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"Jobs" exist because division of labor is an enormous generator of human welfare. If I have to grow my own food, compose and perform my own music, build my own

"Jobs" exist because division of labor is an enormous generator of human welfare. If I have to grow my own food, compose and perform my own music, build my own housing and vehicles, life will be shit. If we do have division of labor and pay each other for the work, we've reinvented capitalism. If we don't pay each other, the incentives are very strong to be a free-rider.

survirtual 3y ago
There are countless models available beyond this black and white, boxed thinking. The dichotomy presented between capitalism as the byproduct of division of labor and the inevitability of free-riding in its absence paints a rather stark picture. However, this view presumes a rigidity in human motivation and socio-economic structures that simply does not account for the complex tapestry of human innovation. Life is not relegated to the binary of paying or not paying for services. Consider that human motivation is not solely hinged on material compensation but also on intrinsic rewards—personal growth, satisfaction, and the joy of contributing to something larger than oneself. The potential for human societies to organize around principles that value these intrinsic motivations equally, if not more than the extrinsic, suggests that the welfare generated by division of labor need not be confined within the traditional frameworks of capitalism. A more nuanced approach considers economies as organic, adaptable, and evolutionary entities that can incorporate diverse motivational drivers, beyond just financial incentives. In such systems, the fear of free-riding is mitigated not by imposing structures but by fostering a culture where communal contribution is as valued as individual success. This shifts the focus from a simplistic labor-for-pay model to a more expansive, dynamic model that embraces a spectrum of motivations and rewards.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  Did... an AI write this?
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Is it incorrect? Is this the future we are bound to? Anytime someone writes beyond the 5th grade level we accuse the writer of being artificial?
    - boeingUH60 3y ago
      The content truly reads like AI…so bland and full of fluff…worse than a 5th grade level because it takes something that could be stated in one line and stretches it into multiple lines repeating the same idea.
  - survirtual 3y ago
    There is a human mind here. I am sorry my thinking and expression does not conform to your expectations.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> If we do have division of labor and pay each other for the work, we've reinvented capitalism Nope. Capitalism, at least 21st century western capitalism, consists of 3 things: 1. relatively free markets, in the sense that what can be bought/sold and for how much is only loosely regulated 2. an entrepeneurial culture that supports the idea of "starting a business" 3. the idea that the rewards of any given human venture should go primarily to those who invest capital (rather than, say, labor or IP) in the venture What you've just described doesn't specifically cover any of these three, and it particularly doesn't cover #3 which is the most pernicious aspect of capitalism (the other two could exist in a system that did not incorporate #3).
- Kye 3y ago
  Capitalism's greatest trick was convincing people markets and capitalism are the same thing.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  You're arguing about the definition of a word. I don't find that interesting.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    "we've reinvented capitalism" .. ok, so i'll substitute "capitalism" with "phrenology". Who cares about the definition? It's just a word, right? Claiming that A, B & C is the same as D surely needs to imply some concern about the actual meaning of D, no?
    - BurningFrog 3y ago
      Words mean different things for different people and in different contexts. That there is only one universally correct meaning is true in Python, but just not how human language works. Pretty sure what I wrote was understandable for most. You probably also understood it, but felt the need to complain about the vocabulary.
monadINtop 3y ago
>If we do have division of labor and pay each other for the work, we've reinvented capitalism. This is extremely wrong. Every society in human history has some degree of division of labour. Capitalism is a specific economic mode of production that emerged from the embers of Feudalism a few hundred years ago, as merchant guilds and private manufacturors in urban centres gradually grew more independent whilst the noble classes who had subsisted off the labour of an agricultural underclass had gradually lost power. The exact process and reasons for this is extremely complicated and vast in scope. There is also an unimaginably vast spectrum of potential ways of organising economic production in a human society, and many civilisations historically have exhibited different iterations of these. To make the claim that it is impossible to devise a system different from where >we don't pay each other,[and] the incentives are very strong to be a free-rider is not only to ignore not an entire field of historical and anthropolgical research, but also to not even bother to imagine any alternative to a very particular and unique economic system that we happen, by pure chance, to find ourselves in our infinitesimally narrow slice of time.
- nradov 3y ago
  What exactly is the alternative which has ever been proven to work at scale? As long as we have private property which people are allowed to buy and sell then capitalism is the only possible result. The fact that some primitive tribes managed to eke out a basic existence for a while with a gift economy or whatever isn't a valid counterargument.
  - monadINtop 3y ago
    What are you talking about? Private property refers to the ownership of the organs of economic production - factories, steal mills, whatever - by private institutions (e.g shareholder-managed organisations). If your referring to markets in general, they have existed since the dawn of urban human civilisation, thousands of years before capitalism. Markets can even exist in the most despotic communist dictatorship, or decentralized anarchist collective. Buying and selling goods or having personal property is largely orthogonal to the mode of production employed by a given society. Right now in spain, the largest buisness group in basque (10th largest overall) is the Mondragon corporation. It’s worker-owned (but not worker managed), although each worker has voting rights. Clearly it is possible - even within capialism - to have some worker autonomy over production. In 1936, during the civil war in Spain, around 60-75% of urban industry and agriculture was restructured by anarchist labour unions and run and managed by the workers to varying degrees of collectivization. Some towns abandoned the use of fiat currency entirely and instead used systems of vouchers, in small villages goods where distributed even more informally. Industrial production is reported to have increased during this time, and agricultural yields rose by around 30%.

