What would you do if Capitalism didn't curb your potential and force you to sell most of your time?
I often daydream about how society would be if we were not forced by society to pigeon hole ourselves into a specialized career for maximizing the profits of capitalists, and sell most of our time for it.
The idea of creating an entire identity for you around your "career" and only specializing in one thing would be ridiculous in another universe. Humans have so much natural potential for breadth, but that is just not compatible with capitalism.
This is evident with how most people develop "hobbies" outside of work, like wood working, gardening, electronics, music, etc. This idea of separating "hobbies" and the thing we do most of our lives (work) is ridiculous.
Here's how my world could be different if I owned my time and dedicated it to the benefit of my own and my community instead of capitalists:
- more reading, learning and excusing knowledge with others.
- learn more handy work, like plumbing and wood working. I love customizing my own home!
- more gardening
- participate in the transportation system (picking up shifts to drive a bus for example)
- become a tour guide for my city
- cook and bake for my neighbors
- academic research
- open source software (and non-software) contributions
- pick up shifts at a café and make coffee, tea and smoothies for people
- pick up shifts to clean up public spaces, such as parks or my own neighborhood
- participate in more than one "professions". I studied one type of engineering but work in a completely different engineering. This already proves I can do both, so why not do both and others?
Humans do not like the same thing over and over every day. It's unnatural. But somehow we revolve our whole livelihood around if.
Let's not be confused here. Specialization is what allows for free time. If everyone has to farm and hunt, that's all you'd do. Specialization is a good thing for humanity and diverse institutions and industries to arise.
Yes, but if we only have to work on our specializations for 16 hours a week each instead of 40+, we would have a lot more time for other good stuff, whether it's personal development, supporting other specialists, or just hanging out.
i've worked for 20h/w and 40h/w. i think 30/32 is a good balance
People are entitled to their preferences. They should also be entitled to overtime after some amount of hours per week that's lower than forty, I think whatever it takes to bring the rate of unemployment to practically zero.
Typically when unemployment is around 4 percent, that is everyone working that wants to work. The 4 percent is people between jobs and people that are kind of looking for work but not in a rush to work. It difficult to be under that number.
In other words we are often at a point where unemployment is at zero. 4 percent being zero.
I understand and kind of agree with the idea that there is some small amount of unemployment that is practically unavoidable, however, I'm not sure that 4% is it. Per the latest US employment report, we're at 3.8%. So, it seems like we should set the limbo bar lower than 4%.
That report also breaks down the unemployment rate by demographic and it seems to vary significantly between groups. To say that we are at full employment when blacks and hispanics have about 2% greater unemployment than whites and asians seems incorrect. The minimum practical unemployment rate for all of these groups should be the same. So, if we're going to adjust OT in order to help achieve full employment, we should be looking at the unemployment rate for the most unemployed race/gender group.
There are also of course problems with how unemployment is measured and calculated, but I suppose that's a little besides the point.
Regionally there will always be variances. Take Chicago and the loss of the auto industry. It took 25 (???) years for that to clean out. There was nothing to replace it rapidly so either people needed to move or they waited it out till new business evolved. Areas like that will skew the average higher. Maybe you could get an extra percentage nationally but I would say it is pretty close to zero at the moment.
Think about if you had a flat tire in your car. You go to get another tire to replace the one with a hole in it.
But the tire factory only manufactures 300 tires a day. Because they only have a handful of employees who feel like making tires and they only really want to work around 10 hours a week.
Now tires are pretty rare. And that means they are difficult to find. Also, rarity is a supply and demand thing, so now tires are also incredibly expensive. People want a lot of them, but the tire manufacturing plant doesn’t make enough.
Oh, and while you were inside the shop being surprised at the 22 month wait for your replacement tire, and the $3,500 price tag for just the single tire, the other 3 tires were stolen off your car in the parking lot.
Cause people don’t want to pay those prices, or wait that amount of time, which has lead to a massive car tire black market
People would use public transport a lot more. Resulting in much better infrastructure.
Why do we need tire factories working employees 40+ hours a week to make enough tires for everyone? Just hire enough workers so that they all have enough time for a life outside of work. Maybe with a little bit of central planning, we could also reduce the demand for tires by figuring out how to get people to drive less.
Central planning has not been a real benefit to countries that employ it heavily. You just need to look at China, Venezuela, USSR to see the results of current and past ones. It is pretty much a joke.
Considering where they started or what they're up against, the countries you mentioned do (or did, in the case of the USSR) incredibly well.
Bullshit. The USSR was a house of cards by then end. If it was doing at all well, it would still exist. It same as you stopping all maintenance on your house, car, not buying any cloth for years. Ya you can live well for some time but eventually your car breaks, your house starts to leak and you look like shit.
The USSR may have been able to survive a few more years but the longer they tried that model, the worse off each person would have been and the more unstable they would have become.
