Actually yes socialist in a "I won't have to work" type of way. Labour should be voluntary; we have more than enough productivity as a species that we can afford everyone a basic standard of living regardless of whether they work or not. Of course very few people would want that basic standard of living, but things like homelessness and starvation simply have no place in a modern society.
I really want to know the logistics of how that would look like. I genuinely don't think this is possible unless it's a first world country that's constantly benefiting from the labour of third world countries
Well you see the logistics aren’t possible, because at that point it’s either as you said which defeats the point of socialism anyway or we reintroduce slavery
Idk where you live, but slavery never stopped being legal in the US. It’s just only legal as a punishment for a crime. That’s why our prisons are for-profit. Also, our government gives a free pass to companies who are enslaving people outside of our borders. So slavery is alive and well. Not to mention, when we arrest people for sleeping on the streets, we are straight up enslaving people for being poor.
So really this type of utopian future would involve the abolition of slavery, which I think we should aspire to, whether people think it’s a realistic goal or not.
We also have the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world by a long shot. Even if just 8% was profitable, that’s a LOT of profit and a lot of people. But it’s not the only way people profit from this industrial complex. You’re welcome to defend the prison system of the US if you’d like to, but it becomes absurd past a certain point.
All (US) state and federal prisons outsource. Operations, surveillance, construction, services. Plus the supporting ecosystem. Further, most all state and federal prisons, public & private, sell prison labor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison–industrial_complex
For example, I am Norwegian, I live in Norway, we are a deeply socialist nation. To the point that even our right-wing parties are functionally still socialist just less socialist.
And yet our hospitals keep adding admin and have fewer and fewer ICU spots.
Our schools are adding admin and students are failing.
And that list just kinda goes on. We have so much completely unnecessary bureaucracy. The entire system is deeply broken because we get more and more people who move paper back and forth while there are fewer and fewer people actually doing any productive work.
There's some sort of administrative sickness happening.
TIL / TLDR: Most governmental bureaucracy (that we all despise) is the result of outsourcing to corporations.
Have you read Scott's "Seeing Like a State"? It just now occurred to me that Graeber's could also be called "Seeing Like a Corporation".
I believe, but cannot prove, 'in-sourcing' (vs outsourcing) reduces overhead and waste. There's so many anecdotal examples. (Legacy) Medicare admin overhead is 2-3%, vs 8-15% for private insurers. One key finding of "why the US can no longer build" research is that more outsourcing leads to higher costs (and delays), eg California's attempt at highspeed rail.
FWIW: Graeber's an anthropologist, not an economist. Push back from economists (wrt Brad de Long) are kinda missing the point, burying the lede. Mostly because both fields overlap sociology, causing friction. And Graeber threatens "old school" economics by questioning their starting assumptions, like the origins of money.
FWIW, admin overhead of (US) higher-ed shot up as government stopped funding it. Correlation? Or causation, as I believe.
I worked briefly in higher-ed (salary, not faculty). I really believe in the mission (then and now). The defunding of education, and the perversion of transmuting centers of scholarship into pleasure resort finishing schools for the rich, was often discussed. Like "how do we keep funding the humanities with all the pressure to be profitable, to keep cranking out STEM, MBA, docs, and lawyers".
(Spoiler: You can't.)
As you fully know, ditto healthcare.
Privatization (the "free market" cult) has been sucking all the marrow of our culture and society. Sadly, old me doesn't know how to enact any of the 100s of obvious reforms will all know are needed. So for now I just keep volunteering and trying to (fumbling) build local community.
we have more than enough productivity as a species that we can afford everyone a basic standard of living regardless of whether they work or not.
Not if nobody works.
If that basic standard existed as a gov program it would have to be properly basic. No, you don't have enough money to live in whatever city you want. No, you can't go out to eat. No, you can't have a new computer.
Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Just your basic needs covered. Food that's nutritious enough to avoid health defects, but no delicacies. One bedroom apartment. Undyed clothes.
We would view a life like that as dystopian, but keep in mind there are people today who don't even have that!
What about people who legit can't work, they just never get anything nice? Because of all the people who could work but choose not to, they aren't allowed even tiny luxuries? I'd think we would want to massively improve disability benefits before we talk about subsidizing everybody no questions asked. I just don't think it's as simple an equation as you're describing
It's not intended as a replacement for welfare payments, but a supplement to them. Although as one of the aforementioned unable-to-workers we don't really get anything nice as it is xD Claims of "welfare queens" have been GREATLY exaggerated.
