this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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The alternative is everyone grows their own food, builds their own houses, makes their own clothes, gathers firewood, yadda yadda.
You certainly wouldn't have the Internet in such a paradise.
That said, with all that we now have, 4 6 hour work days should be the norm.
The alternative is that when you grow food or build homes or make cloths or gather firewood, you own the real material you create plus all the surplus, which can then be used in trade.
When you're working in an industrial agricultural system, you produce orders of magnitude more food than you could ever consume. But as a tenant farmer or field hand, you barely claim enough income to buy enough to sustain yourself personally, because so much of your work product is claimed by your employer.
When you're enjoying an industrial surplus, why wouldn't you have access to a cheap and efficient means of mass communication?
You should not confuse capitalism with markets, and you should not confuse markets with working together.
Consider the family unit, it is doubtful that everyone cooks their own single serve or rotates meal duty evenly. Humans can specialise without capital.
Capital is what enables someone to have someone else cook for them, who then has to go cook their own meal. The one with capital isn't even doing anything for the cook, they are simply taking money that someone working at a widgt factory they own made and giving it to the cook. In so doing they appropriate both the widget factory worker's meal and the cooks!
you can even have market exchange without capitalism. In the above situation if we remove the capitalist the widget maker could give the cook widgets for a meal. Or even currency from selling widgets for a meal. Materially the capitalist contributes nothing, their role is entirely created by private property law.
I may have misread the end of your comment but are you implying that a market can exist without private property?
Not implying, outright stating!
Colloquially private property means like "stuff I have exclusive or near exclusive rights to" but that's not what we mean when we talk economic systems. Something like your clothing, or that neat pot you made is personal property. Private property is a legal construct wherein someone is allowed to claim ownership over means of production, like "this field is mine, it doesn't matter if I'm using it or not, I have the legal right to control what happens there".
So an example of a market without private property might be something like:
Obvs that's simplified but it's a rough sketch of how farming used to work! you earned a right to use land by using it directly and what you grew on it was yours to do as you see fit (often a maniac with a horse and sword would take some portion first though. Because they're just better than you or whatever)
So what changes personal property to a "means of production"?
Probably start here for a general overview https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production
A market can exist without private property by having capital be collectively owned and continuously up for auction to the highest bidder. Basically, each holder of means of production self-assess the price at which they would be willing to turn over that capital to another party, they pay a lease payment based on a percentage of that self-assessed price, and if someone comes along willing to pay that self-assessed price, require that they turn it over to that party
Maybe I'm not getting it, bu that just sounds like capitalism with extra steps.
In what I described, the differences are:
@microblogmemes
It's about the question who owns the product that labor produced (along with land).
Why can someone be the owner of a production line?
Because someone has to build it. Why would you build something if you couldn't own it afterwards?
Besides that it gets built with labor and not capital ... lots of things people build for all to use, some even pool together to build libraries, schools, etc.
But the short answer why would you build a garden/factory/connect hall/etc is so that afterwards you live in a world/society that now has a place to take a walk, toys, concerts, etc.
You would only like to own those things just because it gets you into the position to exploit others (the main topic here I mean) that were unable to build it. Exploit them to have a more comfortable life in unrelated things.
This relies on nobody taking advantage of the system though.
We pay government for that.
Unless you mean like poets etc - that's the beauty of it, this would allow that.
But why would I, as an individual, spend my life learning how to build buildings and then build them if I have no more benefit from doing that than I would from someone else putting in all that work? Surely I'd just do nothing and wait for someone else to do it?
What else would you do? You get all your needs met.
And when no money as such having a big role, you get recognized by what you do and accomplish, not by what made the most profit (that is a huge distinction imho).
Recognition isn't as important as you make it sound. And most people will hardly start to work out of boredom. There's plenty of ways to spend your time that are not productive.
In addition, there are plenty of jobs literally nobody wants to do, and consequently, nobody would do under your proposed system.
With absence of money as the main 'power' it's your deeds that are the only thing left to define the extra exclusive things like apartments, experiences, etc.
