I can hear it now: “Eventually, but the competition of capitalism accelerates innovation so we can have it now instead of decades or centuries from now.”
Maybe life would be actually enjoyable without the constant forced pressure of having to be “valuable.”
The “innovation” is why the climate and biosphere are going to shit. It’s accelerationism – straight into a cliff wall that’s on the other side of an abyss.
Oh, capitalism created tons of things that would not exist without it, like student debt, subprime mortgages, for-profit prisons… just think about all we would lose!
Not to mention the manmade diseases created by factory farming and the pollution
But nobody even likes twitter ☹️
I’ll play
Garbage collection
I think we would probably have to re-imagine our relationship with garbage to some extent. Take more personal responsibility for the garbage we create. Being a garbage collector would probably be a much more respected position too since they’re doing something that directly benefits the community.
Garbage collection doesn’t have to be a life sentence either. Maybe it’s just something you work for a couple months at a time. If people don’t care about the community littering would still be a problem. But is anarchism even possible if people don’t care about their community?
Yeah, that all sounds very nice. Now tell that to the average dumbass joe who doesn’t care…
Anarchism is cool, but I really just want people to care about the place they live in and the people that live around them. I think a lot of other problems solve themselves after that.
I won’t say anything bad about garbage collectors, I feel pride for them of anything, because they do the most important work that nobody wants to do
Having said that, I think we should maybe implement something where each person obligatory has to do something like this, every so often. Let CEO’s pick up garbage too, they too generate it, usually most of it
That’s just an extension of the “who would clean the bathrooms?” “problem” (not really a serious issue just a lazy pro-capitalist-ideology rhetorical device)
Answer: The bathrooms need to be cleaned, so people would find a way to organize it being done.
Oh, just like garbage collection (and other things people don’t necessarily want/love to do) happened before/outside of capitalism.
But most places have publicly owned garbage collection, no?
literally just get gloves and a respirator and its just moving stuff from a bin to a truck
I get the idea but there are several issues.
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Intermediate products. For example I’ve used many automatic measuring microscopes, so if a block was 25mm +/- 1mm it would find the edge of both sides and calculate the distance between them and determine if part was good. These systems are very expensive (cheap ones could buy a car, expensive ones could buy a house). It’s useful but I don’t think anyone would make it without a benefit to them personally. Technically I could do the same with a drop gauge or even a ruler but wouldn’t be as accurate or as fast. In a lot of cases you don’t need that, for example making utensils like forks or spoons. But for example making gears in a transmission have as tight if not tighter tolerances.
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Quanitity. Now let’s make a house, yeah people might like the act of building. And we all agree houses are valuable, not monetarily but in shelter from weather and safety from animals and other humans. How many screws are in your house? If your answer is 3 digits you are wrong. Who is going to make all those screws? Now we are going to ignore machine screws which need a precise thread and just use wood screws. Do you think anyone’s life dream is to make 10,000s of screws? If you find someone to make them, how are they going to feed their family over the months/years it will take them?
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Quality. Going back to screws they need accurate threading and accurate heads. Without accurate heads a screwdriver won’t work(think of removing a stripped screw) and without accurate threads it won’t screw down or mate with the drilled hole. Who is going to verify that? If you “buy” 1000 screws and only 50 are usable what do you do? With no incentive to make good screws does the screw maker care? Who is going to verify the food you get is safe to eat?
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Non-profit products. Let’s say you love math. How are you going to survive? In history their were patrons who paid some of these people hoping there would be a reason in several years or decades. Some worked out, some didn’t. But someone needed to say “yeah study how to solve that problem and I’ll support you while you do”. But they have limited resources too. In most cases these were basically investments hoping the end product would result in a net benefit. You can’t survive with just math. You can’t go into the woods and scream a theorum at a deer to get meat to feed your family. Now that math feeds into intermediate products which feed into final products which are valuable and that value gets distributed to all the earlier producers.
Yeah people like to make final products. Most people won’t enjoy just sitting their useless. Some people like fixing/restoring stuff. But they use so so many stuff other people have done. Distribution is totally fucked up, granted. But for some people to do their dreams there are so many other people they rely on.
I’m gonna skip 1 and come back to it at the end
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yes I think there are definitely people willing to do a simple task to create things everybody needs (screws) to make things, plenty of people. the people who produce food and need screws (all of the food producers) will feed the screw makers’ families. they have a very obvious incentive to keep their screw makers alive even if we’re being superficial in the way capitalism has trained us to be (in an anarchist/communist/socialist society we don’t feed and house and heal people based on how useful they are. we give them what they need because they deserve it because they’re people, their existence makes them valuable and worthy of the things they need)
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no incentive to make good screws? what??? they’re using those screws in their own house too!! you gotta be trolling tbh, what?? people making food will make sure it’s safe to eat because they’re eating it too!! in what universe is governmental oversight the only way to guarantee quality?
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people deserve the things they need to have to exist, just by simple right of them existing. “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” there is more than enough food and housing in the world to feed and house everybody, the only reason we don’t is the greed of the ruling class
ok back to 1, I think that people would still make these devices even if they owned the means of production but if they didn’t that means that they were not valuable as the flow chart says
getting to part 2 I’m half convinced this is just trolling but I’ll still post this in case it’s not
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The “No” line from “Would other people be willing to work to create X if they weren’t forced to?” should just directly lead to “Then capitalism is wasting its resources on X.”
I’m not a moneyologist, but I think that’s describing market economy rather than capitalism. ME is older and can solve some things that capitalism doesn’t.
In the ‘garbage / sewage’ scenario, you might be willing to do those things (ie not forced) in exchange for something else consider more valuable to you. No ownership is required for that.
Stack overflow
wouldnt get made because it isnt useful.
NEXT!
That’s not the criticism that’s being made here. The criticism is not in how the power plant is organized, which the sketch doesn’t talk about that at all. The criticism is that you’d need people in the plant and if that work isn’t rewarded or paid in some way, they’re not going to be able to provide for themselves.
Yeah I know, I watched it.
So what is your answer to the problems it raises?
At the social level: recognition and respect from community members, status grounded in contribution rather than wealth, reciprocal relationships and mutual aid, and the experience of belonging.
Mutual aid is already acknowledged in the sketch. I don’t see any answer to the problem of doing it at scale.
If you need to provide hundreds of people with mutual aid for decades, then you’re probably going to have to have some sort of system to ensure people contribute to it and it goes to the right people. Congratulations, you just reinvented government, and contradicted the meme.
Mutual aid networks can be scaled up indefinitly tho
This is the one
Using a nondeterministic graph isn’t a very good way to promote an economic structure
Capitalism is just legalized exploitation of the have-nots that would be wholly illegal under a just and equitable system.
X is the opposite of valuable.
This is perfect! I find it kind of hard to explain this concept to friends.
