The following explains why this is utterly pie-in the-sky:
1) This Marxist propaganda piece commences, "No one wants to work anymore" As if this is a wholly new idea? Unreal! These are the musings of a 16 year old, not of a grown adult.
2) It Continues:
"Nobody ever wanted to work. We wanted to be productive, be creative, be part of a community, be supported, be validated, and have the time and space to truly rest. Nobody actually wants to trade in hours of their life to "earn" necessities." Perhaps not, but we wanted to eat and make a comfortable life and this also requires communities and cooperation. The free market with some assistance from the church aided villages in achieving improvements in the quality of life.
This quote reflects a naïve lack of understanding of sociology and of the formation of social groups from the early and ancient beginnings of human societies and through the present, not to mention a tremendous ignorance of the literature of social science and the notion of the Social Contract as written about by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Why did humans form social groups in the first place? Self-preservation had a lot to do with it! There was the importance of defending oneself and one's offspring from predators. Social groups formed essentially as small protection syndicates. Rules quickly followed.
It is a simple fact that I don't form a group with you to provide protection for you and get nothing in return. Each party to such partnership has a value that they receive for their contribution to the partnership. Perhaps it is a mutual protection-syndicate: You watch my back - I've got yours?
From these rather individual social contracts, societies grew by sharing work whether it be joining a collective hunt for food, tending crops, gathering nuts and berries, teaching children the skills that the community had honed over many years, etc.
Further on down the road, people learned that there must be some contribution by all in the community to ensure that no one was slacking in their obligations to the community. The early notions of work were established. This provided an accounting of what each member of the tribe contributed to the collective in exchange for the benefits that the collective provided. In part this was to ensure that the collective might survive in both good times and bad times. Slackers were also bad for the morale of the collective, and they would often be turned away from the collective.
In fact, it turns out that the church bell came into being as European agrarian villages evolved and a single timekeeper was needed to alert the community when it was time to tend crops and cattle The church found an opportunity to integrate into existing social structures by building churches with a church bell to be tolled hourly throughout the day a number of tolls to alert the villagers as to the hour of the day, this allowed the community to coordinate time to commence work in the fields, and the proper time when villagers were permitted to conclude their workday. In short, human history clearly contradicts this notion that people don't want to trade their time for necessities. Further on down the line factories had a whistle blow which signified the time to start the work day. Similarly, schools, have a buzzer to indicate the start of the school day and the start of each class period.
Rousseau's social contract was an effort to maximize the notion of human freedom. In doing so, he arrived at the recognition that people do sacrifice some independence and freedom in exchange for the benefits they realize from the society, and furthermore, in this desired social contract, everyone will be free because they all forfeit some rights and impose the some duties in exchange for some privileges. Rousseau argues that it is absurd for a man to surrender his freedom for slavery, and this is quite true. The challenge with Marxism is that far too much is surrendered to the collective and only the elitists of the collective flourish.
The notion that we don't want to exchange our time for necessities is totally ignorant. Long before any of us were born, brilliant people grappled with this very question, and concluded that indeed we do enter into this social contract willingly, specifically for the benefits that we all realize from the social contract.
Another question that deserves some mindshare is what exactly are necessities? Clearly Marxists will pursue a strategy of maximizing the list of items that are necessities. Society provides for the necessities of protection, safety and security, without which there is no foundation for the other things that we may perceive as necessities. Eastern philosophies have a simple measure of necessities:
- Earth
- Sun
- Shelter
- Water
- Food
Tell me what is this Marxist definition of necessities, and what exactly are we content to trade our time for? How exactly do we distinguish necessities from luxuries? Ultimately, if no one is willing to work for necessities, how, pray tell do the rest of us obtain the necessities of life? Imagine, no Toilet paper, no bread, no salt, no sugar, no butter and no meat, not to mention, no vitamins, no kitchenware and no running water. If you think this is fiction, just go to one of several thousand cities and towns throughout the globe where running water is considered a luxury. A few of these are as follows:
1) The Northeast ghetto of Bangkok, Thailand,
2) Tolyatti in the Russian Federation Province of Samara.
3) Many parts of the Republic of the Philippines.
4) Many parts of India and Malaysia
5) Many places in Africa, including: Ethiopia, Nigeria and Ghana, Somalia, Congo and Rwanda.
There are parts of the planet where prostitution remains the only reliable source of income for a woman. I feel that this is an undesirable outcome, but a common outcome in socialist countries.
So, I repeat, where do we draw the line between what is a necessity and what is a little more. Clearly progressives in the USA have designated medical care as a necessity. While I do not reject that medical care is a necessity in the present day, I simply don't understand who determines what is medically necessary and what is not in a socialized medicine model.
That's just for starters. Compound the question by taking away the incentives that people have to pursue medicine as a profession and what are you left with? Fewer options for medical care and a lower quality of care. What is the incentive to work as a nurse, a janitor or an executive of a hospital if we've socialized all medicine and all necessities? Quick answer is that there is no incentive for doing this work!
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