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Could solve the problem of getting stuff done nobody wants to do through a model where you do a 3-4 year tour of civil service. Could be less of a job and more

Could solve the problem of getting stuff done nobody wants to do through a model where you do a 3-4 year tour of civil service. Could be less of a job and more of the entrance fee to the perks of adulthood. Service guarantees citizenship, except unironically.

nlitened 4y ago
To make the math work, more like 40 years tour of civil service as an entrance fee to the perks of adulthood. Wait, that's called retirement!
- luckylion 4y ago
  I'll start the SHAE movement: serve hard, adulthood early.
- Llamamoe 4y ago
  Oh, really? Because I'm pretty sure we didn't strictly need that much labor for essential jobs even before any meaningful automation.
  - nlitened 4y ago
    Humans' consumption infinitely expands to fill all available productivity growth, that what has always happened, and what will keep happening unless someone starts forcing billions into GULAGs, in my opinion.
    - Llamamoe 4y ago
      No it didn't, not for the basic goods. Nobody is drinking "all available productivity growth" worth of water, eating the equivalent of food, buying house after house, or compulsively commuting. About luxury goods, don't you think that humans being blasted with aggressive advertising and other manipulation in every single space of our lives has something to do with it? Don't forget that most of the things we purchase don't even need to be owned by every single person - if they could be meaningfully shared, you definitely don't need a 100 cars per 100 families, most tools are needed but rarely, even entertainment is only consummerism-centric because a lot of money is going into making it so, while very little goes into enabling humans to just hang out together.
kybernetyk 4y ago
Cool. Slavery.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Fair enough, but so is what we have today unless you were born to rich parents.
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    That's absurd. Having to work to earn a living is not the same as slavery. If you don't think there are enough good jobs where you live then you should be agitating for onshoring and more investment in local manufacturing and production. Fundamental wealth in a society comes from producing and improving physical things that make our lives better.
    - marginalia_nu 4y ago
      Depends entirely on what sort of job you have. Wage slavery is definitely a thing. Living paycheck to paycheck, barely being able to afford food and rent, with no real options is materially indistinguishable from slavery. Nobody wants to do these jobs. They're doing them because they're given no other option.
      - throwaway4aday 4y ago
        That's due to a lack of competition among employers. Corporations have been given too much leeway and should be restricted in their reach and forcibly broken up. International corporations should be banned in both directions. If you fix the economy so that it's not possible for companies to commit arbitrage resulting in money both flowing out of the country as well as concentrating at the top then economic mobility would be achievable by all who were willing to put the effort in.
        marginalia_nu 4y ago
GuB-42 4y ago
At best, it is communism, at worst, it is slavery. It doesn't solve the problem that there are tasks that less people want to do than needed. Jobs are an elegant solution to that problem. "I know that you don't want to dig shit, but if you dig shit, then you will be able to afford a better meal than if you didn't", if you like good meals more than you dislike digging shit, you can be happy despite having a literal shit job. Wages are sometimes called "compensation" for a reason. Like democracy, the paid job system sucks, but in practice, it sucks less than the alternatives.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  The reality is that most low-income jobs won't grant you a good meal. It will grant you access to food and maybe housing. The line between this mode of existence and slavery is really fucking blurry. We like to pretend that we're offering these people a way out of poverty by having them work these jobs, but that virtually never happens. For the people doing these jobs, if you don't work you don't eat. This service system is at least fair in the sense that everyone gets a momentary piece of the same raw deal, rather than having some people draw the short straw and spending their entire lives digging shit and living between paychecks while others know nothing but comfort and luxury. It also makes sure everyone has skin in the game when deciding how we decide to treat the people doing these jobs, since it's everyone.
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    This is assuming everyone would happily do their duty and also that the math would actually work out. I think the math is the bigger problem even though human nature is always a wrench in the gears of any such scheme, it's the math that dooms systems like this to implode after a while. The scheduling alone doesn't make any sense, to replace one full-time career of 45 years you'd need to break that up into say 9 five year stints. Then also considering that crappy jobs far outnumber 'good' jobs you'd be looking at rotating through a series of them, changing every 5 years until retirement because if you didn't and everyone 'retired' from having to work a crappy job after one 5 year term then you'd have a massive shortage of workers in no time. So everyone has to work a career that consists almost entirely of shitty jobs but they're forced to change jobs all the time so they can never really get good at any of them and then they retire when they're too old and worn out maybe with a single 5 year stint as a not very good accountant or something?

