Someone builds their houses… someone maintains their plumbing, access to clean water and electricity, someone grows their food, disposes of their waste…
Or are you picturing a future where we have robots doing all those things?
It’d be a generous thing for you to elect to do… it’d also be generous of you to plow fields, mine coal or generally do grueling work for no pay.
But it’s only generous because it’s above and beyond what is morally expected of you. If it were a moral expectation and enforced… that would make you a slave.
When you say people have a right to housing what do you think that means?
Let’s take it back the handful of people scenario
So does that mean you have a RIGHT to the house I built? Do you have a right to demand I build you a house of your own?
If you have the right to make demands of me without any form of reciprocity, how is that not slavery?
In my initial entry, I stated that there would still be people who work regular jobs. They would receive living wages to counteract the drudgery of menial labour. The work would not seem so dismal, if they were paid substantially more; they would, probably, go to work buoyantly, resulting in increased qualitative production and a butterfly effect of happiness.
When I state people should have a right to free housing, what I mean is that having secure housing is something essential to human well-being. Just like some of the other constitutional amendments, housing should be considered an intrinsic right, without financial obligations.
It is inhumane to coerce people into working or freezing outside in the cold. If people don’t want to be a part of the rat race, they shouldn’t have to. If they prefer to live a more simple life, in which they can spend time reading, playing sports, creating art, and so on, they should be allowed to.
As mentioned before, people would still work; there would be financial incentives. Society will not collapse, if people have free housing.
Also, when I propose that people should have a right to free housing, I do not mean that others have a right to the house you built, or that you are obligated to build one for somebody else. What I mean is that the government should do its job of ensuring human well-being by creating a society in which free-housing exists. You, as an individual citizen, are not expected to do this; but rather government officials should be.
I think he means that society should provide a minimum standard of living for the poor before allowing a billionaire to have another billion.
And we also can’t forget how the rich got that way: ie exploitation. You’re making it seem too innocent with your simplistic example as if everyone actually worked FOR themselves instead of either working FOR someone else or having others work FOR them.
Of course no one is entitled to someone else’s labor which is exactly the argument the rich are putting forth in defense of their keeping the fruits of the labors of masses of other people as if it was their labor alone.
You don’t seem to understand what I’m criticising here.
I’m all for a welfare state with comfortable minimum wages, progressive taxation and other forms of enforced solidarity…
I’m all for having a comfortable safety net for people who are out of work, preventing a turn of bad luck from ending in abject poverty and desperation without any opportunity to bounce back.
That can all be be justified…
But you’re talking about a free ride.
If society doesn’t need you to work right now, I agree you should be able to rest easy knowing the rest of us have your back…
But if we need you to work and you’re response is “no thanks, I’m just gonna watch some tv, maybe do an oil painting” then we should cut you off to go fend for yourself.
The government can’t “magic” houses into being or food, or services… they have to hire people, and they would have to pay the people they hired, so they would need money or goods to pay them with…
Where is all that coming from?
I agree it would be nice if we didn’t HAVE to work… if food magically appeared when we were hungry, but alas, that does not seem to be the reality we find ourselves in, for you to have food at all SOMEONE has to go get it.
For you to have a house SOMEONE has to build it.
For human beings to survive, for society to function some number of people have to work… they HAVE TO, it’s not optional
And the rest of us HAVE to work if only to (re)pay them, for the literal fruits of their labor.
And besides, what kind of ungrateful shit, would feel good about being a parasite that survives on the kindness of others without any thought to ever giving back?
How is that conducive to a healthy and happy society?
If not for stockpiling 1.4 billion pounds of cheese and who know what else for the purpose of keeping prices high for the purpose of keeping small farmers in business, 1 farmer could feed 1000s of people. The number of people that are actually required to work is a relative handful and that is the principle premise of the Venus Project and TZM: once free from the monetary shackles to take an engineering approach to production, the required human labor will be minuscule.
No it’s all about the hangup that someone might get something for nothing that prevents us actually getting something for nothing. People who rather submit to slavery themselves just to be sure someone else is also slaving away. That’s at the bottom of the only existing objection. So we’re not waiting on technology, but we’re waiting on the required number of funerals to happen.
More like… putting it out there, for you to respond to and from. Should I have been more clearer? can you not work with that/with what I’ve given you…?
From what I’ve seen documented, such places did not rely on slave-based labour, but a shared labour of utilising skill sets and capabilities - why assume slavery was involved? Theses places would have been run more like monasteries, so inhabitants would have actually had a quality of life to enjoy.
The article was written in 2008 - I’m sure they know a great deal more by now!
““Peters has identified tens of thousands of gazelle bones, which make up more than 60 percent of the total, plus those of other wild game such as boar, sheep and red deer. He’s also found bones of a dozen different bird species, including vultures, cranes, ducks and geese. “The first year, we went through 15,000 pieces of animal bone, all of them wild. It was pretty clear we were dealing with a hunter-gatherer site,” Peters says. “It’s been the same every year since.” The abundant remnants of wild game indicate that the people who lived here had not yet domesticated animals or farmed.””
Is it possible that they ate anything that moved? If, as suggested, they didn’t farm, at some point food would become scarce.
Thus far (I am taking it as read) no one has put up a suitable argument against the suggestion that food is a necessity. Food, therefore, will go on the list.
Capitalism, Socialism, Prism - any old Ism PK doesn’t like, whichever is in fashion at any given moment, Food goes on the list! Number one.
“Today, in the UK”, a gentleman on the radio announced, gleefully. “There are 33 million souls working. The highest number since records began in 1971.” He said, people, NOT souls! I seem to recall records dating back prior to 1971. Never mind. Says very little for efficiency.
1: Food
Dated: 17/4/2019.
Any objections should be lodged within seven days of said date.
