That's what I don't understand. Why the insistence that humans are lazy? Have you seen the shit we make and work on every single day? Have you looked at productivity numbers rising every year? Humans are perfectly capable of running things. You don't need millionaires to fund your business, you just need people.
When feudalism ended labor became much more specialized. Everyone doing one task. Before that if you needed a tool, you built it yourself. You learned how to do a little bit of everything, because you had to survive. I'm hardly saying we should return to feudalism, but the specialization of labor has turned everyone into a unthinking cog in the machine of global capitalism. Unless you own your business, you have little control over your work.
What I'm ultimately getting at, is that people do not need the threat of poverty to work, because they are already being threatened by the outcome of them not getting shit done. You know what happens when your electrician calls out? Someone else steps up and learns how to do it. Why?? Because they need electricity to live.
I am not saying people should all be held to a bare minimum standard. You can have your business because you'd just be serving the working class instead. You might even learn something new with all the extra time you have.
How much do we produce that just goes in the trash? Or the ocean? How much food? Just imagine what could happen if all that wasted labor was actually harnessed to benefit society as opposed to magic paper the State tells you is valuable.
Sure, maybe we won't see a perfect world in our lifetime. But believe me, we need to start working on something. Because that automation shit IS coming and millions will be unemployed. If we don't step up and start to understand the nature of work and productivity in a more nuanced fashion, we are all going to be starving. It starts with trade unions and workers rights. But it can't end there. This is crucial stuff.
You are making good points.
Especially the tradition of "learning a bit of everything" is one that is still hold very dear here. We usually learn a bit of everything in our education. I even enjoy making my own furniture (I have a carpenter's workshop in my attic). A well-rounded skillset is something that can only be beneficial
But I'm just not as optimistic about the specific outcome of such a scenario. Maybe after years of working towards the "event", but not as a "this could work tomorrow".
I see a world full of automatons as the world where your scenario is the norm :D I really don't see the problem. Unless they're AI
If those low paying jobs don't serve a purpose then why do it? If it needs to be done, someone will do it. Our productivity outsizes our demand so much that if 35% of people didn't work tomorrow, we would still produce way more than we could possibly use.
Humans rely on each other to produce the needs of society. We don't need a managerial class to run our workplaces and government. We're perfectly capable.
Those are not the workers I worry about.
I worry about medical workers, police, medical workers, fire "brigade"(?how's this called), medical workers, people working at nuclear powerplants, and also I really worry about medical workers. Homes, hospitals, they are always understaffed and overworked.
O to clarify: when I said "low end" in
this specific context, I meant "All work and no play", not low paying, just shitloads of work(especially of the highly physical variety, or super stressful on the nerves like it is for medical workers)
