Pay a surgeon and a hospital janitor the same and you will soon have very high quality medical care 
I’m shocked by the lack of proper thought and consideration of the full consequences of a system resembling one I’ve roughly outlined.
Has nobody here noticed that as things are, work is simply a means to an end: money?
Doesn’t matter what you do, you just need “a job”. Then you will get money, then you can go on living having accidentally helped the economy along.
Work has been completely dissociated with what it’s actually for, because Capitalism can only work through accelerated transactions of money (growth) - money is its essence. It can never reconcile work with what it’s actually for, it can only alienate the worker from his work.
Obviously the way things are is so bred into people by now that it’s hard to imagine otherwise.
But think about it, seriously:
can a system exist where only the work necessary to keep society going and growing is performed? Yes, it can.
Remember, all the superfluous jobs have been eliminated - jobs for money’s sake no longer exist, only the necessary jobs need doing.
And they are NOT, I repeat NOT done for free.
Can anybody here comprehend the amount of labour that is saved from doing this?
Can anybody here comprehend how few people we need to run everything to the standard it already is at, with the technology we have today? I’m not talking just a few hundred obviously, but relative to the total population the percentage is tiny - much much less than the employment percentage we have today.
It is plain to see that some necessary jobs are less pleasant than others.
But the point is that so many people are freed up, the involvement in them is minimal.
AND, they are performed voluntarily because they need doing - of course people who would be affected by the jobs not being done would volunteer to help out - their time is hugely freed up without the Capitalist necessity to simply have jobs for the sake of money.
The possibility of reward for such things is NOT ruled out in the slightest. It doesn’t have to go through the medium of money - money BUYS rewards, it is not THE reward. This is to be an open, transparent democracy, remember - anything can be suggested and tried out. Every management figure is highly monitored and subject to recall at any time if somebody else would do the job better, so they must react to suggestions. Yet the penalty for being recalled is not bankruptcy or poverty of any kind that threatens everyone today if they lose their job or have to quit.
It must be realised that all of this is absolutely viable.
It is only the assumption that the above is unrealistic in a Capitalist system that’s holding everyone back here - of course it’s utopic under Capitalism.
Try to think beyond that by considering the full consequences.
There are just some jobs noone wants and if you can live comfortably without a job why work in shit? We are hunter gatherers , that is our mentality, we do things the easiest way possible. Why do something to get extra when you have your needs and wants met? There just are not that many people willing to go the extra mile for others. Look at the laws; Our governing bodies had to add good Samaritan laws to force people to help each other rather than just walk past another human in trouble. Its not money driven, it is self centered driven. What is best for us, not others. When someone does a good deed it maybe makes the news, when someone does something lousy it makes the headlines. We want to know about those that can harm us we don’t give a rats butt about those that may help us. What does that say?
that’s quite the non-sequiter
i admit i have a hard time accepting that your system is possible, and that may certainly play into why.
what would the standard of living differential look like between someone who gets paid for working as a doctor and someone who chooses to do nothing?
but idle hands do the devil’s work, no?
it’s a pretty picture, but do you really think we’d have the same number of toothpaste brands to choose from? i doubt it. that doesn’t matter to me, but some people really cherish the surfeit of choices that capitalism offers
i’d like it to be viable, but i’m not convinced it is
i’m trying to do that, perhaps you need to keep laying out what YOU think the full consequences might be - i’m listening, imagination primed
That’s the thing, not everybody does cherish the surfeit of choices that Capitalism offers, many people loathe it, yet we are all bound to a system that causes it.
Technically what I envisage is only one manifestation - the central point is that the format is actually democratic to a huge degree. Not “democratic” towards a mediocre, 51% of the vote choice enforced on everyone equally in a huge state lead bureaucracy - nor “democratic” but in an extremely limited and biased way like we have now. But actually democratic where all structures are based around bodies of people voicing their opinions and taking votes on all issues that they find relevant on all levels to adjust the nuances of economic working at all levels.