World War II is a working example of your hypothetical. The country (USA*) had to ration food, shoes, metal, paper, and rubber - so therefore even tires - to name a few. This all happened under capitalism. The country complied and to even make up for the loss of product women joined the workforce - i.e. Rosie the Riveter. I'm not trying to get into an argument but I wanted to point out your example already came and went and the country responded as it would under either economic system.
First of all, I will start with saying that this is a highly unlikely scenario, because modern technology already allows us way way more tires that we need with a fraction of the labor time we put. But let us assume not and entertain this a bit.
This is a perfect example where members of society will find themselves in a situation where there is a big need for tires that is not being met. Instead of hand wavingly complaining and hoping the government or corporations ramp up production, we remember we don't live under capitalism anymore. We are masters of our own destiny! society is now oriented around human need and wants, not profits! Our prime motivation for working is not to please capitalists in exchange for earning enough to live and a little more. It is to serve the interests of ourselves and our communities, and this is a prime example of a need of ourselves and communities.
So because we are unhappy with the state of tires, we decide to contribute more of the large amount of free time we have to produce more tires (and you only need a tiny fraction of humanity to do this. Consider how many people work in the tire industry right now). The fluidity afforded to us by having both free time and the control over production is a lot greater than you think. We do not even have to imagine this. Many historical civilizations did this already. We can only do better because technology grants us a million times the ability they had to produce.
Historical civilizations were not producing tires or any goods for that matter at industrial scales, so that comparison is useless. If you think that the only reason profit motives exist today is to "please capitalists", you need to do some more reading into how the industrial economy works.
We only got to producing more advanced things like tires because of how technology made things so much easier to produce with a fraction of the labor time. This is a continuing trend in history.
And yes I do think that society is oriented around profits (and pleasing capitalists, which happens by producing profits. I find it ironic that you chose this truism to argue against lmao). I hope you don't expect a response to that second part, because it is not argument and not worth responding to.
actually, hunter-gatherer communities 'work' significantly less time than we do in our corporate jobs. farming is a different story: here's one study: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190520115646.htm
You can read that study and see that it only represents one instance where hunter gathers were more efficient than farmers in the same region. You cant use that to say to our current system is less efficient. I hate pop science so much its unreal.
It's also pretty evident that we could not sustain the current population on preindustrial farming let alone hunter gathering.
How about this then?
https://www.ft.com/content/dd71dc3-4566-48e0-a1d9-3e8bd2b3f60f
reminds me of this project https://farm.bot/ .
but a project like this is so slow or nonexistant development ( i would argue: this is because we put all our hope and time into specialization.) this is only maintained by a few people. it doesn't compete or compare with the size and scale of modern industrial farms so nobody really cares and its not deemed to be important.
i suppose thats a good thing. its not worthwhile to persue agriculture anymore. food is cheap.
i'm more worried about paying my landlord.
They also have sky high infant mortality rates
Is it because they work less, or is it possibly because our technology, sanitary practices, medical expertise and ability to treat diseases based on thousands of years of trials far exceeds there?
I bet it's because they worked less.
That would then mean we would have to support the entire food supply on hunting rather than farming for this to be true, so basically 90% of the population would have to die
Are you thinking that OP is proposing we go back to hunting? I can guarantee that is not what was meant here.
He basically is, he states that I hunter gathering societies that much less work was done, but significantly more in farming societies as a response to another poster saying specialization and careers are a significant contributor to the free time we do have. If he's not suggesting a hunting society is better I don't know what the point of his comment is.
if only monke had toilet paper and modern comforts
I remember reading in The Mating Mind that since hunter gatherer societies long ago had more leisure time, they could spend it socializing, and growing their brain.
Yup. Hunter gatherers has a lot of free time. Honestly, I think it was pretty swell, except for lack of medical ability perhaps.
Yeah, OPs got the spirit but misses the point. We are being pressured to sell our time at a minimum of 40 hours every week. It's thanks to specialization (and the technology that developed from it) that this quantity of of time is grossly over-allocated. Trade and travel allowed people to create better products in less time, so people were no longer very literally working to live, day-in, day-out. Unfortunately wages are kept low, wealth is kept centralized and culture continues to place value on excess so that we're continually convinced that we "have" to work as many hours as we can find.
I don't understand what you think I missed. When I said "specialization", I meant the idea of just doing one thing and one thing only as a "career". This doesn't mean we shouldn't specialize or that people won't. But if I specialize in construction labor, with the extra time awarded to me I could also participate in design if I wanted.
There's no efficiency while we're supporting a welfare class of bourgeoisie.
heres what wikipedia has to say:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour
historically it seems to have been beneficial.. and led us to where we are currently.
Wish I could upvote this 10x
I work as a software engineer and I'm also one of these people that just gets a kick out of making things. So I'd probably do some more of that, just not for an employer. Even more contributions to open source would be likely as you've already highlighted.
Would probably build more physical machines/contraptions/electronic doo-dads that I don't have the time or energy to make today. That and I'd probably make more music, or more accurately, finish more music.
Probably grow more vegetables too, but currently that's limited by space anyway.
