And a lot of the jobs that are truly awful and nobody wants to do … are bullshit jobs that don’t actually need to be done in the first place.
“no one wants to flip burgers for 7.25!” No shit buddy, maybe your business shouldn’t exist anymore
We could automate those jobs, yes, but then a lot of people would have no jobs at all.
In a society in which one’s material needs are not tied to one’s labour, this would not be a problem.
True, but we don’t have that society, yet we do have the ability to automate a lot of people out of a job.
So you see the problem.
We must ban automation!
“nobody wants to do this” = “I don’t want to do this and I have no imagination”
No one wants to be a fast food worker, not because it’s a bad job per se, but because everyone knows it’s bullshit that doesn’t help anyone, and their managers are squeezing them to get the very last penny out of them.
You do almost exactly the same thing in a charity soup kitchen, except everyone there loves doing it so much they do it for free because it gives meaning to their lives, and the people managing the operation are nice.
It’s all about context, it’s all about the ambiance and the social aspects.
Props to the original poster for being open-minded in their reaction
I like the sentiment but working at a sewage plant is way more interesting than a lot of jobs out there.
This is why I’m moving away from programming for a boss and am looking for jobs where I don’t get the stress of countless meetings and project manager bullshit. I just want a nice job where I don’t feel too much stress and make enough money to live decently. Then I can continue working on opensource projects as my hobby.
I really dislike all the “ceremonies” that seem to be involved in software development now. It’s just so much useless ritual.
Join a cooperative!
It’s our time to shine!
If jobs end up not being done, it’s because they have been deemed not necessary by the people. There are enough weird people to fill just about every niche, if filling that niche also allows them to live.
Theres a steep irony in someone doing government controlled work idealizing a system where the work they do would likely not exist. Who exactly would be mandating/funding the existence, operation, or regular testing of a sewage plant in an anarchist society?
Society is poorly designed in the general sense, sure. It could be vastly improved and people could have more liberty wrt a lot of things. But left to their own devices people on average would not choose to mandate water treatment. Even if they somehow did, providing no central system of oversight for making sure that it happens would all but guarantee it doesnt get accomplished.
Its ridiculous how many people take critical aspects of society for granted and assume they would continue to exist in a world where everyone does whatever the fuck they want without any central planning or control. In many places around the world people already dont have access to fresh/clean water for this exact reason…
Look at the libertarian experiments that have all failed spectacularly, like Grafton, NH. Mfs couldnt even agree to not feed the bears or dispose of their trash appropriately. And that doesnt require some massive infrastructure project to accomplish. The greater good often necessitates protecting people at large from their own stupidity, otherwise your liberties are quickly diminished by your neighbor’s negligence
This feels like projection more than anything else.
There are tons of people who voluntarily do hard, unpleasant, or dangerous work because they care about the people around them. Volunteer firefighters. Mutual aid groups. Community search and rescue. The number of regular people who stepped up during disasters when official institutions failed is huge. The idea that nobody would bother maintaining water systems unless a central authority forced them to says more about how you see people than about how people actually behave.
You’re also mixing up anarchism with “no coordination.” Anarchism isn’t “everyone does whatever they want and society collapses.” It’s opposition to hierarchy and domination, not opposition to organization. Sewage plants and water treatment don’t exist because of some mystical power of the state. They exist because people need clean water. They require technical knowledge, cooperation, and systems of accountability. None of that logically requires a top-down ruling authority.
You brought up Grafton, NH, (I had to google this) but that doesn’t look anything like anarchism. That looks more like a hyper-individualist, market-first version of libertarianism with almost no civic culture. Anarchism, especially in its socialist or syndicalist traditions, is built around collective responsibility and shared management. Those are very different things. “Nobody owes anyone anything” is not the same as “we organize ourselves without bosses.”
And on the clean water point: communities historically pushed for sanitation because cholera and dysentery were killing people. Public health measures often came from collective pressure long before centralized bureaucracies standardized them. People don’t need to be tricked into wanting potable water.
You say the greater good requires protecting people from their own stupidity. Maybe sometimes. But you seriously think centralization magically fix negligence? Flint, Michigan had a state. That didn’t prevent a water disaster. Bureaucracy can fail just as hard as decentralized systems, and sometimes with less direct accountability.
The real disagreement here seems to be about human nature. If you assume most people won’t lift a finger unless coerced, then yeah, anarchism sounds ridiculous. If you assume people are capable of organizing around shared needs when they actually have ownership and say over things, it becomes less far-fetched.
Ok, so you have people willing to work at the wastewater treatment plant. What happens when the Reverse Osmosis pump gives out? Costs $500,000 to replace. Whose going to pay for that? Wait, sorry I forgot we’re in an anarchist society so supposedly no money (if there is money, add on a whole other layer of complexity to the following questions).
So who’s going to build the pump? People willing to work at the pump factory? Ok, where do they get the materials to build it? I’m assuming none of this is local because logistically that’s practically impossible, so who delivers the materials to them? The pump factory is unlikely to be next door to the wastewater treatment plant, so how is the pump delivered? Who is the specialist that installs the pump? Who makes sure it’s done safely and correctly? Are there consequences if it’s done in a way that doesn’t result in clean water?
