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Communism assumes that no one has to clean the toilet, but the toilet would still be cleaned. It’s the abundance of resources premise. You can’t have communism

by NhanH 3y ago

Communism assumes that no one has to clean the toilet, but the toilet would still be cleaned. It’s the abundance of resources premise. You can’t have communism in a scarcity world. The common example being taught to kids are oxygen: think of how everyone can consume as much as they need, and there are enough for everyone. How the toilet actually get clean is left as the exercise for the reader.

hnbad 3y ago
It's tiring to hear people critique communists using the same tired arguments I hear from Christians critiquing atheism. "If there is no God, why wouldn't you rape and murder everyone" and "If there is no police, why would you clean the toilet" have the same answer. Yes, if you have a toilet and think cleaning toilets is yucky but you value having a clean toilet, you'll have to ask someone to clean it for you and they'll likely not want this to be a one-sided relationship unless you're literally phyiscally or mentally disabled to the point people want to take care of you because you can't do so yourself. That does not require capitalism. Heck, you could even have money without having capitalism. The question is what money can buy. Under feudalism for example - not that feudalism is preferable to capitalism unless you think you'd get to be the king (and arguably not even then) - all the money in the world wouldn't have turned a peasant into a king because the lord would have just had his guards confiscate the money, kill the peasant and flay their corpse as a warning against not knowing your place in the hierarchy. Saying "if I don't pay people to clean the toilet, it'll just be dirty forever" not only betrays your own suspect attitudes to hygiene but also a complete detachment from how 99% of human interactions operate, namely based on a shared interest of not wanting to be taken advantage of and helping when you can. Some people genuinely like cleaning toilets. Some people don't mind cleaning their own toilets. Some people would really rather not have to clean their own toilets and are willing to do other things for other people. Some people are filthy slobs and would rather have a dirty toilet than clean it themselves or help others. And yes, the obvious answer to "what about jobs that will literally kill you" is: then why should anyone want to do those jobs? If the jobs are vital to the survival of the group, those sound like some pretty damn prestiguous jobs that would lead to whoever does it being held in very high regard and treated as a saint. If the jobs are largely useless to the group, they simply won't be done unless we can find a way to do it that won't kill you. The difference is that under exploitative systems we either literally force people to do so at gunpoint or we treat the workers as disposable drones and only compensate them (or invest in their safety and care) as little as we can get away with. But I understand that all of this might sound like fanciful prose if you can only ever envision systems working if they rely on exploiting some 90% of the population even though they're only held together by those 90%'s misplaced compassion.

by NhanH 3y ago

hnbad 3y ago

It's tiring to hear people critique communists using the same tired arguments I hear from Christians critiquing atheism. "If there is no God, why wouldn't you rape and murder everyone" and "If there is no police, why would you clean the toilet" have the same answer. Yes, if you have a toilet and think cleaning toilets is yucky but you value having a clean toilet, you'll have to ask someone to clean it for you and they'll likely not want this to be a one-sided relationship unless you're literally phyiscally or mentally disabled to the point people want to take care of you because you can't do so yourself. That does not require capitalism. Heck, you could even have money without having capitalism. The question is what money can buy. Under feudalism for example - not that feudalism is preferable to capitalism unless you think you'd get to be the king (and arguably not even then) - all the money in the world wouldn't have turned a peasant into a king because the lord would have just had his guards confiscate the money, kill the peasant and flay their corpse as a warning against not knowing your place in the hierarchy. Saying "if I don't pay people to clean the toilet, it'll just be dirty forever" not only betrays your own suspect attitudes to hygiene but also a complete detachment from how 99% of human interactions operate, namely based on a shared interest of not wanting to be taken advantage of and helping when you can. Some people genuinely like cleaning toilets. Some people don't mind cleaning their own toilets. Some people would really rather not have to clean their own toilets and are willing to do other things for other people. Some people are filthy slobs and would rather have a dirty toilet than clean it themselves or help others. And yes, the obvious answer to "what about jobs that will literally kill you" is: then why should anyone want to do those jobs? If the jobs are vital to the survival of the group, those sound like some pretty damn prestiguous jobs that would lead to whoever does it being held in very high regard and treated as a saint. If the jobs are largely useless to the group, they simply won't be done unless we can find a way to do it that won't kill you. The difference is that under exploitative systems we either literally force people to do so at gunpoint or we treat the workers as disposable drones and only compensate them (or invest in their safety and care) as little as we can get away with. But I understand that all of this might sound like fanciful prose if you can only ever envision systems working if they rely on exploiting some 90% of the population even though they're only held together by those 90%'s misplaced compassion.