Incentives under communism?

[Crezth]

Though it would be a lot to ask of someone back then to answer, conceivably the question could have been “slaves do all this work, how do we have a society without slaves to do all this work”

And someone could say “we could offer a wage for all work, and each worker could offer for each job, and leave if they so choose. We could have the entirety of our labor done this way”

And it would answer the question.

At least hypothetically; it was then required to fight a bloody war to make sure everyone understood that fact.

 

[Senethro]

Though it would be a lot to ask of someone back then to answer, conceivably the question could have been “slaves do all this work, how do we have a society without slaves to do all this work”

And someone could say “we could offer a wage for all work, and each worker could offer for each job, and leave if they so choose. We could have the entirety of our labor done this way”

And it would answer the question.

Pretty sure some people answered the question not dissimilarly.

 

[Hygro]

At least hypothetically; it was then required to fight a bloody war to make sure everyone understood that fact.

Ok but it's an analogy to our conversation. It's probably worth knowing what you are fighting for before the fight. Whether or not we would need wars to reach a greater emancipation is yet to be seen but we should certainly define the terms of emancipation.

Have there ever been systems of slavery successfully dismantled without war?

Pretty sure some people answered the question not dissimilarly.

I would imagine people had, though I have never learned any histories of wage-advocating abolitionists of antiquity.

But isn't that a bit concerning if it was easily imagined, something as robust as a universal incentive structure, before the modern one, in comparison to this discussion? Where the synthesis argument is "still wages but we give enough ownership to people they are self motivated to kick ass regardless of bounty"? Like that's obviously a great outcome, to have that would mean a different world if it was universal. It's already true for many today. It could still be accurately called capitalist if you want, however, as easily as it could socialism or communism.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Though it would be a lot to ask of someone back then to answer, conceivably the question could have been “slaves do all this work, how do we have a society without slaves to do all this work”

"Underpaid, often illegal wage labourers do all of our agriculture, but it's fine, because they have an incentive - the open fist of the state." would be then the equivalent in our modern day. is this what kind of society you want?

And someone could say “we could offer a wage for all work, and each worker could offer for each job, and leave if they so choose. We could have the entirety of our labor done this way”

Great! Real quick question:

1) Who creates the wages in their commodity form?
2) Who actually pays the wages out?
3) Why does the person in 2) pay out the wages?
4) What is the actual purpose of a wage? (Hint: It's not an incentive.)

Ok but it's an analogy to our conversation. It's probably worth knowing what you are fighting for before the fight. Whether or not we would need wars to reach a greater emancipation is yet to be seen but we should certainly define the terms of emancipation.

Have there ever been systems of slavery successfully dismantled without war?

History does not portend particularly optimistic terms to those who are not ready for a war. While the point of history isn't to serve as some unerring guide, the liberation of peoples has come at the point of a blade, or later on, a gun. The U.S Civil War was attempted to be compromised into nonexistence, but that only led to greater bloodshed; the Haitian Revolution's record speaks for itself, and so does the consequences & treatment of it.

There is no peaceful road to abolition, for slavery's a war against mankind in itself; but for the most part, even the most 'clean' solutions - the UK - have been quite, ah, well. Bloody. And equivocal; descendants of slavemasters got payouts by the state until 2013, and British factories did not refuse slave cotton just because of where it came from - though, to their few, singular credit, the British working classes eventually rejected that and refused to work during the U.S Civil War.

I would imagine people had, though I have never learned any histories of wage-advocating abolitionists of antiquity.

That would be incongruous, and you're muddying the waters here by speaking specifically about the antiquity - when we speak of wages, we talk always of contemporary capitalism. Which, of course, got rejected by the millions of dispossessed peasants - we have reams of evidence just how hard monetary taxation (as opposed to natural) hit them and led to their lands being stolen and whatnot.

But isn't that a bit concerning if it was easily imagined, something as robust as a universal incentive structure, before the modern one, in comparison to this discussion? Where the synthesis argument is "still wages but we give enough ownership to people they are self motivated to kick ass regardless of bounty"? Like that's obviously a great outcome, to have that would mean a different world. It could still be accurately called capitalist if you want, however, as easily as it could socialism or communism.

If we're talking about money or wages, in the feudal era (particularly in Europe), that would be, for the vast majority of people, untrue. Peasants likely would've went on for ages without exchanging currency, as they worked in a closed circuit economy limited to a certain locality. However, the issue was that, for long periods of time, that was rather limiting. After all, if your proceeds go to the landlord (whether secular or clerical), what incentive do you have to improve your lands?

If we're talking about an earlier period, there comes an issue. Namely, the fact that currency propagation required a stable empire - the Roman Empire being the ur-example in Europe - that could maintain trade, and more importantly, production; in this case, of course, that meant working the slaves as hard as you can to produce more. This hit an upper limit and caused no end of trouble.

