The Abolition of Work (2002)

Still, someone has to provide them. What are they getting in return? Don't say "food, shelter, and education" because in your scenario, they already get those. What are we doing to incentivize these people to provide food, shelter, and education for everyone else?

> I think that is the point being made when people talk about abolishing work and offering all the basics for free. I believe its a correct premise aswell. We are not talking about luxury.

I'm not talking about luxury either. I'm asking where the food, shelter, and education for everyone is supposed to come from.

> As soon as we hire people we provide them with all these basic perks, they are not conditional, because we believe if we are sending soldiers to fight we better provide them with the best chances of succeeding.

They are conditional upon satisfactory performance of the duties they were hired to perform.

> Its the same idea society-wide. If you mean you fire the employees that don't perform you'd be right, but governments could create brackets.

You want governments to provide better food and shelter for certain people? Who gets the best food? The people in charge, or what?

> The point is, in this day and age there's no reason why we couldn't provide every citizen of a developed society all these basic things.

For a few months, maybe. Who is supposed to work to replenish the food once it is eaten?

> You could argue shelter is the most expensive but there are examples like Singapore solving the issue society-wide.

Actually I think shelter is the easiest, food and energy are the ones that are going to be consumed until they are gone and would need to be rationed/allocated.

Work is voluntary for the rich. Poor people will do the things that rich people don't want to do in order to keep their lives at the level they want.

I'm not sure what you're asking. The body is a natural outcome of my parents' reproductive activity. The planet was here before me and will be here after me. Food, shelter, and education are made by humans. There is not enough forage to support 8 billion humans.

> We've come to a technological point in civilization where people shouldn't have to do labor for these basic things.

It's not a matter of "should." They do have to labor to produce these things. These things are a product of labor and they do not exist without labor. Your preferences are irrelevant to the material necessity of labor.

> It's part of advancing civilization. We can allow people to dedicate their time to whatever other endevours we could think of instead of demanding repititive intense labor work just for the sake of keeping them busy.

Grading papers is repetitive intense labor work. Picking weeds and harvesting crops is repetitive intense labor work. Framing, roofing, and flooring are repetitive intense labor work. These activities are where food, shelter, and education come from in our advanced civilization. People who forage, live in tents and caves, and learn by imitating their elders have been driven into the margins and assimilated by force of superior productivity and now there are too many people and not enough space for us to return to the older mode of living. As unfortunate as this is, it is a fact of life and our dislike of the past 10,000 years of history is not enough (on its own) to turn back the clock.

> Conditional to me means if you give me A I'll return B. When I hire someone I don't wait for A (performance) to be given, I provide B (Desk, computer, Office, Electricity...) forfront.

This is because a capitalist risks his investment in return for the opportunity to make a profit, and the laborer exchanges his time for a certain paycheck in order to lessen his exposure to risk. If the worker does not perform as he is expected (or even if he does and the capitalist has not correctly predicted the future) access to those things is removed.

> The analogy of sending soldiers to war also resonate. We don't send naked bodies to war and is not like they had to work for all the gear either. Where did all these expensive gear came from? which soldier worked so hard to get it? Its not like you know they will win the war beforehand either.

They don't get to keep the gear either, they return it when their term of enlistment is up.

> The best food (luxury), is for those who break through and are able to contribute further to society. You can think of the Silicon Valley crowd as an example.

So you're proposing to reward people based on their productivity? Who is to be trusted to decide what constitutes productivity? What test do you propose to use to decide whose productivity is superior?

> Overall, if you go back in history, the majority of the people we praise these days, created their master pieces as a result of working in their leisure time. Eistein didn't create all his work because he was in a sweatshop having to punch numbers in a sheet.

He had a job in the patent office that allowed him a lot of quiet time to think.

> Something in common most of these individuals had, was being part of the noble class or having access to that financial network.

It sounds like you're saying we already do this thing you're suggesting we do.

> If you look throughout the history of civilization, you'd come to the conclusion that keeping people poor is just another way of ostracise a social class for the benefit of the elite few.

I'd suggest that one of the most effective ways to keep people poor is providing a basic subsistence level income so they do not have the incentive to work and become dependent on your generosity.

Automation benefits cities as well, you know. For instance computers probably drastically reduces the number of manual processing of paperwork. That's tax money you can use for something else.