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Capitalism cant provide
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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Late Stage Capitalism
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Serious question, how can we provide everyone's basic needs without some work? Food doesn't harvest itself. Tools don't maintain themselves.
Labor will always be required on some level though it does not need to be exploited.
The premise is that without coercion people won't work. Which is just not true, people will do the work they want to do. It's just that the work people want to do isn't necessarily the work capitalists want them to do. Which means less exploitation and profit for the capitalists.
Yeah the work people "want to do" and the work that needs to get done do not align IRL. Not enough people want to deal with waste systems or sanitation yet those are critical to any society.
This isn't Star Trek. We don't live in a magical future where all the dangerous yet necessary work is automated.
They'll want to clean the sewer when the sewer needs cleaning, the same way that you "want" to vacuum your home even if you don't want to do it.
That requires a ton of people who know how to maintain sewage systems from experience. You aren’t getting that from volunteers and you’ll need these people in every community.
You missing the point. People will do work when it is required whether or not they desire to do work. It doesn't require a magic job creator to get work done.
YOU are missing the point. At no time have I cited the need for capitalist ownership of this system but rather an need for unequal and naturally higher payment for those that do these jobs. They cannot be volunteer positions as they require experienced people.
Do you have any idea how these systems function IRL?
Yea, I can fix a shitter if I have to.
That is irrelevant to understanding sewage systems. Your skill set isn’t fixing water-main problems around electrical equipment for example.
Anarchism is a field dream for artists who couldn’t understand civil engineering.
But I get 100% of the benefit of vacuuming my home; there's no free rider problem.
Tell that to your kids.
The people that want waste systems do
No one has "shit purger" as their favorite way of passing their time. That doesn't mean that no one would pick the job and leave themselves and everyone else waddling in two inches of it
there are absolutely people who really like maintaining waste systems
You don’t need volunteers to maintan sewer systems. you need trained experts. You aren't getting this from volunteers.
I know all labor is skilled labor. That doesn't contradict what I've described
No it isn’t. Skilled labor has a real definition and it is useful. Unskilled labor doesn’t mean you have no skills it just means you don’t have a proven specific set of skills that your job title implies. For example you know a mason can build a brick wall whereas a contractor might be able to do the same but you wouldn’t know that from the job title.
The emotional response people have to skilled labor vs unskilled is always weird to me. It’s as if none of you read the definition and thought about it for a second.
These are often highly paid, highly desirable, union jobs. Many have missed OP's point that the coercive slavery that exists in our society is that the threat of starvation/homelessness means less power for individual labour vs employers or vs competing with employers. There is some $ offer that will get me to unclog your toilet.
ITT a bunch of unwitting capitulants who seem to think they wouldn't flip burgers for $300k/yr
It's so hard to get people out of that mindset, man...
I’d flip burgers for a living if it paid for that. This is about critical jobs that they propose shouldn pay
They are posing anticapitalist solutions so better pay wasn’t an option.
UBI removes the slavery. If you, or strawman, insists on a labour supremacist society, rather than a shortage of willing linemen, there might be a shortage of employers investing in a working power distribution system. There are many policies in between our current supremacist slavery that eliminate the structural slavery.
“ It can be done in turn, for instance; or volunteers can be rewarded with non-necessity items.”
this is the part of 5Too’s post Im replying to. There’s no strawman here. You just seem to not get that people won’t justdo the work of a lineman without an added benefit given how much more dangerous working with power lines can be.
I'm not speaking for anyone else, just solving OP's truth with UBI/Freedom dividends as the solution. Free and fair markets are not evil. Complex systems to have random people enslaved to be linemen for a day seem categorically unworkable. A system that ensures enough linemen willing to receive great pay to be linemen is workable.
UBI/Freedom dividends means minarchism power redistribution. People need to be well below idiocracy intelligence to not prefer higher dividend to demonic warmongering budget. I disapprove of ultra centralized allocations, if only that any socialist, or other idealist, win to implement it, in an Israel first fascist media environment, leads to right wing fascist takeover of the centralization. US corrupt political/media system requires disempowerment. UBI/Freedom dividend only election platform is only possibility of ending the corruption. It's much more important than voting itself.
Again if we are paying them better that won't work for theor "solution". Paying them better makes sense given the risks.
You're conflating work that needs to get done with work capitalists want done.
