Submitted 3 months ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/d8028075-f417-48f4-a869-090a8c0d99aa.jpeg
You should tell this to subsistence farmers living in Sub-saharan Africa that farm nearly every calorie they consume. It’s a negotiation between them, the earth, and the uncaring sky. Same as its been for millennia. No rich people necessarily involved.
Are they free because no rich people are involved?
We live in an economically connected world. An argument can be made that they’re forced to subsistence farm in a backbreaking and cruel way due to the natural resources of their country extracted by oligarchs that don’t even live in Africa.
Wherever poverty exists, rich people are involved by their sheer unwillness to share enough to meet everyone’s basic needs.
That really isn’t the case for large parts of rural Sub-Sahan Africa. For literally millions of people, they are growing crops basically about the same as their ancestors, in the same area. Maybe now they have mobile phones. It was ALWAYS hard labor.
Is everyone in this thread rich American college kids or something? Why do you all think the natural state of the world is Utopian paradise where leopards and impallas are best friends?
I thought bill gates cured poverty in Africa because he’s such a nice guy.
Is every person in those communities required to work, or does the community take care of those that are unable to contribute due to health conditions/old age?
Everyone works, it’s just a matter of on what.
In the community where I lived, usually the guys did the farming, which was back-breaking work, leaning over hoeing land manually. Men would also raise livestock, be tailors, teachers, traders, barbers, and a few other jobs. Don’t get too wound up over “traders” - a guy would borrow money to walk to a large town and buy things he would sell to neighbors out of his home. He would do this until so many people said they would pay him back for the things from the “store” that he didn’t have any money to buy things in town anymore, so the town would be without things like salt or kerosene for lanterns for a couple weeks, and then people would get fed up, and one new guy would start the cycle over again.
Women pounded the millet and sorghum into flour to make food, did gardening, made every meal, raised the kids, pulled water from the well, and some other micro-level cottage industry-ish type things.
But people worked every day. Old people worked every day. Unless you got malaria or had a severe injury, every day was work until you died, and even then you tried to do something because there was always so much work to do.
I can imagine by some stretch you can still blame the rich, maybe without the rich people they’d have more access to better farmland, cheap water, etc.
If you want to simplify the thought experiment, imagine being the only person in existence. You would still need to struggle just to meet the basic needs of survival, but you would definitely not be oppressed.
Lol, so desperate to be the victim of an imaginary rich person that you don’t even understand that it universally takes work to do things like eat food.
How do you think people got food 10,000 years ago? Or 30,000?
Do you think being a hunter-gatherer society is a vacation? Who were the rich people before money was invented that apparently caused things like drought?
Rich people are very likely at fault, too, given that shitty countries are handy for cheap labour and materials, like coltan…
Explain how that works with a village of 350 people 4k from a paved road, where no one can or does work outside of the village doing farming work.
The lack of rich people doesn’t imply freedom - people who are forced to hunt, gather, fish or farm for subsistence only with no reward beyond that are enslaved to the need to produce food and find shelter, but that differs from a society where there’s sufficient food and shelter, it’s just hoarded by those who have too much
Additionally the presence of rich people doesn’t imply a lack of freedom - you could have a “safety net” system where everyone is guaranteed housing and enough grains and beans/similar to survive, and if they want more they can work for it (some of the taxes from this go towards compensating farmers and builders), giving people the freedom to not have to worry about survival, while also allowing for people to earn lots of money and buy nice things if they want and/or can
Not only that, but as time goes on, we become more productive and generate more profits, only to see the age of retirement increased
Age of retirement goes up, working hours stay the same(or sometimes even get worse), wages go down(compared to inflation), and we still only have two measly weekend days. And the real kicker is that we know for a fact that we’d actually be even more productive if we soent less time at work.
It’s all horseshit.
This productivity increase has been happening since the start of humanity.
