How is this a scalable approach to everyone in the society? Someone has to work to produce food. Someone has to work to produce electricity. Until we can automate everything, most people have to work and contribute to society (unless you choose to be self-sufficient - grow your own food, produce your own electricity etc.)
> How is this a scalable approach to everyone in the society?
It is not, but let's not pretend most of us work to increase societal good. It just happens to be that our rent-seeking behavior is aligned with society's interests.
I was only giving an argument against the "antiwork mentality". This doesn't mean that I want to preserve the status-quo or I that I think the existing system is perfect. I agree that there are many issues in our society and the existing system, but I don't think "antiwork" is really the right way to go about it.
They are just two examples of things we need. Did you expect an extensive list of all the things someone needs to do? What is the point of your comment?
These are few examples and I am expecting the reader would use their imagination a bit.
Food production - planting seeds, collecting crops, watering the farms, creating anti-pesticides, creating all the farming equipment, packaging food, distributing food, storing food (for storing food just think about all the work that goes into creating a fridge - from mining metals from the ground, to designing the fridge and building a factory that create thousands of fridges quickly)
Here's the pro fast food take. There are productive people working jobs that have massive necessity, and they need to eat. The least somebody who isn't productive can do is help feed them.
There are plenty of people building houses, growing food, and maintaining infrastructure like water treatment that directly contribute to sustaining life. And there are plenty of people in the industries that are required to support those people.
I'm not saying they don't know how to cook- but I'm saying that the least the rest of society who aren't responsible for sustaining us can do is make life better for those who do
Depend on those people are treated. Minimum wage and work conditions matter. If it's not sustainable, it's just not, and you cannot argue that "work is mandatory" on the premise that some people should prepare food for others.
I worked in fast food for several years and the job is terrible. The fundamental problem with this job and others like it are the fact that you can bust your ass day in and day out and see no benefit to your work. It's like groundhog day where every singe day you work there is exactly the same until you finally quit.
I think what would really improve a job like fast food is if workers were part owners of their franchise. Most fast food restaurants are franchises owned by one person or a local corporation that owns several franchises. Putting ownership into the workers hands would mean profit sharing, it would mean when you bust ass over the hot grill working a double shift or cleaning shit and blood from the walls in the bathroom, you are actually rewarded for the increased demand on the restaurant. It would be like a built in hazard pay for when things got busy and stressful and awful. At least benefits would be nice, I know several people who burned their forearms really bad on the fryer.
We don't need a lot of people to provide food, shelter, electricity and water for 7.6bn people? What about clothes, cars, furniture, electronics, schools, hospitals, medical equipment?
"The main argument is UBI." - is that it? UBI will solve everything? Let's just print more money and give it to everyone. Problem solved.
As I said in my other comment, I am not saying that the current status-quo is right. I think there is plenty of inequality and injustice in the world, but I just don't think "antiwork" is the way to solve that.
> What about clothes, cars, furniture, electronics, schools, hospitals, medical equipment?
Not all jobs are unnecessary, but there are jobs that are more important than others. There are a lot of jobs people wish they would not work or that they think nothing would change if they did not work those jobs. Just read about David Graeber and his book, Bullshit Jobs.
Just imagine all the workers in fast food. Look around and you will see a lot of people working jobs when they could spend time at university instead. You only listed the best jobs. People who work in insurance, sales, fast food, uber drivers, food delivery, clothing shops, etc.
> Let's just print more money and give it to everyone. Problem solved.
That's already what happens when there are bailouts. Giving money to people instead of giving it to the banks makes more sense.
I'm not saying that everybody should quit their jobs, I'm just saying that once you raise unemployment benefits, you will see a lot of wage slave quit their jobs and nothing will change.