survirtual 3y ago

There are countless models available beyond this black and white, boxed thinking. The dichotomy presented between capitalism as the byproduct of division of labor and the inevitability of free-riding in its absence paints a rather stark picture. However, this view presumes a rigidity in human motivation and socio-economic structures that simply does not account for the complex tapestry of human innovation. Life is not relegated to the binary of paying or not paying for services. Consider that human motivation is not solely hinged on material compensation but also on intrinsic rewards—personal growth, satisfaction, and the joy of contributing to something larger than oneself. The potential for human societies to organize around principles that value these intrinsic motivations equally, if not more than the extrinsic, suggests that the welfare generated by division of labor need not be confined within the traditional frameworks of capitalism. A more nuanced approach considers economies as organic, adaptable, and evolutionary entities that can incorporate diverse motivational drivers, beyond just financial incentives. In such systems, the fear of free-riding is mitigated not by imposing structures but by fostering a culture where communal contribution is as valued as individual success. This shifts the focus from a simplistic labor-for-pay model to a more expansive, dynamic model that embraces a spectrum of motivations and rewards.

BurningFrog 3y ago
Did... an AI write this?
- pixl97 3y ago
  Is it incorrect? Is this the future we are bound to? Anytime someone writes beyond the 5th grade level we accuse the writer of being artificial?
  - boeingUH60 3y ago
    The content truly reads like AI…so bland and full of fluff…worse than a 5th grade level because it takes something that could be stated in one line and stretches it into multiple lines repeating the same idea.
- survirtual 3y ago
  There is a human mind here. I am sorry my thinking and expression does not conform to your expectations.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

> If we do have division of labor and pay each other for the work, we've reinvented capitalism Nope. Capitalism, at least 21st century western capitalism, consists of 3 things: 1. relatively free markets, in the sense that what can be bought/sold and for how much is only loosely regulated 2. an entrepeneurial culture that supports the idea of "starting a business" 3. the idea that the rewards of any given human venture should go primarily to those who invest capital (rather than, say, labor or IP) in the venture What you've just described doesn't specifically cover any of these three, and it particularly doesn't cover #3 which is the most pernicious aspect of capitalism (the other two could exist in a system that did not incorporate #3).

Kye 3y ago
Capitalism's greatest trick was convincing people markets and capitalism are the same thing.
BurningFrog 3y ago
You're arguing about the definition of a word. I don't find that interesting.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  "we've reinvented capitalism" .. ok, so i'll substitute "capitalism" with "phrenology". Who cares about the definition? It's just a word, right? Claiming that A, B & C is the same as D surely needs to imply some concern about the actual meaning of D, no?
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    Words mean different things for different people and in different contexts. That there is only one universally correct meaning is true in Python, but just not how human language works. Pretty sure what I wrote was understandable for most. You probably also understood it, but felt the need to complain about the vocabulary.

monadINtop 3y ago

>If we do have division of labor and pay each other for the work, we've reinvented capitalism. This is extremely wrong. Every society in human history has some degree of division of labour. Capitalism is a specific economic mode of production that emerged from the embers of Feudalism a few hundred years ago, as merchant guilds and private manufacturors in urban centres gradually grew more independent whilst the noble classes who had subsisted off the labour of an agricultural underclass had gradually lost power. The exact process and reasons for this is extremely complicated and vast in scope. There is also an unimaginably vast spectrum of potential ways of organising economic production in a human society, and many civilisations historically have exhibited different iterations of these. To make the claim that it is impossible to devise a system different from where >we don't pay each other,[and] the incentives are very strong to be a free-rider is not only to ignore not an entire field of historical and anthropolgical research, but also to not even bother to imagine any alternative to a very particular and unique economic system that we happen, by pure chance, to find ourselves in our infinitesimally narrow slice of time.

nradov 3y ago
What exactly is the alternative which has ever been proven to work at scale? As long as we have private property which people are allowed to buy and sell then capitalism is the only possible result. The fact that some primitive tribes managed to eke out a basic existence for a while with a gift economy or whatever isn't a valid counterargument.
- monadINtop 3y ago
  What are you talking about? Private property refers to the ownership of the organs of economic production - factories, steal mills, whatever - by private institutions (e.g shareholder-managed organisations). If your referring to markets in general, they have existed since the dawn of urban human civilisation, thousands of years before capitalism. Markets can even exist in the most despotic communist dictatorship, or decentralized anarchist collective. Buying and selling goods or having personal property is largely orthogonal to the mode of production employed by a given society. Right now in spain, the largest buisness group in basque (10th largest overall) is the Mondragon corporation. It’s worker-owned (but not worker managed), although each worker has voting rights. Clearly it is possible - even within capialism - to have some worker autonomy over production. In 1936, during the civil war in Spain, around 60-75% of urban industry and agriculture was restructured by anarchist labour unions and run and managed by the workers to varying degrees of collectivization. Some towns abandoned the use of fiat currency entirely and instead used systems of vouchers, in small villages goods where distributed even more informally. Industrial production is reported to have increased during this time, and agricultural yields rose by around 30%.