In the ancestral environment we would still work all day to survive, and we wouldn’t have medicine or YouTube for it either. There could obviously be a more equitable system today, and the end goal is that humans don’t have to work any more, but it’s disingenuous to imply that the capitalist division of labour model is an alternative to not working and still getting stuff.
Yeah, it used to be sunup to sundown, 6 days a week. And the seventh was hardly a day of rest. And, there was no retirement at 65. There was working until you died, or at least working until you were very feeble and hoping that your children would take care of you in your old age (which just added to the work they had to do). Work also wasn’t this thing that you had to start doing after university. It was this thing you started going before you hit puberty. You’d be feeding the animals, or helping mend the clothing as a child, and that work would continue for your entire life.
And, even if things were distributed more equitably, work would still be necessary. In fact, if things were distributed more equitably, it wouldn’t be illegal immigrants or immigrants on short-term visas doing a lot of the agricultural work, it would be the kinds of people who complain about their 9-5 jobs.
The sad fact is that getting enough variety on your plate, a comfortable roof over your head, and entertainment in your eyes requires a lot of work from a lot of people. It would be really nice if we lived in a post-scarcity world with replicators to provide any food anybody desired, and robots to repair everything that broke. But, we’re not there yet. Spending all day working 5 days a week feels rough, and maybe if things were more fairly distributed we’d only be working 3 days a week. But, until we invent the replicator, we’re still going to need farms, and farms will need farm workers, and farm workers will need mattresses and roofs and vehicles, and those vehicles will require tires, and those tires will need to be tested for safety, and those safety testers will need computers, and those computers will need programmers, and those programmers will need caffeine…
Of course we have to work. We still need food, water, shelter, etc., and machines will not fulfill these needs on their own (at least not yet). However, given the recent increases in productivity and corporate wealth, do you believe it is necessary for us to work as much as we do in order to fulfill everyone’s needs?
This depends on what ancestors your talking about. For instance, hunter and gathers rarely worked more than twenty hours a week to provide all their needs.
Good, we are in agreement. No one is implying that work is unnecessary. Labor has existed for as long as we have – much longer than capitalism. To equate this sentiment with the original post appears disingenuous.
Capitalism is exploitative by necessity. The rise of machines during the industrial revolution divorced the worker from the fruits of their labor and from the tools with which to produce them. Now we, the workers, are dependent on the owners for wages to sustain the material conditions of our existence. Much like how the manorial system forced the feudal serf to cultivate the land, today’s workers are institutionally coerced: we sell ourselves by the year or by the hour. Meanwhile, the owners reap the vast profits watered by the sweat of labor while seeking to reduce the price of labor down to whatever minuscule sum allows us to continue working. There is, indeed, a more equitable system available.
There’s a difference between working in a primitive environment (hunter-gather, especially before hominid started to establish settlements) and what we call as “working” nowadays.
The former didn’t involve exploiting others. The latter does.
The former did involve direct involvement to one’s own survival, just like any lifeform still does out there. The “work” involved no one’s “means of production” because they could get their sustenance from Mother Nature. Even when hominids started to settle in tribes, their work yielded the direct thing that would sustain them: food and water and shelters, as the tribe cared about the tribe.
Meanwhile, “working” in modernity involves solving other’s “problems” while one’s own problems are promptly dismissed by those whose “problems” are being solved.
Working in modernity involves having no direct part on the means of production, and the yield is exclusivity advantage for the employer.
Working in modernity involves receiving a piece of paper (or digits on a computer screen) that isn’t guaranteed to be exchangeable for sustenance (not enough “digits” or “paper” pieces, the core of the meme).
You mentioned how we wouldn’t have medicine, but medicine comes from Mother Nature (except for petroleum or other very artificial sources, practically every drug from pharmacy was built from a plant that Mother Nature originally offered for free).
Interestingly, humans existed for millions of years while modern medicine only appeared “recently” (a few centuries ago), so if medicine was sine qua non for surviving, humans would be long extinct.
And, YouTube as part of “human survival”, are you serious?! You should’ve included Onlyfans, Tinder and LinkedIn to “survival essentials” as well (guess I’m dying as I use neither of those)! /s
Back on the ancestral work vs modern work, the ancestral environment didn’t have climate change as a byproduct of human greedy. Species weren’t endangered by our activities. There was no hole in the Ozone layer, no PM2.5, no metallic wreckage orbiting Earth without means to be deorbited, no microplastics, no pandemics that could risk other species as well (bc there was no globalization yet).
So I’m quite radical: I advocate that humans should pave a way to return to hunter-gathering systems among wildlife, where we used to belong, even with the use of technology (AI) that could allow us to reintegrate with Nature as seamlessly as possible.
After all, fire was the beginning of civilization, so “fire” (as in electricity) must bring civilization to its end as we know it, before humanity goes extinct through its own fire (e.g. nuclear exchanges due to MAD or chunks of metal hitting our heads due to a Kessler Syndrome provoked by the recklessness of billionaires wet-dreaming to colonize a red planet) together with all the amazing species on this Pale Blue Dot that have nothing to do with humans’ artificially-invented problems.
