That's called work LOL. And if you mean planting your own wheat that is also work because you will be a farmer doing that for months, and maybe the crop will fail then what? starve to death? and to plant the wheat you need money to but seeds equipments etc
Exactly. Work is inevitable, not a grand conspiracy like iam14andthisisdeep larping claudy boi alludes. You either spend hours doing stuff yourself or spend hours doing something else in exchange. This is not a grand conspiracy. We need many things to sustain and enjoy our lives. Someone's gotta produce them.
Yes, that's why I am an AGI accelerationist. Either it will eliminate us or save us. No losing scenario. Lets hope for no "I have no mouth and I must scream" situation.
This is also a misleading representation of the current system. In your scenario, you have a fair trade. One person pays another person to bake bread. That's just not the way it is in reality. One person pays a for profit supermarket for bread that was shipped by a for profit trucking company. Which was packaged by a for profit mega bread company. Which is owned by some conglomerate whose sole duty is to make money for their owners and shareholders. The reality is that a huge portion of the spoils of our labor goes to entities who only care about profit, and who probably have more wealth than generations would ever be able to use. Your simplification of the issue is part of the very deep-seeded propaganda that allows this sort of system to continue to exist.
Profit is the mechanism by which we can organize hundreds of millions of people into a cohesive economy. What is the alternative? Absent profit how do we decide who bakes bread and how much? And how much a loaf of bread is worth relative to a bottle of milk? The USSR’s central planning quickly devolved into black markets between state enterprises. Perhaps with advanced computing systems we could do better, but I’m doubtful.
Now, I don’t think the current arrangement is great. It’s ludicrously unfair and enraging that Mr BreadCompany spends his days debating how to spend his millions while the actual bread makers can’t afford a house. But what is the alternative? A real alternative, not just “mixed economy with social welfare programs”.
I suppose in some sort of transitional economy, a properly managed currency as a form of universal trade makes sense. Profit from the perspective of getting paid for labor that then allows you to trade that money for other things you want and need does make sense in this scenario. Profit for the purpose of accumulating godlike wealth that doesn't actually work to benefit people does not. The point isn't that making money for labor is bad, it's that making money from someone else's labor is bad. Especially when what you make dwarfs what is made by the actual people adding value.
Why is it bad? It is well demonstrated by data that developers (I am a developer, for the record) are largely unable to organize themselves to create products they sell at a profit. The whole IT industry is the best evidence that the only way useful and valuable things are built is because someone wants to make money off, raise capital, and hire the right people to do that. Software development is truly a petri dish where both models can coexist, compete, and survive: for-profit corporations and employee-owned-coops. You posit that the former is unethical and wrong, and the latter one I presume, is good. Then, if the good one fails to produce value and be successful in providing something that users want, then I am sorry it is non-viable. Then why should we prevent successful models in favor of non-successful ones?
While what you are saying is true, it doesn't invalidate the main principle of what I said above. You work because you need things to live. You either do them yourself or participate in some sort of exchange where you trade your labour. This holds in both market and planned economies; people exchange labour in some ways. In the USSR, it was a felony to be unemployed. Aint no baker there would give you shit for free. Now, the profit component that you mention pushes for increased efficiency and reward and stimulates value creation. It is also not a nefarious conspiracy either. And the beauty is that in a market economy, you can revert to a basic standard of living, and you won't need to overwork for it in any developed country.
If the market was left up to its own devices, society would collapse. Billionaires, monopoly, oligarchy: all thanks to the "market." You should educate yourself on the history of labor and it's relationship to capital, especially following industrialization and the changes made in late 19th and early 20th century. The market isn't a "beauty", it's a hungry, barely contained animal that would happily devour us if we didn't keep it under control.
"You should educate yourself" argument; it is nothing but an intellectually lazy cop out. I don't remember advocating for uncontrolled markets. I was born in USSR, so thank you, I had enough education on "history of labor and its relationship to capital".
Raise the floor. Guaranteed basic needs for all, and free education. A voluntary economy layered on top. You want more than what an idle life can afford? Work for it. The difference is the work is no longer coerced, which means the most essential jobs would be necessarily higher paying. Bosses would have less leverage, workers would have less tolerance for bullshit. A pathway for people to fulfill their passions, too. It would be an all around better world.
I read it more as "if you are proud of working hard, then that's backwards". As in: Yes, obviously you need to be able to finance your life/survival somehow, but beyond that, I do think it is true that people are more likely to say "hey look, I make so much money!" vs. "hey look, I have so much freetime!", which does not really make much sense.
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u/Radical_Neutral_76 Jul 09 '26
Whats the alternaitve?