Job! Jobs! Jobs! Cheering on our own slavery. Employment bubble popped. Fight against work.

Alright, rock and roll. This thread got pretty huge over night. I just want to say a couple things

1- "Hes a communist!!!" - Just because something is an alternative to capitlism doesnt mean its communism. There are more economic models than just two you know. I do NOT advocate socialism or communism. The humanistic ideas behind them are nice but they still involve YOU working for SOMEONE ELSE who takes all the profits you've made. There is NO difference to the worker between communism and capitalism. For workers the process is the same. We work for someone else and that work is mediated through money. The EXACT SAME SYSTEM just under a different name. The only difference iswho steals the fruits of your labor (central govt or CEOs?) and how honest they are about stealing it (Capitalism has to be sneaky about it, communism just takes it). So lets keep the Communist Criers out of this conversation please because I'm not advocating anything thats ever been tried before, including communism.

2 - Super phone - The best products will never be on the market. Why? Because they make more money selling products little by little. Someone mentioned iPods. Well they're the perfect example. First they have a 2 Gb iPod, then a 4 gB then an 8 Gb then a 16Gb, then one that plays video, then one that makes phone calls. You see, its a gradual scaling of the product up to the ideal product. Are we really supossed to believe that Apple was physcially unable to put a 32Gb hard drive in an iPod back when they were selling the 4Gb ones? Of course they could. But putting out the best products doesnt make the most profit.

Capitalists found out its more profitable to slowly trickle out new technology than to give us the best products all the time. Its more profitable because we buy all those 2 Gb Ipods, then want the bigger one, then the video one, etc. Also, many products are NOT built to last. Building crappy products has become essential to capitalism because we need to rebuy that toaster, rebuy that iPod, rebuy that crapped out TV. So when someone thinks that capitalism provides us with the best possible products all the time just remind them about iPods. Not only that but its a terrible misuse of our very finite resources. "Efficiency" is another area where capitalists wrongly claim superiority. In fact, its almost the least efficient system we could come up with.

3 - Laziness, Incentive and No One Working - I also do not advocate laziness. I know that people need to do work. What I'm saying is a phasing out of jobs through technology and putting in social efficiencies. Why ship food across the country when you can grow it local, ship it local and sell it local? The entire shipping industry is a major inefficiency and one thats rather easy to solve. If you'll read my second post you'll see that the idea is to get people to contribute, in whatever way they feel best. Some will write books, some will build houses, some will clean toilets. People think when you take away money that incentive to do work just ends, right then and there. But thats simply not true. When you take away money people's incentive to do crappy, useless, meaningless jobs ends, right then and there. But not the desire to help the community, the world and each other. Thats inside everybody. Even the evilest in goverments and businessmen think they're doing good for the world.

You'll find that once the incentive "to make money - buy food and shelter - repeat" fades away that NEW incentives will grow from the ashes. Incentives like making other's lives better, improving the planet and society, making art, music, poetry, theater, staying home to raise your kids and be with your friends and family. These are the ONLY incentives there truly are. They're simply perverted through the lens of work. Jobs and money actually have to attach themselves to THESE incentives to make themselves relevant to society. Meaning, if jobs and money DIDNT attach themselves to these universal incentives then they wouldnt even exist. Jobs and money would have NO purpose in our society if they didnt put themselves BETWEEN us and these incentives.

4 - Who decides? - We do. The beauty of this system is that all extraneous work, (work that makes a profit but doesnt fulfill a human need) will flake away like old paint. WE, the workers, will decide where to put our energies and that will be in our immediate homes and communities. One poster asked "Who gets to live at Lake Tahoe and who lives in Detroit?" Well think about this for a second. What makes Detroit a bad area to live? People dont have money to buy food or shelter. People dont have money to fix their communities and make them better. Therefore they turn to crime to simply get by. But if people were given food and shelter, given a REASON to clean up their community, a REASON to learn and be creative, a REASON to NOT commit crime for food and shelter, then how quickly will the bad areas be transformed into livable areas? Sure, Tahoe is going to be prettier than any city, but if offered free food and shelter in exchange for ANY contribution you'll find the Detroits of the world become better places. You'll also find all the "who does this, who does that" will fade away too because there will be people who will scrub the toilets at a meaningful company simply to be a part of a meaningul company. Also, theres MILLIONS of people willing to garden for the joy of it, cook for the joy of it, build houses for the joy of it. We're so overwhelmed by the tedium of jobs that we tend to forget that they started out as fun, meaningful work.