Yes, someone needs to deal with sanitation. But we don't need a capitalist to own the sanitation system to address this. It can be done in turn, for instance; or volunteers can be rewarded with non-necessity items.
No, Im not. Do you think we can get enough volunteers who have the right skills to address sanitation issues?
In most places no one owns the sewage system other than the state.
There is a lot of work that no one would willingly do that is critical and requires a lot if hands on experience. The problem leftist ideologies face IRL is that so many require people who would choose to do extremely dangerous jobs with no realistic plan for how to account fir this.
Yes. Those jobs would provide more luxury lifestyle outside of the basic needs already. Keep rasing the pay until someone takes the job.
Also the issue is that we think we're too good to do those jobs, but we're not above lowering everyone's standards of living to the point that people have to jump in shit to survive? We can get people to take those jobs, but do we also need to stop judging people based on their career path. That'll go a long way to fixing our nation.
If you are talking about higher pay you are talking about a different system than the one proposed. Their system has no economic inequality so no higher pay.
Even in a post scarcity world those who provide more for to society do receive greater accommodations. Captains and officers get larger rooms and houses. But until that reality is possible those who provide more for society should receive greater financial support. Not CEOs.
The point being raised is that the current wage system is oriented around profit alone. Systems designed to meet the needs of the people as the prime order for society would still pay for labor, at least initially, but wouldn't threaten people into doing so via starvation.
And if we maintained a wage based system with some degree of inequality that comes with it I would expect people to do these jobs. The moment there is no personal benefit I doubt you will ever find people doing the dangerous critical work.
Not a single socialist system has ever had equal pay across the board. I'm not sure what strawman you're trying to fight here.
They aren’t posing a socialist one. They are posing a communist or anarchist society which does not pay.
edit: whoops forgot who I was replying to and what you initially replied to. You are correct Cowbee in that this wouldnt be a problem under socialism. Others, not you, have proposed a purely volunteer system and that’s impossible.
Communism is a post-socialist society. When others speak of moving beyond wage labor, it's a process that requires many steps and twisting roads, not just something we do outright. At least, that's the Marxist viewpoint, and I'll let anarchists speak for themselves.
Communist society that has sufficiently advanced and collectivized production will still require labor, but said labor will largely be either enjoyable or easy, and will be constantly automated even further, as the goal is to meet the needs of as many people as possible with as little labor as possible, as opposed to creating the most profits regardless of labor.
And the idea that this will magically be automated, pleasurable or volunteer based is why I believe many leftists have no real understanding of the work that needs to be done or how incredibly dangerous some of that is. Fir example It’s a fantasy to presume people will engage in underwater welding just because we need it.
It's also a fantasy to presume jobs like underwater welding cannot and will not be automated, or that it can't be compensated for by requiring fewer hours worked or other means than wage labor.
No, it isn't fantasy to think that. There's no reason to believe it can be automated.
Would you do life risking work for zero benefit?
There's every reason to believe it can be automated. Welding itself is already highly automated, and underwater welding is highly dangerous, it's natural for science to continue advancing technology in useful ways.
Additionally, nobody said no benefit. You read "moving beyond wage labor" and assume everything is purely volunteer work, which isn't what people are suggesting.
It is what everyone else has suggested who has actually understood the question (lots of people have suggested better pay).
Not quite. When people say that work becomes more enjoyable and that people wouldn't be as opposed to working without wages, that doesn't mean they don't materially benefit from harder or more dangerous labor. You're assuming wages are the only form of compensation and that any alternative is free from material benefits.
I had breakfast this morning, and my fridge is full for the week. That doesn't mean I will refuse all wage offers for my time. If there is no slavery, then workers will get 5 recruiter calls per day begging them to take their clients' money.
This right here! When people's basic needs are met, they'll work for luxury needs. The DS9 baseball card episode comes to mind.
Ok now how do critical systems work that are not pleasant or dangerous to maintain and require skilled workers? Do we hope every community has people capable of being linemen or engaging in underwater welding?
How much IRL practical thought have you really put into this notion because it seems unlikely to work out at all.
You need linemen? Call enough people to train them with promised starting salary when they complete training. Or pay them some salary during training. Or increase the promised starting salary. Enough people will say yes if you keep improving offer.
Your examples are already "good jobs" relative to say roofing (statistically most dangerous occupation).
If we are talking about payment then we aren’t talking about the situation proposed.