this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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Meanwhile I want us to work on things that are actually personally fulfilling, instead of earning imaginary money for rich assholes to abuse and hold us down with.
If we were working on what we wanted to do, we’d do it as much as we had energy for. That might be once a week, or it might be every waking hour for 6+ months.
The important bit is “days per week” would be 0+. This is what I want for everyone. It’s why I fully support a UBI, along with socialized healthcare and housing.
You want to spend your time doing nothing but raise your kids? Great, do that super well and don’t worry about the “lost” income. You want to make art? Awesome, do it! You want to engineer a bridge, teach, be a doctor or nurse, grow crops, etc? We need that too, and in addition to your base UBI money you get extra for doing a socially needed job. Good for you!
If I didn't have to work, I'd probably end up doing the same job I am now but for schools and local government, rather than for large companies. And I'd also be doing things like building and maintaining community gardens, or teaching anyone who wanted to learn what I know, because then there's more people to help me out and I can relax more.
Personally I’d love to help with community gardening initiatives… sort of.
I’m presently working on an indoor root crop system for urban dwellers, just as a hobby. I don’t actually want to profit off it, I want to develop it to help fix the world, but with the present system, I feel the absolute need to monetize it in some way, which is anathema to how I want to exist and it being low cost and accessible for low income households.
Capitalism hinders progress. It’s really sad and demoralizing.
I’m going to release it for free anyway when it’s done - when it’s a reproducible system and not just an interdependent idea - but it’s never going to benefit me, and that sucks because I’m poor lol
You could release the ideas and techniques but patent it to protect from commercial theft. then sell licensing and expertise while making it easy for lower income people to utilize what you make.
That’s something I’ve thought about, as well as making a companion cooking series (recipes to use what you grow sort of thing), or hands-on/ongoing troubleshooting..
I just barely have the energy to make and test the thing in the first place, after years of planning out how to optimize it and testing lesser variations (which means if I get the last iteration balanced, it will work for anyone with minimal input. I’m super irresponsible. I do have a few more responsible testers lined up, however. For reproducibility.) and I definitely don’t know where to go for help that won’t screw me over for a fee I can’t afford 😅
You can check out online legal services! They might be able to help you a bit more with the process without breaking the bank.
That’s a good idea, thanks :)
I love this community. Thank you all for not being cooperate assholea
This does sound pretty cool
If you like what you hear, you should look into, and support, politicians who support a UBI (universal basic income) in your region!
But bear in mind that a UBI alone isn’t enough; because capitalism encourages greed, we also (regardless where you live) need socialized housing so landlords don’t just eat the full entitlement, and socialized healthcare so people can keep themselves healthy to do the things they want without going bankrupt. Those are by far the biggest spends for most people, and if we could get that in check, a UBI is a great equalizer, and could pull millions of households out of the worst of poverty.
It’s good for disabled people, so they can be much more independent, it’s good for retired people, so they can retire without worry, it’s good for parents, so they don’t have to choose between supporting the family and actually raising the family, and it’s good for society as a whole because those “nonproductives” now have economy stimulation power by not being flat broke.
You don't want to collect trash off the streets? Well, looks like our city will look like shit forever. You don't want to work as a cashier? Well, looks like our supermarkets will remain closed.
Most jobs are not fulfilling and would never be done voluntarily (at a relevant scale).
That’s why they pay above the UBI.
The UBI (universal basic income) is intended to meet basic needs, it’s not intended to give a lavish life. If you want more than the basic, you need to work a bit for it.
What it would do for work is to make it optional and more flexible. If your employer isn’t paying you enough to be there, you don’t keep working there. You find a different job. You have the security to quit with nothing lined up. Because nobody has to be there to meet their basic needs, employers have to actively make you want to work there for your extra wants to be met.
That means maybe a store clerk gets a discount on goods in addition to their flexible hours per week.
