I often daydream about how society would be if we were not forced by society to pigeon hole ourselves into a specialized career for maximizing the profits of capitalists, and sell most of our time for it.

The idea of creating an entire identity for you around your “career” and only specializing in one thing would be ridiculous in another universe. Humans have so much natural potential for breadth, but that is just not compatible with capitalism.

This is evident with how most people develop “hobbies” outside of work, like wood working, gardening, electronics, music, etc. This idea of separating “hobbies” and the thing we do most of our lives (work) is ridiculous.

Here’s how my world could be different if I owned my time and dedicated it to the benefit of my own and my community instead of capitalists:

  • more reading, learning and excusing knowledge with others.
  • learn more handy work, like plumbing and wood working. I love customizing my own home!
  • more gardening
  • participate in the transportation system (picking up shifts to drive a bus for example)
  • become a tour guide for my city
  • cook and bake for my neighbors
  • academic research
  • open source software (and non-software) contributions
  • pick up shifts at a café and make coffee, tea and smoothies for people
  • pick up shifts to clean up public spaces, such as parks or my own neighborhood
  • participate in more than one “professions”. I studied one type of engineering but work in a completely different engineering. This already proves I can do both, so why not do both and others?

Humans do not like the same thing over and over every day. It’s unnatural. But somehow we revolve our whole livelihood around if.

  • CrimeDad
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    51 year ago

    If you really want to dive in then just go and read Capital. Otherwise, the short and sweet of it is that it would really be up to the workers. The particular solutions will probably vary depending on the industry, location, the status of the revolution and whatnot, but it might involve combinations of time banks, computer AIs, human engineers just doing the math, and/or even some forms of markets and price signals.

    • @Zippy
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      11 year ago

      Heard that before. Remember the USSR?

      Why would anyone with a bit of critical thinking believe that would be a good model to try again. It is such a joke.

      • CrimeDad
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        11 year ago

        The critical thinker would consider that maybe the material conditions of the people of the former USSR would be better if dissolution never happened, that they are much better even 30 years after dissolution than if the USSR never happened in the first place.

        • @Zippy
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          11 year ago

          No they fucking wouldn’t. The USSR was completely failing and was being propped up by using up every resource and relying on old technologies to not break down. The house was slowly deteriorating and the sooner they left that model the sooner they could get on track to a sustainable system.

          Unfortunately there was so little left after years of communism that it was pretty hard to kick start a functional economy. Communism just ingrained corruption so deep it is hard to invest there. Then you got a dictator type of government that again is centralizing much of their output and this is what you get. Shit economy with incredible stability.

          Pretty much same in any country that has any model like that.