• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    12 days ago

    That’s a tad spurious though.

    “Work” isn’t about having to get things from those that guard it, not inherently.

    It’s also about specialization. If I’m a better hunter, and you’re a better farmer, then why waste effort by splitting our time and energy each doing something we’re not as good at.

    You expand that until you’ve got specialists that aren’t “working” with food at all, they’re making bows for me, and making plows for you.

    The problem is the system of resource allocation. It ends up where resources are hoarded by some rather than being used. In a non capitalist system, working to eat doesn’t mean wage slavery or grinding at something only to be able to eat, it’s about keeping the wheels of social exchange moving. Allocation of resources, where you do whatever it is you’d be good at, or be willing to get good at so that someone else that’s good at other things doesn’t need to do that, and you all eat because you all worked.

    Not that any given system of resource allocation is perfect or free from problems, but the concept of having a job, of working, doesn’t have to be oppressive. Hell, in a well enough regulated capitalist system, it would be less oppressive than it is; you can see that in worker owned businesses.