William_Holz has some great ideas. I’ll throw in some more at a higher level.
I see this as part of the big challenge of figuring out and agreeing on what work needs to be done - the work that we will all share. If you need a bunch of fiber optic tapers for your project, then someone has to produce those - time and materials must be allotted. So a bunch of folks would need to agree that it’s worth spending the time and materials for your project, sort of the same way that we would need to agree that it’s worth the time and materials to farm beets or strawberries or produce steel or mini-blinds.
I don’t have a perfect solution for that problem. It seems like some basic things (steel and mattresses and carrots and vaccines) would be fairly easy to agree on and we would benefit from a system that did not allow their manufacture to vary too much.
For other less basic needs, perhaps a system somewhere between a general election and kickstarter would work out. We vote to maintain the mobile phone network towers. We pledge work hours in a kick-starter fashion for pet projects.
So if you need fiber optic tapers, and I love your project, then I’ll agree to work an extra fifteen minutes a week at my regular job, or a few hours this month at the fiber optic farm (they grow on trees, right?) to get your stuff to you. My neighbor wants to build a giant sculpture and needs steel, so I’m volunteering some extra time for that, too. Maybe I don’t know enough about farming fiber optic cables, so I’m spending that time at my regular job, which frees up time for someone with the right expertise to make your stuff. The steel plant is pretty far away, but I’m interested in seeing it, so I’m going to travel there and work a twenty hour week to bank some time. Computers keep track.
Now I’ve got an eleven hour work week and a trip to a steel plant, but I know some other cool stuff is happening AND that the basic needs of everyone are getting taken care of. Unlike now, when hundreds of millions of dollars are spend on a single Lone Ranger movie within blocks of the homeless… I’m getting off track.
Basically, think of using time rather than money. And think of the all the secondary benefits that come from saving time (long term time) over saving money. More reliable products save more time long term. More automation saves more time long term. We incentivize ways of creating free time for everyone, rather than ways of getting money from other people.
When I was a stock broker at a small brokerage, the owner used to have his rabbi come down after the close of business one day a week and we would discuss what we were doing (and planning on doing) with him. Every week, we had an ethical check on our professional choices. It was a great place to work. No opportunity for advancement, unfortunately.
But I just want to pop online, order a bunch of shit that I think I might need (or might not, because it looks cool and I want it on my workbench for future projects) and have it shipped to me 2-day express, and not have to go through the materials needs peer-review committee for approval, which is notoriously slow because they only meet weekly, and monthly during summer because with all their free time, they are busy sailing. I want to be an egalitarian and just get my shit and not have to tell everybody about it at the supply depot, “Oh what are you building?” Friggin nosey bastards. I want to just build my time machine in the privacy of my own home and not have to answer to anybody about it. How does the new system accommodate me?
That’s exactly the opposite of the sort of system we’re talking about.
Obviously, you can’t just have everybody ordering everything, that’s potentially silly, and we want something more rugged than that, so we can’t be using this sort of framework.
Instead there’d be a degree of journeymanship, where the more you demonstrate you’re responsible and know what you’re up to the less you have to worry about access to more expensive materials and (FAR more importantly for many intrinsically motivated people) people. However, if you’re just getting started in the game and can show you’ve got a good idea, you still can get access based on the quality if your idea if it’s got legs to stand on.
Meanwhile, with less amazingly wasteful administration and ‘work for work’s sake’ we’ve got more man hours to free up, which means that when you do have to deal with other people there aren’t that sort of delay, and more to recycling so materials are being returned to the hoppers faster, and more to research so we have more ideas for you to incorporate into your own and more advanced production technologies giving you better equipment to work with and . . . well, we could go on for a while, couldn’t we?
I’ve worked in industry, academia, finance, and defense. I’ve done the most menial sorts of labor (cleaning up gas station bathrooms, digging ditches, busing tables at minimum wage) and I’ve worked on nuclear weapons and space vehicles.
The most meaningful thing I’ve ever done is adopt a child. My career is a means of gaining enough social and economic power to rear children who will have the ability to build the society that will come after this one.
Why would everyone else in the system do extra work just so you can have some pretty stuff sitting on your workbench that you aren’t going to use? Why would they rush to deliver that stuff to you? Why would they stop sailing for that?
If you have answers to those questions, then make the answers known and the system will listen and decide if your answers sound good enough.
One possible answer is “We all want that - we all want something like Amazon to just bring us stuff we want.” And if we all (or a lot of us) want that, then we’re going to be willing to work an extra few hours to make that happen, right? So we all work a little more for the stuff we want and then we all get it. You do some extra work so that some other folks keep 2-day express running.
There’s no reason to fall back to some sort of gray concrete Stalinist parody where no one has toilet paper if we all want iPhones and shag carpeting and fast food and overnight shipping. We just agree to share the work it takes to make it happen.
Or maybe everyone wants it, but no one wants to do any work for it. Then what? It’s sort of like wanting a unicorn or a free submarine or a jetpack at that point.
We just have to keep in mind that everything we take requires time and materials, and we have to find a way to agree that some things are worth those, and some things are not.
How does it work now? You want some shit delivered to you, so you have to get money from somewhere. … Where? From other people… How do you get money from other people? … What a horrible question to ask! “How do you get other people’s money?” Really? Why aren’t you asking what you can do to make the world a better place or make other people’s lives better? Why would you want to compete with other people for money rather than work together so everyone gets what they want?
