• Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Meanwhile I want us to work on things that are actually personally fulfilling, instead of earning imaginary money for rich assholes to abuse and hold us down with.

    If we were working on what we wanted to do, we’d do it as much as we had energy for. That might be once a week, or it might be every waking hour for 6+ months.

    The important bit is “days per week” would be 0+. This is what I want for everyone. It’s why I fully support a UBI, along with socialized healthcare and housing.

    You want to spend your time doing nothing but raise your kids? Great, do that super well and don’t worry about the “lost” income. You want to make art? Awesome, do it! You want to engineer a bridge, teach, be a doctor or nurse, grow crops, etc? We need that too, and in addition to your base UBI money you get extra for doing a socially needed job. Good for you!

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      If I didn’t have to work, I’d probably end up doing the same job I am now but for schools and local government, rather than for large companies. And I’d also be doing things like building and maintaining community gardens, or teaching anyone who wanted to learn what I know, because then there’s more people to help me out and I can relax more.

      • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Personally I’d love to help with community gardening initiatives… sort of.

        I’m presently working on an indoor root crop system for urban dwellers, just as a hobby. I don’t actually want to profit off it, I want to develop it to help fix the world, but with the present system, I feel the absolute need to monetize it in some way, which is anathema to how I want to exist and it being low cost and accessible for low income households.

        Capitalism hinders progress. It’s really sad and demoralizing.

        I’m going to release it for free anyway when it’s done - when it’s a reproducible system and not just an interdependent idea - but it’s never going to benefit me, and that sucks because I’m poor lol

    • smollittlefrog@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      You don’t want to collect trash off the streets? Well, looks like our city will look like shit forever. You don’t want to work as a cashier? Well, looks like our supermarkets will remain closed.

      Most jobs are not fulfilling and would never be done voluntarily (at a relevant scale).

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        You don’t want to collect trash off the streets? Well, looks like our city will look like shit forever. You don’t want to work as a cashier? Well, looks like our supermarkets will remain closed.

        Every time I read this I just hear loud licking sounds. bootlicker

        How about paying those people enough that they want to do those jobs?

        • smollittlefrog@lemdro.id
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          1 year ago

          What is “enough”?

          In many countries, your basic needs are already fully met no matter which job you do.

          E.g. in Germany working minimum wage full time gets you way more money than you need.

          Minimum wage full time gets you about 2160€ before tax, which will be about 1650€ after tax (and healthcare etc.).

          You can easily pay for your basic needs for less than half of that (even when living alone). The rest you can use to buy upgrades, like a new phone etc.

          Minimum wage workers in Germany are already wealthy.

          But of course, if you’d ask the average German minimum wage worker, they’d claim to be poor.

          They claim to be poor because they can not afford modern luxury. They can not afford to pay for expensive brands, they can not afford to eat in expensive restaurants.

          They can not afford to be lavish.

          Now imagine if every person in Germany could afford twice as much (something that happens multiple times in a lifetime). Would they stop considering themselves poor? No, their entitlement would simply rise accordingly (as we’ve seen again and again throughout the thousands of years of history).

          You can not pay people “enough”. People do not care about their individual wealth. They only care about how wealthy they are compared to others.

          The majority of people can never be wealthy, because people only consider themselves wealthy if they have someone (or rather many) to look down upon.

          • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            What is “enough”?

            You’re demanding an exact boundary while offering nothing in return but an avalanche of vague imprecise claims with no sources cited.

            You can not pay people “enough”. People do not care about their individual wealth. They only care about how wealthy they are compared to others.

            The majority of people can never be wealthy, because people only consider themselves wealthy if they have someone (or rather many) to look down upon.

            Speak for yourself and only yourself. You don’t speak for me. You don’t speak for the people I call friends. You only speak for a narrow “keeping up with the Joneses” sort of American asshole that is actually getting a bit rarer as boomers slowly die off and not enough young people echo that ideology to sustain it.

            Save your “all human beings are exactly the same way, therefore capitalism good” naturalistic bullshit claims for reddit-logo and for that matter save your bootlicking apologia for there, too.

            Lastly, what are you arguing for? That it’s cool and good to underpay people that do the most unpleasant (and in many cases, most important for society’s ongoing functioning) tasks because of some biotruthy sophistry about how no amount of pay would be enough therefore underpaying them is good? Or extending your argument to its conclusion, if it’s just “how much compared to everyone else” that matters, you are seriously arguing for everyone to get paid less if they aren’t in some exclusive very special secret club of very special elite people (that you probably include yourself into)? Fuck that.

            • smollittlefrog@lemdro.id
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              1 year ago

              As cited above, the GDP per capita in Germany doubles every few years.

              How many times more do you think it has to be doubled until you and your friends deem themselves wealthy.

              They never will. Because you, too, define wealth as being able to look down on others (in your social environment).

              A large part of the world’s population would consider themselves extremely wealthy if they had even near the income of a German worker earning minimum wage.

              On a global scale, German minimum wage workers are very, very wealthy.

              The only reason you’d ever consider German minimum wage to be too little is if you’re used to extreme excess, if you’ve lived in a hyper wealthy environment all your life.

              You’re so used to extreme wealth, that you deem slightly less extreme wealth to be poverty. You consider it to be poverty, because the people surrounding you are even wealthier. You consider it poverty, because you can not look down on them.

              • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Oh, so you’re one of those smug (ethno)nationaist chuds that think that people in the United States that are one missed paycheck from homelessness, or are already homeless and are in physical decline from exposure and preventable illness are actually spoiled because some numbers on a screen say that that homeless person is actually a recipient of extreme wealth due to location while completely ignoring cost of living expenses because it doesn’t fit the numbers you want.

                You’re way too far up your own ass to argue with, and you probably have goosestepping lessons to keep up with for the big plans you and yours have for your glorious fatherland in the future.

                Most jobs are not fulfilling and would never be done voluntarily (at a relevant scale).

                What is your glorious German superiority proposal for those “not fulfilling” jobs, then? Slavery? The US prison system might excite and thrill you if you look into it. scared-fash

                • smollittlefrog@lemdro.id
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                  1 year ago

                  What is your glorious German superiority proposal for those “not fulfilling” jobs, then?

                  The current system.

                  ignoring cost of living expenses

                  I don’t have detailed knowledge of the US economy, which is why I keep using Germany as an example.

                  In Germany you are never one paycheck away from being homeless unless you’re actively wasting money. As said before, 800€ is more than enough to live alone in an apartment. And you make more than double that (in the worst case).

                  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    I don’t have detailed knowledge of the US economy, which is why I keep using Germany as an example.

                    You only have arrogant presumptions about rich the United States ostensibly is, while ignoring that a tiny percentage of the population actually benefits from those riches and the rest experience staggeringly higher cost of living, especially for things like medical care and housing.

                    In Germany you are never one paycheck away from being homeless unless you’re actively wasting money. As said before, 800€ is more than enough to live alone in an apartment. And you make more than double that (in the worst case).

                    Again, you’ve admitted your ignorance about the United States there, and the situation of hundreds of millions of people that live in it that are not functionally wealthy in a material way that they actually experience.

                    And once again, “the current system” is failing those people and no amount of being smugly content with a status quo that is unsustainably bad for people in the United States that scrub toilets, drive ambulances, or provide CNA services to hospital patients does those people any good.