If Capitalism really was what everybody wanted in the end, so be it. But I am sure as hell that the current market-led economy tends AWAY from such a choice being available.
I regard this comment as perhaps being the entire reasoning for Capitalism enduring to this day.
The onus on jobs for the sake of providing an excuse to pay wages sounds like a great excuse to keep everybody occupied and worn out - so they cannot “do the devil’s work”. It is a disguised form of social control.
The only thing is that, whilst it does keep people occupied who otherwise might not know what to do with themselves, it also keeps people occupied who flourish so much and to the benefit of society if simply given a break from the Capitalist cage.
An opportunity is needed to rectify this, which requires Capitalism to be displaced - at least to a significant amount so that people can actually voice their opinions and be genuinely heard. Under Capitalism, this opportunity will never emerge, so it follows that it must be actually democratically voted against by whoever genuinely doesn’t like it.
Tons of kids actually grow up knowing they want to be a doctor from a very early age. Many, who would make excellent doctors, are rooted out by the inflexible procedures required to officially deign one a doctor. Whilst this isn’t specifically a fault of Capitalism, Capitalism certainly doesn’t tend toward the actual democracy needed to refine such flaws in society. Too much concentration is on profit to give enough time and concern to such issues. The pressures under such a system distract attention away from such issues.
Solving this would increase the supply of doctors.
Removing the intense relentless competition and the unhealthy kind of inequality that Capitalism imposes on us all would significantly reduce the demand of doctors.
The social and environmental damage caused by extreme excess of Capitalism would be vastly reduced.
If the demand was STILL exceeding supply of doctors, it is degrading to bribe people with extra cash - but those lows would still not be necessary. Extra people, with their freed-up time would take on the role out of necessity, and there is even the opportunity for a democratic decision to include material rewards to encourage yet more people to join the cause IF needed… (not “as standard”).
Personally I would not support rewarding someone who chooses to do nothing with anything more than access to minimally sufficient standards of living.
Your outlook is very crude.
If you think you have all your needs and wants met then by all means, vote to keep things as they are. Under the system I propose, you would be entirely listened to and catered for.
I am aware that people don’t naturally want to care for those who don’t feature in their life - the vast majority of society.
But if you think about it, this is what you are forced to do under Capitalism - you MUST have a job, no matter how superfluous - just to help lubricate the economy for the whole society. You are ALREADY tied to a system that demands you sacrifice much of your life for people you don’t have anything to do with.
What I propose lets each person adapt only to their personal setting if that is what they want. If they want to help things to a wider extent, they may. At the moment we are all denied this choice - is that what you support?
People will do even the least pleasant chores if they see them as necessary for themselves and their limited social circle. Things WILL get done. There is just no longer the need to go through the medium of money to do what you want. Material things still exist - it’s ridiculous to worship the money-before-material-things mentality that is bred into us nowadays - don’t you think?
Money is not the end, it is the means by which one acquires what one wants: food, shelter clothing, entertainment and anything else one can get in exchange only for money.
You don’t need a “job”, you need someone to willingly give you what you want. My children don’t need a “job”, the wife and I get them what they want. My father doesn’t have a “job”, having retired a while ago. Many in the society get what they want without having a “job”. A “job” is nothing more than someone willing to give you some of what you want measured in terms of money.
Economy is a measure of commerce i.e. exchange of value measured in terms of money. If you want things others have/produce and they demand money for it, you have to give/do things for some others that you may not be interested in doing except for what you can get out of it, money. The baker across the street doesn’t charge money from his kids for the cakes he bakes, but he certainly charges me for the cakes he bakes. So his children don’t need money to get cakes from him, but I do. I don’t know if the baker enjoys baking the cakes in itself, but definitely enjoys the things he can get from others using the money he makes by baking and selling the cakes and that is what keeps him baking the cakes.