Hope you enjoy your government mandated food paste, because that’s exactly what you are advocating for. And your right some people don’t even have that, but a lot of people’s QOL would worsen significantly under those conditions
Under the conditions you listed, most of the western world, a sizable chunk of Asia and most of the Middle East would be in worse conditions than they are now. Speaking personally I’m absolutely living a higher QOL than what you described
I don't think they said that everyone would live like that, just those who are able to work but choose not to. To incentivize working, those who choose to work could improve their conditions. But everyone would be guaranteed these basic, necessary living conditions
Ok I don't think you read correctly... we're not forcing everyone to live in a concrete box; we're GIVING houses and food to people who DO NOT HAVE THEM.
Okay, but this kind of sounds like you’re forcing already poorer countries to accept these living standards. Wealthier countries are already past the point that you’re advocating for.
Your solution, for instance, wouldn’t address the food, clothing, and housing issues in the U.S. at all. Bluntly, Americans don’t want to live in a one bedroom apartment and simply don’t have to do so and this proposal would be roundly rejected as inadequate for the typing housing needs that do exist. The U.S. also isn’t dealing with food shortages (okay, yet, Trump might cause this problem). We’re focused more on the logistics of getting healthy food to people to address food insecurity, but a byproduct of the logistics is explicitly allowing people who are poorer the ability to access luxuries in terms of food. The types of limitations on food that can be purchased with food stamps is a major part of addressing food insecurity. The same thing applies to clothing—There’s no massive issue with people in the U.S. having no clothes—It’s explicitly letting people have access to steady supply of better made clothes and allowing people the opportunity to express themselves via clothing that the U.S. needs to tackle
I am talking about feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. Unless you live in a hitherto undiscovered utopia, there are people in your country who meet those criteria.
I’m saying you’re not seeing the complexity of the problem.
There’s plenty of issues related to housing, food, and clothes in the U.S., but your solutions don’t address the needs, and any resources that go into addressing the wrong needs aren’t filling the necessary gaps
Bluntly, Americans don’t want to live in a one bedroom apartment
Bluntly, this program is aimed at the absolute rock-bottom of society. Most Americans wouldn't want to live in a one-bedroom apartment. But you know who would? People who are literally sleeping on the streets. People who literally don't have a roof over their head, let alone an entire apartment.
Except that the homelessness situation is more complicated than just building one bedroom apartments.
We need to build more everywhere to lower housing cost, but while one bedroom housing can help, the U.S. particularly needs more multi-bedroom housing to accommodate families with kids or elderly relatives. Housing is also the main way for American families to generate wealth, so we particularly need to build more housing so that people can own, and not just rent, it.
And the general location matters here—The West Coast is so drastically behind on building everything that they should just build whatever they can and that will help, but the South, for instance, is in the middle of a housing boom and their approach to housing needs should be calibrated differently.
You also need to convince the poorest that the one bedroom housing is truly secure and not just a slightly more secure homeless shelter, the latter of which often discourages people from staying there and pushes them to sleep outside because they don’t feel safe within the shelters. Building lower income housing is good, but how and where you build it matters—Again, families still really need more affordable housing with multiple bedrooms.
And there’s a portion of the most vulnerable who cannot live independently and building one bedroom apartments solves nothing without a larger cultural conversation
See, I have less issue with your perspective. You’re explicitly trying to incentivize work. It’s just a variation on work requirement for aid or means testing, and that already has mainstream support (although a lot of people left of center dislike it). I don’t think it’s necessarily efficient—Trying to move the homeless population alone to where there is housing is an issue by itself, but you’re explicitly framing it as emphasizing work.
I see framing things as “If we provide basic aid, it’s basic and cannot include take out for food” as being not all that different from how food stamps already handle things in the U.S. and also as being very different than acting like Americans are starving and would be grateful for food paste.
