[AskSocialist]

> at its core it's about rewarding everyone equally, despite the fact some people choose to work more

I hear this frequently, but I do not believe it is axiomatic. I believe we should provide a sense of equal minimum reward, a baseline level of food, shelter, amenities that everyone gets access to. Even if they cannot work or choose to work the minimum amount.

Again, it's important to recall that "Socialism" includes everything from Soviets to Anarchists to Democratic Socialists and many (many) flavors in between.

But it's not fundamentally antithetical to Socialism to recognize the people who choose to work more. The rewards structure might look different, depending on what flavor of Socialism you prefer, but I would expect that someone who goes above and beyond also tends to attract rewards (whether those are luxuries, time, recognition, or other things).

Even my anarchist/socialist friends would recognize that many luxuries are limited -- we cannot all have infinite bottles of aged whiskey -- but if you put in the extra time to really help out at the distillery, or really devote a lot of time to making their barrels, it stands to reason you'd be recognized for that.

I also genuinely believe that when you remove the necessity of "I need to work an excess to ensure I can afford to support my family's basic needs", the desire to work more comes from a passion for the work or for securing 'nice to haves'. There's nothing saying a worker's co-op couldn't decide to, for instance, nominate 10% of their peers each month for extra rewards or something.

[proc0]

> But it's not fundamentally antithetical to Socialism to recognize the people who choose to work more.

Fair point, and I think there are definitely enough resources to support people with disabilities or incapable of working for other extreme reasons. I guess the main discussion would be around where exactly to draw the line such that we're not forcing people to pay for those that choose to not work.

>I also genuinely believe that when you remove the necessity of "I need to work an excess to ensure I can afford to support my family's basic needs"

It depends on how we define "excess work". Unfortunately some people's excess work is another person's daily morning routine. If the productive person is not fairly rewarded, they will stop trying or even worse try something illegal or immoral. I think there are still a number of creative solutions to try, things like facilitating sponsorships for people of all ages to learn new skills, or investing in a public "linkedin" of sorts that is free and uses AI to match people with jobs. There are many creative and cheap things to try, and artificially imposing a certain "living wage" which constantly changes isn't addressing the root of the problem, which is that many people don't understand how to leverage the job market, their skills, etc.

[AskSocialist]

I really appreciated Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread, where he discusses how factories may, if the incentives were different, actually be quite pleasant places to work. If the factory needs to produce product but is open to anyone working at it, some folks will take the time to improve lighting, reduce noise and pollution, step in and take shifts, and generally try to make it nice to be there.

Not everyone will do this, but some folks are just wired to want to help in that way. The thing is that we don't have a financial incentive to do that today -- you must optimize your factory ruthlessly for production efficiency rather than for comfort.

I believe that rewards for excess work are similar -- some of us cannot put the work down, we enjoy doing it. I think those cases will largely fall into one of a few buckets:

1) Some folks will just do extra work and not be bothered that they are doing more. (I tend to fall into this bucket -- my needs are met, I do it because I derive value in the labor)

2) Some folks will divert their excess labor from production to a hobby, art, or other projects (like the factory comfort). It might not mean more widgets, but maybe we have enough widgets. If you make everyone around you happier, rewards will find you.

3) Some folks will want more luxuries, and we'll have to figure out if and how to allocate those things. Not everyone can work excess. If I lost a hand due to a workplace accident, but I'm otherwise eager to work, do I deserve less than someone who is equally eager but able bodied? I believe many Capitalists would say yes, but many Socialists would say no.

4) We'll have to recognize work that isn't considered 'work' today. Parenting, for instance, requires an immense amount of labor. Laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, elder care, etc. Maybe we encourage productive folks to spend their excess time looking for ways to make that work easier.

5) Some folks aren't going to be happy. They are going to feel under-rewarded for their labor. Hopefully this is offset by generally higher wages/standard of living for most. (If we're not paying billions of dollars to CEOs, that's billions in the pockets of individual workers).

6) Some folks work excess today and see no increase in comp -- it's already a problem for salaried workers, even within Capitalism. I can work 40 hours or 60 hours, but my pay is the same either way. I might get a notional bonus of a few grand a year, I might get an earlier promotion. But those things certainly aren't guaranteed.

> we're not forcing people to pay for those that choose to not work.

What is work is a very, very important question. If someone is a stay at home parent, cooking and cleaning, is that work? If someone is a musician, but isn't a particularly great one, is that work? If I sit in the park and tell stories and people enjoy listening to me and I have a regular audience, is that work? If I'm an elder and mostly enjoy spending my remaining years with my loved ones, is that work?

Yes, we must have some level of productivity, obviously, in order to survive. I strongly suspect that if you gave people basic needs, nearly everyone would chip in some labor, but we'd also probably need to decide on some mechanism for "who performs sanitation if we do not get enough volunteers?" Today that mechanism is "you gotta eat, so you gotta work wage labor", but we could absolutely replace that with "least popular labor gets bonus luxuries" or "we all take turns, once a year you gotta collect trash".

[MichaelZuo]

Who gets to define what 'basic needs' are?

[proc0]

All of those hypotheticals can be true, yet you'll still need to deal with people who consciously choose not to work or do much less work. Under Socialism these behaviors are encouraged because they are rewarded regardless. Under Capitalism these people pay the price themselves, whether that is fair or not, not only is it more unfair to have others pay for it, but at least it discourages people to a great extent.

> 1) Some folks will just do extra work and not be bothered that they are doing more

I doubt this for most people. This is basically saying that right now a lot of people are ok with a pay cut (same work, less pay = free extra work). I can see a lot of people doing #2, which is equivalent to not working. And as mentioned before, these people are not working yet still somehow rewarded for it.

#5 and #6 are true, and is why if everyone gets a living wage regardless of whether they work or not, the people who currently don't enjoy doing what they do would simply stop doing it. Maybe everyone would become some kind of artist, while machines keep the economy running, but that is a utopia that requires many technological breakthroughs, i.e. advanced AI, unlimited renewable energy, better batteries, etc... and we're not getting there without Capitalism, which is somewhat ironic.

> but we'd also probably need to decide on some mechanism for "who performs sanitation if we do not get enough volunteers?" Today that mechanism is "you gotta eat, so you gotta work wage labor", but we could absolutely replace that with "least popular labor gets bonus luxuries" or "we all take turns, once a year you gotta collect trash".

This is something that the market solves as if it where a large, decentralized computer. Without market incentives there needs to be top-down coordination to incentivize people and this becomes unmanageable and does not scale.

I still feel that there is a problem with markets in how success is exponential for an extreme minority, while seemingly impossible to attain for a large portion at the bottom. I'm not sure what the best approach to solve that is, but we cannot take the wealth markets produce and expect the same output for a system without markets. The wealth we have under markets is not attainable without it, even though some people exponentially get rich from it. While inequality between rich and poor is bad, having everyone be poor because nobody can coordinate their productivity is even worse. Personally, I feel once AI becomes powerful enough, we will be able to do this kinds of complicated coordination that may solve the problem, however that path is a minefield of potential dystopias.