I felt that one in my bones
art is never finished, only abandoned
If I just had one more synthesizer...
I'm very similar. I got into home automation and building custom IoT devices as part of that.
Haha we're very similar indeed, I've got Pis dotted around my house doing various things, and recently jammed one of those tiny D1 mini ESP modules into a cheap IKEA air quality sensor so I could track it over time in home assistant.
Not done much more than that in terms of custom IoT devices currently, I've got a few more of those D1 minis left and thinking of putting one in my coffee machine (and covering it in a big blob of silicone). What have you built? I'm always open to ideas
My wife and I moved across the country and bought a 5 room bed and breakfast 2 years ago. Most of my automation and the devices I've created are geared towards the BnB. So lots of lights turning on and off based on time of day and whether or not we have guests. I wrote a web scraper to pull down guest data to push into Home Assistant. One of the really nice things that provides is last 4 digits of phone numbers get programmed into the front door lock and deleted when they check out. That code is here and is not terribly well organized https://github.com/chunkystyles/reservationsScraper
I created a salt tank level sensor for my water softener using a pair of Arduinos communicating over 400mhz RF. If I were redoing this one, I'd just do an ESP device. I also built a doorbell sensor that literally just has a photo resistor glued to the LED on one of the doorbell receivers. The code for both of those is here https://github.com/chunkystyles/arduinoSketches
I created touch screen controllers for mini-splits in guest rooms twice. The first version used M5 Stack Core 2 devices that was OK. The tiny screen wasn't great. And it was programmed using M5's visual block programming and it was a pain.
The second version is using a 3.5 inch screen and works way better. That code is here https://github.com/chunkystyles/makerfabs_hvac_remote
I have a project that I need to get started on. We have a small ice maker in our lobby and I need a device to monitor the door being left open, and whether the scoop was put back in its holder. The first part is self explanatory. The second part is because the ice refills from the top, and if someone leaves the scoop in the ice maker, it will get covered up by fresh ice. For that, I'm probably going to reuse one of the M5 Stacks and do a magnetic door sensor, and for the scoop holder a small limit switch that will trigger when the handle is in its normal place.
Man, you're living a dream over there. As you'd expect, given I'm not running a BnB, your ideas don't have an immediate application to my life, but damn am I impressed!
Could you tell me more about the 400mhz radios? I had a quick look at the code and it looks like you're delegating to a transceiver module or something if I'm reading correctly
The BnB thing certainly is interesting. I like it, but it's not what I expected.
The radios I'm using are these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09KY28VH8
I'm fairly sure the driver I'm using is this https://github.com/PaulStoffregen/RadioHead/tree/master It's been a while since I worked on these.
So one device has an ultrasonic distance sensor and a radio transmitter. It just takes a reading and transmits is once an hour.
The other device monitors the doorbell and has the radio receiver on it. Both of those things are sent to the serial output and monitored by Node-RED.
https://imgur.com/a/SQdc95d
The transmitter and receiver aren't terribly far apart. They're probably like 30 feet or so, but in the basement, with walls in between them. I didn't do any testing on how far apart they worked, but 433mhz is a pretty sturdy frequency and these have been rock solid. With the driver, they're actually super easy to use, too.
Nice one, thanks for the detailed response! It seems like a pretty straightforward solution for simple ad-hoc connectivity. Definitely one to keep in mind
Not least of all, who knows, maybe I'll have a BnB one day!
I've almost been getting upset with engineering as my career because I really enjoy doing it, but am absolutely exhausted with doing it at work that I can never bring myself to do it at home. All my hobby PCB designs or programming projects take a back seat because they require a lot of time and thought.
It really is a shame that STEM pays so highly that it may as well be a requirement if you're not going to do trades or something with a boatload of overtime attached to it.
If I was born 100 earlier, I’m pretty sure I would have been building all sorts of crazy contraptions out of wood and metal. I would have like a collection of different mouse traps, valves, pumps, engines, turbines and all that. Instead, I have code and calculations now, but that’s ok too.
I would cut cars in half and weld them into the other halves of other cars
Lenght or width wise?
Diagonally.
Like imagine taking a big ol dump truck, and putting the back from a regular pickup on it so it’s just a monster pickup. Saw one like that once.
Or imagine a sports car front, with a station wagon back. Like a shooting brake but more shootier.
Or utes like they have in Australia, love those
Yes.
You jest, but my dad actually had a friend who did this for a living with Ford Pintos back in the day, and one time an inspector of some kind remarked that he made them safer than they were when they rolled off the factory floor.
Not jesting 100% serious
Even better. Supposedly, there's a guy around here who flipped the frame of his pickup truck around so it looks like he's driving backward down the road. Get creative with it!
Make hybrids?
Speak for yourself, I like routine and being rewarded for working hard.
Do you really get rewarded for working hard? Every time I've gone above and beyond for my job it becomes and expectation with no increase in pay. There is no reward for us "no skill" jobs that somehow are the very foundation of this god forsaken societal system we uphold.