I always ask these complainers “then why don’t you go apply for a state job if you think they’re so cushy?” And then I get some kind of non-answer about how it’s all about who you know, and quotas, and etc., and I think the answer actually translates to “well I’m not black, and only black people get cushy state jobs,” which has led me to wonder whether the resentment of state workers is actually tied to the success of anti-discrimination efforts in the civil service meaning that people of color are actually visibly represented in decent, middle-class jobs. It’s racists all the way down, I think.
Two reasons - both of which are because of the existing system.
if I use my faculties and resources to make everything other people want, they will just die of morbid obesity and I will have to empty their bedpans and bury their bloated corpses. Look at the diabetes numbers and tell me I’m wrong - far too many people do not want what is good for them, unfortunately.
If I use my faculties and resources to make everything what other people want, my family and I will die of starvation. Because other people won’t support me and I won’t have time to support myself.
The current social contract (which is not the type of contract you have to sign and agree to, so libertarian know-nothings can just shut up and go read a book) says that I must work at least 50 hours a week to support the system, or I will be sanctioned harshly. I cannot unilaterally decide to stop supporting the 1% because such a decision only harms my own family, it will do nothing to harm the exploiting class.
Why do you think other people wouldn’t agree to work less if it meant supporting you? Do people hate you? Are you an asshole? I don’t think you’re an asshole. I’ll support you. It will be a pleasure. Especially if it means working less than I do now. But also because there’s no reason for anyone to die of starvation. Not if we cooperate instead of compete. How hard could that really be?
We’re not going to make Everything that Everyone wants. I may have worded things sloppily in some places in my posts. I’m sorry. We’re going to come to some agreements - locally, regionally, nationally - about what we want to do and have. Then we’re going to share the work to make that happen. Maybe with some long term vision we can agree that carrot farming and health care are better uses of our time than producing Twinkies and Jolt Cola. I am optimistic about that.
Perhaps you’re suggesting that there needs to be some part of the system that helps ensure that everyone is doing their fair share? I imagine a lot of people would agree with you, and would be willing to work a few hours a year/month/week to make that part of the system.
I agree that this cannot be done unilaterally. You can’t cooperate by yourself. We’ll have to figure out the transition together.
That is the promise of the current system, which it fails to fulfill. Hmmm, come to think of it that’s the promise of every social system except unapologetic tyranny, isn’t it? Yet we still end up with the sociopaths on top, and the well-meaning co-operative people divided into mutually antagonistic clades, every time…
Edit: also, I don’t think I’m an asshole, but I’m willing to entertain the possibility. How could I know really?
That does seem to happen a lot. Do you think it’s inevitable, or do you think there may be some way to increase our cooperation and reduce our divisions?
But I don’t think of it that way. I keep the value equation flipped in my mind. I think of it this way: “I provide a valuable service, and in return they pay me.” Now, with MY money, which they willingly gave me because I provided them something they wanted, I should be able to do with it whatever the heck I want, including throw it out the window onto my neighbors’ lawns. I never took anybody’s money against their will. I EARNED it, with my hard work. I’m willing to work for it. I’ll work 80 hours a week for it, if necessary, because I like what I do.
I can’t speak for sssss, but since we’re also talking solutions, with respect to our vision it sounds like you’re presenting yourself as exactly the sort of person who wouldn’t be very interested in what we’re talking about, nor would we be seeking you out other than to point out what options we’ve got. That’s part of the fun, options.
Meanwhile, if that’s the way you REALLY need to be motivated, and you can’t adapt, then you wouldn’t be the sort of person that would be the sort of intrinsically motivated person we’d need, in fact you’d hold everybody else back and provide limited or negative value.
I bet you’re more complicated than that, but if you’re not, then that’s also a good thing, because it’s a sort of addition by subtraction. Everybody wins.
I flutter erratically between “the only solutions involve executions” and “surely we can all just get along” but after half a century of trying to conform to the categorical imperative I’m starting to believe that humans are basically pack animals - neither herd animals nor loners, but fundamentally rather easily controlled by dominance displays and status hierarchies.
Is that so different from “I provide a valuable service, and in return they give me what I need”? Perhaps the “they” changes from a few wealthy people to society at large, but isn’t that a good thing?
Do you feel like the money gives you autonomy? Even if it takes 80 hours a week to get it? What if you only had to work ten hours a week? Aren’t you more free with an extra 30-70 hours of time to do what you like?
With these questions, I am trying to change your mind a bit. But I also want to know how you feel about these things. At some point to me it just seemed obvious that my suggestions would be a good way for things to work. I would honestly like to know why it would not appeal to others.
I have to admit I oscillate the same way. Because I wouldn’t trust myself (or anyone else) to decide who to execute, I try to lean toward optimism. If we could teach our children that they’re not in competition with each other… If we could focus on making everyone happy rather than making stock prices go up… If we could reward productivity rather than greed… It seems like we would all choose those things if we were confident that everyone else would choose them too. If we could trust one another for a little while.
On the subject of dominance displays, did you ever read “The Authoritarians” by Bob Altemeyer?
That was my conclusion of two decades ago - change the system by showing our children alternatives to “consumerism” as a way of life. Adopt as many kids as you can, there’s already enough humans that we don’t need to grow our own.
No, I haven’t heard of it before - should I?
I’ve always thought that if the Milgram experiments were done in the 1320s, you’d have to put the experimenter in a black cassock and have him hold a bible, rather than a white lab coat and clipboard. The plumage of authority changes over time.
