I often daydream about how society would be if we were not forced by society to pigeon hole ourselves into a specialized career for maximizing the profits of capitalists, and sell most of our time for it.
The idea of creating an entire identity for you around your “career” and only specializing in one thing would be ridiculous in another universe. Humans have so much natural potential for breadth, but that is just not compatible with capitalism.
This is evident with how most people develop “hobbies” outside of work, like wood working, gardening, electronics, music, etc. This idea of separating “hobbies” and the thing we do most of our lives (work) is ridiculous.
Here’s how my world could be different if I owned my time and dedicated it to the benefit of my own and my community instead of capitalists:
- more reading, learning and excusing knowledge with others.
- learn more handy work, like plumbing and wood working. I love customizing my own home!
- more gardening
- participate in the transportation system (picking up shifts to drive a bus for example)
- become a tour guide for my city
- cook and bake for my neighbors
- academic research
- open source software (and non-software) contributions
- pick up shifts at a café and make coffee, tea and smoothies for people
- pick up shifts to clean up public spaces, such as parks or my own neighborhood
- participate in more than one “professions”. I studied one type of engineering but work in a completely different engineering. This already proves I can do both, so why not do both and others?
Humans do not like the same thing over and over every day. It’s unnatural. But somehow we revolve our whole livelihood around if.
Not everyone has to farm and hunt. It was more than 200,000 years ago that humanity figured out how not to get all of us to farm and hunt, way before capitalism ever was a thing.
Speicalization in the context I used does not mean “be an expert at a thing”. It means “Spend most of your time doing just that one thing”. I can see why you were confused, I think my use of “pigeon-holed” was probably better than specializetion.
We don’t actually know when money started so it’s hard to say.
But even before money the person with more stuff could acquire more stuff through barter. Even if they weren’t using money it’s still basically capitalism.
Barter being the predecessor of money is actually false, and has never been supported with sufficient evidence.
From what anthropology tells us, money was introduced by force, not by a natural tendency for humans to barter, and wanting a better way to do it.
And no, that isn’t “basically capitalism”. No “capital” involved here in the sense of capitalism.
Yes we do, money started around temple societies in the fertile crescent to control people and keep them centrally located.
Also, there is no known historical example of a purely barter economy. What’s known now is everything tended to work on an informal gift/reputation economy.
Until money came along, was typically forced upon people, and then if the money system failed, people fell back to a barter system. Neither money or barter are natural for the vast majority of human time and society
The invention of currency basically just introduced universal fungibility to a communities barter system by adding 1 additional step.
It’s a good step. You need something else to trade if the guy that raises chickens needs medicine and the pharmacist doesn’t want chicken products.
Specialization has always been a thing. Probably more so before. A carpenter wouldn’t just wake up and “nah, I’d rather work with pottery today”. The carpenter probably became a carpenter because their parents passed on their carpentering skills to them, so that’s what they do until they die.
Hi Mr Smith, another loaf of your god awful bread please.
I think you misunderstood my comment. I was saying that maybe my use of specialization is incorrect here.
But the same result would occur in socialism. Even communism. I don’t know what you expect to happen in any societal economic structure that would suddenly give you the freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want. Jobs existed the same way all the way back then as they do now. And that was the birth of capitalism, not before it. Most didn’t own their land. It belonged to a king or emperor. Sure there are exceptions and caveats, but to say capitalism didn’t exist back then isn’t accurate. Capitalism isn’t bad. It’s how it’s implemented that makes it awful. I think we need to migrate to socialism via capitalism. But it requires winning of the minds of the populace and that won’t happen until folks have an accurate understanding of both capitalism and whatever system you want them to transition to. I don’t even know what system you’re supporting with your question. It sounds like you’re trying to describe some sort of star trek utopia that supposedly is advanced beyond economic systems (yet how many episodes revolved around trade deals between planets and races… but I digress).
Are you arguing that ancient societies had “jobs”, and in the same way that we do nowadays? I don’t intend to be rude (and sorry if I come off that way), but a simple Google search will tell you that’s false, but I’d be glad to cite you exact resources as well.
While the exact beginning of capitalism may be a subject of a little debate, no expert on the matter believes it goes that far back. Again, simple Google search reveals it, and I’ll be glad to cite you resources if you want.
This wasn’t always true. There was a time that preceded class society. And not all class society is capitalism.
It is the scientific consensus that it did not.
Not sure what you mean here. Can you please elaborate?
It is simple. Instead of orienting society around profits and capital, we orient it around bettering the human condition. Instead of working our days to generate more profit for capitalists in exchange for money to buy necessities, we work to serve our interests and our own communities. So much wasted labor is suddenly removed.