[heavyset_go]

Wage labor isn't a natural baseline, though. It's an arbitrary system that benefits certain people at the expense of others, and is just as natural as feudalism, monarchism, etc.

If you want to make an argument from history and nature, you can't ignore that early human societies didn't have wage labor, nor were there asset owning classes that didn't work and depended on the labor of others. Those kind of relations eventually erupted with the advent of agriculture that allowed people to settle and accumulate assets.

[antisthenes]

> It's an arbitrary system that benefits certain people at the expense of others, and is just as natural as feudalism, monarchism, etc.

Yeah, but for a person coming into it, it sure is a hell of a lot easier to just earn a wage and buy existing goods, rather than be self-sufficient and grow your own crops, plant your own trees to harvest lumber and mine your own ore to make steel.

Nor is the shift back to hunting/gathering even possible at this point. The population of the planet is such that we would consume all animal and plant matter within months, if it were not replenished in highly structured ways on farms.

[least]

> Wage labor isn't a natural baseline, though. It's an arbitrary system that benefits certain people at the expense of others, and is just as natural as feudalism, monarchism, etc.

Labor having value is in fact wholly arbitrary, which is why its value fluctuates depending on various market conditions. Fundamentally, it depends on people valuing living, which is why what I'm saying is not unnatural.

"Wage labor" is just "labor."

> If you want to make an argument from history and nature, you can't ignore that early human societies didn't have wage labor, nor were there asset owning classes that didn't work and depended on the labor of others.

Asset owning people do work, though. This notion falls apart under minute scrutiny. There's of course people that inherit wealth that only ever exchange it for consumption of goods or services, but those people are still inheriting labor from people that chose to give them it.