Bullshit jobs (=> jobs that are doing unnecessary work) are certainly part of that, but shit jobs (=> jobs that you would really not want to work) are another part of the equation.
Shit jobs make up a huge amount of the jobs that actually do stuff we depend on (e.g. food industry, retail, agricultural, garbage, …). So the question is how do you get people to do these jobs? Without some form of coercion, that might be difficult.
By paying accordingly to how shitty they are. It’s that simple and actually what a free market is about. Because people need to work to survive the labor market isn’t free and it doesn’t work as it should/could.
I remember as a kid I always thought garbage collectors must be paid pretty well to do a job like that. It’s actually pretty sad that we accepted the slavery like conditions today as normal and unchangeable.
While I agree that redistribution should be a much more central thing in our economy and that these jobs should totally earn much more than they do, I don’t think that this would be an actual solution in a scarcity-based society with even moderate capitalism as a basis. And it certainly wouldn’t work in a communist framework either.
If you pay most people a lot more than we do today, that would certainly make things more equal (we would e.g. not have to spend such a huge portion of our economic output feeding wealthy parasites), but it would not remove the problem of some people being forced to do work they wouldn’t want to, since the prices would jump up to instantly balance the gains.
If you keep a somewhat capitalist framework, then this price jump would instantly make life unaffordable for anyone not working a shit job, so it would just shift who is under coercion instead of removing the concept of coercion.
Of course it’s worth discussing what’s a fair distribution, no question about that. I just question that coercion can be actually really done away with.
Bullshit jobs (=> jobs that are doing unnecessary work) are certainly part of that, but shit jobs (=> jobs that you would really not want to work) are another part of the equation.
Shit jobs make up a huge amount of the jobs that actually do stuff we depend on (e.g. food industry, retail, agricultural, garbage, …). So the question is how do you get people to do these jobs? Without some form of coercion, that might be difficult.
By paying accordingly to how shitty they are. It’s that simple and actually what a free market is about. Because people need to work to survive the labor market isn’t free and it doesn’t work as it should/could.
I remember as a kid I always thought garbage collectors must be paid pretty well to do a job like that. It’s actually pretty sad that we accepted the slavery like conditions today as normal and unchangeable.
While I agree that redistribution should be a much more central thing in our economy and that these jobs should totally earn much more than they do, I don’t think that this would be an actual solution in a scarcity-based society with even moderate capitalism as a basis. And it certainly wouldn’t work in a communist framework either.
If you pay most people a lot more than we do today, that would certainly make things more equal (we would e.g. not have to spend such a huge portion of our economic output feeding wealthy parasites), but it would not remove the problem of some people being forced to do work they wouldn’t want to, since the prices would jump up to instantly balance the gains.
If you keep a somewhat capitalist framework, then this price jump would instantly make life unaffordable for anyone not working a shit job, so it would just shift who is under coercion instead of removing the concept of coercion.
Of course it’s worth discussing what’s a fair distribution, no question about that. I just question that coercion can be actually really done away with.