The reasons those jobs are such shit is also money. A lot of people enjoy cleaning, nobody enjoys being overworked. Normal functioning societies don’t leave heaps of stinking trash around, they neatly pack it and the work of a janitor of garbage collector becomes actually enjoyable if you’re a proper type of personality.
Hell, my uncle right now works as a part time street sweeper basically for free. He has his basic needs met by other means, and his “job” pays him enough to get a cup of coffee before the shift and a sandwich after. He just enjoys making the world cleaner, chatting with locals, taking care of stray cats, and having a routine. All of that is possible in a world that doesn’t revolves around squeesing every bit of labour from people so some pedos can buy themselves another island and fill it with sex slaves
Normal functioning societies don’t leave heaps of stinking trash around, they neatly pack it and the work of a janitor of garbage collector becomes actually enjoyable if you’re a proper type of personality.
Idk if you noticed, but people won’t behave that way if there is no repercussion for it.
He has his basic needs met by other means, and his “job” pays him enough to get a cup of coffee before the shift and a sandwich after. He just enjoys making the world cleaner, chatting with locals, taking care of stray cats, and having a routine.
Great but some people have more aspirations than your uncle. And I think they should have the chance to achieve that. And I don’t think having a clean neighborhood should depend on having that uncle that enjoys cleaning for free.
All of that is possible in a world that doesn’t revolves around squeesing every bit of labour from people
I mean, yes, absolutely possible without squeezing every bit of labor from people. However, it’s not possible in a world without money or capital. The wide-spread introduction of capitalism has DRASTICALLY reduced the amount of people living in extreme poverty. According to https://ourworldindata.org/end-progress-extreme-poverty , from 1990 - 2025, the amount of people living in extreme poverty dropped by 65%, from 2.3 billion to 800 million. If we extend the timeframe a bit further, according to https://ourworldindata.org/history-of-poverty-data-appendix , the number went from 53.9% in extreme poverty to only 5.5% - meaning an almost 90% reduction in extreme poverty. Unless I’m too stupid to do math now.
(ourworldindata.org is a non-profit funded by the university of oxford btw - so it’s fairly reliable)
Now, capitalism isn’t the sole reason why poverty dropped - it’s the combination with effective social policies. Capitalism creates wealth, taxes take a part of that wealth and spread it to the rest of society. That’s how it should work and that is also by far the best system we could ever have in place. The fact that america fails on that tax-part is not the fault of capitalism. It’s a failure of the government.
It’s insane that so many people tried to flee from communist terror regimes, and still try to flee to this day out of North Korea or Cuba, yet people on lemmy will just close their eyes and pretend that communism is the perfect system and every system that fails is just because of the “CIA”.
And you think your uncle is a scalable solution to a city of millions of people. These positions dont scale. Some quick googling show about a half a millions workers in waste remediation in the us in 2023. Do you honestly think you could find half a million people like your uncle that all live spread out enough to fill all the positions (thats on the low end of need also fyi, not surprisingly they have high turnover and difficulty keeping staff for extended periods) around the entire us and that those people would never lose motivation or get burned out or just tired or stop caring. Because that is what we need and that is a single job for a single industry.
I just think it’s boring that you think money is the only reasonable motivator for these people. There are other forms of compensation and appreciation. And it’s not the only option available to us. It’s crazy to me that people understand the idea of countries that have military conscription but can’t fathom the idea of a system of workable civil conscription.
As I see it you successfully identified a problem and a solution, but that does not suggest that that is the sole or even best solution.
When you do your scaling you need to scale everything. The adult population of the US is estimated as 266 million people as of now. Half a million is roughly 1 adult in 530 people. Let’s quadruple it up so they have nice relaxed works schedule. Let’s say now you need 4 people per 530. If you think you can’t find 10 out of 1000 people who would do some sanitation work, with no stress and without having to think where their next meal comes from, you just never met people.
And this is the most important part that you seem to ignore - when people’s basic means are met, they want to fulfill higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. For some that means doing arts or doing some engineering or running a company. For some, and there are s many of those some, that means “it’s not much but it’s honest work”. Doing small visible changes that make the world the better place one picked up piece of rubbish at a time, is exactly, precisely what significant portion of humanity will be doing.
