5 ms·
> If a person has enough to survive, why would they toil and labour? Just do whatever you like! It really boils down on how many people need how much resources
by mrtksn 4y ago
> If a person has enough to survive, why would they toil and labour? Just do whatever you like!
It really boils down on how many people need how much resources and how many people produce these resources. You can argue over who should be your bourgeoisie, should it be the political elite or the entrepreneurs or should it be inherited or or should it be the the people from special blood or religion or should no one be bourgeoisie and everyone should be working but you can't really argue over the resources and work done that is need to sustain a society.
You simply cannot have all the population on planet Earth retire on their savings because you cannot eat the numbers on the screen. With automation, robotics and other technologies we can increase the productivity and as a result we can afford to have greater percentage of people in leisure but we are nowhere near total machine labor. In fact, the percentage of non-working people probably is not that different than the past because despite the increase in productivity we also have increased lifespan which results in large number of retirees who consume the resources for much longer than before.
In dominant countries you might have the percentage higher and live off on imports from countries where everyone works much harder but the gap evaporates as these countries catch up.
So, the trick is to be part of a society that is so much advanced than the rest that their produce can buy off the produce of the society that relies on hard work. You can have a lot of bananas from Honduras if your society can make great apps that Hondurans love and willing to trade their bananas but this scheme falls apart when Hondurans start making their own apps and now you need to grow your own bananas.
- neonsunset 4y agoUnsure why the post is downvoted, this point of view is really interesting. Could you link some reference materials to explore this more?
- mrtksn 4y agoI think the topic is quite nebulous but I recall some articles on these issues here on HN that reached the front page. I recall something about historical ratio of the non-working elites being about the same and societies crumbling over that threshold.
- GoldenRacer 4y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
- joaonmatos 4y agoI guess you can read “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” by V.I. Lenin to explore the topic more
- mandmandam 4y agoI am downvoting because the comment acts as if it's a mystery where all the wealth gains in productivity have gone. It is NOT a fucking mystery, and I'm outraged that so, so many people are or act oblivious to the obscenely obvious cause. (Since it's not actually obvious to everyone, thanks to shit education and propaganda, the uber-wealthy have hoovered up the gains in productivity and kept it to themselves.) It's very clear by looking at the numbers [0], and it's outrageous to ignore this factor and blame a slightly older population. [0] - https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforce-america-united-states-wages-stagnate https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforc...
- upsidesinclude 4y agoAnd no one cares about your diatribe or outrage. The point is that there is always an elite or wealthy class, pick which group you like best. Always, for all time this is what happens in society. Don't care about your one example of some communist paradise that was great.
- feet 4y ago>The point is that there is always an elite or wealthy class, pick which group you like best. Citations required I do not agree whatsoever, just because you don't have the imagination to come up with a better system for organizing labor and resources doesn't mean it isn't possible
- heretogetout 4y agoHow would you organize labor and resources such that there is no elite class? How do you enforce whatever rules are required and ensure that those enforcers don't become the elite themselves (if nobody else..)?
- slothtrop 4y agoI'm not holding my breath. As of yet, no one has had the imagination. This has become a fav piece of rhetoric by ancoms who believe complex supply lines, infrastructure and essential services could be maintained, let alone improved upon, with a "flat hierarchy" society doing away with representative democracy. No one can take that seriously. The universe hates a vacuum and you can be sure that, as in the past, if goons have an opening to seize power under the guise of Communism, with their party being the only legitimate, then they will. Removing checks and balances will do that.
- hansword 4y ago> because despite the increase in productivity we also have increased lifespan which results in large number of retirees who consume the resources for much longer than before. The retirees in your example, with great probability, either have to rely on outside support (be it children or social security), or they will die with lots of wealth left over (aka inheritance). I hate to sound like a crummy communist, but this is a distribution problem, first and foremost.
- IdEntities 4y ago> you can have a lot of bananas from Honduras if your society can make great apps that Hondurans love and willing to trade their bananas Yes, or alternatively, you can live in a society which uses coups, death squads, and puppet dictators to keep Honduran labor cheap.
- cs137 4y ago[flagged]
- mrtksn 4y agoUnfortunately that's true. There are also many other models to have elites, some more fair or less cruel than others. This way or another the main equation never changes. That is, the resources we consume are below the resources we produce. Left or right, communists or capitalist or other kind of ideologues are just different groups of people who have different ideas on how to distribute the roles.