Alienation from work is a result of heirarchical structure and distrust of the heirarchy above the worker, not capitalism. When the significance of one’s work for others outside the heirarchy is not obvious the worker, the worker gets alienated from the work. If the worker trusts the heirarchy above him, he can take comfort in their assurance that his work is significant even if he doesn’t understand how himself.
It already exists in every society. Except that everything that gets done is not always what you or any single individual considers “necessary”, but just that there is at least one person who is interested in doing it/getting it done (“necessary” for that person).
Who is this discussion “necessary” for? For those participating in it. Everyone who considers it “unnecessary” can and do keep out, they are not being forced into it.
Essentially you are saying everyone gets some minimum without having to do any work for it and those that do some work of some value to the others do get paid for it and enjoy more things than the minimum. Unless unemployed people are starving to death they already seem to be getting what is necessary for survival. So the difference between the existing system and yours would be only in what an individual can be assured even when he doesn’t work for someone else, with a guarrantee that when he does work for someone else he gets more.
What exactly are you going to do with the “saved labour”, since all the necessary things are getting done anyway? Anything they do would be “unnecessary”, by your own definition.
Since there are so many “freed up” people who don’t have to do anything necessary, exactly what would occupy their waken hours? Television? Online games? Online discussions? Or is that unnecessary to know and they can do anything they please?
So are the rewards going to be in kind and not cash? Is that the biggest difference? Giving a cash reward means leaving the material reward to the worker’s choice from the options available in the market. Taking the choice away from the worker is somehow going to make it better?
So who does the monitoring and decides if someone else would do the job better? Voting public or someone is placed in a superior position? Or does the heirarchy stop at one level of workers and managers?
Sure. But have you considered the full consequences?
Sure. If everyone who is not working is considered family by those working and the latter believe they owe it to the former, things WILL get done. Otherwise not.
So if some of those who are employed and earning more than what they consider subsistence level and use the excess to support those who are unemployed to give them what they consider is a subsistence level earning, you would have some evidence it would work. If these numbers keep increasing you would have proof it will work. Do you have either proof or evidence it will work?
My outlook is crude. So are most humans today. We have come far but not far enough for what you propose. In the future perhaps. We would actually have to learn to put the human species before the individual.
understanding the “significance” of one’s labor is generally of little consolation to someone who does not enjoy their work - the notion that alienation is strictly the result of a lack of understanding of the importance of one’s work is inaccurate, tho it does help justify the whims (and sometimes salaries) of people further up the heirarchy.
as Silhouette highlights, people become alienated from their work by being forced to do jobs they despise in order to survive, there is a natural resentment that stands between the worker and her work. one that does damage to both the worker and the quality of his work.
capitalism forces many people this way, and so results in something of a slave class, one that is fully necessarry to keep capitalist society moving forward - that such workers, call them the “wage-slaves”, tend to be the ones whose work is most taken for granted and least well paid is a perhaps inevitable flaw of the market, but also a great ethical failing on the part of capitalist society, which could compensate for these systemic shortcomings if it had the will to do so.
the problem with trying to change systems is that those who most benefit from capitalism have both power (in the form of money) and an interest in sustaining the status quo. they also have familiarity on their side in terms of popular opinion: “the devil you know”, and all that.
i for one tend to think of some sort of competative market based society as both natural and inevitable, as determined by human greed. but i admit that could just be lack of imagination on my part.
Money is the end of the job. Money THEN goes on to provide one with the ability to legitmately acquire what they want.
The two are entirely separate under Capitalism.
Your job being something you want only comes about as an accident, or something that is only true “on balance” or relative to other jobs.
Your job is generally completely removed from your own free-time lifestyle too - unless exceptional luck is in your favour somehow. People who sell things all-too-often aren’t doing it for the love of selling, often there is no particular personal interest in what is being sold (but thankfully not always) - or at least what is being sold is only a particularly specific and narrow aspect of one’s interests. Interest in working under the dictates of whoever your employer turns out to be is almost never there, and often the employer doesn’t need to know much or anything about what they are getting other people to sell for them either.