In the ancestral environment we would still work all day to survive, and we wouldn’t have medicine or YouTube for it either. There could obviously be a more equitable system today, and the end goal is that humans don’t have to work any more, but it’s disingenuous to imply that the capitalist division of labour model is an alternative to not working and still getting stuff.
Nobody is suggesting a model in which you don’t work and still get stuff…
Labor is entitled to all it creates.
Yeah, it used to be sunup to sundown, 6 days a week. And the seventh was hardly a day of rest. And, there was no retirement at 65. There was working until you died, or at least working until you were very feeble and hoping that your children would take care of you in your old age (which just added to the work they had to do). Work also wasn’t this thing that you had to start doing after university. It was this thing you started going before you hit puberty. You’d be feeding the animals, or helping mend the clothing as a child, and that work would continue for your entire life.
And, even if things were distributed more equitably, work would still be necessary. In fact, if things were distributed more equitably, it wouldn’t be illegal immigrants or immigrants on short-term visas doing a lot of the agricultural work, it would be the kinds of people who complain about their 9-5 jobs.
The sad fact is that getting enough variety on your plate, a comfortable roof over your head, and entertainment in your eyes requires a lot of work from a lot of people. It would be really nice if we lived in a post-scarcity world with replicators to provide any food anybody desired, and robots to repair everything that broke. But, we’re not there yet. Spending all day working 5 days a week feels rough, and maybe if things were more fairly distributed we’d only be working 3 days a week. But, until we invent the replicator, we’re still going to need farms, and farms will need farm workers, and farm workers will need mattresses and roofs and vehicles, and those vehicles will require tires, and those tires will need to be tested for safety, and those safety testers will need computers, and those computers will need programmers, and those programmers will need caffeine…
Of course we have to work. We still need food, water, shelter, etc., and machines will not fulfill these needs on their own (at least not yet). However, given the recent increases in productivity and corporate wealth, do you believe it is necessary for us to work as much as we do in order to fulfill everyone’s needs?
Not quite as much, but not enough to make a major difference.
This depends on what ancestors your talking about. For instance, hunter and gathers rarely worked more than twenty hours a week to provide all their needs.
Good, we are in agreement. No one is implying that work is unnecessary. Labor has existed for as long as we have – much longer than capitalism. To equate this sentiment with the original post appears disingenuous.
Capitalism is exploitative by necessity. The rise of machines during the industrial revolution divorced the worker from the fruits of their labor and from the tools with which to produce them. Now we, the workers, are dependent on the owners for wages to sustain the material conditions of our existence. Much like how the manorial system forced the feudal serf to cultivate the land, today’s workers are institutionally coerced: we sell ourselves by the year or by the hour. Meanwhile, the owners reap the vast profits watered by the sweat of labor while seeking to reduce the price of labor down to whatever minuscule sum allows us to continue working. There is, indeed, a more equitable system available.
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There’s a difference between working in a primitive environment (hunter-gather, especially before hominid started to establish settlements) and what we call as “working” nowadays.
The former didn’t involve exploiting others. The latter does.
The former did involve direct involvement to one’s own survival, just like any lifeform still does out there. The “work” involved no one’s “means of production” because they could get their sustenance from Mother Nature. Even when hominids started to settle in tribes, their work yielded the direct thing that would sustain them: food and water and shelters, as the tribe cared about the tribe.
Meanwhile, “working” in modernity involves solving other’s “problems” while one’s own problems are promptly dismissed by those whose “problems” are being solved.
Working in modernity involves having no direct part on the means of production, and the yield is exclusivity advantage for the employer.
Working in modernity involves receiving a piece of paper (or digits on a computer screen) that isn’t guaranteed to be exchangeable for sustenance (not enough “digits” or “paper” pieces, the core of the meme).
You mentioned how we wouldn’t have medicine, but medicine comes from Mother Nature (except for petroleum or other very artificial sources, practically every drug from pharmacy was built from a plant that Mother Nature originally offered for free).
Interestingly, humans existed for millions of years while modern medicine only appeared “recently” (a few centuries ago), so if medicine was sine qua non for surviving, humans would be long extinct.
And, YouTube as part of “human survival”, are you serious?! You should’ve included Onlyfans, Tinder and LinkedIn to “survival essentials” as well (guess I’m dying as I use neither of those)! /s
Back on the ancestral work vs modern work, the ancestral environment didn’t have climate change as a byproduct of human greedy. Species weren’t endangered by our activities. There was no hole in the Ozone layer, no PM2.5, no metallic wreckage orbiting Earth without means to be deorbited, no microplastics, no pandemics that could risk other species as well (bc there was no globalization yet).
So I’m quite radical: I advocate that humans should pave a way to return to hunter-gathering systems among wildlife, where we used to belong, even with the use of technology (AI) that could allow us to reintegrate with Nature as seamlessly as possible.
After all, fire was the beginning of civilization, so “fire” (as in electricity) must bring civilization to its end as we know it, before humanity goes extinct through its own fire (e.g. nuclear exchanges due to MAD or chunks of metal hitting our heads due to a Kessler Syndrome provoked by the recklessness of billionaires wet-dreaming to colonize a red planet) together with all the amazing species on this Pale Blue Dot that have nothing to do with humans’ artificially-invented problems.