nlitened 4y ago

To make the math work, more like 40 years tour of civil service as an entrance fee to the perks of adulthood. Wait, that's called retirement!

luckylion 4y ago
I'll start the SHAE movement: serve hard, adulthood early.
Llamamoe 4y ago
Oh, really? Because I'm pretty sure we didn't strictly need that much labor for essential jobs even before any meaningful automation.
- nlitened 4y ago
  Humans' consumption infinitely expands to fill all available productivity growth, that what has always happened, and what will keep happening unless someone starts forcing billions into GULAGs, in my opinion.
  - Llamamoe 4y ago
    No it didn't, not for the basic goods. Nobody is drinking "all available productivity growth" worth of water, eating the equivalent of food, buying house after house, or compulsively commuting. About luxury goods, don't you think that humans being blasted with aggressive advertising and other manipulation in every single space of our lives has something to do with it? Don't forget that most of the things we purchase don't even need to be owned by every single person - if they could be meaningfully shared, you definitely don't need a 100 cars per 100 families, most tools are needed but rarely, even entertainment is only consummerism-centric because a lot of money is going into making it so, while very little goes into enabling humans to just hang out together.

kybernetyk 4y ago

Cool. Slavery.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
Fair enough, but so is what we have today unless you were born to rich parents.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  That's absurd. Having to work to earn a living is not the same as slavery. If you don't think there are enough good jobs where you live then you should be agitating for onshoring and more investment in local manufacturing and production. Fundamental wealth in a society comes from producing and improving physical things that make our lives better.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Depends entirely on what sort of job you have. Wage slavery is definitely a thing. Living paycheck to paycheck, barely being able to afford food and rent, with no real options is materially indistinguishable from slavery. Nobody wants to do these jobs. They're doing them because they're given no other option.
    - throwaway4aday 4y ago
      That's due to a lack of competition among employers. Corporations have been given too much leeway and should be restricted in their reach and forcibly broken up. International corporations should be banned in both directions. If you fix the economy so that it's not possible for companies to commit arbitrage resulting in money both flowing out of the country as well as concentrating at the top then economic mobility would be achievable by all who were willing to put the effort in.
      - marginalia_nu 4y ago

GuB-42 4y ago

At best, it is communism, at worst, it is slavery. It doesn't solve the problem that there are tasks that less people want to do than needed. Jobs are an elegant solution to that problem. "I know that you don't want to dig shit, but if you dig shit, then you will be able to afford a better meal than if you didn't", if you like good meals more than you dislike digging shit, you can be happy despite having a literal shit job. Wages are sometimes called "compensation" for a reason. Like democracy, the paid job system sucks, but in practice, it sucks less than the alternatives.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
The reality is that most low-income jobs won't grant you a good meal. It will grant you access to food and maybe housing. The line between this mode of existence and slavery is really fucking blurry. We like to pretend that we're offering these people a way out of poverty by having them work these jobs, but that virtually never happens. For the people doing these jobs, if you don't work you don't eat. This service system is at least fair in the sense that everyone gets a momentary piece of the same raw deal, rather than having some people draw the short straw and spending their entire lives digging shit and living between paychecks while others know nothing but comfort and luxury. It also makes sure everyone has skin in the game when deciding how we decide to treat the people doing these jobs, since it's everyone.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  This is assuming everyone would happily do their duty and also that the math would actually work out. I think the math is the bigger problem even though human nature is always a wrench in the gears of any such scheme, it's the math that dooms systems like this to implode after a while. The scheduling alone doesn't make any sense, to replace one full-time career of 45 years you'd need to break that up into say 9 five year stints. Then also considering that crappy jobs far outnumber 'good' jobs you'd be looking at rotating through a series of them, changing every 5 years until retirement because if you didn't and everyone 'retired' from having to work a crappy job after one 5 year term then you'd have a massive shortage of workers in no time. So everyone has to work a career that consists almost entirely of shitty jobs but they're forced to change jobs all the time so they can never really get good at any of them and then they retire when they're too old and worn out maybe with a single 5 year stint as a not very good accountant or something?