5 - Who does the crappy jobs? - Well lets not forget about the market. I didnt get to put this in the original post because I didnt want to clutter it up but my subsequent posts point out that jobs that cannot be fulfilled by volunteer contributors will be left to the market. If people need to be bribed with money to be a garbage man then the market will take care of his wage the same way it does now. Crappy jobs will fade away but the ones we cannot replace with technology will be left to the market. We just can't let the market be responsible for our food and shelter. They're too important to be left to the whims and fluctuations of a market economy.

reply to post by buddhasystem

Once again, you are making things up, and you aren't very good at that. I pointed out that your housing is subsidized by other people's taxes. You also congratulated yourself on that. That's the blunt truth, and that's that. I never said that you need to be starved or anything.

WRONG yet again, dear.
I said you gave the impression of such a character - how is that making things up? I was merely relating the impression you gave from my POV.
Do you think that after paying taxes since leaving school, that I shouldn't be entitled to the subsidised housing that I need now? I am not in this situation by choice, or did you conveniently not read that part of my post?

How does that make you unique?

Erm .... where have I said I am unique? Tut tut, and you say I make things up

First you say you had no savings, and apparently your had a mortgage so didn't actually own your house. Then you say that "a lifetime of work" (sounds like a lot), and your savings "was took away" from you (sic), as well as the house. What is the truth here?

My savings were used up on living expenses before my home was repossessed and weren't 'taken' away, my apologies for my mistake there. It was meant to read by the time my home was repo'd, my savings were gone.

Yes I had a mortgage, and thus didn't 'own' my house. It was my family home for 15 years. My point was that it takes all those years to 'buy' a home, but it takes just a few months to snatch it all back. And the result is that when a person is unemployed and has nothing material to show for their 53 years of life, some people are quick to assume that that person has been bone idle and must have done nothing but scrounge all their life, when in fact, like myself they have done quite the opposite.

You seem to have a real problem just because I am in a council house and only pay partial rent? I pay a fair amount of rent in proportion to my now low income, calculated by the local authority, same with my council tax. Do you think I, and people like myself, shouldn't be allowed to live in subsidised social housing? If not, why not?

Do you think that I, and people like myself, after they have worked hard and paid taxes for years, should be offered no help at all when circumstances change for the worse? If not, why not? If yes, what are you whining about?

And those 3 kids of yours can't help you out?

My precious kids are wonderful to me. They are young and earn minimum pay, have their own living expenses and unable to help financially. They help in every other way and I am proud of them.

Can I just enquire as to what you would do, should you suddenly find yourself unemployed? Would you go live in a cardboard box under The Arches, or would you accept subsidised social housing?

And listen, it's no good taking a swing at me because I don't pay full rent or council tax. I didn't invent the system we live by - I just paid into it for more than 35 years.

Originally posted by gosseyn
I think you don't get the idea. No one is asking you to quit doing what you like to do, designing AI or whatever. The idea is to provide for the basic needs of everyone for free, and that means for you too. No jobs doesn't mean no work, but no jobs means that your survival isn't tied to your job or the money you get from that job. And since you are not alone on this planet and that others will also have their basic needs satisfied, they will also continue to do what they like to do and they will provide you with what they produce or with their services, just like you will contribute to the advancement of AI technology. Everything you do would benefit everyone, and everything everyone is doing will benefit you. That's the true meaning of cooperation, and it is time that we truly cooperate for the advancement of our species.

I think you missed my point. It wasn't just about "jobs". Just because I'm good and excell at hacking code, doesn't mean I like it. It does however provide me a good means to support and feed my family. But honestly, I'd rather be doing something outside, sincerely, like maybe painting scenic views of forrests. Unfortunately, I can't draw, paint, or sculpt well at all; and while I've taken classes for these things to get better, I find instruction in such occupations to be tiresome and boring, but I do enjoy these actvities and I like being outside.

I assume basic needs include food and shelter right? Okay, I'd like my shelter to be on Lake Tahoe. Afterall, someone has to live on such pristine and party like areas. So what if 20 million people want to live there and there's only 4,000 lots? How do we decide who gets the house in the Hamptons VS. who gets the loft above a Detroit gas station?

As far as my food, I have allergies to most vegetables and some meats. I can eat some cuts of beef (Del Monico, Ribeye, and TBone), some chicken (typically the white meat), potatoes and corn. If I eat anything else I don't feel good. Oh, unless they are on a pizza, then I can eat sausage pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, and peppers. Hopefully there's no shortages of these foods once the demand for them sky rockets as they would then be free to everyone. Oh, and don't forget red wine with my Del Monico.

