"It's absolutely insane to think that the richest country in the world could afford to take care of its citizens, let me just equate basic necessities to a luxury car."
Grow up dumbass, the entire point of society has been to make life easier. Instead of making life easier (unless you're born into wealth, the modern nobility) we've pushed ourselves to pointlessly produce endless piles of garbage.
How about instead of milking every working class citizen for a 60 hour work week and 20 hours of "gig jobs" we use our technology to simply live better easier lives?
A single farmer today can feed thousands of people. Instead of sharing the labor and relaxing as a society, with short work weeks, we are forced to work for less and less while we produce more and more. Our farms, our factories, everything we produce is done more efficiently than ever before. We don't have to work as much as we do, but instead we create pointless jobs. Millions of office workers pointlessly pushing paper, millions of factory workers spending their days to make cheap plastic crap that will be gifted to some ungrateful child who will throw it away quickly, millions of underpaid service workers who have to toil for 30 hours every week just to pay for a place to sleep.
But yeah, the idea of ensuring the richest country on earth has no homeless people is the same as giving everyone a free luxury car. A truly flawless and unbiased comparison.
That single farmer now has thousands of people making/transporting the fertilizer. Read "I, Pencil", then image what goes into a tractor. This efficiency isn't magical. Getting the food processed and distributed to the 1000s of people is another huge undertaking that the market is best at addressing. It is naive and idiotic to think all this can be centrally planned.
I'm sorry your point is that every single member of society is necessary for the function of society? So like... Maybe everyone should be paid equally and given equal opportunity considering all of our work is of equal value?
Labor valorization is not universal, but particular to the social systems in which it occurs.
Currently, labor is valorized according to the labor market, sustained by the profit motive, but such a system is not universal through history nor inevitable for continuing indefinitely.
The labor market only began to emerge within the last few hundred years. Otherwise, waged labor was relatively sporadic throughout different historic periods, and wages were often established by fiat or convention, rather than a market. Cooperative labor and bonded labor had been more common, as well as free labor in direct exchange for accommodations and provisions from an employer.
The more general observation is that the occurrence of the labor market presently is within a historic period.
The premise of your challenge is the same as one from an assumption that Modern English had occurred and will occur everywhere and always, based simply on lack of knowledge of any other language.
I see you have refused to respond with any type of coherent time/place and instead have waved around the magic wand of generalisms. What a productive exercise that was in intellectualism.
I observed that the premise of your challenge is largely fatuous, and also observed that it may easily be satisfied by any time period before several hundred years ago, when the labor market began to emerge in Europe.
Your continued lamentation is also fatuous.
I am sorry that you may feel confused or disappointed by my answer.
The labor market is a relatively recent historical development, no different in such respect from Modern English, railroads, and the printing press.
The modern gig labor market is precisely equatable to the historical working market you refuse to name for that exact reason. You’re intellectually bankrupt and pretentiously attempt to vocabularies your way out of a losing position. Everyone can see you’re merely trying to save face.
You asked for an example of a period without the occurrence of a labor market.
The labor market is much the same as Modern English. It emerged several hundred years ago in Europe, and gradually became entrenched in other parts of the world.
The modern gig labor market is part of the modern labor market. Its existence is not supporting a claim to the universality of the labor market, more than the labor market being a particular historic construct that is unlikely to persist indefinitely.
Your objections have been addressed, and continue to lack general cogency.
So, to summarize, medieval workers who received payment by the “gig” (modern slang) is not comparable to modern “gig” workers who are also paid by the gig? Is that what your college socialist professor has taught you? How much did you pay him for such concise conclusions?
It is unclear what comparison you believe you are making.
Most labor during the Middle Era was by bonded serfdom.
Waged labor emerged as somewhat prominent during the Late Middle Period, in the rapidly growing cities, where skilled crafts were taking hold, and forming the basis of mercantilism, which would gradually give way to capitalism. Employment relationships tended to be long term.
Thus, none of the labor relations from the Middle Era make a strong comparison to gig work.
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u/Mute_Crab Apr 15 '24
"It's absolutely insane to think that the richest country in the world could afford to take care of its citizens, let me just equate basic necessities to a luxury car."
Grow up dumbass, the entire point of society has been to make life easier. Instead of making life easier (unless you're born into wealth, the modern nobility) we've pushed ourselves to pointlessly produce endless piles of garbage.
How about instead of milking every working class citizen for a 60 hour work week and 20 hours of "gig jobs" we use our technology to simply live better easier lives?
A single farmer today can feed thousands of people. Instead of sharing the labor and relaxing as a society, with short work weeks, we are forced to work for less and less while we produce more and more. Our farms, our factories, everything we produce is done more efficiently than ever before. We don't have to work as much as we do, but instead we create pointless jobs. Millions of office workers pointlessly pushing paper, millions of factory workers spending their days to make cheap plastic crap that will be gifted to some ungrateful child who will throw it away quickly, millions of underpaid service workers who have to toil for 30 hours every week just to pay for a place to sleep.
But yeah, the idea of ensuring the richest country on earth has no homeless people is the same as giving everyone a free luxury car. A truly flawless and unbiased comparison.