You’re right that I’m relatively hostile and in general this platform breeds hostility due to the ideological differences between those that created and originally populated the platform, and reddit ‘refugees’ that disagree with reddit’s management but not the far-right ideologies so ever present in all aspects of that website (fostered of course by bots). Those with your viewpoint tend not to want to learn, and instead decide anyone to the left of burning orphans for warmth is a ‘tankie.’ That’s not fair to you.
To clarify, you have a transactional worldview, you assume that in order to exist, one must be useful to society. This incidentally narrows down the number of countries you could be from, as it’s not actually a common idea. Protestants, and generally former global empires are the two places you’ll see this so readily codified into the public conscious to be fed down to a general idea of jealousy of your fellow worker; i.e. you believe that all things must be earned, and if you feel someone is getting something that by your estimation they have not earned, you feel slighted.
This is a greedy and self-interested idea, but can be worked with until you limit the essentials. So I’d like to refocus on that.
In a normal human household, for nearly all of human history and human present, in nearly all cultures and societies that have ever existed, the family dynamic is the one least commonly likely to be transactional. You wouldn’t keep food away from your child if they failed to do a chore, you wouldn’t take medicine away from your grandparents because they are too sick to sweep up, you wouldn’t stop showing affection towards your lover just because the dishes weren’t done. This is a non-transactional relationship. Everyone gets what they need, unconditionally. Now luxuries, that might be withheld; that might entirely be absent; that might be a reward for hard work – but the essentials everyone gets, even if they come at great personal loss.
Now, one might say, that is just family, and that could not work beyond that unit – again we look at history and the present. In most societies, in most cultures, in most of human history the ‘family’ and the ‘village’ had little differences beyond who is a possible (and societally acceptable) mate. Human behavioral biology (free course btw) is an interesting field that shows us that we didn’t evolve to protect the clan, those related to us; we evolved to protect everyone we saw as a tribe – including those not genetically related to us. How and why would evolution do that? What possible ‘survival of the fittest’ category could that fulfill? In short (but seriously watch the course) when we take care of others, and others take care of us, we all prosper and are more likely to pass on our genes. When we compete we are less likely to pass on our genes. Because competition narrows both the genetic field and makes it harder for those that survive the competition to continue surviving. We are not polar bears who can go off independently for half our adult lives and come back only to mate; we are weak tribal apes that have evolved to rely on each other.
Now… that background out of the way;
Imagine a world where we extend that family unit. We extend that tribe. We have an essential set of things that all humans are entitled to, that we all work to fulfill. Luxuries, again, may be withheld or rewarded, but not food, water, shelter, or any of the necessary items we all have come to rely on.
But, you will likely say, what if someone is greedy? – Greed is primarily a learned trait, although there is a clear genetic component, most people are not greedy. Those that are, we could treat like we treat any other person that breaks the social contract; i.e. education, imprisonment, or similar corrective action.
But, you might ask, how do we know who is actually contributing? – And I ask, why does that actually matter? To alay this concern I would point to the mountain of evidence that people want to work, especially when they are not alienated from the effects of their work; but I would still ask why does it matter? Does your toddler need to work in order to eat? Does your grandmother? Again we should be extending the idea of the tribe beyond our immediate web of connections, and that requires trust. And through research we can see the trust will always statistically be well placed.
But, you might ask, how do people get rewarded for their work? What’s the incentive? – The incentive, primarily, is the same incentive a mother has to clean up a spill or a child has to help their sibling with homework. Not love or anything so immeasurable – but good will, the direct understanding of the good that work does, and the satisfaction of knowing you made a positive change in your environment. Now that’s not to say there can’t be other rewards. Not every job has someone that wants to do it (though we’ve all seen enough kink videos to know most every job has someone way too into doing it that they’d do it for free), and maybe there can be additional incentive structures for luxuries; but the goal would be through education and showing people the direct positive results of their actions that everyone helps how they can, when they can, as much as they can.
But, you might ask, about those that are genetically greedy, those that would ‘take advantage’ and try to hoard wealth? Well my friend, there are a myriad of solutions for that, again from education and imprisonment, to the good ol’ French Micro Press.. Setting up a trust-based, family-oriented (actually family oriented) society means there are still rules, and those that would tear down society for their own gain would be on the level of murderers and child molesters.
- Not directly linked but the ideas referenced throughout:
That’s nice, and genuinely good for you if that’s your calling, but that is something you choose, not something that you need to do. Again the total number of people on the planet contributing practically 100% of the food grown for sale is 2%. Down from 98% less than two centuries ago.
The reason people are able to do things other than farm for 6-9 months out of the year, is because productivity in that field is so incredibly high we can feed the world off the labor of 2 people in a hundred. And this is already, currently, true for nearly all production fields. A single textile worker produces more textiles than a 1,000 could have a century ago. Similar increases in productivity are true for nearly every field save for incredibly niche (but still important) industries.
Automation is just going to keep increasing this over time. We will never completely eliminate human labor, at least not while we resemble anything close to human, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have already dropped the 40 hour work week down to 10 hours (we’d still have more production than at any point in human history) and that doesn’t mean we can’t strive to eliminate work to the furthest extent possible so we can actually enjoy life; even if that enjoyment for people like you is spending your time farming manually.