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Sure, ask someone to shovel shit for 8h/day 5 days a week and see where your thanks will get you. You might find one sucker, but not nearly enough

by ilyt 3y ago

guidoism 3y ago
Clearly this isn't going to work in a world where people use the word "sucker" to refer to people who do work to help others. Honestly, do we call volunteers at soup kitchens suckers? The problem clearly involves an unequal distribution of work. If everyone is else being paid and you are trying to convince a single person to literally shovel shit for 8 hours then yes, that won't work. They will feel like they are being taken advantage of. I think this is a common feeling amongst all workers. If your boss asks you to work late you are much less likely to be pissed off if the boss stays late and helps out too.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
We only have structures like this due to the class system, where some people never shovel shit and some people do it all week long. A great suggestion for this incidentally brought up by Noam Chomsky in 1976 is to rotate people through these jobs, so everyone spends maybe two days a month on the task. People appreciate a little bit of difficult labor, it just sucks when you have to do it every day for survival. I linked directly to the few minutes of this talk where he talks about it here, but if you have more time check out the whole thing: https://youtu.be/h_x0Y3FqkEI?t=1744 https://youtu.be/h_x0Y3FqkEI?t=1744
- myk9001 3y ago
  Without any intention of snark or confrontation whatsoever, can I ask you 1) Have you personally tried to put this idea to practice? If yes, for how long? Would you be willing to share some details? If no, why not? It doesn't take changing the entire society, you can do something like that literally now. Be creative, travel to a different random town twice a month and offer to clean toilets in a couple of buildings? Again, I don't mean to be snarky with this example, I just think working on 3D printers doesn't cut it as a type of difficult labor. Think more along the lines of going down into a mine, shoveling literal shit for 8 hours, etc. 2) Imagine, the society has actually changed such that everyone is supposed to do a couple days of difficult labor. What happens if someone refuses? A punishment? If there is no punishment, what happens if almost everyone refuses and there's not enough people to sustain this undesirable but critical jobs?
  - CMCDragonkai 3y ago
    I believe this concept was tried out in communist states. They sent intellectuals out to farms in china so they could get some hard manual labour.

Sure, ask someone to shovel shit for 8h/day 5 days a week and see where your thanks will get you. You might find one sucker, but not nearly enough

by ilyt 3y ago

Sure, ask someone to shovel shit for 8h/day 5 days a week and see where your thanks will get you. You might find one sucker, but not nearly enough

guidoism 3y ago

Clearly this isn't going to work in a world where people use the word "sucker" to refer to people who do work to help others. Honestly, do we call volunteers at soup kitchens suckers? The problem clearly involves an unequal distribution of work. If everyone is else being paid and you are trying to convince a single person to literally shovel shit for 8 hours then yes, that won't work. They will feel like they are being taken advantage of. I think this is a common feeling amongst all workers. If your boss asks you to work late you are much less likely to be pissed off if the boss stays late and helps out too.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

We only have structures like this due to the class system, where some people never shovel shit and some people do it all week long. A great suggestion for this incidentally brought up by Noam Chomsky in 1976 is to rotate people through these jobs, so everyone spends maybe two days a month on the task. People appreciate a little bit of difficult labor, it just sucks when you have to do it every day for survival. I linked directly to the few minutes of this talk where he talks about it here, but if you have more time check out the whole thing: https://youtu.be/h_x0Y3FqkEI?t=1744 https://youtu.be/h_x0Y3FqkEI?t=1744

myk9001 3y ago
Without any intention of snark or confrontation whatsoever, can I ask you 1) Have you personally tried to put this idea to practice? If yes, for how long? Would you be willing to share some details? If no, why not? It doesn't take changing the entire society, you can do something like that literally now. Be creative, travel to a different random town twice a month and offer to clean toilets in a couple of buildings? Again, I don't mean to be snarky with this example, I just think working on 3D printers doesn't cut it as a type of difficult labor. Think more along the lines of going down into a mine, shoveling literal shit for 8 hours, etc. 2) Imagine, the society has actually changed such that everyone is supposed to do a couple days of difficult labor. What happens if someone refuses? A punishment? If there is no punishment, what happens if almost everyone refuses and there's not enough people to sustain this undesirable but critical jobs?
- CMCDragonkai 3y ago
  I believe this concept was tried out in communist states. They sent intellectuals out to farms in china so they could get some hard manual labour.