But ultimately a shift to UBI plus socialized housing and socialized healthcare would lead to a shift in society such that we don’t have the bullshit jobs we do now, and a lot more people would probably be happy to do menial society supporting labor as part of a rotation. Idk, frankly I’ve met people, they don’t mind doing grunt work if it’s appreciated and valued.
If my bills were paid and I had to cashier or collect trash 2 days a week to keep society running (and for some extra spending, like for electronics or games or whatever) I would totally do so. It’s not my full time occupation, which makes it infinitely more desirable.
I can’t really capture an entire economic shift in one digestible comment, but a lot of stuff would necessarily change to accommodate this shift. It’s not a business as usual proposal, so you can’t really apply a business as usual mindset to it.
While I think UBI is a good direction for us to head towards as a society, I have a feeling megacorps would just skyjack the prices of pretty much everything to negate the benefits of UBI (look what happened during the pandemic). We would need some kind of legislated regulatory shift as well that would inhibit price gouging just for because there is more money floating through the economy.
You are probably correct in that racketeering would need to be reigned in, but I don’t really think it’s all that impactful over housing and medical.
We already have what you are using as a worst case, it’s just fully legal and uncontrolled. Rent and medical has been inflating for years for no reason. Because the proletariat can handle it (even though we can’t).
Its barely an inconvenience. And no job should be undesirable in a society that values the labor that it runs on.
yeah but realistically no one is ever going to be leaping for joy about cleaning toilets
Literally because they aren't treated with respect in our society, while actively keeping our society functional. Cashier's are Literally in the process of becoming obsolete in our Modern Society. Wake up! Ding dong! Ding Dong!
Fwiw, I’d love to see cashiering eliminated as a position. We have the tech for it already and honestly only keep humans doing it because we need to keep human labor up (capitalism and “reasons”).
There is no reason whatever to keep that position huminated (as opposed to automated), other than driving up employment. And maybe reducing loss through theft, but if there was less meaningless junk everywhere that would be less of an issue overall.. plus people wouldn’t be destitute and could pay for it..
Every time I read this I just hear loud licking sounds.
How about paying those people enough that they want to do those jobs?
What is "enough"?
In many countries, your basic needs are already fully met no matter which job you do.
E.g. in Germany working minimum wage full time gets you way more money than you need.
Minimum wage full time gets you about 2160€ before tax, which will be about 1650€ after tax (and healthcare etc.).
You can easily pay for your basic needs for less than half of that (even when living alone). The rest you can use to buy upgrades, like a new phone etc.
Minimum wage workers in Germany are already wealthy.
But of course, if you'd ask the average German minimum wage worker, they'd claim to be poor.
They claim to be poor because they can not afford modern luxury. They can not afford to pay for expensive brands, they can not afford to eat in expensive restaurants.
They can not afford to be lavish.
Now imagine if every person in Germany could afford twice as much (something that happens multiple times in a lifetime). Would they stop considering themselves poor? No, their entitlement would simply rise accordingly (as we've seen again and again throughout the thousands of years of history).
You can not pay people "enough". People do not care about their individual wealth. They only care about how wealthy they are compared to others.
The majority of people can never be wealthy, because people only consider themselves wealthy if they have someone (or rather many) to look down upon.
You're demanding an exact boundary while offering nothing in return but an avalanche of vague imprecise claims with no sources cited.
Speak for yourself and only yourself. You don't speak for me. You don't speak for the people I call friends. You only speak for a narrow "keeping up with the Joneses" sort of American asshole that is actually getting a bit rarer as boomers slowly die off and not enough young people echo that ideology to sustain it.
Save your "all human beings are exactly the same way, therefore capitalism good" naturalistic bullshit claims for
and for that matter save your bootlicking apologia for there, too.
Lastly, what are you arguing for? That it's cool and good to underpay people that do the most unpleasant (and in many cases, most important for society's ongoing functioning) tasks because of some biotruthy sophistry about how no amount of pay would be enough therefore underpaying them is good? Or extending your argument to its conclusion, if it's just "how much compared to everyone else" that matters, you are seriously arguing for everyone to get paid less if they aren't in some exclusive very special secret club of very special elite people (that you probably include yourself into)? Fuck that.