I’ve left jobs when I don’t get rewarded for hard work. Thankfully we live in a free market that allows me to also freely choose my employer and occupation.
As long as you meet the dozens of credentials to work for a place, as well as the 5 to 10 hidden ones they don't tell you about in the job listing or the interview.
Credentials exist for a reason.
That sounds salty.
Are you denying it's reality?
No, I’m skeptical because it sounds more like disillusionment.
You don't think that companies have dozens of credentials and requirements for a job? And hidden ones as well? This is very well documented. The first one is easily verified by looking at indeed.com. I take it you've never applied for a job before?
yes I am chronically unemployed and I blame the “hidden” requirements boogeyman for my troubles
How many reply chains does it take you to stop avoiding questions? 😁 if you can't answer and think it'll make you look bad, you already look pretty bad by avoiding it :)
You must have me confused for someone else, I am not on any other reply chain except this one.
I'd still be a programmer. I'd work on open source projects 100% of the time. It's something I love to do.
Man's got to eat though. I still work in an area that makes the world slightly less shitty though, so it's not all bad.
I run a goth night once every other month.
I visit friends quite often whenever I want to.
I get up and start my day when I feel like it.
I play with code and build web toys.
I'm a freelance IT guy. I could, if I wanted to, earn a lot more than I do, but my time is worth more than money. It is possible to do, even in this world where everyone is told that you need a 'career' and to work for a company, although a lot more work is needed to freeing other careers from the obligation of the grind.
Don't give up hope, unionise, demand respect,
buy a guillotine,and keep an eye out for a way to get what you need and to contribute to society or your community without signing your life away.(Yes, some people will never get the opportunity. And that, frankly, pisses me off no end. But don't lose hope until you're dead.)
Your a freelance IT guy and you are suggesting to unionize? Your the guy companies use when they don't want unions.
I don't work for big companies, I support small businesses where a full-time IT guy doesn't make sense, and old people who are struggling to get their internet working because their internet explorer icon disappeared. Additionally, if I was contacted by a company to cover them whilst their employees are striking, I'd turn them down.
So your suggesting the small companies don't unionize as you got them?
Honestly your stance is a bit disingenuous. Unions do not like your model as you take away work that could be done under a union.
It's clear you don't understand my business. A kebab house does not hire a full time IT guy, they hire someone like me when needed. Similarly, they don't hire a full-time plumber for their toilets, a full-time builder to repair broken tiles, or a full time electrician to repair their electronics.
As for unionising, I'd support such businesses unionising, and would not help management stop them, even if they are my clients.
Some perspective for you, because you're looking for an enemy here: Just because I got sick of working under middle management doesn't mean I don't need to be able to afford food and rent. Under the current state of affairs, you have to work for someone, or you have to work for yourself. The only alternative is social support systems which differ nation to nation. If looking at the big CEOs, yeah, you're looking at arsewipes. No way they got there without stepping on people. But the farther down you go, the more normal people you meet. Owning or running a business is not the same as taking advantage of people, and being self-employed is not the same as union busting.
I am not your enemy here, but I'm also not going to respond to you anymore. I wish you well, but this is not worth my time.
Not suggesting you are my enemy but there are union IT shops that your model would certainly take work away.
I like my job. It's not a hobby, but it also ensures I don't burn out in my hobbies, which happened when I initially tried to make a hobby my job.
I'd have more time to become a better artist.
edit: what the fuck was that unwarranted shitty comment.
dont worry about that other commenter. They're angry that their argument in another comment was argued against, and now they look stupid.
Thanks. It was so out of left field. Like damn, I've never even posted my art on lemmy for anyone to know.
They were probably projecting and expressing their disappointments in not becoming their own ideal self. Anyways! My answer was going to be taking in all the wonderful art and creations people like you would have the freedom to create.
Yeah! We'd all have time to do the things we're passionate about.
I'd rewrite the game engines for Command & Conquer games so that they could be modernized.
It's a perfectly doable task, but not with the amount of free time I have.
OpenRA is already a thing, you could contribute to that.
I've thought about it but their vision is pretty different from what I want to do. I want to keep red alert 2 fully original but decouple frame rate and game speed, and decouple resolution from zoom level.
Is there a good C&C community in lemmy?
Also, were you a member of PPM?
This comment prompted me to have a look, a couple exist but have basically no content.
I guess we need to be the change we want to see!
Let's pick one and post some content?
Looks like !commandandconquer@lemmy.ml has the more activity of the ones I've seen (though not for a while)
Yeah but I was never very active there.
I assume you already know, but the first two in the series got the "remastered" treatment a couple of years ago. I'm holding out hope that Tiberian Sun and RA2 are in the works getting the same treatment
Yeah I've been wanting those so badly. If they open sourced red alert 2 I would be in heaven. I'd immediately start work on decoupling game speed from frame rate.