This also works in another direction: billions of people who would be doing something grand and moving humanity further, are stuck in mundane repetitive broken jobs they hate, because they’re stuck in this cycle of needing to grind to survive, without having a moment to breath, which slowly kills every bit of light they once had a potential to have.
Would you enjoy being a garbage man or a plumber? Or is that work you’re saving for others to enjoy?
Doctors make good money and we don’t have enough of them because it takes so much time and dedication. You think getting rid of money would help there?
It’s not that gotcha that you think it is. I worked a lot of hard jobs, for 10 years I did very hard and complicated work in very unpleasant environments for very very little money only because I loved what we did and the results of our labour, and I was good at it. I would be doing that still if I didn’t need money to feed my family. In my years I’ve met a lot of people who were enjoying, properly enjoying jobs that other people will call hell. My job at the time, and to a big extend my job now, is something other people will never want to do for any amount of money.
Doctors make good money and we don’t have enough of them
And your conclusion isn’t that the system of people working for money and only for money is a broken system that demonstrably doesn’t work, but that we need to conserve it as long as we can because it was always done like that?
Yes, getting rid of money will absolutely help. Many people want to be doctors but can’t afford the time or resources to either become one, or to actually put their existing education to use.
And as an example I’ve personally witnessed, being a doctor in Russia in the 90s was about the worst job you can get, you don’t get any money, and I mean none, they were going multiple consecutive months without any salary. The shortage was about on par with the doctor’s shortage in US right now. Trapping people in jobs they don’t want to do is not something that helps humanity in any way.
Do kids need to go to school? Five days a week?
I struggle to understand how this is relevant to the conversation.
Doctors make good money and we don’t have enough of them because it takes so much time and dedication. You think getting rid of money would help there?
Yes. There are easier ways of making money. If you do it just for the money you won’t have the mental fortitude to get to the point of making money. Profit motives is about the path of least resistance.
Lol what MD is the goto job for making easy money. Getting the degree is difficult because everyone wants to do that job, not because it’s difficult per se
The reasons those jobs are such shit is also money. A lot of people enjoy cleaning, nobody enjoys being overworked. Normal functioning societies don’t leave heaps of stinking trash around, they neatly pack it and the work of a janitor of garbage collector becomes actually enjoyable if you’re a proper type of personality.
Hell, my uncle right now works as a part time street sweeper basically for free. He has his basic needs met by other means, and his “job” pays him enough to get a cup of coffee before the shift and a sandwich after. He just enjoys making the world cleaner, chatting with locals, taking care of stray cats, and having a routine. All of that is possible in a world that doesn’t revolves around squeesing every bit of labour from people so some pedos can buy themselves another island and fill it with sex slaves
Idk if you noticed, but people won’t behave that way if there is no repercussion for it.
Great but some people have more aspirations than your uncle. And I think they should have the chance to achieve that. And I don’t think having a clean neighborhood should depend on having that uncle that enjoys cleaning for free.
I mean, yes, absolutely possible without squeezing every bit of labor from people. However, it’s not possible in a world without money or capital. The wide-spread introduction of capitalism has DRASTICALLY reduced the amount of people living in extreme poverty. According to https://ourworldindata.org/end-progress-extreme-poverty , from 1990 - 2025, the amount of people living in extreme poverty dropped by 65%, from 2.3 billion to 800 million. If we extend the timeframe a bit further, according to https://ourworldindata.org/history-of-poverty-data-appendix , the number went from 53.9% in extreme poverty to only 5.5% - meaning an almost 90% reduction in extreme poverty. Unless I’m too stupid to do math now.
(ourworldindata.org is a non-profit funded by the university of oxford btw - so it’s fairly reliable)
Now, capitalism isn’t the sole reason why poverty dropped - it’s the combination with effective social policies. Capitalism creates wealth, taxes take a part of that wealth and spread it to the rest of society. That’s how it should work and that is also by far the best system we could ever have in place. The fact that america fails on that tax-part is not the fault of capitalism. It’s a failure of the government.