And that is the thing, afaik all studies & experiments concluded that people start being productive regardless. It's not "out of boredom". Its just something to do. Sure, not everything benefits everyone, but imagine the impact of all the eg artist stuck flipping burgers. They would seem 'unproductive' just "laying about" until they produce a pice the whole world recognizes as something special (and not just because of the marketing budget).
Basically no one just stays still doing nothing, definitely not a significant margin. Same with animals, at the very least they will play.
Eg, could you imagine your life without long-term producing/making/planning something?
Yes, I absolutely could. Why not?
Not even thinking? Reading books? Talking to people?
None of these activities produce anything
Don't they? Imagine people thinking a bit more, having free time, etc - the effects on politics, local quality of living, and so on.
I would much rather live in a neighborhood of people reading books all day vs working in a factory all day.
Reading books doesn't build houses
Nope. Building houses builds houses.
My point exactly. I could quite easily imagine my life without ever building a house. And so could everyone else. So your argument doesn't really work.
I don't really see how you can speak for everyone.
What are you even trying to say here? Are you trying to make a point of any sort or just being obnoxious?
I think we both made our points and that we disagreed. No need to be obnoxious about it, you can just stop replying if you don't enjoy the convo.
But yes, if I didn't have to go to work to buy food, I would help build stuff, work on various interesting projects that would have me, etc. Absolutely no way I would stand still adding nothing to no one.
Its what universal basic income is proving, people are still productive, but how they went to be & what they like doing.
That's a bit different though. UBI means people can survive without working, but working will still drastically increase their quality of living.
And sure, you may still work if you had no benefit from it, but would you put in as much time as people do now? And how many other people would?
Yes, I would probably work even more, but only the things I wound enjoy, putting my time into things I expect the most (non-monetary) reward/experience/sense of pride/whatever floats my goat.
And the 'put in as much time part, I suppose it would vary very much, some would still be workoholics, some would would with an hour a day but be more productive bcs that's just how they do their best. An all of that is ok imho, in a post scarcity world where everyone can be housed & fed for a fraction of the total global prediction, the whole point is to work less ... The 'work' part in sense of must, with less options overall.
Im really saying, that I would like that ppl would be able to 'do' ("work") what they like, be productive in their way (or not at all). I'm one of those ppl happy to pay taxes, regardless of (or especially for) social transfers.
This perfectly describes capitalism. The workers are factually responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs. The workers build the positive and negative product, but the employer has sole ownership of the produced outputs and holds the liabilities for the used-up inputs. The workers produce the whole product but are denied the legal rights to it under capitalism
@microblogmemes
The difference is that in capitalism, you are compensated for your labour in a different way, with wages. That is sufficient motivation to be productive. It does not make a difference in that regard who owns the final product.
It matters who owns the final product. The owner is the party the legal system is holding responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs. There is a tenet that who the legal system holds responsible for a result should match who actually is factually responsible for the result. Capitalism systematically violates this principle. Property rights rest on people having the right to get the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Capitalism also fails there
Who says this principle exists and who says we need to adhere to it? I don't see what benefit that would bring.
An intuition pump for this tenet is the case where an employer and employee cooperate to commit a crime and get caught. Both the employer and employee are held legally responsible for the crime. The servant in work becomes a partner in crime. The employee can't argue that they sold their labor so whatever was done with their labor is not their responsibility. The law already applies this tenet. It just fails to apply it in the firm.
What do you mean by benefit?
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say, so let me rephrase the question. What exactly would have to change to adhere to this tenet, and why would that benefit society?
To adhere to this tenet, all firms would have to be structured as democratic worker coops. This would benefit society by making it more just. The basic idea of a miscarriage of justice is when someone else is held legally responsible for the deeds of another party such as when one party cooperates to commit a crime and another innocent party is held guilty of it. The employer-employee contract varies in degree, but it is also a miscarriage of justice.
What do you mean by benefit?
Have you heard of co-ops?