That’s the thing, anarchism seems great whenever everything is working and everything is already in place. The moment something big breaks, anarchism just doesn’t provide enough resources to get it fixed. We would need a post-scarcity society before we could move to something like that.
Again, you’re assuming complexity only works if there’s hierarchy and profit at the top.
Now I’m no hydraulics expert, but I’m pretty sure a reverse osmosis pump does not need a CEO to function. We have engineers, machinists, operators and logistics workers who coordinate their labor. For the last time, anarchism does not mean no organization. It means organization without concentrated ownership and coercive authority.
The way you frame this makes it sound like the only reason you’d ever lift a finger for anyone is if there’s a paycheck or someone above you making you. That’s not really a strong critique of anarchism. It’s more of a self report about how you see community.
Its ridiculous how many people take critical aspects of society for granted and assume they would continue to exist in a world where everyone does whatever the fuck they want without any central planning or control. In many places around the world people already dont have access to fresh/clean water for this exact reason…
You have a very simplistic view of what an anarchist society could look like and it’s rooted in the assumption that the only possible alternative to central planning is no planning. It’s absolutely possible for people to organize access to clean water in a decentralized manner and I know this because it has been done repeatedly all over the world and throughout human history. In the places you’re thinking of that do not have access to clean water it is often not the result of a lack of central planning, but directly caused by it, such as when a multinational corporation claims a community’s water supply as its private property and restricts access.
If you consider the Zapatista’s anarchist, they are a federation of autonomous municipalities that do stuff like this (along with hospitals, schools, etc).
Precisely. The original post shows there could still be labor willing to do the work, but it does does not address how that work would be funded. Even if the labor was free there are resources required to build and maintain that plant that are not free. Where do those resources come from?
Wait till you hear about the anarchist that loves going into the mines with toxic gases and all to get the resources for the sewage maintainer guy.
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Yeah, now you just need someone that has a passion for manufacturing safety gear!
You think the issue with non authoritarian collectivization is that people don’t like making things?…
No. The problem is that what people want is not the same as what the people need.
The central problem of economics is that humans have infinite desires, which need resources to be met, and resources are finite. Therefore, we should aim to efficiently allocate our resources to meet the most of our desires.
If in a population of 1000, there are 100 fiction writers, you’re gone get more fiction books than you can read, and you’re probably die of hunger, because now the other 900 have to sustain the 100 writers for basically no value. Since probably most people will only want to read the top 1-2 that are actually good.
If the other 99-98 other writers don’t have any pressure to change careers because the community provides for them, why would they? The thing they want to do most is writing!
And all that is assuming such a civilization exists. From my PoV, dreaming about anarchism makes no sense. Our world was born anarchic. There were no CEOs nor governments. And the people that lived in that world rapidly formed societies that had hierarchies, because that is the most efficient way.
The natural consequence of anarchy is non-anarchy. Anarchy is not a final state, it’s transitory. Anarchy is not a stable state.
Just like you can try mixing water and oil all you want, the moment you stop stirring, they will separate.
The only way to keep a non-stable state is by force. That is, if you want anarchy, there must be someone enforcing that there be anarchy. And if that’s the case, then it’s no longer anarchy, since there is a ruler.
Rapidly formed hierarchies huh? miiight wanna read about early human history.
Hundreds of thousands of years passed before tyrants became the norm
If it’s necessary, someone will do it. If that can’t be counted on, we’re kinda fucked.
Will you? Because I know I won’t
If all that stands between me and the beginning of a society with no oppression is strapping some gear on and doing some manual labor, then fuck it gimme a pickaxe I’m going down there.
Am I suited for it? Absolutely the fuck not, but I’m willing, and I’m sure many others are as well, especially if they know that whatever happens, their safety and health comes before profit, and they’ll always come back to a good place. I could certainly stand working until things begin to hurt if I knew every bit I dug up would do good.
Yeah that’s cool. You and sewage guy will make a great duo. But the 5 dudes over there organized themselves, acquired a weapon and killed the other guy. They’re waiting for you to come out of the mine with all those resources and you don’t even know it.
Is that freedom from oppression?
Anarchism is the absence of hierarchy, not organization. The means of the people to use force against violent attempts at theft for personal gain are neither eliminated nor lessened.
Wait, you imagine that there must be a guy forced into dangerous situations against their will and that this society is better because it forces that guy to exist?
What happens is that different people have different options. For some people, they have options that are way better than mining. For some other people, the other options might not be as appealing because they might pay less or whatever. That is the market.
If nobody wants to be a miner, the pay/conditions of mining should go up enough so that there is someone that prefers mining over what they’re currently doing.
This encourages people to do jobs that are unappealing.
On the other side, if you are a bad fiction writer, you’re probably not earning enough money to survive. That’s because you’re spending resources but you’re not calming many people’s desires, so you’ll probably take up a job that you like less but pays way more, and is probably more healthy for the community.
Nobody is forcing them. But if those jobs were not done, we wouldn’t have the society we have today. Mining safety gear will probably not have been invented in an anarchy society. Water treatment plants wouldn’t either. All those things we have today is because we used our resources way more efficiently than “go do whatever you want, the guy over there that loves farming and the guy over there that loves cooking will keep you fed”.