There’s so much dissociation, it’s inherent in Capitalism - understandably with the goal of freedom in mind but it’s highly biasing freedom of consumption over work related freedom. The balance has gotten far too out of hand to the point where the “freedom” just feels like punishment. There’s just so much potential to improve things simply by changing the system.
If money is abundant enough to voluntarily be distributed to you, then yes - you don’t need a job.
Under Capitalism - to its extreme there is no welfare to retire on, just a pension at your cost during your working life. Or charity. If times are hard, charity is compromised and shows itself to be unreliable. You can’t just be alive when the charity is there and dead otherwise - once you’re dead, you don’t come back. And irreversible health damage due to lack of charity doesn’t get reversed either. If you can’t afford to put any money aside for your pension then you’re just fucked aren’t you. Maybe if you’re a kid and your parents lose their job or disown you, or fall out with you - same result without any reliable, secure safety nets. Or is that just tough for such unfortunates?
And it can only grow through greater quantity and quality of commerce in terms of finding new added value, doing things faster and cutting costs such as employees and their wages. Contradictorily, increased population gives access to a wider employee pool, allowing more to be created and workers start producing worse quality goods and services when they are forced to work under more time pressure. Why are you vouching for a system that has such antagonisms inherent within it?
Value isn’t inherently present in money - transforming everything into money dissociates utility value and exchange value. No wonder there is so much ambiguity in the fairness of transactions when this is the standard procedure. No wonder there is so much exploitation when this standard is rooted in ambiguity.
I find this slightly disgusting.
First of all, you’re not looking into WHY distrust of the hierarchy above the worker exists. You won’t question your own system.
UPF has the right idea. If you weren’t so bound to your system, you might dare to realise that it IS in fact the system that causes this. Evident significance to one’s work used to exist before Capitalism - now it doesn’t. Strange, no?
I agree.
But you’d be surprised how many people DO want to discuss it - I’ve talked to a varied selection of working class individuals due to the nature of the jobs I’ve had over the years. You only need to listen into workers in pubs/bars to have a glimpse of what I have heard.
Yes, but the “minimum” can be replaced with “the socially accepted minimum” as technology etc. advances to raise what the minimum can be. Your idea of minimum as just being over the borderline of starvation is extremely bleak, inhuman and only realistic for countries who are denied the technology that developed countries have access to in huge abundance. Often it’s a government of corrupt individuals, often it’s a group of free market beneficiaries who hold back less developed countries from what developed countries have. This is where a system that is ACTUALLY democratic comes in - such as what I propose.
What is “necessary” is something decided by the public, relative to what their society can afford them.
If the society currently supplies them with a “necessary” amount, then that can be the realistic necessary amount for that society.
And for Capitalist nations, that amount can easily be equalled with far far fewer people due to the wasted excesses inherent in Capitalism, and the need to provide jobs for job’s sake to lubricate the economy more etc.
So we take out the Capitalist element and match what it supplied - and from then on it’s a matter of what the public decide that determines how this amount is lowered or raised, in what proportion, and amongst who. People actually venting their real feelings does this much more directly than any dubious price mechanism under Capitalism ever could.
Supporters of Capitalism generally hold the mistaken view that things would all be the same as they are now even if Capitalism was removed. They lack the ability or willingness to see the world much more holistically - where altered economic conditions affect supposed “human nature” too.
People know what is necessary to afford the lifestyle they want much better than a what Capitalist system demands of them.
If they want to escape and recuperate in the normal ways we have now under Capitalism, they can. But you have to realise that the choice of leisure time WILL change if you remove the Capitalist element.
Saved labour can go towards running things, turning willing and able people into masters of the economy rather than slaves to it.
You are still restricted by thinking only money can provide choice.
Voting public. Not someone placed in a “superior” position or a particular level of workers and managers.
And in turn the “superior” positions monitor the voting public to provide what they want - it’s a two way, no, all-way communication, like a good conversation.
