You seem to think that those proposing this don't recognize we're pushing for a massive shift in how things work, that will disrupt many areas significantly.
We recognize that just fine. There are ways to mitigate the harm from that disruption.
It's absolutely clear to us that even if we don't mitigate that harm, the system afterward will be much more just and much more kind and humane than the system we have now.
It’s hard for many to consider alternatives under the long shadow of the Cold War where the US food and grocery system was the envy of the world and was basically fantasy land compared to the Soviet counterparts. So why not mitigate current harms instead of overthrow a system with a speculative alternative with speculative mitigations?
Otoh: maybe just saying “everything remains the same except the large orgs are non-profit” could be an interesting mitigation to current system.
Nobody has ever explained how this "mitigation" is supposed to happen. Instead there are just flippant "Yes? Why not?" comments like yours and your siblings, as if "why not" hasn't been demonstrated and explained countless times before.
Feel free to show any example of a non-market-based society that had plentiful food. You cannot. Non-market-based societies always fail to provide what people want. The only societies in history where the problem has been too many calories instead of not enough calories are modern commercial societies.
Of course you can't. Post-scarcity is a new thing; you can't go to societies of the past and see its effects.
But you act as though adding any features to our society and economy that move toward taking better care of all our people would somehow ruin the whole thing.
Now, to answer your initial question:
Provide governmental support for small businesses during the transition—local grocery stores, small family farms; not the ones already making hundreds of millions+ in profit every year. A lot of this support wouldn't even need to be monetary—remember, this isn't even talking about making food free or anything; it's just talking about moving to a non-profit model. The most obvious type of assistance is legal (to understand what being a non-profit means and how to legally go about making those changes) and accounting (to understand what this will mean for their books).
I don't believe that massive chain supermarkets and agribusiness conglomerates should get much in the way of financial support for this kind of change—they've already been making huge amounts of money for their execs and shareholders. And, again, only one of those groups actually has to stop making money off this. While I would 100% support separate measures to reduce the exec pay disparity, that's out of scope for this particular discussion. Going non-profit just means you don't have shareholders who get to make money off the business—and, vitally, you don't have shareholders pushing the business to make more profit at the expense of pricing people out of staples or reducing the quality of the food.
We need farms and some sort of food distribution system for everyone to survive, so that doesn't sound like a bad idea.
You could always decide that grocery stores are allowed to be for-profit, or perhaps only things like co-ops or benefit corporations.
We eventually came to accept the reality that our society works better if we ensure universal access to things like mail, so we should be willing to evaluate whether the list of universal goods needs to be expanded
Why don't you provide that service profit free then. People on this stuff are always all talk. Id be interested in people demonstrating a world with no profit on a smaller scale first. Why not run a company where every one gets paid the same and demonstrate your competence.
Why would anyone want to "exercise curiosity" about abject nonsense? There's nothing to be curious about here. You might as well make the same comment on any topic where something has been dismissed. The concept of "every human need" (whatever a "need" is, given that anatomically modern humans lived without electricity for hundreds of thousands of years just fine) necessarily being provided without any profit motive is just plain stupid. It's being dismissed for that reason.
What is "stupid", or even controversial, about the idea that society should be organized to provide for people's needs? To suggest that society should be a zero sum economic gladiatorial affair, that that's the best our species can do or should strive for, seems like a failure of imagination to me.
I'm sure you're being rhetorical, but to some extent the answer is yes.
At least where I live, light and heat are basic rights and those are often most easily and cheaply provided by electrical means. X-ray machines, considered as part of adequate medical care, are similarly guaranteed.
I don't know that the internet is considered a "basic" necessity anywhere, but again we're entitled to education and to engage with the society in which we live, and the internet is a common and effective means for doing those. That said, I'm not aware of state-provided internet outside of libraries and schools.
The UN has strongly implied that internet access should be considered a basic human right, but haven't quite crossed the line to actually stating it plainly.
Given that in plenty of locations in the developed world you can now no longer function as a normal member of society without internet access because everything has gone online it makes good sense that it should be. Paper is pretty much done for, invoices are all pdfs, banking and interaction with the government on all levels is all online.
If we go by your definition, there's nothing left. Every single one of those things requires parts and if you're going to require all of that to be nonprofit, there's no commercial activity left.
I don't necessarily agree. If I have a "right" to transport that doesn't mean the government has to give me a car, maybe they provide a train and if I want a car I have to buy it commercially.
Even of the things listed above, their being a basic right doesn't preclude someone buying them. I pay for electricity like almost everyone else.here, but it won't be taken away from me even if I do not pay (though it's not worth the hassle unless I have really cannot afford to pay).
I'm not sure if there's a legal definition, but what I found[0] says that
> Essential services are the services and functions that are absolutely necessary, even during a pandemic. They maintain the health and welfare of the municipality. Without these services, sickness, poverty, violence, and chaos would likely result.
The listed examples of essential services include things not absolutely, positively necessary to protect life and limb:
* Maintenance of communication infrastructure (e.g., telephone system, radio, internet)
* Maintenance of utilities (e.g., gas and electricity)
I'd argue it's not as hard as you seem to insinuate.
If a person wants to be able to live in their own accommodation there are some very key things they require. One of the most basic is a bank account (how do you pay rent without that?). Work backwards from just that one basic concept and you'll quickly see how easy it is to figure out what "basic necessities" are.
Granted, these will vary between economic regions, but it's quite simple to do so.