[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)
21–23 of 23 posts
Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)
#22Chomsky: Just think about it for a minute: almost everybody spends most of their life living in a totalitarian system. It's called having a job. When you have a job, you're under total control of the masters of the enterprise. They determine what you wear, when you go to the bathroom, what you do – the very idea of a wage contract is selling yourself into servitude. These are private governments. They're more totalit…
After being poor for several years I realized something.
People like Chomsky have never been in a situation where they were starving. He is clueless as to what this is really like. Only an out of touch wealthy person would say such ridiculous things. Or a child whose parents take care of their basic survival needs.
Survival takes work. Always has. Always will. Food and shelter will never be magically provided to everyone. Someone somewhere has to grow the food, harvest the food, hunt the food, prepare the food, store the food, preserve the food, harvest building materials, manufacture building materials, assemble building materials, maintain buildings, clean buildings, etc. Or if we're talking about AI robot utopian future, someone has to build and maintain the robots, and prevent them from making humanity obsolete.
If you don't want to work for another human then you have to work for yourself at the whims of nature.
If you expect other people to give you food and shelter to you for free, then you are expecting other people to be slaves for you.
Re: Chomsky on having a job (“living in a totalitarian system”)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
[flagged]
> I grew up in the USSR. How could I possibly understand what socialism is?
I don't doubt you have a very good understanding of the Soviet type, due to your experience there. However, your original comment seemed to present a false binary choice between Western capitalism and that Soviet-style centrally-planned socialism. It's clear that Chomsky opposes both the former and the latter, so brining up the latter seems like a bit of a straw man in the context of this video and its subject.