It really is you and other supporters of Capitalism who aren’t considering the consequences. I am quite happy to keep answering everybody’s questions because I can’t include everything in my explanations without feedback. In fact, this attitude I have is a mirror of the system I am proposing.
That is why state-wide uniformity and obligation is not what I am proposing.
Read more carefully - it is local decisions that decide action, and higher management tiers - if voted for - are monitored to co-ordinate a more regional or nationwide direction.
Rather than the isolation of Capitalism, people are free to work in social groups if they so desire. The size of the individual’s influence and involvement - how much they work and for who is up to them and other people who vote for such things.
It’s not a case of “we must evolve to put the species before the individual” - we already evolved to the point where we put our social circle just as high, or higher than the individual aeons ago. It’s just time this nature was utilised, and not weakened by Capitalist individualism.
Ganapati -
This is why things will get done when people can decide who they get done for. The flexibility of all this really is as much as you want it to be.
If people actually got together and voted for what they wanted, we WOULD be able to start collecting number and figures that could provide “proof” that it worked - within whatever the bounds were of your measurements… but even Capitalism works using certain measurements with certain bounds. I think people’s feelings are a much better proof.
Job is a means to acquire money, money a means to acquire goods and services and goods and services are a means to survive/be happy. None of job, money and goods and services are an end. The end is staying alive and happy. If surving and being happy didn’t need outside means no one would need money and jobs, but also goods and services. If you want to avoid so many intermediates between you actual end surviving and being happy you should hunt/gather/produce every single thing you want towards that end. If you want what someone else has hunted/gathered/produced find someway you can be useful to them either directly as in barter or indirectly through money.
They are as “separate” as cooking and eating.
Yeah, there has to be a “balance” between cooking and eating too.
Same way cooking is removed from your own free-time lifestyle too. You don’t have to cook if you don’t want to eat cooked food. You don’t need to work for others if you don’t need what the others have/produce.
People who cook food don’t always do it for the love of cooking either, they do it so that they can enjoy eating and surviving.
If there are others, besides yourself, who are interested in your welfare for just you existing and capable of providing for it, then you don’t need a job.
Charity is someone else acknowledging that your welfare has value and providing for it. Trade (or job) is someone else acknowledging that you contibuted to their welfare and agreeing to contrbute to your welfare. State welfare is those who want to provide for their own/others’ welfare from some others’ resources. If you are really concerned about the destitute, you can probably deomnstrate it first by your gving up everything that is not absolutely essential for your existence and is more than what the destitute have before stealing from others to provide them.
Why would it be unfortunate otherwise?
Yeah, right! Automobile, computers, airconditioners, air travel, internet commerce and stuff like that have always existed and economies grew after industrialisation by constantly cutting employees and their wages and the quality of goods and services today is worse than at any time in the history? 
Only an ignorant believes value is inherent in money and nobody need transform everything into money. For instance you are free to offer your services for free or in exchange for food or other items you are interested in and if someone else is willing to accept such an offer. Or you could accept money and exchange it for things that you want. Most people choose to transact using money because it is convenient.
Truth is sure difficult to accept for some.
It is not my system, I didn’t invent it nor do I care for it.
The reason why you don’t trust superiors in the heirarchy either because you built system based on greed and only the most greedy and untrustworthy rise to the top or because you don’t trust anyone. It is not a problem of the system. Japan too has capitalism and Japanese are not alienated from work any more than they are from cooking.
The problem is not with the system, it with you as a population, greedy and untrustworthy. You sell your souls for a promise of more wealth and then cry foul when you don’t get it. Guess what? No one feels sorry for you because you have been duped by your own kind after centuries of supporting murdering and plundering others to feed your greed.
Same way what is necessary for the society doesn’t have to be determined any one individual, especially not losers. What is necessary will automatically emerge from what people value and voluntarily participate in.
Yeah, right! All the losers get together to determine what is the minimum they are “entitled to”
Thats right! Those who produce nothing will decide what is “necessary”. So what happens when those actually working and producing stuff decide that the freeloaders are not worth catering to and stop producing more than they need for themselves? What will the freeloaders do?
