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>because they consider it less demoralising than working at McDonald's I honestly think that people shouldn't be forced to sell their time to McDonald's for le

>because they consider it less demoralising than working at McDonald's I honestly think that people shouldn't be forced to sell their time to McDonald's for less than fair value because they are afraid of starvation, either. Elsewhere in the thread people advocate a licensing system -- my fear of complete legitimization would be that people who need help from society will be refused that help if it seems that they could just get a job at the local brothel. BUT if that licensing system is used to screen people who are in desperate straits to give them solid alternatives before they make that decision, I think that might be a very workable solution.

vertex-four 10y ago
> I honestly think that people shouldn't be forced to sell their time to McDonald's for less than fair value because they are afraid of starvation, either. Sure. But solving that involves a complete overhaul of the current capitalist system, and we're not going to get that for a long time. In the meantime, allowing people to survive within the capitalist system however they need to is a necessity. > my fear of complete legitimization would be that people who need help from society will be refused that help if it seems that they could just get a job at the local brothel I don't think that's ever likely to be the case. It certainly isn't the case in first-world countries where prostitution, and even brothels, are legal right now. Nobody has been turned away from receiving services and benefits in the UK or Nevada, for example, because they could be performing sex work, similarly as they're not forced into a number of other things (such as the military).
- clavalle 10y ago
  >Sure. But solving that involves a complete overhaul of the current capitalist system The current capitalist system, maybe, but I think it is perfectly workable within some flavor of capitalism. In fact, I think that having a solid social safety net would push capitalism to even greater heights of efficiency. With the notable exception of the taxation to pay it people would be making transactions that are guaranteed to be a net positive. That assumes, of course, that paying for such a system isn't an overall negative which is debatable (but more and more plausible with productivity gains over the last century or two).
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    > In fact, I think that having a solid social safety net would push capitalism to even greater heights of efficiency. I live in the UK. We have a solid social safety net. The issue is that it exists to support a capitalist understanding of wages - i.e. that your wage is a result of a market, which is more-or-less unrelated to the value that you create through your work (except insofar as an upper limit is created) and more to do with how many people and companies you're competing with to do the work. A "safety net" which somehow ensures, in perpetuity, that people are able to work for a wage which has some relation to the value they create winds up looking a lot like certain forms of socialism. But as with all real-world politics, it winds up being blurry.
    - aninhumer 10y ago
      > that your wage is a result of a market, which is more-or-less unrelated to the value that you create through your work ... and more to do with how many people and companies you're competing with to do the work. That's how supply and demand works. The wages are low because the more people are looking for a particular job, the more people there are willing to do it for less than others. In a well functioning society, this is a signal saying "we have enough people doing this job, go do something else". The problem is that our society doesn't make it easy for people to do something else. Generally people get one chance at education, and if they make a bad choice, they're screwed. And beyond that, there's nothing that ensures that there will even be enough demand for labour that everyone can earn a decent living.
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        Yes. Supply and demand as applied to compensation for labour is a capitalist idea of how society should work, and results in all sorts of issues, including the ones discussed in this thread and the fact that the value people create gets siphoned into the capitalist class by way of the companies they're forced to work for to survive, for less compensation than the value they create. The solutions to this lie in the ideas of worker-led organisations of varying kinds, mutual aid, and more generally the reduction of the role a capitalist class takes in the production of value. And yes, accessible education to all.

vertex-four 10y ago

> I honestly think that people shouldn't be forced to sell their time to McDonald's for less than fair value because they are afraid of starvation, either. Sure. But solving that involves a complete overhaul of the current capitalist system, and we're not going to get that for a long time. In the meantime, allowing people to survive within the capitalist system however they need to is a necessity. > my fear of complete legitimization would be that people who need help from society will be refused that help if it seems that they could just get a job at the local brothel I don't think that's ever likely to be the case. It certainly isn't the case in first-world countries where prostitution, and even brothels, are legal right now. Nobody has been turned away from receiving services and benefits in the UK or Nevada, for example, because they could be performing sex work, similarly as they're not forced into a number of other things (such as the military).

clavalle 10y ago
>Sure. But solving that involves a complete overhaul of the current capitalist system The current capitalist system, maybe, but I think it is perfectly workable within some flavor of capitalism. In fact, I think that having a solid social safety net would push capitalism to even greater heights of efficiency. With the notable exception of the taxation to pay it people would be making transactions that are guaranteed to be a net positive. That assumes, of course, that paying for such a system isn't an overall negative which is debatable (but more and more plausible with productivity gains over the last century or two).
- vertex-four 10y ago
  > In fact, I think that having a solid social safety net would push capitalism to even greater heights of efficiency. I live in the UK. We have a solid social safety net. The issue is that it exists to support a capitalist understanding of wages - i.e. that your wage is a result of a market, which is more-or-less unrelated to the value that you create through your work (except insofar as an upper limit is created) and more to do with how many people and companies you're competing with to do the work. A "safety net" which somehow ensures, in perpetuity, that people are able to work for a wage which has some relation to the value they create winds up looking a lot like certain forms of socialism. But as with all real-world politics, it winds up being blurry.
  - aninhumer 10y ago
    > that your wage is a result of a market, which is more-or-less unrelated to the value that you create through your work ... and more to do with how many people and companies you're competing with to do the work. That's how supply and demand works. The wages are low because the more people are looking for a particular job, the more people there are willing to do it for less than others. In a well functioning society, this is a signal saying "we have enough people doing this job, go do something else". The problem is that our society doesn't make it easy for people to do something else. Generally people get one chance at education, and if they make a bad choice, they're screwed. And beyond that, there's nothing that ensures that there will even be enough demand for labour that everyone can earn a decent living.
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      Yes. Supply and demand as applied to compensation for labour is a capitalist idea of how society should work, and results in all sorts of issues, including the ones discussed in this thread and the fact that the value people create gets siphoned into the capitalist class by way of the companies they're forced to work for to survive, for less compensation than the value they create. The solutions to this lie in the ideas of worker-led organisations of varying kinds, mutual aid, and more generally the reduction of the role a capitalist class takes in the production of value. And yes, accessible education to all.