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It's also just not true. Most people will find work to do if they have none. That's pretty much what hobbies are. And all of the people I know who lived very long lives stayed active volunteering the whole time. My grandmother was like that, and died at 97 shortly after she had to stop for health reasons.
Not to mention that if your basic necessities are covered, you could still work to buy things that aren't necessities.
Okay but you won't do stupid bullshit in inefficient ways that keep me in 5000$ wine and a gilded skull throne of all the kids who hit puberty and became too old for me to fuck. So nothing of actual value to society.
so is it even really 'work'?
I disagree that "labor" can never be voluntary. But I also fully agree that labor in a Capitalist system is fundamentally based on coercion.
The thing to me is that "labor" and "doing work" are two fundamentally different things. You can accept a role that someone else needs done in exchange for something, or you can work on things you find important or interesting, or that just needs doing, to maintain yourself and your environment in a broad sense.
You should look up the feminist definition of labor. It includes everything you're talking about and draws a line between public and private labor. Labor =/= work.
If you meet people's basic needs, they do not cease to care or aspire.
A lot of the issue is "bullshit jobs" and being forced to do one. Work needs to be done, but we could be just as productive and maintain higher quality of life if we all worked less or for a shorter part of our lifespan.
Folks are happy to do a job that helps others, but they're less inclined to do a job to make a few bastards rich.
Bullshit jobs (=> jobs that are doing unnecessary work) are certainly part of that, but shit jobs (=> jobs that you would really not want to work) are another part of the equation.
Shit jobs make up a huge amount of the jobs that actually do stuff we depend on (e.g. food industry, retail, agricultural, garbage, ...). So the question is how do you get people to do these jobs? Without some form of coercion, that might be difficult.
By paying accordingly to how shitty they are. It's that simple and actually what a free market is about. Because people need to work to survive the labor market isn't free and it doesn't work as it should/could.
I remember as a kid I always thought garbage collectors must be paid pretty well to do a job like that. It's actually pretty sad that we accepted the slavery like conditions today as normal and unchangeable.
I don't get why it's so controversial that people should be able to survive without a job. It doesn't need to be glamourous, but nobody should be unhoused or unfed. We are blessed with plenty and we should share. And before it sounds like I'm religious, no, I'm not saying churches should be responsible for that, government should. (Though obviously I have no problems with any religious groups feeding and housing people as well.)
The argument is mostly that if nobody has to work, too few people will choose to work, and then the quality of life for all will deteriorate. It is still true that our modern society requires an enormous amount of upkeep just to keep the quality of life where it is now. That's work and if nobody does it then services will stop functioning.
Technically speaking, one could theoretically survive solely on homeless shelters and soup kitchens right now in the modern day, without the need to work. This would keep you biologically alive, but for most people, this is a degrading, unfulfilling existence. Which motivates people to work (or steal).
That also assumes that once people have what they need to survive they would give up on the things that they want. I'd love to have things like the necessities taken care of but I wouldn't expect them to pay for my video games and movie tickets, so I'd need a job to pay for that. Not only that, but I'd be able to work towards a career that I actually want instead of being forced to work a dead end job because I have to be constantly employed or else be homeless. The way the system works now makes it difficult to change careers or go to school later in life because any risk of being unemployed or lapse of time in our income could literally ruin our lives in a matter of weeks.
There's a fact that a lot of people commenting here are overlooking. Marx himself admitted that in the lower stage of communism, wages will have to exist until people's mindset on labor changes. It's simply not true that communism will not work because 'people don't like working'.
edit: grammar
Not really? Organization around mutual aid exemplifies time and time again people's willingness to do all kinds of labor without pay as well as capital's antagonistic response to the act.
Wages only have to exist until people are provided an alternative means of well being and self empowerment. That they can observe the value of labor is intrinsically tied to survival and well being, rather than extrinsically and arbitrarily.
Yep, every existing socialist society past and present requires labor, and paid for it. We can't jump from A to Z, we have to build socialism and build communism, and we have to continue developing. Wage labor as the sole motivator for labor in society is something that gets phased out as work becomes more for satisfying needs than profits for the few.
Claim is ok, the unspoken "so everything will collapse" is bullshit. In the end, Hampton is right: "work (do what someone else wants) or starve" is not how anyone should live
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.
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.
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.
People are going to work for pleasure. That's how we're wired. What I find interesting is that people don't get this. They also never see any motive to work beyond the profit motive. I guess that what a system designed to squeeze all the blood out of you does.. you have none left to wander your mind.
Betterment of yourself and your part of society, human connection, just fucking around with curiosity and silliness. That's what I know deep down I want to guide me, but I'm also fighting against an internal system that had me hearing "you have to work if you want to eat" since I was a child.
You have to eat food to eat. That's it. It's literally the basis of life. I don't see birds commuting and paying taxes on their food
Adam Smith "sold" capitalism on the virtue of "free and fair markets". Capitalism, as a practical understanding today, is the supremacy of capital, oligarchist protectionism, and corporatism. Only fair markets (those without coercion and lies, including structural coercion) are free. Adam Smith did not define/sell capitalism as structural coercion of society to maximize ROI for those with capital. Actually the opposite, where "perfect competition" was supposed to result from free and fair markets. Monopoly/cartels generate higher ROI than competition.
UBI/freedom dividends is the path for free and fair markets for labour. It also naturally increases ROI, where investment includes work/time, where the freedom to refuse unfair work means higher pay for work, including higher returns on capital/management, if competition needs higher returns for their work too. But, most important to ROI, redistribution and high pay, means significant increase in demand/GDP, and more work available to satisfy that demand.
The reason UBI is resisted, is not that the rich cannot get much richer from UBI. It is that UBI redistributes power instead of wealth. Those in power, have more power under slavery than by giving away their power (freedom) to the people. Oligarchy needs control over power to protect their oligarchy. After your first $B, what is the point of more money if not to enforce harsher slavery to limit competition to your next $Bs.
The specific issue in the US is the exploitation of labor to serve the need for infinite profits. In an ideal state, the government (for the people, by the people) would stand between the needs of labor and the needs of profit by providing labor with legal protections from exploitation. When those in government become one with the needs of profits, the people lose.
What we are seeing now after Citizens United is that it becomes more profitable to lobby/capture the government to increase profits than it is to buy more productive labor. By extension, they use a portion of their profits to convince labor to vote against the interests of the many by identifying and focusing on divisive culture issues.
Now who is poised to protect labor? Used to be the news media holding the government accountable to the people, but now most influential news media organizations are held to the need for infinite profits. They have something to lose now if they report on an issue that interferes with their ad revenue.
The solution? Talk to your neighbors and engage in your local community. Invite others to the community. Support each other by sharing skills, knowledge, and resources locally. Serve your community rather than insatiable unidentifiable shareholders. Also be wary of organized religions that can be used to incite conflicts or division. Not saying religion is bad, just that large organizations dilute the accountability needed to prevent the reliance on infinite profits.
I wonder what life was really like back in hunter gather times...must have been nice sometimes. Maybe even most of the time.
And if it wasn't, at least it was brief.
Well, no. Infant mortality was crazy high, health problems were different, but life expectancies were 60-70 years if you survived puberty. We only recently hit that in agricultural hierarchalist society, and are slipping back below it.