That’s right! Things get produced because people “vent their real feelings” and not because anyone actually does something. So sure “people venting their real feelings” is somehow going to get everybody what he wnats.
How does that answer my question?
Change to what?
Those who actually produce anything will be slaves and freeloaders will run the society! Great idea!
Since you are liberated from money why not share your “wisdom”?
Great! So those who have shown no capability other than that they were born and can consume will decide whether someone managing a complex production process is better than someone else willing to the same job. Do you also want your voting public to decide what is the best medicine when you fall ill?
some people judge humanity as though they stand apart from it - once you do that you end up being wrong on just about everything else - what does it mean to judge someone whom fate has dealt a poor hand? it is sanctimony. you call people names then make assumptions about them based on that name (classic fallacy) = “Loser”. to dismiss people as that is self-righteous, cruel, and ignorant. you may not “care” for Capitalism but you have swallowed far too many of its conceits and superstitions.
you DO see wealth as an indicator of virtue, whether you admit it or not. that’s incorrect - wealth is an indicator of good fortune, but not virtue - that’s like thinking that nature actually rewards some people over others by bestowing advantages upon them - guess what, you didn’t do anything special by surviving and reproducing and putting your name on a bunch of STUFF. that doesn’t show character, and it’s not an indicator of a person’s value.
I haven’t judged anyone purely based on what fate has dealt them. I judge people based on what they believe they are “entitled to” regardless of what fate has dealt them. No one is “entitled to” anything more than what fate has dealt them and what others are willing to give them without coercion.
If I wanted something, failed to get it and gave up the attempt, I am a failure in that respect. No one is a loser/failure unless he wanted it, failed to get it and gave up the attempt. Losers/failures are not the best judges of the path to winning/success.
Wealth has no relation to virtue. I see that very clearly. I doubt you do by your insistence that wealth be redistributed and everyone be assured of some minimum wealth. You are the one assuming there is some inherent virtue in holding wealth, not me.
Wealth/higher income, to the extent that anyone desires it, can be created only in certain ways and those that create it are the best judges of how to create more of it, not those who don’t know how to create it. If you desire wealth/higher income but cannot create it, you work under the directions of the ones who can. Not the reverse as suggested by Silhouette. If majority of the individuals in a society are greedy and want to use every opportunity to maximise their wealth/income, some systems serve them better than others. Capitalism assumes everyone is greedy, I don’t. But if you weren’t greedy you wouldn’t so concerned about this “fairness” determined exclusively in terms of wealth/income.
coercion aside, you seem to believe that people are entitled to anything they can afford to pay for - in practice that means that some people (regardless of how they came to posess their wealth) are arbitrarily entitled to just about anything while others (regardless of how they came to be poor) are arbitrarily entitled to nothing. where is the logic or fairness in that? surely if entitlements exist, they exist for everyone, not just the wealthy.
you’re assuming by your arguments that anyone who pursues survival with help from state is a loser or failure who has given up on their goals. that is a prejudice. people generally know what they need to function and survive in society, and they pursue it any way they can get it, simply because they don’t go through what you seem to think are the proper (namely, orthodox Capitalist) channels does not make them losers or failures. even by your own definition, you cannot possibly have any idea who among those seeking social aid is a “loser” or “failure”.
no, i have never spoken of redistribution of virtue, and my concern has never been with making the poor more virtuous - with my insistence on redistribution of wealth i am concerned only with the material well-being of those less fortunate.
being able to generate wealth does not translate into knowing how wealth is best distributed - one doesn’t trust a miner with the responsibility of determining who gets the coal - one shouldn’t even trust the managers of the mine with such responsibility - their demonstrated competence is with harvesting the resource, not determining the best way to use it.
again, no - it is only by stretching the definition of “greedy” to the breaking point that one can say the desire to survive and function within a system or society is greedy. everyone is self-interested, yes. and in a capitalist system, self interest will translate into the pursuit of wealth/income - that does not necessarily make me or anyone else who is concerned with the wealth/income of others greedy
Social circle is not what I meant, I meant the species as a whole, that we have not done, not by a long shot. We promote social circles only because they are our extensions.