As cited above, the GDP per capita in Germany doubles every few years.
How many times more do you think it has to be doubled until you and your friends deem themselves wealthy.
They never will. Because you, too, define wealth as being able to look down on others (in your social environment).
A large part of the world's population would consider themselves extremely wealthy if they had even near the income of a German worker earning minimum wage.
On a global scale, German minimum wage workers are very, very wealthy.
The only reason you'd ever consider German minimum wage to be too little is if you're used to extreme excess, if you've lived in a hyper wealthy environment all your life.
You're so used to extreme wealth, that you deem slightly less extreme wealth to be poverty. You consider it to be poverty, because the people surrounding you are even wealthier. You consider it poverty, because you can not look down on them.
Oh, so you're one of those smug (ethno)nationaist chuds that think that people in the United States that are one missed paycheck from homelessness, or are already homeless and are in physical decline from exposure and preventable illness are actually spoiled because some numbers on a screen say that that homeless person is actually a recipient of extreme wealth due to location while completely ignoring cost of living expenses because it doesn't fit the numbers you want.
You're way too far up your own ass to argue with, and you probably have goosestepping lessons to keep up with for the big plans you and yours have for your glorious fatherland in the future.
What is your glorious German superiority proposal for those "not fulfilling" jobs, then? Slavery? The US prison system might excite and thrill you if you look into it.
The current system.
I don't have detailed knowledge of the US economy, which is why I keep using Germany as an example.
In Germany you are never one paycheck away from being homeless unless you're actively wasting money. As said before, 800€ is more than enough to live alone in an apartment. And you make more than double that (in the worst case).
You only have arrogant presumptions about rich the United States ostensibly is, while ignoring that a tiny percentage of the population actually benefits from those riches and the rest experience staggeringly higher cost of living, especially for things like medical care and housing.
Again, you've admitted your ignorance about the United States there, and the situation of hundreds of millions of people that live in it that are not functionally wealthy in a material way that they actually experience.
And once again, "the current system" is failing those people and no amount of being smugly content with a status quo that is unsustainably bad for people in the United States that scrub toilets, drive ambulances, or provide CNA services to hospital patients does those people any good.
I am indeed ignorant about the United States. This may surprise you, but I don't know about every economy around the world. I'm sure you don't either.
But I do know that a capitalist system can work well without UBI, as proven by the German system.
(Yes, I will keep using the German system as an example.)
As long as we haven't fully automated it, people will have to scrub toilets and pick fruits in any econonic system. What you wish for is for them to not be poor. Which they aren't (in Germany).
Are you claiming that people's actual wealth has not gone up in the past 50 years? That we don't eat better regulated food, that we don't own very advanced devices, that we don't eat food shipped from across the world?
Normal people's wealth does keep growing. That is a very obvious fact. You may claim that it doesn't grow fast enough, but it does grow.
No shit. And you were making vast and bold status quo warrior declarations upon a foundation of that ignorance.
It only surprises me that you came here and made those claims with that much ignorance to begin with. I made no such claims about Germany, but you certainly did about the United States, again, in support of your enthusiasm for the status quo.
And according to your smug status quo advocacy, those people getting any more pay or being treated with any more dignity is bad because... Germany is so glorious to you. Which somehow justifies the status quo worldwide.
It is far from evenly distributed and is steeply tilted by the staggering increase of wealth in the billionaire class.
If you bent down and talked to someone sleeping in the street (as the rate of homelessness now rises here), told them how their wealth has gone up, actually, with a probably smug look on your face, you shouldn't be surprised if you get spat on.
Can you please quote where I did that? Because I never made any global claim. I always referred either to "many countries" or "Germany", neither of which explicitly include the USA.
They can get paid more. But they're already dignified and already well paid (in Germany).
Where is "here"? Some country which didn't manage to implement capitalism successfully? I never claimed that calitalism does work everywhere, I claimed that can work everywhere.