It’s kind of accumulative effect given the gains from technology we have
It makes sense that people will be able to work then more years, as your qol is also increasing as well
We’re more productive than ever and there’s more of us than ever and your conclusion to that information is that of course we should also be working more than ever?
You don’t question that if there’s more of us and we’re all more productive, then we should be doing less work? Because if we were able to meet our needs before then it should be even easier to meet our needs now as we’re more productive per person than before and we also have even more people capable of doing the work.
What you’re saying makes sense only if you put the production of goods above the wellbeing of the people producing the goods. So ask yourself, what’s the purpose of producing goods? If it’s not for us then who is it for?
Is there anyone who genuinely believes that working for basic needs is freedom?
I imagine the people who actually think about how they are working just for basic needs are mostly a different group of people than those yelling about freedom.
I don’t know how many conservatives wake up in the morning with the feeling that everything they do is just to make some rich guy richer until they eventually die. Because why would they be a conservative at that point?
From my experience they believe that it’s an executive’s right to do shitty things for money if the law allows for it. They also believe that it’s some other person(who generally has it much worse and can’t easily fight back) who is making their lives hard for them.
A charicature(though not by much) to make my point clear would be: “it’s the immigrants’ fault that my boss needs to deny my raise and dodge their taxes again! It’s regulation’s fault that I can’t afford anything, not my shit wage combined with landlords and real-estate speculators working tirelessly to fuck everyone over! I’d get to work faster if they took out that bike lane! The woke mind virus is why I can’t find a “female”, not my shitty personality that they’re finally able to have the freedom and unity to not put up with anymore!”
I don’t think anyone does. When people talk about freedom, they talk about being able to travel, do whatever they want in their spare time, say whatever they believe, buy a gun and a hummer, go BASE jumping.
That kinda stuff.
You know, if you lived self-sufficient you’d still have to work for meeting basic needs. Even in pretty much any form of socialism you are expected to work. So yeah, I don’t know what you think you are saying, but I think you are saying a whole lot of nothing here
The problem isnt the work, the problem is you dont get most of the reward for it. It all sits in some nepo baby ceos bank account, probably overseas so they never pay taxes on it either. Every company does this, and competing with them is a risk with a 98% casaulty rate
Which is funny and sad because keeping the fruits of your labor instead of contributing to some collective is the argument for capitalism and against socialism in standard American politics.
Obviously work has to be done, but if the 1% wasn’t hoarding all the value we’re creating, we’d be able to work less AND be better off. How is it that in an era of technology and automation, we still have to work 40 hour weeks if not more, yet a large percentage of the population can barely afford the basics? Some will always be wealthier than others of course, but no person needs billions of dollars, especially not while others are starving.
It’s pretty clear to me that the original theme was that capitalism can and will ignore your basic needs. In the US capitalism is the way our economy works and the way people provide for their basic needs. Yet, at the same time, we claim to represent freedom. The original point, I think, is the juxtaposition of freedom and capitalism. We have the illusion of freedom. Our true freedom is really just a choice to participate in the machine, to be a criminal, or to die.
You can’t complain about freedom and then participate in a platform like Lemmy, full people who claim to advocate for freedom of speech and information, who actively demand for information shared on social networks to be controlled, networks to be shutdown and people to be censored based on unknown and ambiguous criteria, without even understanding the implications of it.
The problem isn’t that people have to do work. The problem is that we live in an economic system where the increase in profit created by technological advances is seized by business owners to make themselves richer, at the expense of the workers who they employ. This allows some to become billionnaires while others have to work multiple jobs or become homeless.
The goal isn’t to be self-sufficient – the goal is to continue to work with others, while abolishing the class of people who would happily seize profit created by your own labour to make themselves an easy buck.
I do wonder what the alternative is… Would that be growing/hunting your own food and making your own clothes and building your own shelter? I don’t know about anyone else, but I would not live long in that scenario.
The context is that there is enough wealth in most western countries that not everyone must work to survive. Working should be for having access to more things that just surviving, and not everyone should be required to work all the time just to survive.
