>A society is people. People being dependent on their society is somewhere between an oxymoron and baseline assumption. Everyone is dependent on the day to day cooperation of their society, in one way or another, even if it is "just" roads, and breathable air, and a political reality in which they can live their day-to-day.
In some sense, people depend on society to maintain their quality of life and provide for a subset of their needs; people also contribute to society and maintain it in turn. You're talking about cutting out the latter and keeping the former without replacing it with anything to support yourself with, which makes you completely dependent on society to provide everything for you, not just some things.
I didn't and I don't think most people do look down on those that cannot find work because there is no work to be found. Your 'I want to be able to choose not to work despite having the opportunity to work' perspective, though - that I look down on.
By the way, if you decided to work for yourself - to grow your own food, live off the land, and trade your labor specifically for your own sustenance, you could probably do it. That's a choice you continuously make.
>If capitalism needs more hands on deck, it can pay for them. It's time to stop assuming everyone should work, and let the market tell us why we should work (and how much it is willing to pay to let that work get done).
It already does do that. I don't volunteer at my job, I'm paid for my labor. The market tells you why you should work by pricing goods. You should work so that you can afford goods and services that improve your life. If you don't want any of those things, that's fine, but there's an argument to be had about whether my labor should subsidize your lack of it.
>companies don't have to do right by us, because they aren't our societies, they don't need us, they don't depend on us. The basic problem is that we are post-scarcity in the labor market, and companies have a "free lunch" by this "morality" that basic subsidence should be tied to some nominal value of productivity that they decide based on a quarter-to-quarter bottom line.
This is a weird argument to me, because companies absolutely depend on their workers. There are deficiencies in the labor market that cause certain labor to be valued at a higher rate than others; companies routinely hire from their competitors and give their workers raises or better offers. That's the labor market at work. It's not a free lunch.
>I think society should invest more directly in its people.
I agree. I think subsidized education is a pretty good thing, and it has positive impacts on society which is why we continue to do it. 'Investing in people' doesn't mean paying you to do nothing, though; that'd be a pretty terrible investment.
> In some sense, people depend on society to maintain their quality of life and provide for a subset of their needs; people also contribute to society and maintain it in turn. You're talking about cutting out the latter and keeping the former without replacing it with anything to support yourself with, which makes you completely dependent on society to provide everything for you, not just some things.
Sorry, no, that's not what I'm talking about.
I am saying that I'd like to see the notion of "contributes to the labor market" entirely disentangled from the notion of "contributes to society". Those are very separate concepts, but today everyone talks about the morality of the first as if it is the morality of the second.
Consider it moral relativism if you will, but I think "contributes to society" is and should be a very low bar. Existing as a law abiding member of a society alone is a contribution.
Child care is extremely undervalued by the labor market, but hugely valuable to society. Child care raises the next generation of that society, after all.
In the case of the "town drunk", making transactions to buy a legal vice is a contribution, keeping the money circulating in that town. That "town drunk" may even contribute directly to the well being of people directly in the way that they brighten people's days.
The lower the bar we set as a society, the greater the safety net, the larger the trampoline. Yes, that's a bit selfish to want, but a large safety net, a giant trampoline lets you take huge risks in the labor market, lets you take huge risks undervalued by the labor market.
I got laid off in a terrible state once, where to collect the unemployment insurance money to which I contributed, almost all of which came out of my premiums, I was treated as a guilty, negligent individual that needed constant supervision to keep from a life of crime, I was micro-managed in how I could use my money, and my unemployed time. Every form was designed to infantilize me, and possibly also designed to humiliate and judge me and guilt me, for daring to make use of the insurance product for which I had greatly contributed in a time when it was decided it would be nice to "cut overhead this quarter to bring shareholder value up for a buyout". That's not a society I want to live in.
We are post-scarcity in the labor market for all unskilled and easily trainable jobs. We are dangerously close to post-scarcity for a lot of skilled labor. That scares me. I want to selfishly redefine what "contributes to society" means because I fear we need to do that sooner rather than later. We don't all want to be standing in lines in government offices, for the rest of our days, filling out forms demanding us to prove our worth as people. It would be better if we could assume people are worth something as a baseline.
In some sense, people depend on society to maintain their quality of life and provide for a subset of their needs; people also contribute to society and maintain it in turn. You're talking about cutting out the latter and keeping the former without replacing it with anything to support yourself with, which makes you completely dependent on society to provide everything for you, not just some things.
I didn't and I don't think most people do look down on those that cannot find work because there is no work to be found. Your 'I want to be able to choose not to work despite having the opportunity to work' perspective, though - that I look down on.
By the way, if you decided to work for yourself - to grow your own food, live off the land, and trade your labor specifically for your own sustenance, you could probably do it. That's a choice you continuously make.
>If capitalism needs more hands on deck, it can pay for them. It's time to stop assuming everyone should work, and let the market tell us why we should work (and how much it is willing to pay to let that work get done).
It already does do that. I don't volunteer at my job, I'm paid for my labor. The market tells you why you should work by pricing goods. You should work so that you can afford goods and services that improve your life. If you don't want any of those things, that's fine, but there's an argument to be had about whether my labor should subsidize your lack of it.
>companies don't have to do right by us, because they aren't our societies, they don't need us, they don't depend on us. The basic problem is that we are post-scarcity in the labor market, and companies have a "free lunch" by this "morality" that basic subsidence should be tied to some nominal value of productivity that they decide based on a quarter-to-quarter bottom line.
This is a weird argument to me, because companies absolutely depend on their workers. There are deficiencies in the labor market that cause certain labor to be valued at a higher rate than others; companies routinely hire from their competitors and give their workers raises or better offers. That's the labor market at work. It's not a free lunch.
>I think society should invest more directly in its people.
I agree. I think subsidized education is a pretty good thing, and it has positive impacts on society which is why we continue to do it. 'Investing in people' doesn't mean paying you to do nothing, though; that'd be a pretty terrible investment.