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The entire fucking internet they use to spread their propaganda runs chiefly on FOSS
Just FYI at least here I get compensated for my work as a voluntary firefighter. Not sure how much anymore but it is around 25 bucks per hour. Made like 1k last year, had not really a lot to do except training and 2-3 smaller incidents.
But yeah I don’t do it for the money, I learned about that in basic training 😁
Maybe the problem in our society is the people who are only motivated by profit.
Most creative people don’t profit from their creations. Some do. Most don’t.
Is it fair to compare Linux and Windows in this context? 👾
I think that’s a great comparison - and we could broaden the analogy a bit, too. Windows is an example of the means of production being privatized, and Linux is more of an example of a more socially owned means of production (to a certain extent). We see that the development of Windows follows the incentives of shareholders - towards AI, advertisements, dark patterns, data gathering and so on, whereas the development of Linux and open source software follows the incentives of the users and the developers, towards things that actually add value to the lives of the people who use it.
"Without the fear of poverty, no one would be submissive "
in some sense these are cool duties, let me know when someone voluntarily emptied septic tanks of other people
When I was young I lived in a commune of sorts, with artists and hippies* and what not. Every few weeks a couple of us did just that, because why wouldn’t we?
Also later when I worked in a group home for elderly autistic people in all shapes and sizes that experience came in handy as I was used to the smell. Usually I ended up doing the shittiest (harhar) cleaning duties and it never really bothered me even though we were supposed to rotate. One of the nurses with over a decade of experience refused to even enter a room while I was emptying the stomach contents of one particularly tricky patient (he essentially had plugs straight into his stomach for both in and output, they definitely generated some interesting smells).
Sure, I got paid for the latter half, but I still did that stuff daily for years.
Later when I became a father there was absolutely nothing that could faze me anymore. Sort of glad I got to experience all that, weirdly enough. I even miss that job sometimes, felt like I at least did something meaningful.
If something really needs to get done, like repairing necessary sewer systems, then it will get done, because it needs to. Do you really think that people who have the skills to repair the water treatment plant are going to just deal with sewage backing up into their home because they don’t want to do the work?
For a more comprehensive analysis of the question, I’d direct your attention towards an anarchist FAQ. I’ll quote a few choice sections below, but the link goes into great detail, comparing and contrasting multiple approaches to handling the problem.
There are some jobs that few, if any, would enjoy (for example, collecting rubbish, processing sewage, dangerous work, etc.). So how would an anarchist society deal with it?
[…]
It would be easy to imagine a free community sharing such tasks as fairly as possible between a community’s members by, for example, allocating a few days a month to all fit members of a community to do work which no one volunteers to do. This would soon ensure that it would be done, particularly if it were part of a festival or before a party. In this way, every one shares in the unpleasant as well as pleasant tasks (and, of course, minimises the time any one individual has to spend on it). Or, for tasks which are very popular, individuals would also have to do unpleasant tasks as well. In this way, popular and unpopular tasks could balance each other out. Or such tasks could be rotated randomly by lottery. The possibilities are many and, undoubtedly, a free people will try many different ones in different areas.
[…]
Of course, no system is perfect – we are sure that not everyone will be able to do the work they enjoy the most (this is also the case under capitalism, we may add). In an anarchist society every method of ensuring that individuals pursue the work they are interested in would be investigated. If a possible solution can be found, we are sure that it will. What a free society would make sure of was that neither the capitalist market redeveloped (which ensures that the majority are marginalised into wage slavery) or a state socialist “labour army” type allocation process developed (which would ensure that free socialism did not remain free or socialist for long).
In this manner, anarchism will be able to ensure the principle of voluntary labour and free association as well as making sure that unpleasant and unwanted “work” is done. Moreover, most anarchists are sure that in a free society such requirements to encourage people to volunteer for unpleasant work will disappear over time as feelings of mutual aid and solidarity become more and more common place. Indeed, it is likely that people will gain respect for doing jobs that others might find unpleasant and so it might become “glamorous” to do such activity. Showing off to friends can be a powerful stimulus in doing any activity.
allocating a few days a month to all fit members of a community to do work which no one volunteers to do.
I can agree to that as long as it’s a spelled-out condition of living in that community. As an autistic person myself, I like having expectations and conditions written out clearly and concisely, in mutually agreed-upon language.