Basic needs are basic, like food, shelter, and healthcare. If everyone had access to those basic things they would be free even if they need to work to attain more.
Someone still has to work for those things to be produced.
Surely there isn’t an economic system in which people don’t work for a top 1%, but for everyone, you could say a communal economic system…
I mean, that experiment has been run and it is wildly difficult to manage (humans are quite wily!).
The alternative is all the wealth and resources hoarded by top 1% are shared among people so that everyone has access to basic stuff like food, shelter and healthcare regardless of whether they’re able to work.
Which isn’t to say this would be easy to achieve, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Taxing people appropriately is obviously the right way to go. But it actually doesn’t change the dynamic identified in the meme substantially. Rich people still hoard resources (albeit less after taxes). And basic needs are only met if enough people keep working to pay taxes or enrich their employees who pay taxes.
It’s called democratic socialism.
This ain’t a shitpost, but it is a realpost
Yeah, I was confounded as to what about this was a shitpost.
A society must consist of individuals willing to perform labor- that much I know. I also know the current system isn’t working
Yeah the deal is, you do a sensible and helpful amount of work, and get taken care of in return, like (almost) everybody else.
If you work long hours, it’s because it’s thrilling and you choose to, even when money isn’t involved.
I thought lemmy already surpassed this “stage”
This isnt a shitpost
I agree, this is simply stating fact.
You’re free to use your enormous wealth to secure a comfortable life for yourself and your ilk, just like they are.
That’s the logic. Law of the jungle. The strongest survive. And that’s why freedom absolutists are either moronic or evil.
So why are u guys so against communism?
This problem was solved in ussr.
Ah yes, the USSR, a state which considered homosexuality to be a mental disorder and a sign of fascism, and then subsequently criminalized it, arrested queer people, and sentenced them to years in labour camps.
People oppose communism because we don’t trust authoritarians to make good decisions, and when they inevitably make bad decisions, the effects are disastrous and widespread due to how centralized the system is.
It’s unrelated to Ussr.
Many countries criminalized it and still do including US until very very recent times
A nation that, for most of its existence, did not successfully produce toilet paper.
I always had toilet paper growing up in ussr.
Not sure where u got that from.
But what it did have - you could walk everywhere - any lake, any shore any seafront is public. Medical system for everyone. Housing for everyone.
Yes - light industry had issues.
Is there some correlation between communism and toilet paper?
Communism is just a different sort of fucked up. It’s just as bad for people in its own way.
Lol no
It’s way more complicated than that. Say hypothetically, we have an abundance of milk which we don’t but assume we do, so everyone can have as much milk as they wanted, and no body needs to pay for it. First of all, the entire supply chain of milk production, packaging, & distribution must still exist & function efficiently, & maintain quality standards, much like it does in the current developed world. People will still need to work, farmers must still milk the cows, factories must still produce and package, goods must still be transported to and shelved on retail outlets for customers to access it. Someone still needs to clean the retail floor, and someone still needs to engage with the customers, and you need a way to reasonably compensate everyone involved. Second of all, what about milk derivatives that are not abundant, like cheese or butter or your favorite Greek yogurt? They are not in abundance, so you’re back to a scarcity economy and you need to figure out how to reasonably distribute them based on need.
Basic needs and the infrastructure required should be covered by taxes. “Luxury” items like greek yogurt can be capitalized.
FuckYouDontTakeMyGreekYoghurt!!
Modern Slavery
Even worse, many people sincerely believe “low-skill” labor to be valued at less than the cost of a decent livelihood.
Banana@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Literally a modern serfdom
Benjaben@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Can’t forget the terrible consequences of failing to meet “quota” (make enough to pay the bills).
But thanks for pointing this out, it really is similar, just with enough layers of abstraction to make the structure hard to see.
Shardikprime@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Almost all white collar work is now and has been for a long time goal based. There are people who, since they started working in modern times, don’t even know what a quota is
And with automation, more and more will become as such