People will work given incentive only. Right now we have 5th generation welfare recipients, they live in sec 8 housing, they get foodstamps welfare,whatever they can get. They have no incentive to do otherwise. When you get handouts instead of hand ups, you stick with the easiest path. To do what you propose even on a local level will create more problems as we stand. We would have to change our ego as individuals before such things would work. I really do wish it were different.
Your repeated references back to this analogy made your post quite painful to read.
You cook so that you can eat, yes - but under Capitalism, the necessity for extreme efficiency has got to the point where some people pull levers all day to eat.
There is no alienation between work and worker in cooking so that you can eat, but there is alienation from labour in pulling levers all day so you can eat. Get it now?
There is further alienation when you get paid monthly (like most people do) only after doing a month’s work - having received absolutely nothing in the way of reward until then. If you know anybody who gets paid during or immediately after they perform their service/produce their goods, you will know from what they tell you that the connection between labour and reward makes the labour itself much more rewarding. But working in credit is much more profitable for the employer as they have a whole extra month to acquire the money you make for them, and use it how they please, before they have to return a dime.
The emphasis on competition alienates employees from each other and even employers from each other - not to mention employees from employers. For all the time they are working around each other toward certain goals, they are forever working against each other.
So,
if eating had nothing to do with cooking, you had to compete over the permission and ability to cook, and you could only eat a month after you first started cooking - then yes, things under Capitalism ‘are as “separate” as cooking and eating.’
It is apparently most efficient to make workers in high supply live on the edge of their means - or today, they live in debt. They need a job because they have retired relatives and children as well as themselves, whose welfare they are interested in, but can’t support because of the “need” for this interpretation of extreme efficiency. The workers can only work themselves into unhealth and compromise on their children and retired relatives.
Employers don’t need a job because they can fund other people to do it for them and they reap the rewards, having an abundance to give to retired relatives and children whose welfare they are interested in.
This inequality is only really a moral question until you make the connection that a system geared more favourably towards the workers would result in their better health and therefore their improved work, and therefore improved riches for their employers…
This is so obvious to me - why not anyone else? Do employees WANT to compromise their prosperity?
If charity covered this then that alleviates things a little. But it doesn’t - not even close. And even if it did, throwing money at the exploited doesn’t solve the problems that arise through the “need” to exploit, which is only “necessary” due to the system in place.
Further, the system would put the charitable in a disadvantaged position for not squeezing everything from your company for short term benefit, and could put them out of business.
Further still, when a bust is looming or in effect, the availability of charity dries up and those who rely on your charity are screwed. Like I said they can’t just hibernate while the economy is bust - on the contrary, they are made to be even MORE exploited to keep the employers happy so they start investing again, getting the economy moving again.
The Capitalist system just seems ridiculous at times like these, and charity is exposed as being no solace.
Er… no?
“Doing things faster” includes the invention and implementation of such technology as you have just mentioned. But it also includes other ways of “doing things faster” - under Capitalism, technology doesn’t mean workers can recuperate a little more since machines are doing more for them. Other work is found for them and they end up doing just as much work as before, and the progressive squeezing of more work from them continues to keep profits on the increase - in parallel to technological innovations.
Another painful aspect to your response is your simplistic interpreting of my points. But I am happy to elucidate.
“Truth is sure difficult to accept for some.” - indeed.
This is quite revealing.
The possessing element of possessive pronouns, to you, implies invention and care. It is a phenomenon of poverty when invention leads to proclamations of possession. Under Capitalism, if you don’t claim possession of your inventions, you will be stuck in the same position as before - you must seize it with the backing of law to get the system’s version of “reward” back from it.