Getting people to volunteer for garbage collection is going to be tough. Also, I would assume that jobs like offshore oil drilling, coal mining, and nuclear power plant maintenance, while high paying now, would not be as sought after "areas of work" once the idea of currency is disbanded; thus, we will eventually need to ration power. As long as I'm one of the people set to always get power (afterall, I may need to set up lights at night to do my scenic forrest paintings) I'll be alright with rationing electricity.

This is a great thread. Every morning since I was 15 years old I've been wondering why I have to spend most of my life working for someone else to make money. I believe greed is what spawned capitalism and the ingrained need to be working to have food and shelter. Why do we need to pay $1,000 a month for our houses for 30 years and spend $150 at the grocery store every week ? Aren't there enough houses ? Doesn't the USA produce more than enough food for all our citizens ? Does anyone need a billion dollars ? Could Bill Gates spend all his money in one lifetime ? And this unreasoning fear of "communists" that has been drilled into our heads. If everyone realized we are all in this together, the basics of life - food, shelter, health care, education - could be provided to everyone. This is a given. It's part of the infrastructure. Competition is a great thing, but we don't need competition among ourselves when it comes to basic needs. The rich and big corporations want us fighting each other over the scraps so they can keep the real money and power. If we didn't have to spend all our time working to pay the bills for basic survival, we could do something really useful instead of working at the Walmart or for some rich banker. We are effectively slaves to the dollar, the rich, the big corporations. I don't think everyone can go off and drop out and grow their own food. We now have technology that is very efficient and could provide for us all. BTW, what ever happened to that dream in Disneyland where the work week gets shorter and more flexible (due to new technology) and people have more time to travel, etc., etc. It seems that now we have to work longer to just survive. I remember the old TV shows where the Dad is in his suit at the breakfast table eating bacon and eggs and going in to the office at 9:00. Of course Mom didn't need to work - ha ha !

Originally posted by doobydoll
reply to post by nightbringr

 

Oh BOO HOO!!

You don't pay for my life. I paid for my own life. It isn't my fault your life is so miserable, get off your arse and do something to make yourself happy instead of moaning and groaning and spreading your misery ffs!

You misunderstand. My life is quite good. Im very happy. I have a wonderful family i love, make decent money and go on great trips every year. My house is paid off, i have no debt and life is good!

I just do not like paying for those who refuse to work. If you were on social security due to old age and retirement, fine. But it simply sounds like you are on welfare. So yes, i do pay your way.

Your welcome once again.

reply to post by sylvie


I agree with you, the American Empire has to stop meddling in other people's affairs, but I'm talking about individual citizens making conscious choices to improve the quality of life in the third world. Paying more for goods because they are ethical and sustainable, not because it makes financial sense but because it's the right thing to do. Not supporting companies like Coca-Cola or McDonald's or Nestle that don't give a # about anything but profit. You cannot change the world you can only change your world.

Originally posted by nightbringr

Originally posted by doobydoll
reply to post by nightbringr

 

Oh BOO HOO!!

You don't pay for my life. I paid for my own life. It isn't my fault your life is so miserable, get off your arse and do something to make yourself happy instead of moaning and groaning and spreading your misery ffs!

You misunderstand. My life is quite good. Im very happy. I have a wonderful family i love, make decent money and go on great trips every year. My house is paid off, i have no debt and life is good!

I just do not like paying for those who refuse to work. If you were on social security due to old age and retirement, fine. But it simply sounds like you are on welfare. So yes, i do pay your way.

Your welcome once again.

W-R-O-N-G !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am not on welfare and never have been.

Nor do I claim unemployment benefits.

I now do not have a mortgage, and I have NO debt, and I too have a wonderful family, I draw a private pension which I paid into while I was earning, and that is what I live on.

And guess what? My life is better than good - my life is EXCELLENT!!!

You don't like paying for people who refuse to work? Well that's just tough titties. You have NO CHOICE!

So suck it up. And while you're at it, don't be late for work - the scroungers need paying

cheer up!! you could have spent your whole life draging large rocks
around Mexico building pyramids. or maybe being sold out by your
own and picking cotton the rest of your life. Maybe if you were real lucky
the roman leigons had a job for you.

If 2012 is for real maybe all those jobs listed above will come back!!
Face it we are lucky to be living now.

I know alot of people are having hard times these days
and i hope the best for you and our society.

Shame how we easily turn against each and disapprove other folks' lifestyles when everyone's just trying to survive. We can so easily be living in the other person's shoes.