It’s insane that so many people tried to flee from communist terror regimes, and still try to flee to this day out of North Korea or Cuba, yet people on lemmy will just close their eyes and pretend that communism is the perfect system and every system that fails is just because of the “CIA”.
And you think your uncle is a scalable solution to a city of millions of people. These positions dont scale. Some quick googling show about a half a millions workers in waste remediation in the us in 2023. Do you honestly think you could find half a million people like your uncle that all live spread out enough to fill all the positions (thats on the low end of need also fyi, not surprisingly they have high turnover and difficulty keeping staff for extended periods) around the entire us and that those people would never lose motivation or get burned out or just tired or stop caring. Because that is what we need and that is a single job for a single industry.
Its not scalable
I just think it’s boring that you think money is the only reasonable motivator for these people. There are other forms of compensation and appreciation. And it’s not the only option available to us. It’s crazy to me that people understand the idea of countries that have military conscription but can’t fathom the idea of a system of workable civil conscription.
As I see it you successfully identified a problem and a solution, but that does not suggest that that is the sole or even best solution.
When you do your scaling you need to scale everything. The adult population of the US is estimated as 266 million people as of now. Half a million is roughly 1 adult in 530 people. Let’s quadruple it up so they have nice relaxed works schedule. Let’s say now you need 4 people per 530. If you think you can’t find 10 out of 1000 people who would do some sanitation work, with no stress and without having to think where their next meal comes from, you just never met people.
And this is the most important part that you seem to ignore - when people’s basic means are met, they want to fulfill higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. For some that means doing arts or doing some engineering or running a company. For some, and there are s many of those some, that means “it’s not much but it’s honest work”. Doing small visible changes that make the world the better place one picked up piece of rubbish at a time, is exactly, precisely what significant portion of humanity will be doing.
This also works in another direction: billions of people who would be doing something grand and moving humanity further, are stuck in mundane repetitive broken jobs they hate, because they’re stuck in this cycle of needing to grind to survive, without having a moment to breath, which slowly kills every bit of light they once had a potential to have.
Would you enjoy being a garbage man or a plumber? Or is that work you’re saving for others to enjoy?
Doctors make good money and we don’t have enough of them because it takes so much time and dedication. You think getting rid of money would help there?
Do kids need to go to school? Five days a week?
It’s not that gotcha that you think it is. I worked a lot of hard jobs, for 10 years I did very hard and complicated work in very unpleasant environments for very very little money only because I loved what we did and the results of our labour, and I was good at it. I would be doing that still if I didn’t need money to feed my family. In my years I’ve met a lot of people who were enjoying, properly enjoying jobs that other people will call hell. My job at the time, and to a big extend my job now, is something other people will never want to do for any amount of money.
And your conclusion isn’t that the system of people working for money and only for money is a broken system that demonstrably doesn’t work, but that we need to conserve it as long as we can because it was always done like that?
Yes, getting rid of money will absolutely help. Many people want to be doctors but can’t afford the time or resources to either become one, or to actually put their existing education to use.
And as an example I’ve personally witnessed, being a doctor in Russia in the 90s was about the worst job you can get, you don’t get any money, and I mean none, they were going multiple consecutive months without any salary. The shortage was about on par with the doctor’s shortage in US right now. Trapping people in jobs they don’t want to do is not something that helps humanity in any way.
I struggle to understand how this is relevant to the conversation.
Yes. There are easier ways of making money. If you do it just for the money you won’t have the mental fortitude to get to the point of making money. Profit motives is about the path of least resistance.
Lol what MD is the goto job for making easy money. Getting the degree is difficult because everyone wants to do that job, not because it’s difficult per se
Pretty much says everything about why your wrong on this. Being a doctor is hard. There are far easier career and business if profit is the motive.
Beyond that are doctors that rich? They are wealthy, but the Zucc ain’t no MD. Neither is Warren Buffet.
My point is that someone motivated by money will drop out of the MD path. Being a doctor is a career of passion that also happens to pay well.
Engineer is similar. Take some differential equations or read Jackson EM. There are easier things to do for money.
I know someone who make similar to a doctor with a seafood restaurant. Particularly when you consider fewer hours.