I don’t think anyone has ever argued that nobody would ever be productive without pay. The concern is that not enough people would choose to be productive if they didn’t have to.
There seems to be a correlation between doing productive things for fun and higher intelligence and education. There is also a strong correlation between higher intelligence and holding left-wing views. Hence, the people posting these types of memes think that everyone would do what they would (be productive for fun). But ask some more… average intelligence people, and you will find that they’ll tend to say if they could just chill and play video games or scroll TikTok all day, that’s all they would do.
Could we continue to feed people even if work was made optional? At our level of the tech tree, probably. But people don’t just want to be fed, they like having computers and video games and houses and running water, all of which take a stupendous amount of labour to create and maintain, and I’m just not convinced that we could subside off volunteer labour for any society bigger than a few hundred people (which, not coincidentally, also tends to be about the maximum size of a left-wing commune)
That’s because you shouldn’t give everthing to them, but you should at least give them a place to call home, food and meds, enough to make them survive and not worry if they can’t work but not enough to not wanting to work because then you don’t have stuff like computers, videogames etc etc
There seems to be a correlation between doing productive things for fun and higher intelligence and education
Correlation does not mean causation. Many people do productive things because they can. And being productive is also very dependent on definition.
If you’re uneducated, unlucky enough to grow in a household where ideas aren’t valued and failure is mocked or success belittled, and of course poor, chances are great you will not do much in life.
However, if you’re poor, surrounded by motivated individuals who thrive to be successful and push you to be educated, and they do what they van to get you into school, there’s a good chance you will succeed.
The biggest problems are lack of access to good education and opportunity. “High intelligence” is just an excuse to confuse success with intelligence and hard work. That’s not how our society works.
I agree with you on that. Intelligence isn’t a stat point that someone is assigned at character creation. It’s the result of the educational opportunities and support that they had access to growing up.
I don’t think anyone has ever argued that nobody would ever be productive without pay. The concern is that not enough people would choose to be productive if they didn’t have to.
There seems to be a correlation between doing productive things for fun and higher intelligence and education. There is also a strong correlation between higher intelligence and holding left-wing views. Hence, the people posting these types of memes think that everyone would do what they would (be productive for fun). But ask some more… average intelligence people, and you will find that they’ll tend to say if they could just chill and play video games or scroll TikTok all day, that’s all they would do.
Could we continue to feed people even if work was made optional? At our level of the tech tree, probably. But people don’t just want to be fed, they like having computers and video games and houses and running water, all of which take a stupendous amount of labour to create and maintain, and I’m just not convinced that we could subside off volunteer labour for any society bigger than a few hundred people (which, not coincidentally, also tends to be about the maximum size of a left-wing commune)
That’s because you shouldn’t give everthing to them, but you should at least give them a place to call home, food and meds, enough to make them survive and not worry if they can’t work but not enough to not wanting to work because then you don’t have stuff like computers, videogames etc etc
Correlation does not mean causation. Many people do productive things because they can. And being productive is also very dependent on definition.
If you’re uneducated, unlucky enough to grow in a household where ideas aren’t valued and failure is mocked or success belittled, and of course poor, chances are great you will not do much in life. However, if you’re poor, surrounded by motivated individuals who thrive to be successful and push you to be educated, and they do what they van to get you into school, there’s a good chance you will succeed.
The biggest problems are lack of access to good education and opportunity. “High intelligence” is just an excuse to confuse success with intelligence and hard work. That’s not how our society works.
I agree with you on that. Intelligence isn’t a stat point that someone is assigned at character creation. It’s the result of the educational opportunities and support that they had access to growing up.