Your innovation will only be subsumed by the system, with work conditions staying just as exploitative as before, and with the benefits of your invention going primarily to the richest few. Yet if you are in the richest few, your innovation will still mean very little to you since you are already very rich - all it will come to is a temporarily satisfying elevation within social circles, because the use of your innovation is alienated from what you are using it for: your social standing. Social standing is all the richest few have left to battle over because their financial richness quickly comes to leave them with a poverty of connection between themselves and the cause/earning of their riches. This is one of the primary reasons why rich people have started retreating to a life of relative self-sufficiency, which they approach as a kind of leisure activity. Yes, even the richest few become “poor” from the Capitalist system.
I am aware of this realisation by the descendents of the victims of my ancestors who supported their murder and plunder to feed their own greed. The fact that the resentment has been inherited and stands to threaten things even today is one reason why I want things to change.
I agree, that is why I propose a system that is more representative of what people value and what they would more voluntarily participate in if it was an option.
Yes, together with the winners and the rest of the participants. Something much much more flexible and voluntary could emerge compared to what Capitalism could ever offer.
The freeloaders having some kind of influence will keep those actually working from producing way much more than they need, beyond the point of their detriment. They all work together as masters for their mutual benefit - work will no longer be slavery.
The existence of freeloaders - even in huge numbers - will not impact on the availability of what we have today once Capitalism is rooted out. The reasons for this, such as Capitalism’s essential surpluses, replication and necessity for superfluous jobs etc., I have already covered.
The freeloaders being “worth catering for” or not won’t even be an issue to anybody else. Anybody else is still free to achieve to their heart’s content - to the same, or an improved/growing extent relative to what would be possible under Capitalism.
People having the resulting time to “vent their real feelings” will result in people actually doing something - you speak in the Capitalist mindset when you make it sound like the two are incompatible. Currently, of course, they are incompatible.
This is really obtuse.
There are better options than the unqualified voting for the best medicine - such as voting for the best qualified doctors or nurses to decide what the best medicine is. And the labour time freed up will vastly increase the time available to study such things too = improved healthcare.
This is slander - I want no such thing!
Capitalism, as you agree, assumes things that distort reality to fit it when it is implemented - such as everyone being greedy when they are not.
Greed is a symptom of poverty of some kind. I seek a system that minimises it, not one that has those who can create wealth working under the direction of those who cannot… - that is clearly stupid.
If you would like to entertain suggestions on how to do this such as my own, you would benefit from reading them correctly. I envisage a system that has those who can and cannot create wealth coming to a voluntary understanding, rather than an accidentally imposing one that has those who can create wealth working under the direction of those who cannot far too often.
You see, success in business is not the sole cause of wealth creation - I won’t assume you disagree with that.
The current system has the above as the case, and as such, much wealth is lost out on. Too many financially wealthy individuals are complete morons, for example.
Do you not want to rectify this too?
I am of the school of thought that sees the “individual” as their social circles, or the social circles “as our extensions” too. My point was that I know social circles don’t span entire nations - and they don’t need to.
This is why I neither support 1984-style uniformity/egalitarianism and suppression of individuality, NOR an economic system that reduces the individual to less than their potential social circles that they would otherwise naturally encompass.
I want to harness this toward greater “individual” (not in the Capitalist sense) wealth.
When you see people doing nothing because they are given foodstamps etc, this is seeing people under the current system.
Under a different system, they would not stick with what you call the “easiest path” (which quite obviously isn’t that great a life).
If opportunity was in sight of these people, do you not think they would take it? The “freedom” to set up your own source of wealth isn’t available to these people, like the Capitalist ideal would like to have you believe.
You cannot use land for what might be the best use of it unless you go through a lot of hassle and unless you have the right contacts and finance. These are barriers of Capitalism. If what these people actually wanted was democratically discussed, do you think they are so in love with their welfare-life that they wouldn’t bare to change it - even if an improved option was easily on offer?
Your despair in wishing it were different is a Capitalist despair.