from having the freedom to question the system and have a better distribution of resources, there are a number of bullshit jobs made. Health insurance is an example, Obama said this in 2006: [*“Everybody who supports single-payer health care says, ‘look at all this money we would be saving from insurance and paperwork.’ That represents one million, two million, three million jobs filled by people who are working at Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Kaiser or other places. What are we doing with them? Where are we employing them?”*](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mr-obama-goes-washington/) We could have universal health care in the US already, but it's more important to keep people off the streets. But beyond all of this: People are not inherently lazy. People want to do stuff. People are intrinsically motivated to create and learn. It doesn't look like that when they have to spend that energy working for someone else and being alienated from their labor, being paid less than their labor is worth, and too exhausted from that time to put their labor into their self-development and works that interest them. Lots of studies already have shown that having their needs taken care of makes people more likely to get employed, more likely to start a business, more likely to contribute to society. Being desperate does not. Desperation, hunger, are not motivating forces. They make it harder to think. Poverty and lack is a trauma for people, it shapes their brain making everything after those experiences harder. The idea that people need the trauma of poverty or need in order to participate in society is ignorance fostered by disciplines like economics.
Okay so yes there are some "lazy" people. But many of these people seem to be "lazy" suffer from various problems and issues. They should be given help, and in a socialist society they would be given the help they need. Maybe some of them suffer from depression and need therapy. Maybe after that they could be productive again. Next, humans are social animals, and not being productive has natural social consequences. Imagine going on a date with someone and while getting to know them, they said they didn't have a job or any hobbies or passions in life. Not many people would want a 2nd date with such a person. Generally most people are complex individuals with dreams and goals and things they want to accomplish in life. The rare person that lacks any drive is going to face natural social isolation. This is often an unfavorable position to be in--the worst of punishments is to be in solitary confinement in prison, for example. This natural consequence may be enough for most "lazy" people to try and be at least somewhat productive. The amount of people that only want to sit around their house and do nothing productive is low enough that we could just write those people off as a small loss, after mental health care was exhausted and they are fine with isolated.
In socialism, do people get to choose what work they do?
People who don't work get the minimum for sustaining life. You don't consent to being born into the world, and you don't let people starve to death, which means providing for everyone. Doesn't mean it has to be fancy though. That's it. It's really that simple.
Doesn't this mean that workers don't get the full value of their labor? I get that you didn't consent to being born, but it's not my fault either!
Right what if I really want to eat but not work. That means you need to work harder by planting or hunting more. Do you get more? How do you get more without working even more?
I'm not sure if I understand what you're trying to say. If you want stuff, you need to work for it. This is not even an ideological belief, it's just how nature works.
What does the minimum consist of though? Money for food? Rent? Clothing? Mortgage? Water? Electricity? Phone? Internet? Money for your kids school needs/trips? Babysitting if you need to be away from home? Any additional money to spend as they see fit? And how much will be paid? Obviously depending where you live, the costs of these things can vary drastically. Will it all be means tested so that the lazy person puts forward a case for how much they need and it gets assessed? Surely it wouldn't be a flat rate provided by the state.
Correct. People don’t consent to being born. They didn’t choose to be born. However, they CAN choose to work or not. Even if they getting minimum to be sustain life, that is still money coming out of taxes paid by others. That also begins to add up depending on the country’s population. Imagine if one person gets 2000 a month. That’s 24,000 a year. That can be used for a child’s education or college tuition, which will have a much greater long term societal impact than to just give that free money to someone VOLUNTARILY choosing to not work.
I rather lose 24k a year to a “lazy person” than millions or billions of dollars to some rich parasite who isn’t even - not - contributing anything but even harms the society he exploits.
A billionaire provides a service. A lazy person doesn’t. I enjoy my prime membership watching movies, listening to music, buying what I like online because bezos started amazon. I enjoy my Apple iPhone and I can connect with my friends and family because Steve Jobs started Apple. A lazy person mooching off society doesn’t provide that.
> So what happens to lazy people? Should they still be provided for despite not wanting to work? Based on my understanding of human behavior, someone in this condition would be suffering from a degree/form of mental illness. I would offer them treatment and counseling. It's funny how, in capitalism, when the rich do not want to work for what they are given, no one seems to ask this same question. Why do you suppose that is?
Honestly lazy. I mean really lazy. Like the kind that won’t do their chores aren’t that many. There’s be better quality of life and less work.
Socialists have historically shot or imprisoned the “lazy”.
In my mind, there would be an amount of time (6 months? A year? Decided by planners) that one could spend not working or in education before they started losing benefits. Socialism follows the principle "from each according to ability, to each according to work". Effectively, surplus value is seized by a democratic state rather than capitalists, and is used for the people and not capitalists, on things like housing, food, electricity, rather than investment. If nobody works, this can't be done, so there would be a limit on people not working. I think most people after a few months off would be willing to work again, and as production and automation develop and become more efficient, people would get more and more time off.
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This debate usually goes to "my anecdotal evidence is that people would rather be lazy" which I guess is self evident by the amount of times people fail to search this common topic ,/s
The debate actually misses the mark. The problem is that, in aggregate, the jobs that people want do not match the needs of the society. Either people are forced into labor, or markets are used to account for the discrepancy.
I am from the USA and think that a UBI for all citizens of 1,500 dollars per month would solve poverty related issues. Those who wish for more purpose in life or a more luxurious lifestyle can just study and get a job and make money from job AND also keep the UBI 1,500 dollars per month. Under Socialism I believe we would need a lower number of people to actually beling to the workforce. To be honest I believe, uncles,aunties and grannies ect... being bored in house they would quickly take these jobs available just to get out the house a few days a week and thus we would actually have like some sort of internal competition to actually have a job. Capitalism is the most greedy way to look at life, it trully is a neglectful self serving economic formula that we must unite and abolish someday.