- feet 4y agoThis is a point that many people seem to ignore US foreign policy and actions of private companies have absolutely decimated other countries, cultures, and economies so now those countries are reliant on the income from rich US capitalists exploiting their populace's dire straights. That we placed them in.
- lesam 4y agoHumanity is much more productive per capita than 50 years ago, but we are collectively working more hours, not less. The goal should not be for everyone to do no work. The goal should not be for everyone to work full time and fear unemployment.
- cs137 4y agoPart of the problem is that people have been conditioned into accepting this weird binary division between Work (measurable, institutionalized, subordinate labor) and Not-Work (everything else) that doesn't exist in healthy societies. The kibbutzniks worked a lot harder than U.S. office workers, but didn't have the problem of alienation and the epidemic of mental ill-health (plus chronic inflammation, obesity, et al) that we have. Almost all of us want the institutional, authoritarian nightmare we call "Work" to die, and it's past high time that it does... but, unfortunately, we've been stripped of our imagination when it comes to the question of how work (that is, useful activity) will get done without it.
- nradov 4y agoCollective farms similar to kibbutz also exist in the US. They are an option for those who prefer that lifestyle. You can even start one yourself.
- bhk 4y agoWho are you to tell everyone what their goals should be?
- CodeSgt 4y agoWe work more in large part because we consume much more. Increased consumption requires increased supply which requires increased production which means more work to be done.
- bombcar 4y agoDebt also provides a large motivator, and just as you get close to being out of it you easily pick up more.
- strken 4y agoI live in Australia. Australia produces 190% of the food it requires, exports 71% of its agricultural production, and only 2.2% of its population work in agriculture. In earlier societies around 60% or more of the population worked in agriculture. I don't believe most of this increasing agricultural productivity is due to us buying things from poor countries, although it's probably a factor at some level. I think it's due to the increasing technological sophistication of farming: the breeding of more productive crops, the use of tractors, the use of fertiliser both synthetic and man-made, better understanding and monitoring of soil health, better storage and better supply chains, new weedkillers, automated and partially automated animal handling, refrigeration and freezers, and everything else. I do understand that someone has to do some work, but if we could have 8.8% of our population work in agriculture for 10 hours a week and not have to compete for housing against 40 hours a week incomes[0], that would be pretty great. [0] Numbers are wrong: farmers work more than 40 hours a week. I think they explain the general point well enough, though.
- imgabe 4y agoPeople need more than food. Healthcare, education, electricity, water, the fancy phone or computer you’re reading this on, the infrastructure that connects it together with everyone else - all of these require people working in order to exist.
- mrtksn 4y agoFood is just part of the human consumption. Starting with the agrarian society, we as species are having it very easy TBH. Disasters happen and some places are chronically problematic but overall food is solved problem since many millenniums. Thanks to the developments in the last century, incredibly small percentage of people directly produce the food. However this is due to paradigm shift, these people are capable to produce so much food is thanks to other people who produce their tools and resources used in production of food. Still huge number of people are working in feeding the population, just indirectly.
- strken 4y agoI don't buy the argument that people living in Australia would starve to death if everyone in the world gradually halved their working hours over the next decade. I think current consumption here is so far above subsistence levels that there's a lot of room to drop without facing famine. This is less clear-cut for anyone in a society that's close to subsistence and I'm not in any way suggesting that we should all cut our hours by 50%, but why not 20%? Even if food production decreases linearly, we'd still be at a 152% surplus, right?
- huijzer 4y ago> despite the increase in productivity we also have increased lifespan which results in large number of retirees who consume the resources for much longer than before Don’t forget "rising living standards" which in Western cultures is an euphemism for "extravagant consumption".
- arinlen 4y ago> It really boils down on how many people need how much resources and how many people produce these resources. You can argue over who should be your bourgeoisie, should it be (...) How about we don't succumb to the desire to pull strawmen and focus on simple things to accomplish such as being able to make a honest living that leaves you with disposable income after covering all your cost of living with a simple 9-to-5 job? Where does this need to create the illusion that there is possibly no grey area between a homeless slacker and a glorious millionaire investor? Is it too much to ask the most prosperous economy in the history of the world to allow workers to actually live a modest life with your salary? Otherwise, why would those workers continue to support that absurd society?
- scollet 4y agoI mean, how about we just take the wealth from the 10%?
- mrtksn 4y agoHow about it? You still wont be able to eat those numbers, albeit the numbers would be slightly bigger for some.