People make such a fuss about paying for other folks' freebies when it's a pittance against what you pay to keep all our great leaders living in luxury and the bombs and bombers and other nasty things they'd use on us if they ever feel like it.

What OP described is extremely similar to an initial idea of a resource-based economy, namely the Venus project.

And that's not communism, in fact, what you currently have is a worst form of communism seeing as your super-strong economy, super-powerful military and lavish lifestyles are all based on printing worthless paper. And soon the world will accept your worthless papers no more.... they'll switch to other worthless papers.

As much as I hate working, I have learned biggest lessons from my co- workers.

Damn, to think of it, arbeit really macht frei... weird. When you catch the yin/yan -thingie.

Wow, I've looked at our economy and the exploitation of human resources the same way for years but what can we do. Obviously we would need to organize but where do we start. We all want to provide shelter and food for our families but how do we go about it the right way.

Can anyone provide a list of products or stores we should stay away from?
How do we wake up the world to realize that we just make these fat cat richer?

Every corner of my neighborhood has a Publix, Wal-Mart, CVS, Walgreens, WindDixie...

I think maybe that's where we can start, identifying stores that we should be shopping at as opposed to these large money hungry, human resource abusing corporations.

Any ideas..

Everyone! Check this guy out !!!

Jaimie Mantzel, he's on YouTube. He has a totally awesome way way outside-of-the-box thinker and tinker, almost off the grid lifestyle. And he doesn't work at a conventional job. He builds his own stuff from recycled stuff. He lives on his own land, he built his own geodesic dome-homes, he's solar powered, he designs toys for a company in England (that actually got him a 3D printer - see his video on this and many other topics). He's not a hippy, he's not political. Just happy go lucky dude, with an unstoppable can-do attitude. He's valiantly raising his own kid and he's building quite a following of Do-ers through the Adventure Builders Club. He's even building a GIANT ROBOT completely from scratch. Plus he's got a really great attitude about life and trying to make the world a better place. He's not a global warming freak either.

Guys checkout Jaimius.com and gals goto Dashaina.com

Originally posted by buddhasystem
The OP is completely misguided.

Until the 90s, the US was a manufacturing powerhouse. We were exporting goods like refrigerators and musical instruments to many countries in the world. It's a travesty to say that the need for these items is "artificial".

Well, then these jobs were simply moved overseas. If you will, the country was strip-mined of potential by laissez faire attitude of the government.

I was with you up to the point where you blamed it on laissez-faire. We do not have laissez-faire and it's almost not even free market. Free Trade is not what it sounds like. The cause is unrealistic and burdensome taxes and regulations. I hate to say this, but when you dictate the cost of labor, you take away the ability for a company to price it's product at the lowest price. The cost of everything goes up the minute labor goes up, everybody has to get a higher wage then to purchase the products that the cost just raised, or the company has to go overseas to find cheaper labor.
Socialists want to eliminate the CEOs and make the companies owned by the proletariat, which really means that the companies would belong to the State and controlled by the State because the proletariat never truly owns it. Marxism means abolition of private property. Marx had said eventually the State withers away.
Let's look at the former USSR. The system of communism fell, the State ownership of the means of production failed, and the Soviet Union broke away from that system(only to replace it with Mafia), and there never was a system there where the proletariat truly owned things.
Do you really believe that once the masses get their little slice of pie they will be happy?
You are already unhappy with the crummy job you have. The State cannot take care of you and let you choose a more fun job and provide for you all at the same time. It just doesn't work that way.
Unpleasant things also have to be done to make things happen. Someone has to put the trash out. Who will do that if everyone is all happy with their more creative jobs?
Utopia is not achievable unless we find a better way to manufacture and distribute things. Some people want to go back to a more agrarian way of life, removing all this product that has to be made, but you cannot dictate that to people, it becomes more of a Totalitarian thing(think the UN now).
And then there are those of us who have faint memories of a better time in Atlantis....

reply to post by TheLastStand


Yep me too, I see the system in place is Socialism for the super rich, and Capitalism for the poor.

We fail its our fault They fail its our problem sounds like were all being had lol.

reply to post by GenerationGap

think you missed my point. It wasn't just about "jobs". Just because I'm good and excell at hacking code, doesn't mean I like it. It does however provide me a good means to support and feed my family. But honestly, I'd rather be doing something outside, sincerely, like maybe painting scenic views of forrests. Unfortunately, I can't draw, paint, or sculpt well at all; and while I've taken classes for these things to get better, I find instruction in such occupations to be tiresome and boring, but I do enjoy these actvities and I like being outside.