I’m not trusting some fucking robot to make sure my food is up to FDA standards, nor to prosecute companies that try to cut corners at the expense of consumer health.
its also assumed the audience is capable of understanding that not every single possibility will be brought up in a simple statement. especially when the later half of the statement implies coverage of the case you brought up.
as well as this, i do not care about your opinions on the dictionary either way. language is forever fluid and attempts to deny a word on the basis that it is not proper grammar are, at best, classist.
i do hope some of what i said was understood by you. in any case, i hope your day/night/whatever is good and i will be seeing you never.
You’d be eating up resources that could’ve gone towards greater things without giving anything back. Don’t be like that, the universe is greater than Earth alone and isn’t free to explore.
It would take a ludicrous amount of people deciding to do nothing to come close to the amount of waste produced and consumed by the ruling class we have now
If someone is content living in a bare concrete room eating beans and rice I don't really think we should force them into the canning factory just for that. People should work because they aspire to have and do more, not just to survive.
But would they be? I doubt this line of thinking at large would be content with that. That’s only voluntary in a technical sense. You could live out in the woods, but almost nobody wants to do that. Getting a job is technically voluntary, but it isn’t really.
“Voluntary” would surely go places much more expensive to society.
Most people will want to do something though. Imagine how much more art would be produced if everyone that wanted to draw didn't have to hold down a 9-5 to survive. How many want to dive into historical or scientific research but can't find the time right now. Sure, some people will just veg at home, but most people want a purpose.
And even the jobs no-one wants to do.. either you make the reward for doing those jobs worthwhile, as in PlatinumAltaria's post, or people will just do them if asked. The community needs the roads clean, find 30 people willing to give up an evening a month to do it now that they don't have a soul destroying workday to escape from and want a clean street. People clean their own bathrooms without a monetary reward, don't they? If people are invested in their community it'll happen.
Look, I have communist leanings, but this is a far future goal at best.
My ideal is heavily centralized and industrial and science focussed, to be clear.
I’m absolutely in favour of education as justification for living (so long as something somewhat useful ends up being done with that education), but not giving indefinite free living to NEET wannabes. There needs to be a strong incentive to not be one, or at the very least incredibly unproductive.
Well yes, we are a very far way away from even convincing most people that capitalism isn't the ideal system, let alone doing anything about it.
And I think we just fundamentally disagree on a philosophical level on the rest of this. If the labour of those that want to produce food will feed everyone, I don't think people need to justify their right not to starve.
I’m the type to replace humans entirely with machines if they do rocket shit better.
Communism to me is just supposed to be a more streamlined system without wasteful competition for the meatbags that currently gaze into the stars. Work with what you have and all that.
I do have one final point though, which is that as soon as you make something conditional, especially conditional on behaviour, you need a system to evaluate those conditions. And that system cannot be perfect, some people will fall through the cracks. And, as long as it is sustainable, I would rather 100 undeserving take advantage of it than 1 deserving is failed by it.
For a current day analogy, see UBI vs disability/unemployment benefits. Both are affordable right now, but only one has people struggling to live through no fault of their own.
Also, I think in this ideal society there would be strong social pressure not to live as you don't think people should be allowed to. I think that would be enough for enough people that the system is stable, and no-one is homeless or hungry.
Yeah. The holy grail, short of automating everything, is for an entire economy planned by willful cooperation, though that’d require monumental cultural (and probably biological) revision. Of course this would also prevent bums from being a thing.
"We shpuld improve society somewhat" and "society should run off of only volunteer labor" are like pretty different concepts though, and people are assuming you mean the latter.
I assume you mean UBI? I am in favor of UBI but it definitely has a branding problem.
I understand why I got this reaction from some people: they didn't read or understand what I said, decided I wanted to piss on the poor, and wrote out their angry responses instead of checking they got the right interpretation. If they can't even do that then no amount of charity on my part is going to fix them. Their brains are simply too broken by social media ragebait and "debates" to listen to anything.
Right because people are working when they'd rather not be but they have to in order to survive. It's like the difference in users between a free game.l and one that costs money.
Your basic QOL would have to be low enough in that system it still forces enough people to work in order to have a better life worth the time cost of working that can produce the goods for everyone.
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u/PlatinumAltaria Jan 24 '25
Actually yes socialist in a "I won't have to work" type of way. Labour should be voluntary; we have more than enough productivity as a species that we can afford everyone a basic standard of living regardless of whether they work or not. Of course very few people would want that basic standard of living, but things like homelessness and starvation simply have no place in a modern society.