I wish I could get the generals source code so I could fix the path finding, but until I'm rich enough to retire and remake the engine, or unless they open source it, I can't do it :/
There's a godlike reverse engineer of the early c&c games out there called Nyerguds, I'm pretty sure he could give you a guided tour through the TD and RA binaries in Ida Pro at one point in time.
I wonder if he ever put much time into the TS/RA2 engine, I know he wrote modding tools for them.
Oh yeah he's a god. I work with him on cncnet.
Haha no way, I worked a little on that ages ago, I was Irony on the forums something like a decade ago
I was never on the forums for cncnet sadly. I started contributing during early covid. I've been playing C&C since 2000 though
I would be doing more programming and more open source work. I would also spend more time doing physical activities like sports. I wouldn't mind doing gardening for anyone, I also wouldn't mind automating all their systems. Definetely I'd sleep for one extra hour.
I think I would travel or wander a lot more. Not in an instagram backpacker kind of way, just in a dawdle from town to town road trippy kind of way.
I’ve wanted to RV across the US - spend 5-7 days in any given place - for so long.
I'd do what I'm doing now but I'd be helping hospitals and schools instead of companies.
I feel the same about my job. I love what I do, I just wish it was targeted towards helping my community rather than generating profits for rich capitalists
What's stopping you? Academia is in dire need of software/computer engineering researchers.
I am forced to pick one thing and one thing only, so I picked the thing that gives me the best balance (between pay, enjoyment, working conditions, mobility, etc) and academia wasn't it. Notice how most of these factors are purely capitalistic
Why is there so much communist content on lemmy?
Not every criticism of capitalism is communism.
But also, is it any wonder that a platform built without a profit incentive and centred around the concepts of mutual voluntary interaction rather than hierarchical control would attract a more anti-capitalist userbase?
I love how the mere idea of thinking about a better world away from capitalism immediately says "communism!" to you people, and you don't see the irony of it
It’s pretty obvious by the language you’re using that you’re a communist ‘selling your time to capitalists’ isn’t really very subtle
It's called "describing the reality of capitalist economy" not "being a communist"
The reality of capitalist economies has turned out to be: Living in the freest and richest nations the world has ever seen. If you’re too hot you can set the thermostat to cool down and if you’re too cold you can just turn the heat up.
You have ample choices for food, leisure and activity. More than anyone else has ever had in all of human history.
You only need to work a fraction of an hour for a meal, instead of all day long (and often working for days on end and not ever bringing home anything to eat)
You’re the most comfortable any human has ever been. Surviving is so easy for you, you feel the need to complain that ITS NOT EASY ENOUGH.
Tell everyone you’ve never had to experience hardship without telling everyone you’ve never had to experience hardship.
Millions of Americans have to choose between feeding themselves and housing themselves. You are hardly the “freest” country, haha. Richest? Sure just like every other wealthy country, the vast majority of the wealth is held by the people who tell you how to live your life.
Get a grip pal.
Those advances were not created by capitalism.
They were created during capitalism. Huge difference.
Slavery didn't create agriculture.
Feudalism didn't create brickwork.
Well let’s just say that none of these things were created during communism
...and? That's kind of pointless to say. We're living under capitalism, so of course it happened under capitalism. It can't magically happen under communism if we're not living in communism, can it?
Also, while not communist (though nominally aimed towards it), elsewhere in the world, socialist governments definitely managed to achieve incredible feats of modernisation in starkly short amounts of time. Both China and the USSR went from mainly peasant farmers to industrial giants in mere decades.
People work and create because it's what humans do, under any economic system. What changes is who it's made for and who profits. Under capitalism, it's made for capitalists to profit them. Under communism, it's made for fellow workers to profit the workers.
I sure am thankful for HVAC technology, and the development of science and human technology in general that has been happening since way before capitalism.
I love the agricultural revolution from hundreds of thousands of years ago! And tractors.
Okay now, pre-industrial societies did not work an entire day for a single meal lmao. That's something you'd see in capitalism or slavery. The vast majority of human history did not involve that much work.
Thanks for technological advancements and not-capitalism!
What a boomer statement lmao. Isn't it ironic that you complain about other people critiquing society, and lash out in caps lock? What if I told you that people have critiqued society since antiquity? I highly recommend you pick up a book. You'll learn something or two!
Just a heads up you are both discussing in bad faith and neither of you will make any strides with the other.
You can summarize my argument in two:
Apparently one of the instances is extremely pro communism.
Even though communism has been proven historically to be detrimental by nearly every metric. Detrimental economically, detrimental environmentally, detrimental socially, and very much against basic human rights.
The pro-communists call normal people the extremists
Well they can move to Russia and check out the result of the USSR experiment.
I would sleep a lot more, that's for sure.
Produce documentaries, develop a video game
I would love to do those too!
If I wasnt working a job for money I wouldn't be doing anything that contributed to making food or providing infrastructure. What I did with my time would probably be considered useless by society and that's why I'm not doing it as a job currently.
I too would never do anything to serve my interests or the interests of my community!
Thank God for our capitalist overlords for keeping us in check. We thank them by making them even more mega rich.
