I realise this is something that never goes down well, but I don't think you understand what Pratchett was getting at. Nobody is saying rich people don't spend money.
The point is to illustrate the cost of being poor vs. the cost of having more money / being rich. Much like renting vs. buying a property. Or renting vs. buying anything. Buying costs more upfront, and costs (often vastly) less in total. Renting is more expensive. My rent is up to double the mortgage of most of my peers (even with the mortgages going pear-shaped recently). And by "peers" I mean "other parents living in exactly the same village living in the same kinds of houses".
I do understand, and I spoke about it already :
Being poor can be more expensive than being just a tad bit above poor, because you're constantly forced to live in urgency, but that's all. That's a very small margin that is completely dwarfed by income differences.
As I point, it's somethning to think about when you consider how poverty pile up on people (and is an important and interesting aspect to discuss when such poverty is the subject), but it's nothing to do with the significant inequalities with wealthy people.
So you wouldn't be. I've already said I would be.
Like, the point isn't "how many people are like you and how many people are like me". The point is that we wouldn't need be churning out stuff just so someone could sell it. That sets a vastly lower requirement for production in the first place. Which means it's far easier and more manageable for people like myself to service that need, in that kind of society.
Don't get me wrong. I'd meet friends more than I currently do. I'd spend more time with my children. I'd play more video games. Because so much of my time is for the job, and not necessarily making the thing. Again, that's a product of the company needing to make money vs. the company needing to make a serviceable, reliable product.
Some people would do work even without incentive, I know. The problems are twofold :
1) How many of people would actually do it ? Because even with reduced production, you'd still need a lot of work hours to keep society working.
2) What would these people willing to work without incentive would actually work on ? As I pointed, I could imagine making software for fun in my spare time (and it would probably not be "useful" software that would help society as a whole ; even if it were, it might not be what is actually needed at the time). But I would certainly not want to spend my time on digging trenches for putting cables/sanitation in, or cleaning bathrooms, or filing administrative data. A common problem with organizations relying on voluntary people, is that they often come to do the glamorous/dreamed of part of the job, but not the dirty, grimmy aspects.
Efficient work require people who are experienced in it, and being organized to put the work where it's needed. It needs people being reliably here, putting in significant efforts into improving and their work not being wasted. That's a much higher bar to reach, and I don't see how a whole society would reach it just through people volunteering to do the dirty work. I'm not even going into the psychological factor of having a number of people doing nothing and living basically on the back of those who work.
To sum it up, relying on people being willing to work just looks like both a pipe dream and a nightmare to organize.
Why are we assuming that there would be no state backing of the value of money? Assuming money is still used, etc.
I mean, people already do favours for one another. So that's one model that already exists. For something more professional, what's to stop two people drawing up a contract and agreeing to it? The problem is the breaking of the contract - who would deal with that? But again we're back to "why would there not exist a body to deal with such things". Why are you assuming that seemingly everything around the concept of buying and selling goods would cease to exist? Maybe I'm just not knowledgeable enough either, but I think it's more that I'm missing something in your position on the topic.
As I said, I'm rather wondering than assuming. But money relying on law of offer and demand would badly fit a communist society, which is by essence opposed to the market. I don't see how a communist state could back up money while still keeping the communist aspect.
I don't understand. What incentives am I meant to be listing, exactly? Incentives for people to work in said theoretical society, or the incentives that the society itself offers?
I was focusing on the latter, but I obviously got mixed up.
The entire thread has been about incentive for people to work in said theoretical society. It's the very title and the very first sentence in the thread and when it comes to my posts I've also specifically asked about it.
So yes, once again I'm asking what would be the incentive
IN such a society, to do the required work (and also, farther down the road, how "required work" would be determined and how it could evolve).
If I am understanding your objection to the thesis is that organising society like roommates organise chores won’t scale and doesn’t account for what other people in this thread call “bastardy”. Is this correct?
I believe that most human bastardy is not inherent to human nature and is merely a consequence of us all growing up under a system that rewards many forms of bastardy and punishes most non-bastard behaviours. I think most people, given a better environment, would not be bastards.
I believe after a dozen or so generations under a less bastardly system we wouldn’t need stringent measures to ensure that things run smoothly because the total sum of human bastardy wouldn’t amount to much.
I understand that "bastardly" is used just because it refers to a fun description in the thread, but while it's an understandable term, it gives a wrong feeling (and lead to wrong conclusion) on what it actually represents.
It's not that humans are "bastards", it's that humans, as social animals produced by evolution, simply have a general balance between selfishness and altruism - the first one ensuring the survival of the being, the second ensuring the survival of the species. What this "bastardly" word represents, is not actual "evil", but simply the nebulous and variable limit of altruism, where individuals aren't endlessly empathetic and ready to self-sacrifice, and prioritize their own well-being over the more distant well-being of "others".
And this limit can vary wildly from people to people, some being actual bona fide "evil" (lacking empathy and without principle, ready to trample people to further their gain), other being downright heroic (helping others and taking great care in the consequence of their actions), but this limit is
VERY MUCH inherent to "human nature". Nurture can do a lot and change a lot, but we still are hardwired by what how our brain and hormones work, and it's both extremely childish and extremely dangerous to ignore that in order to imagine people as white sheets of paper that can be molded to fit one's preferred ideology.