It absolutely would be, yes. Anarchist communes function based on codified agreements, reached through direct democratic processes and consensus decision making. You would not only have all of the expectations of the society written out, you’d also have full and equal input into what those rules are, so we can guide the structure of society towards one that works for everyone.
For more information, you could check out the section “What could the social structure of anarchy look like?” in an anarchist FAQ.
this picture doesn’t address the fact that a lot of people work to enable subsistence and in this economy it is becoming very common.
Now let’s discuss all the people eager to volunteer to work sewage treatment plants.
The proportion of people with more innate motivation versus need for a job to be done varies wildly between jobs.
But when someone approaches work with innate motivation, amazingly better stuff happens compared to people in it just for the paycheck.
If something really needs to get done, like repairing necessary sewer systems, then it will get done, because it needs to. Do you really think that people who have the skills to repair the water treatment plant are going to just deal with sewage backing up into their home because they don’t want to do the work?
For a more comprehensive analysis of the question, I’d direct your attention towards an anarchist FAQ. I’ll quote a few choice sections below, but the link goes into great detail, comparing and contrasting multiple approaches to handling the problem.
There are some jobs that few, if any, would enjoy (for example, collecting rubbish, processing sewage, dangerous work, etc.). So how would an anarchist society deal with it?
[…]
It would be easy to imagine a free community sharing such tasks as fairly as possible between a community’s members by, for example, allocating a few days a month to all fit members of a community to do work which no one volunteers to do. This would soon ensure that it would be done, particularly if it were part of a festival or before a party. In this way, every one shares in the unpleasant as well as pleasant tasks (and, of course, minimises the time any one individual has to spend on it). Or, for tasks which are very popular, individuals would also have to do unpleasant tasks as well. In this way, popular and unpopular tasks could balance each other out. Or such tasks could be rotated randomly by lottery. The possibilities are many and, undoubtedly, a free people will try many different ones in different areas.
[…]
Of course, no system is perfect – we are sure that not everyone will be able to do the work they enjoy the most (this is also the case under capitalism, we may add). In an anarchist society every method of ensuring that individuals pursue the work they are interested in would be investigated. If a possible solution can be found, we are sure that it will. What a free society would make sure of was that neither the capitalist market redeveloped (which ensures that the majority are marginalised into wage slavery) or a state socialist “labour army” type allocation process developed (which would ensure that free socialism did not remain free or socialist for long).
In this manner, anarchism will be able to ensure the principle of voluntary labour and free association as well as making sure that unpleasant and unwanted “work” is done. Moreover, most anarchists are sure that in a free society such requirements to encourage people to volunteer for unpleasant work will disappear over time as feelings of mutual aid and solidarity become more and more common place. Indeed, it is likely that people will gain respect for doing jobs that others might find unpleasant and so it might become “glamorous” to do such activity. Showing off to friends can be a powerful stimulus in doing any activity.
allocating a few days a month to all fit members of a community to do work which no one volunteers to do.
Ok, this basically sums up the answer: the community forces labor one way or another. What is the enforcement, carrot vs. stick for making people do their fair share. How do you reward people for doing unwanted work? How do you deal with someone refusing to do it, or “maliciously complying” and doing it terribly to make the job easier and/or get out of doing it again in the future?
So the agreement is that there is work that needs some external impetus to happen, because not every job has enough people intrinsically interested or civic minded to make it happen. The question becomes which solutions manage to be more fair than others? For unskilled and unwanted jobs, the current answer has a lower class overworked because they are the most desperate, and that’s bad. A forced labor system might manage to distribute the burden more fairly, though thanks to people being crap it’s likely for a system set up to do that to be abused to overwork some demonized demographic, ending in a similar outcome a different way.
Whatever the case is, it’s not as rosy as “people freely work on wikipedia and programming, therefore people will freely work on anything society may want or need”
I’m absolutely against both wage slavery and forced labor. The point of this post is that people are willing to work on things without the profit motive, so we can structure society in a way that the work that needs to get done still gets done without any exploitation necessary.
I’m an anarchist - if you haven’t heard much about anarchism before, you probably have some misconceptions about it, so I encourage you to watch the Q&Anarchy video series by Thought Slime or have a look through an Anarchist FAQ, because it’s almost definitely nothing like what you think. I personally believe that it’s the most coherent philosophy which adequately explains and addresses all of the problems which plague our society, and which holds the most promise for a path out of the inevitable cycle of the continuous rise and fall of fascism that capitalism makes inevitable.