Make art and hike more.
Id play more guitar and more piano, and record more. Id take pictures hiking and take videos and stuff. I'd fully automate the mundane from my life, finish my self hosting projects.
I'd be healthier, overall. By a lot. Mentally and physically.
I'd be that guy that makes all those useless inventions, except they'd be incredibly useful to me and like 2 other people.
That's how many great inventions benefitting the entire world happened :)
Basic research. I left basic research because research in academia is a lost cause, killed by lack of funding, hyper toxic environment, rat race to the bottom, mafias and corruption.
It is so bad that I feel a much more morally cleaner environment working in finance.
I would go back doing what I used to do, but without the baggage that forced most of us to leave
I'm trying to change careers into medical science research...
I did a bit in big pharma... But it was 90% paper work unfortunately.
Probably a smaller firm would have been better, but I was tired of lack of job security and I went for safe bets.
I am now in fintech. We still struggle with corporate mindset, particularly IT, we are highly regulated as pharma, but at least we are not stuck in the 90s as I was when working with SAS in pharma. And salaries are slightly higher.
At the end you don't need much to be successful outside academia. In academia it is literally a scammy lottery. Outside, you just need to be a bit pro active. Standards are pretty low. The biggest difficult is to convince hr that you are good fit without industry experience. HR people unfortunately do not think as reasonable beings. They wouldn't do hr if they were reasonable. But once you manage to start, even the most "complex" job in industry is pretty trivial, you'll be more than enough doing the bare minimum. If you put a bit of effort (even not much), you'll be very successful
I appreciate the advice
I also jump around with this. Like I would definitely read more. But there's a part of me that would love to write books. But also male music. But also paint. Basically I would do something in the realm of art.
I wouldn't mind having a part time job doing something physical. Like I used to work at a warehouse for a medical supplies company. It was probably one of my favorite jobs. I could see myself doing that again. Gives me a reason to get out of the house, be active, and people will always need the supplies. Ironically I lost the job because we got bought out by one of the world's largest corporations so they could make even more money, and they closed us down. So I lost that job because of capitalism.
I would contribute to any activity that would ensure capitalism wouldn't start existing.
It would be pretty difficult to bring back capitalism after its gone. It's like someone trying to bring back feudalism today, beyond individual interactions.
I too dream of this same future:
https://sturlabragason.github.io/blog/2023/07/04/Decentralized-Autonomous-Communities.html
Quoting this:
"In DACs, knowledge, creativity, and innovation are communal properties. Whether it’s a new AI algorithm, a more efficient building design, or a breakthrough software update, all are shared freely among the network of DACs. This community-wide open-source approach fuels rapid progress and the spread of beneficial developments."
Reading. I have lots of books I want to read but not enough time / energy to do so.
Go hiking everyday
If money weren't an object and I didn't have to worry about rent I would love to bury myself in math, chemistry, earth science, medical science, language, and systems development studies. Then I'd spend my free time sharing what I learned with others who want to learn, focusing on under represented. I'd also do more outdoor sports.
Im fortunate. I love my career. I've been doing since I was 12 what I do for a living now at 39. I'd still do what I do if income were a non-issue.
With that being said, I'd probably only do it three days/week or so, being able to pick a more realistic balance between productivity and burnout would be great. I'd also spend that time making something I want, for me, rather than doing what I'm told. I feel like that's significant here as well.
Imma be honest I have no idea. I might legit just sit here and be a leech on society playing video games and watching shows. But I'd like to imagine I would go back to school and try and do freelance repair/maintenance for various things. I just honestly don't know if I'd do enough to consider it a fair contribution to society.
Self ownership is the basis of capitalism and you're already playing the game, you're just playing it bad.
if you're on hourly I want you to ask yourself if you would pay someone else what you earn at work to do whatever you just did in the last hour.
if not why not? did you explicitly set aside this time to be unproductive? do you think people doing better than you let themselves slide like that?
Speak for yourself, I love having a routine and getting in the zone. Autonomy and Mastery are worth more to me than money.
What a nonsense reply. Describing any rest as "slipping".
The number one thing, by FAR, that earns money under capitalism is investment. Not work, not skill, not merit. Just having money to invest and shave off your share of someone else's work.
The "people doing better" actually rest far more than your average worker. They just have money, so they get to make more money even while they are "unproductive".
I said slide not slip. and managing your time is the takeaway. can't slip, or slide, if you are being intentional about your time.
People who don't think they have the time to do anything are usually not being intentional. you get home from work and kick back with a cold one and that's the whole plan, then the next minute you're back at work again and you don't know where the weekend went.
and if you know how to make money under capitalism without working why exactly aren't you doing that?
Were you too busy doing a capitalism that you forgot to read the comment they made?
The real, unloaded question, should be "what would you do if money was no obstacle"
Presuming capitalism is the reason we have no time is what's happening here.
But I wouldn't pay anyone to defend capitalism. oh shit beaten by my own logic.
Who wants to go blow up a pipeline?
