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I, too, hate the endless mouse wheel of employment. However, having a job is a COMPLETELY OPTIONAL choice that one makes; nothing is stopping any of us from liv

by kkoomi 10y ago

I, too, hate the endless mouse wheel of employment. However, having a job is a COMPLETELY OPTIONAL choice that one makes; nothing is stopping any of us from living on a deserted island without a job. Having a job is the cost of living in society. It sucks and needs improvement, but it is not as bad as slavery where you have no choice and not much gain.

glennsl 10y ago
Don't you think the owner of this deserted island with enough resources to live on might at some point object to you being there and force you off his land? There is no living outside of society, outside of private property and the rule of law. There is no real choice here.
- daveloyall 10y ago
  Right. Those systems ate the world a long time ago. This is sort of a proxy conversation about money. I'd like to point out that manufacturing your own money from scratch is a good way to get shot.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
Yeah, I stopped calling it "slavery" because it tends to derail the discussion. However, if you say that slavery gives you "no choice and not much gain" then the jobs are mostly improvement in the second aspect - you still don't have a choice, but you get a bit more in return.
rad88 10y ago
> Having a job is the cost of living in society. In other words, we are born into debt and must work all our lives to pay off that debt. This is true in so many ways, and makes what we're talking about amount to at best a kind of bonded child labor. You don't have to think of it as slavery, but it's very very far from COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. There is no deserted island to live on!! There are no guarantees of universal housing, or healthcare, or much else that is needed to survive. Until there are, working vs. not working can never be a real choice. The working class by definition must work in order to live.
- kkoomi 10y ago
  One could potentially find an uninhabited island with soil and water among the islands in the world, like 1 out of the 5000 uninhabited ones in the Philippine archipelago. One could even hide out in a remote location on land in a random large country, like Russia. It might take some work, but it seems possible to me.
  - rad88 10y ago
    Such a trip costs money. To secure the legal right to inhabit the island, to make the trip, and to bring enough supplies to survive. A person either needs to use his parent's cash or to work for a number of years and save before leaving. The "choice" isn't available to him until that happens, so either his parents must work to purchase their child's freedom, or he must work to purchase it himself. In either case this is one of the very definitions of slavery.
arisAlexis 10y ago
I could write a long post about this but my thought process currently is that being born in society automatically includes the cost of the knowledge that gets transferred to you even without doing anything. Geting automatically registered in the system and being born in a hospital or a house with heating has an inherent cost like "society debt". I think its part of evolution and not linked to monetary systems, money is only a representation.

by kkoomi 10y ago

glennsl 10y ago

Don't you think the owner of this deserted island with enough resources to live on might at some point object to you being there and force you off his land? There is no living outside of society, outside of private property and the rule of law. There is no real choice here.

daveloyall 10y ago
Right. Those systems ate the world a long time ago. This is sort of a proxy conversation about money. I'd like to point out that manufacturing your own money from scratch is a good way to get shot.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

Yeah, I stopped calling it "slavery" because it tends to derail the discussion. However, if you say that slavery gives you "no choice and not much gain" then the jobs are mostly improvement in the second aspect - you still don't have a choice, but you get a bit more in return.

rad88 10y ago

> Having a job is the cost of living in society. In other words, we are born into debt and must work all our lives to pay off that debt. This is true in so many ways, and makes what we're talking about amount to at best a kind of bonded child labor. You don't have to think of it as slavery, but it's very very far from COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. There is no deserted island to live on!! There are no guarantees of universal housing, or healthcare, or much else that is needed to survive. Until there are, working vs. not working can never be a real choice. The working class by definition must work in order to live.

kkoomi 10y ago
One could potentially find an uninhabited island with soil and water among the islands in the world, like 1 out of the 5000 uninhabited ones in the Philippine archipelago. One could even hide out in a remote location on land in a random large country, like Russia. It might take some work, but it seems possible to me.
- rad88 10y ago
  Such a trip costs money. To secure the legal right to inhabit the island, to make the trip, and to bring enough supplies to survive. A person either needs to use his parent's cash or to work for a number of years and save before leaving. The "choice" isn't available to him until that happens, so either his parents must work to purchase their child's freedom, or he must work to purchase it himself. In either case this is one of the very definitions of slavery.

arisAlexis 10y ago

I could write a long post about this but my thought process currently is that being born in society automatically includes the cost of the knowledge that gets transferred to you even without doing anything. Geting automatically registered in the system and being born in a hospital or a house with heating has an inherent cost like "society debt". I think its part of evolution and not linked to monetary systems, money is only a representation.