Maybe US capitalism is shit. But it can work well without UBI (as proven by, you guessed it, Germany).
Smug status quo liberals like you phrase their bad faith questions like that all the time, but just in case you will surprise me, here.
You are obnoxiously ignorant of living situations outside of your own to the point that you prescribe maintaining the status quo to people you don't know that don't live anywhere near you do. You made the extraordinary claims, not me.
Again, your ignorance is showing, paired once again with your arrogance. It is not working for most other people and no amount of being smug about you getting yours changes that for most other people.
Further, what about the status quo makes you so happy about people being paid less than a sustainable living to scrub toilets and pick fruit? Why is that so necessary to you? Well, besides you having a disgustingly privileged point of view where people toiling for almost nothing is cool and good because GLORIOUS GERMANY.
I'm sorry, I don't see where I explicitly mentioned the USA in those quotes.
Was it "A large part of the world's population"? (Note that it doesn't say "the entire world's population".)
okay
sure
Again, I never claimed that capitalism is well implemented everywhere. I only claimed that
You're not, but you should be.
I assumed bad faith questioning and goalpost moving, and that's exactly what I got from you because your arguments have nothing to stand on. You wanted to narrow in on some pedantic Reddit-tier bullshit because your failure to understand that GDP has massive blindspots as an actual measure of how most people live in any given country.
Again, your arrogance and ignorance (by your own admission) about how other nations are going, all to justify unlivable wages for people doing essential but underpaid and underappreciated jobs, is quite frankly monstrous and you've provided nothing to justify that status quo but your own arrogance and your own ignorance.
You got yours. Congratulations. The status quo isn't supported well by smug arrogant people like you stanning for it with nothing to offer but statements of "I got mine." That's a good thing, because the status quo is shit and is failing far more people in the world right now than it is benefiting.
I'm not sure whether you believe to be arguing without moving goalposts. Do you want me to tell you about some goalposts you moved? (E.g. asking me to apply my statements regarding Germany to all countries, including the USA.)
Oh, the people in Germany (whom I was talking about all along) are living just fine.
Perhaps. Good thing I never claimed the status quo to be successful in all countries.
You're dodging the consequences of your own claims so quickly that all I see is a blur of denial.
You started from a position of arrogance and ignorance. You cited GDP as if billionaires and their ever larger share of the total GDP take don't matter and that poverty in other countries than your own simply can not exist in a way you understand because that shiny GDP number says otherwise.
You said that both increasing wages and any sort of UBI are wrong. You gave no real justification except "you got yours."
Arguing with you further is like wrestling a pig in shit.
Enjoy rolling in the shit and oinking in it. Win a last word game if you must, because there is nothing to your argument but "you got yours" and blatant ignorance about the rest of the world.
can you two just fuck already
Citation needed.
We voluntarily do plenty of distasteful tasks, even without any expectation of a non-economic reward. Lemmy moderation is a salient example.
I've got other gripes about UBI, and especially about pinning the hopes of a "purely voluntary (but with asterisks)" workforce onto it... but there really is no telling how we would behave if we tried this experiment.
For every study suggesting that Hardin's "tragedy of the commons" is actually a legit thing (even though Hardin was later exposed as an academic fraud who fabricated his theory because of his white supremacist, eugenicist political agenda), there is another study suggesting that we're actually historically really, really good at managing commons and that perhaps capitalist framing only gets in the way of the cooperation that we're predisposed toward.
There's even one that came to mind specifically about sanitation workers: https://youtu.be/fe-SZ_FPZew?t=2403
There's also not any evidence that we settled into our modern capitalist model due to any sort of societal optimization. All of the theoretical reasons why an economic abstraction may be an advantage over a social gift economy don't really hold up when you look at historical or contemporaneous accounts of actual gift economies. It seems like the only reason we ended up with this model is because it was advantageous for several waves of wealthy rulers who needed ways to translate their violence-based power into legal power or else lose it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/fe-SZ_FPZew?t=2403
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.