Your post reminds me of my Dad. He was a metallurgical engineer and that's what he did for a living. He developed all the patents for his own foundry which he worked up to from pouring metal in the furnace room. He loved to read and had a library filled with books on science. He painted and sculpted too. He ended up doing water colors which is not easy. The sculpting thing was prompted by the abundance of excess scrap metal sitting around the foundry property. I remember one day I went with him and I went around the parking lot area by the shipping dept.picking up pieces of scrap metal. He made a bust one time, and it ended up as one of Sammy Davis Jr's possessions. Sammy liked it so my Dad made a gift of it. He tried to learn to play the mandolin and Spanish Flemenco guitar. He fenced. I still have some of his fencing equipment. One time he brought a glass blowing torch home and taught me how to bend glass tubes. He even made a sculpture from the scrap metal into an interesting fountain for his pool.
Me personally, I have worked as a Montessori aide, got a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, taken Kung Fu lessons, done competitive ballroom dancing, traveled to India, practiced yoga for hobbies. And I also love to read, but my favorite subjects are metaphysics and conspiracy theories.

reply to post by OpenMindedCynic


Unreasoning fear of communism drilled into our heads? I was wondering when others would see it for what it is, a terrible cancer. It is totalitarian, and didn't you learn from the former USSR that centralized planning doesn't work well? Remember the long lines for a loaf of bread or piece of meat? That was because of centralized planning. When the State owns the means of all the production, it tries to run everything. If the State today cannot even run Medicare and SS without going bankrupt, what's going to happen when it owns all the auto, finance, and health sectors as well? Prepare to have the job at the DMVAH(DIvision of Motor Vehicles And Healthcare, where you can make sour faces at the long lines of people waiting to get some minimal treatment.

And don't get me started on the gulags and labor camps. You worked for your food in the Soviet Union. You didn't like the treatment, you get to go to Siberia.
Didn't you know that the film Doctor Zhivago was one of the more realistic movies Hollywood ever made?

Originally posted by doobydoll

My savings were used up on living expenses before my home was repossessed and weren't 'taken' away, my apologies for my mistake there. It was meant to read by the time my home was repo'd, my savings were gone.

Do you think that I, and people like myself, after they have worked hard and paid taxes for years, should be offered no help at all when circumstances change for the worse? If not, why not? If yes, what are you whining about?

YES if you have paid into a system YES you should of been entitled to benefits of that system. However I do have one question for you. Instead of using that savings to pay the bills would of it been better to fix the car so you could continue to work? I mean you knew you would eventually run out of money. You could of used the savings to fix the car and supplement your income.

I was fired from my job in January because my car broke down, and I needed a car to actually do the job, I was a delivery driver.

I am just saying...

Originally posted by RedParrotHead
I'm trying to wrap my head around the OP idea but just can't. No one works? How does anything get done?

Would public robots give my children teeth cleanings and check for cavities or would I have to learn how to? Would my wife be compensated for teaching school all day or just do it for self satisfaction while I get to stay home trying to figure out what I need to build a guitar so that I can teach myself how to play the guitar to give me something to do that's not actually productive?

Like I said, I just don't get it. I could work hard for other peoples benefit if I wanted to - but could also choose to spend all day everyday drinking free beer and eating free cheeseburgers?

Also Parrot, what happened to the argument that we need undocumented migrant workers to do our jobs we don't want to do.....now suddenly all jobs are worthless unless it's something fun and creative...

Originally posted by geryon
If you want to go live off the land just go do it, no one is stopping you. For most people that existence is not enough though. I believe most people want modern conveniences and nice things but just don't want to have to work for it, me either but until that system comes I will do what it takes to have the lifestyle i want. And I don't think its fair that I have to pay for those that won't.

edit on 14-9-2011 by geryon because: add

I spent two weeks in India, and I don't mean hotels. I stayed in someone's apartment part of the time, and the rest was in an Ashram by the Ganges. I'm sure Richard Gere, Madonna, and Sharon Stone all were in the best hotels. But I spent half the day just staying warm. The temp ranged from about 38 to 45 or so. We had little portable heaters that heat up only the room you are in. To make things worse, you cannot drink the water. It is unpotable. You have to buy it bottled and hope it wasnt river water sealed up to look like pure water. Showers were "bucket-baths" where you had to pump the water up in the night, then use it for your morning shower. Hot out of the hot tap and cold out of the cold tap, and the fun begins with mixing the hot and the cold in the bucket. And that's your shower.
Sound like fun?