Alaska. You can move out there by yourself, do whatever the hell you want (as long as its by yourself and doesn’t impact others), and no one will notice or care.
In re-reading this thread, I realize something: if you move to Alaska to avoid being forced to work by society, you better damn well believe that you will be forced to work by nature.
I think this says something about the very nature of work. In our modern times it is detached from its purpose (survival of self and species), but that is ultimately what drives the need to work.
This idea that a capable, working-age living thing should be able to free load off of others’ work to stay alive is not dignifying for that person, and unfairly burdens the one who is working to keep the other person alive.
Put another way, just because a farmer can make enough to feed a town doesn’t mean the farmer should only be allowed enough grain to feed his family, with everything else divided among those who don’t work. What’s the incentive to work?
And when you introduce government rules to enforce those things, the farmer is compelled by violence and force to give away his labor.
Just like missing the connection between work and survival, people miss the connection between government regulation and the promise of force behind it as a punishment for non-compliance.
The reason people pay taxes (which is the only way we have as a society to redistribute resources from those who work to those who don’t) is because their money will be taken if it is not paid, or they will be put in jail if they lie about how much they owe.
So while the original comment complains about how you’re compelled to work, that’s actually not true. It is a societal norm to work and to have a good quality of life, but no one is forcing you. But at the same time they are asking to increase government benefits and force those who work to pay for their survival.
All this said - if the conversation is framed around how much work it takes to survive, I think as a society it would make sense for that number to drop as we’ve increased scale of production and automation.
This is only true if you define "work" as "tasks that has to be executed to survive". If you live in the wilderness you have to "work" a lot because you have to execute many tasks to survive. That is not what work is. I have to eat and defecate to survive, but you wouldn't call that "work", would you?
The definition of "work" used by every leftist movement in the world is different. They define it as "directly or indirectly selling your time to other humans in exchange for material benefits." Thus, if I hunt alone in the wilderness to get meat for myself I'm not "working". But if there is another person in the wilderness who forces me to hunt to get meat for us then I'm "working".
I hope you understand the difference. Scrubbing toilets is not per se "work". Scrubbing toilets so that someone will give you money to buy food is "work".
I think this says something about the very nature of work. In our modern times it is detached from its purpose (survival of self and species), but that is ultimately what drives the need to work.
This idea that a capable, working-age living thing should be able to free load off of others’ work to stay alive is not dignifying for that person, and unfairly burdens the one who is working to keep the other person alive.
Put another way, just because a farmer can make enough to feed a town doesn’t mean the farmer should only be allowed enough grain to feed his family, with everything else divided among those who don’t work. What’s the incentive to work?
And when you introduce government rules to enforce those things, the farmer is compelled by violence and force to give away his labor.
Just like missing the connection between work and survival, people miss the connection between government regulation and the promise of force behind it as a punishment for non-compliance.
The reason people pay taxes (which is the only way we have as a society to redistribute resources from those who work to those who don’t) is because their money will be taken if it is not paid, or they will be put in jail if they lie about how much they owe.
So while the original comment complains about how you’re compelled to work, that’s actually not true. It is a societal norm to work and to have a good quality of life, but no one is forcing you. But at the same time they are asking to increase government benefits and force those who work to pay for their survival.
All this said - if the conversation is framed around how much work it takes to survive, I think as a society it would make sense for that number to drop as we’ve increased scale of production and automation.