> This is typical libertarian claptrap, from the Skilled White Male litany.
Perhaps I was understanding or explaining it poorly, but my understanding is that it's close to the opposite of the "typical libertarian claptrap", which I take to mean something close to "we need the concept of money (and a free market) to get people to work" (and consequently, if you don't work, you get no money, and therefore none of the stuff you need). The position I was talking about is very explicitly that, whether or not you work at all, you deserve food/shelter/healthcare/education/etc.
The point was not whether you can change the world with your work (I think that'd more accurately be the "G. H. Hardy claptrap"!), but why you do what you do, or not, e.g., I know someone who works in a bookstore who would be there even if salaries did not exist.
> shitty jobs need to be done
This statement has been the case for all of human history, and yet the mechanism by which these jobs manage to get done has changed rather drastically many times. Even assuming the current set of "shitty jobs" isn't changing, I see no reason the mechanism couldn't change again.
> In terms of your hand-wringing about full-time programming work, there are all sorts of ways you can work part-time in programming and part-time in something else. That you can't see this shows you haven't really thought about the problem seriously.
You are welcome to accuse me of being stupid, or to point out that these opportunities are incompatible with my other (unstated) requirements, but it's not fair to claim that I've not thought about the problem seriously.
The position I was talking about is very explicitly that, whether or not you work at all, you deserve food/shelter/healthcare/education/etc.
I misread you then. What you wrote sounds like the typical libertarian spiel of 'skilled work = hard work' and if you're not skilled, then by definition you don't work hard, with the corollary that you are then not deserving of wealth or esteem.
You are welcome to accuse me of being stupid, or to point out that these opportunities are incompatible with my other (unstated) requirements, but it's not fair to claim that I've not thought about the problem seriously.
I don't think you're stupid, but I do think you're hand-wringing (that is, not serious about doing it) if you're having trouble figuring out eays of doing it.
I'm sorry but this is BS. You don't deserve food/shelter/healthcare/education etc. You only deserve what you go out of your cave, kill, and bring back home.
Food, shelter, healthcare, and education are all things that require someone else to do something to provide. Why should I have to go to work to pay for your X that you think is a right so that you can sit on your couch or plant trees and be happy. That's absurd. That bread you find at Kroger, somebody had to work to make it appear in your cart.
> That bread you find at Kroger, somebody had to work to make it appear in your cart.
In any community there is likely to be someone with a passion for something. Whether that something is making bread, helping the sick, or teaching children.
It's true that there are some jobs which people aren't naturally inclined to do, but in the society being described I think that communities would become smaller, and more cohesive. Some the of the jobs required to maintain a large city no longer need to be done, and those that do still need doing become less of a strain and can be distributed amongst people.
we've tried utopian societies before. they have never worked. we've tried socialism and it mostly doesn't work that well. communism looks great on paper and it has been a failure. why do people still continue to believe this is the way things should be?
>I'm sorry but this is BS. You don't deserve food/shelter/healthcare/education etc. You only deserve what you go out of your cave, kill, and bring back home.
Yes. That's what we did when we lived in caves.
When man grew into civilization (neoliberals excluded), we collectively decided that people deserve food/shelter/healthcare/education. Not in every country, mind you. But then again, there are countries so backwards that they still have the death penalty...
Perhaps I was understanding or explaining it poorly, but my understanding is that it's close to the opposite of the "typical libertarian claptrap", which I take to mean something close to "we need the concept of money (and a free market) to get people to work" (and consequently, if you don't work, you get no money, and therefore none of the stuff you need). The position I was talking about is very explicitly that, whether or not you work at all, you deserve food/shelter/healthcare/education/etc.
The point was not whether you can change the world with your work (I think that'd more accurately be the "G. H. Hardy claptrap"!), but why you do what you do, or not, e.g., I know someone who works in a bookstore who would be there even if salaries did not exist.
> shitty jobs need to be done
This statement has been the case for all of human history, and yet the mechanism by which these jobs manage to get done has changed rather drastically many times. Even assuming the current set of "shitty jobs" isn't changing, I see no reason the mechanism couldn't change again.
> In terms of your hand-wringing about full-time programming work, there are all sorts of ways you can work part-time in programming and part-time in something else. That you can't see this shows you haven't really thought about the problem seriously.
You are welcome to accuse me of being stupid, or to point out that these opportunities are incompatible with my other (unstated) requirements, but it's not fair to claim that I've not thought about the problem seriously.