It said right in your quote that people do work that “no one volunteers to do”. If they aren’t volunteering, then something is providing the impetus.
Broadly the writing avoids the more difficult nuance of how the community gets unplesant work to be “shared” when no one volunteers. This suggests enforcement one way or another.
At small scale of a commune, some pretty human interactions can probably serve to drive this in a pretty reasonable way, by instilling sense of duty and comradery and potentially shame inherent to everyone knowing everyone else in a nuanced way. As you scale up, when inevitably people start losing track of each other, those soft mechanisms deteriorate, and the systems start to develop cracks for exploitation. Capitalism breaks in some ways, other systems break down in others. Fundamentally human behavior when interaction becomes diluted at scale tends to suck.
If they aren’t volunteering, then something is providing the impetus.
Sure, which you can read my quoted section above, or even better, click the link to an anarchist FAQ which goes over a number of solutions and approaches.
Broadly the writing avoids the more difficult nuance of how the community gets unplesant work to be “shared” when no one volunteers. This suggests enforcement one way or another.
I’d encourage you to pause and read an anarchist FAQ’s answer to the question “Who will do the dirty or unpleasant work?”, and also the subsequent section, “What about the person who will not work?”. You’re spending a lot of energy debating this with me when you could do a little reading and have all the answers you’re looking for in far more detail and far better explained than little ol’ me can give you!
Fundamentally human behavior when interaction becomes diluted at scale tends to suck.
I get where you’re coming from, but my point is that we can collectively design a system that sucks the least, and it sure as shit is not capitalism. There are examples of large-scale anarchist societies which demonstrate how anarchism works at scale, both historical and current, such as Revolutionary Spain and the Zapatista movement in Mexico.
Except these people are very rare and I doubt an averege Joe would do 40 hours work for community just because its gonna benifit somebody else
Even more powerful examples, despite threat of persecution at the hands of Oligarchs and the state instruments these persist: Sci-hub, Library genesis
It’s one of those “every accusation is a confession”. People are thinking about themselves when talking about others.
This is not everyone. These people are great but rare.
If there was a world full of people like this, life would be different but it isn’t. Most people suck.
Now in a time when there was homogeneous society and there was about 150 people you interacted people could be kept a lot more in check. But today no way.
Just today for example I called some guy scum and threw a plastic bag in his face because he took his dog to the beach and wouldn’t pick up his shit. I highly doubt that guy would do 40 hours of work for someone else if he didn’t have to. I had actually talked to him before that and he seemed positively pleasant.
You need some kind of motivation for sure, but that doesn’t have to be monetary. The feeling of fullfillment, honor, acceptance or being able to help a greater good can come a long way. The reservists of armies all around the world are on example. Germany is dependant on volunteers to organise fire departements (80% volunteers) disaster relieve (THW ~95% volunteers) sport clubs (99%) etc.
Alternative motivation may be viable and in fact drive better results when feasible. You find the right person with the right passion who wants to do the job.
Problem is not every sort of job can pull that off. You aren’t going to find enough sewage treatment enthusiasts to handle that demand. You aren’t going to have enough line men to keep the grid going reliably and safely.
Just today for example I called some guy scum and threw a plastic bag in his face because he took his dog to the beach and wouldn’t pick up his shit.
I’m getting there. Interacting with people is exhausting. On public transit it’s just endless annoyances and I feel the snappy bit inside me is getting closer.
Also wtf do minecraft players have to do with working for free?
If I’m not completely wrong that picture is from the uncensored library, a massive project that allows users to search most of Annas archive in Minecraft. Its used to circumvent state censorship and allows for freer access to knowledge.
Turns out passion, curiosity, and purpose are way stronger motivators than profit ever was 😅
Problem being the jobs that don’t inspire passion, curiosity, and purpose, but we still need them to get done.
It depends on the person. I’ve known people who are much more motivated by money. Some of them ended up in prison, some are doing quite well, and some are still trying.
Honestly, I sometimes wish I were more money-motivated. I’m very lucky that my passion happens to earn a good salary (for now), but I gave up my business for it.
Everything depends on the person. Hitler could have been a great artist if he wasn’t a genocidal maniac. 🤣
And Trump could have been great… well, person if he wasn’t, eh… Trump. 🤷🏻
