I was told growing up that I won’t like socialism once I have to start paying taxes. I pay taxes, but would much rather pay way more taxes to have socialism. Including paying for social programs I wouldn’t use like welfare, free tuition etc.
Once I qualified for work pharmacare that was great! But I remember how much it sucked not having any health insurance. Yeah I bootstrapped it, but I’d hope we would grow up as a species and not have to have so much bootstrapping, since there are better ways at this point.
Socialism is the idea that means of production are owned publicly with how and why people work being decided democratically. Creating a social safety net via taxes while the means of production are privately owned is still capitalism.
The fundamental question is what is the purpose of work, and why we work in the first place. Some work is necessary work that makes our society function. This is what we were referring to as essential jobs at the start of the pandemic. These jobs produce direct value such as food production, creation of housing, education, healthcare, and so on. This is known as production of use value.
However, there is a whole other set of jobs which only exist for the purpose of producing capital with any social value being largely incidental. These jobs don’t have any purpose beyond that, and can often be harmful to society. An example of such a job would be a corporate lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry. This job is a net negative for our society, and we’d all be better off if these people could just stay home and do nothing at all. There’s a great book called Bullshit Jobs on the subject.
One of core problems with capitalism is that it primarily optimizes for creation of trade value, and use value is largely produced incidentally. The reason most people have to work is not because it’s actually necessary or useful, but because it creates value for the capital owning class. Most of the people end up being treated as nothing more than resources for wealth creation. This is especially clear in US where health coverage is tied to employment. This is basically explicitly saying that human life has no value beyond creating wealth for the business owners.
Companies are also run as totalitarian dictatorships where the company decides when you work, where you work, how you work, what you’re allowed to say, how you dress, and so on. Many companies even monitor everything you do while at work. So, people are spending majority of their waking lives in an Orwellian nightmare.
I highly recommend reading this article explaining the relationship between socialism and communism.
Socialism is the idea that means of production are owned publicly with how and why people work being decided democratically. Creating a social safety net via taxes while the means of production are privately owned is still capitalism.
The fundamental question is what is the purpose of work, and why we work in the first place. Some work is necessary work that makes our society function. This is what we were referring to as essential jobs at the start of the pandemic. These jobs produce direct value such as food production, creation of housing, education, healthcare, and so on. This is known as production of use value.
However, there is a whole other set of jobs which only exist for the purpose of producing capital with any social value being largely incidental. These jobs don’t have any purpose beyond that, and can often be harmful to society. An example of such a job would be a corporate lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry. This job is a net negative for our society, and we’d all be better off if these people could just stay home and do nothing at all. There’s a great book called Bullshit Jobs on the subject.
One of core problems with capitalism is that it primarily optimizes for creation of trade value, and use value is largely produced incidentally. The reason most people have to work is not because it’s actually necessary or useful, but because it creates value for the capital owning class. Most of the people end up being treated as nothing more than resources for wealth creation. This is especially clear in US where health coverage is tied to employment. This is basically explicitly saying that human life has no value beyond creating wealth for the business owners.
Companies are also run as totalitarian dictatorships where the company decides when you work, where you work, how you work, what you’re allowed to say, how you dress, and so on. Many companies even monitor everything you do while at work. So, people are spending majority of their waking lives in an Orwellian nightmare.
I highly recommend reading this article explaining the relationship between socialism and communism.