You cannot be serious.
I would love to respond but I have no idea what you're saying. Sorry. Why would I pay someone for doing my job? I would not be doing it if I could just pay someone to do it lol.
are you working right now? must be nice to have that much free time. let me guess ... Union?
j/k just having a laugh. (I'm also union)
I mean when you're off the clock is your time worth the same to you?
I don't mean to say there's no value in rest but occasionally accounting for your free time is a good idea otherwise you wake up in your 50s and wonder where all that time went.
What would allow that isn't communism, but a "post-scarcity" society, much like Star Trek TNG. A lot of what we take for granted can only happen thanks to the commercial logistics of fucktons of materials going around.
I'd devote more time into programming, performance optimization, processor architecture and computer graphics. These things are still "magic" to me and there aren't many resources, especially on the "bare metal" graphics part of most recent parts. Once I figured it out enough to feel confident in passing that knowledge around, I would do that in english and portuguese
One thing that I'm already doing thanks to my job giving me a decent salary for only 20h of work is my own game project. Something that I'll probably end up selling, but I'll probably be the first to release a pirate/free version of it, too.
Yeah it's easy to do whatever you want as a job when matter/antimatter reactors give unlimited energy and replicators can use that limitless energy to create any object.
I would spend my time the same way. Honing my specialization to increase benefit to society. I love software development!
I would do loads of degrees. History, English, Psychology, Politics, Spanish, etc. Having the brain space to focus on learning would be amazing. I did my masters part time while working full time and it was a nightmare. Glad I did it but I couldn't do my best as I was bogged down in work stuff.
I would also like to learn more languages. I do a bit of Spanish and Danish when I can but I rarely have the mental energy after work.
Travel too. Maybe write a book.
I'd be writing a lot more music
Gymnastics, surfing, and study and write philosophical works. And maybe practice guitar.
I'd love to spend more time planting trees. I volunteer to do it occasionally on weekends but I really love the process of going from sprout to seedling to planted. I just wish I could do more of it.
I would be what I am now, just a more "official" version of it, since what I do is akin to a paid hobby and has no firmly nested societal position. But that's assuming what I do would be valued in other types of societies either (it's just barely valued in Capitalism). I know a Marxist society most likely wouldn't value what I do as it's only a necessity-based job on a technical level. And it would have little relevance in Distributism, I think. Mutualism is a coin toss.
What do you do now?
I would, in no certain order:
I would make video games. I'd even do some adult ones, since I've noticed the existing ones aren't super great.
I'm an intellectually overqualified filmmaker surrounded by anti-intellectuals (I routinely get made fun of for being interested in technical stuff)....and right now, I am on workman's comp with a broken foot. So: exactly what I am doing right now is exactly what I would want to be doing.
What's that?
Hanging out with my daughter in my lab,
Learning
Practicing:
guitar
Blazing:
Everyone thinks they're smarter than the idiots around them. Most are wrong.
In my case, whether I’m wrong or not, they actively discourage me from using my brain.
I would write and draw more. There's so many stories I wanna make. I might even take up some other medium like animation or something physical like sculpture or architecture. It would be fun to design spaces that don't need to have the soul sucked out of them to appear "mature" or "professional"
I feel like the fear of not making profits and not surviving pressures me into watering down everything I do so it's appealing to someone else. That's why art is strictly a hobby for me and not a career I wanna pursue
Probably sleep or do gamedev in a full time fashion.
I would love to do more with animation especially non-traditional animation like LED or Pinscreen, but the barrier of entry is just too high.
Rock climbing. I got into over summer but I only have time to go once or twice a week at most. And that's just indoors. A whole outdoor trip would take way too much of my time, time that I don't have.
I think about this at least a little bit most days.
I'd finish some video games again.
Work on more music, ideally practice piani again to get my theory back on track.
Make projects, communal gardening etc..
Outside the selfish self-enrichment kinda stuff, teach kids programming, and participate more in my hema club.
I'd hang out and enjoy the fruits of other people's time being sold. Pretty hard to think of a hobby that wouldn't cover.
Something new every day. Create. Spend time with my children. Volunteer my time and knowledge.
I'd probably still be a mechanical engineer, but maybe I could have gotten some more education in the direction of nuclear power and/or automation. I might have also had another kid instead of just one.
Edit: I'd also like to learn and get good at welding. It would be cool to not only engineer a nuclear power plant, but to help actually build it as well. Then again, I'd probably never get good enough at welding to do so unless I devoted myself to the trade. Maybe I could just get some shifts as a plant operator after it's built.
Without capitalism, I'd probably be serf like my great-grandparents were. There's a lot to criticize about capitalism, but it's still an improvement on its predecessor.
For a lot of people, it probably still doesn't feel dissimilar enough from serfdom, just with a lot more parties to be indebted/obligated to than your one feudal lord. Still at risk of becoming a landless vagrant if you don't keep up with your dues.
You can also live like many kings of old if you aren't a lazy twat.
Of course, sirrah. Poverty is, as ever, a personal failing.
Same thing I do now, but instead of full-time work / part-time student, I'd flip it to part-time work and full-time student.
I'm hanging on to the bottom step of the medical ladder - this field is fascinating as fuck, and even as just a tech I get a lot of satisfaction in my role (albeit minor relative to doctors or nurses) in helping others recover from whatever sickness/injury they present with.
Without the financial barriers and current need to work till exhaustion to afford rent, I'd be highly interested in going all the way to physician, but at the rate I'm able to actually afford the time and money to take classes, I'll be pushing 40 when I'm able to clear the hurdle from tech to nurse; and it already hurts to move half of my fucking joints, so once this nursing shit is finished, I don't see myself climbing any more ladders, literal or otherwise... at that point it'll just be the counting the days till retirement or planning out the most pleasurable way to commit suicide.
Same. Almost completely the same except our jobs differ. Work is going to kill my goal to be more specialized in the medical sciences. It's depressing. I'm hoping to at least land in the field of research.
What would you when you get in this undefined yet not capitalist utopia and are forced to work long hours at a job you didn't choose to help further the cause of the revolution?
It'd give me more time to learn languages. I want to learn most Romance languages then later some Germanic languages. I'd have more time to read, study, and learn from the "For Dummies" series books I bought.
I'd play music for my community. It's alright by myself but I love an audience.
Get involved in whatever community food garden is around.
Make art. Give it away.
If I could start from scratch, maybe something. In my current condition I would probably just feel unproductive and guilty every day, with no personal direction of my own.
Great list!
I get three days off a week and just got off of a 3 week long vacation and I slept a bunch lol. Played videogames. If I could never work again I'd just relax and enjoy food and entertainment.
There's a couple of countries without capitalism, you could try to live your dream there.
ask the Soviet union how easy it is to decouple from global capitalism
Not sure what your point is, there wasn't much trade between US and the West until about 80s. Soviets certainly could end all trade with evil capitalists, if they wanted.
Countries like Iran or North Korea even have the luxury of capitalists themselves decoupling from them.
There are countries striving to break away from capitalism, but I don't think we're quite there yet.
Starve to death.
I don’t understand why these people think they’d have All this free time.
If there wasn’t an industry to sell us all the things we buy, people wouldn’t just volunteer to do it.
You’d be spending all your time learning how to hunt, fighting with your neighbours over territory, waging war over it likely, and dressing your kills to help feed your family.
Your wives would probably be busy trying to avoid being raped by your enemies while you’re out trying to bring home dinner and making clothes out of threads.
People think there would be starbuck’s to just walk into and start making coffees for people? Just some random dude who thinks ‘Hm, today I’m going to go and make coffees for people for a couple hours’ is this guy seriously okay?
Lemmy users do not understand why things are the way they are. They’re …. Childish. Child-like.
It’s almost like they imagine the government will be just like their parents and fund their lifestyle like they did when they were actually children.
Take them to swimming lessons, sign them up for art classes, dinner just magically appears on the dinner table everyday, they can spend all day just hanging out with friends and playing video games or whatever they want to do.
I think lemmy users, for the most part, are stuck having a crisis of changing from childhood to adult hood.
They’ll likely grow out of it, but boy is reading shit like this fucking embarrassing to adults
Here’s a hint, lemmy communists:
Without capitalism, you’ll do what the government decides you will do, for however long they decide you should do it for. If you’ve been farming wheat for 3 years and the government decides there’s too much wheat and not enough apples, you’ll be picking fucking apples for 16 hours a day, without sunscreen or water or breaks.
Or you’ll be shot and your family will be put in prison.
While the government leaders will live in big mansions free to do whatever they want.
This is exactly my thoughts on this. OP feels he's going to just 'pick up shifts' as he feels like it. Nope, it doesn't work like that. It's total fantasy, and you're description is on the money of how it really would be.
"Wow I just really feel like being a garbage man today!" ... said no one ever.
exactly
Without capitalism, we would be serving our own interests, not the interests of a minority ruling class, be it a capitalist class or one disguised by a state.
Capitalism gives you the BEST chance to make a living doing what interests you. If you don't like working for others, open a business and own capital. It's literally the rules of the game.
It does not. I spoke a bit in my post about why it doesn't. Owning a business is a bit better, but you're still operating at the whims of capital, having to do what the market deems a good investment rather than what's good for society. You also have to make sure not to ever compete with or upset a mega conglomerate with infinite money. You also still have to live with the fact that most of the rest of society is forced to live under this for profit system, which locks their potential.
So many words to say that you have a first-grade understanding of what an alternative to capitalism might look like
We have seen many alternatives to capitalism. They are all much much worse than capitalism.
You act as if humanity just popped into existence and started capitalism 200,000 years ago lmfo
Jesus Christ this post sucks
If only we had a voting system to express whether we thought a post meaningfully contributed or not!
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I'm sorry that a harmless question on askLemmy bothers you so much :(
luke's poor feefees. :(