If not, I'm just confused as to what you're getting to - some form of syndicalism? That has issues of its own. Namely, the fact that unions and worker cooperatives have a defensive (and very occasionally, only in times of great crisis, counteroffensive) functions. Most unions, at least in the West, are right now sectional, and that's of course, by necessity. But if the entire working class of a given state is united and is governing, the function of unions would not be to control the production, as that would be obsolete given the abovementioned fact, but mostly to regulate it. Union's sectionism would result into fighting who gets what, how they get this and that, and really be a fight between different sections of a class. Highly undesirable under a dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, which ones? This is just whataboutism and I don’t know how many times your Nazi-preferring self is going to have to be reminded that in fact your beloved wealthy democratic capitalist nations put lots of people in “gulags,” they just called them things like latifundia, native reservations, imperial protectorates, sugar plantations, coal mines, et cetera. So for you get all bent out of shape how uniquely bad communists are while you prove totally and completely incapable of qualifying what makes them so unique let alone so bad, well, I guess I’m made to think of the fact you’d rather half your countrymen be killed in concentration camps than share with them so… that’s why there’s gonna be a revolution, really. The contradictions. While you continue to feed from the trough of imperial plunder, the people who are actually feeding you and keeping you in electricity - the working masses of the world, not all white or nearly - will do what is necessary for their own survival.

Can't recall to much if tgat in the 20th century. Main point was you don't need to kill 15 odd million of your own citizens to achieve what Soviets did.

You also cherry pick the worst regimes Soviets weren't the worst and it was in every communism as attempted country. It's systematic

Don't recall Sweden or Finland killing 10% of the population.

 

[Gorbles]

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.

I agree. It was originally a throwaway reference around how it factors into peoples' motivations to work (in my opinion), so I'll cover this later on.

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.

So I'm going to move away from the incentives (and discuss that in the last part of my post) and towards the journey. First off, yes, it sounds like a pipe dream, because of the difference between the state we're theorycrafting about, and the state(s) any of us live under now. That's why it sounds like a pipe dream. That's the underlying tension in how believable it may or may not be, even to folks actively considering the possibilities. I get that.

However, the journey is what makes it possible. At the moment the tension between automation and jobs is that people need jobs to live, and automation can be used in place of peoples' jobs, making them (at times) unable to pay for the basics. This would not be an issue in said theoretical society. People would be catered for. Therefore, we could invest more in automation.

Is automation going to fix every problem? Not at all. I'm happy to theorise on a case-by-case basis, but it would fix a lot of problems. A lot of administrative work, when it's not created on purpose, can absolutely be automated. We already have the technology to create machine-readable forms. We already trust electronic signatures (in specific contexts where the contract between the people involved is a known quantity - I'm not going near something like "voting" for my argument here, just like "yes i have digitally signed this receipt from my secured email" kind of thing). These are things we can work at automating, or flat-out eliminating in the case of unnecessary bureaucracy. Cleaning, likewise.

So much innovation is stifled under capitalism because it's not profitable. Or because it threatens someone's existing bottom line. Call me an idealist, but with that removed, and combined with our ability to innovate (look at what we've achieved as a species within a century - a lot of which was done for the theoretical good, and some obviously done under more compromising circumstances, like for money or for a war effort).

Cleaning, again, there have been arguments to this throughout the thread. Folks want their places to be clean. The issue is public spaces, but even under capitalism I can tell you, nobody pays to fix public toilets up properly. At least here in the shining beacon of modernity that is the United Kingdom I'm happy to chalk it up to "why don't we try and see", because it's not exactly something that's solved now that would then not be solved under this new socialist-or-communist-society.

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).

Back to incentives, then. Toilets need to be cleaned. People (let's say) don't want to spend their time cleaning toilets, nobody wants to share a rota, etc. Let's assume any human-centric resolution this problem could theoretically have isn't going to work out.

We're really good at working out solutions for stuff we don't want to do. And with more free time, more minds are able to work out solutions to problems. That's why the matter of "incentive" needs a different framing to the society we currently live under. This stuff happens in stages, we don't immediately just somehow create the end state. I am confident that the species that inside of two centuries worked out computers, powered flight, space travel, splitting the atom, etc . . . can figure out a reasonable solution for sanitation. Because it's a shared problem. Everyone would feel the impact of poor sanitation. Redirecting even a fraction of humankind's innovative output would definitely come up with ideas. The lack of capitalism would also mean it wouldn't need to be profitable to be possible in the first place.

I'm not an expert in it. I can't tell you what that solution will look like. I can speculate at quite some length at what software would look like independent of capitalism, because that's my wheelhouse. Individuals cannot be reasonably, fairly, expected, to be able to model every single aspect of a theoretical system. But people have still, in this thread, including myself, at least tried to present plausible solutions, or paths to get to a point where a solution is possible.

The whole thing about "incentive" misses the point about what would and wouldn't be necessary in this hypothetical future. At the centre of it, your disagreement is with the amount of hours that are needed to "keep society going". You think it's a number that can't be reached without sufficient incentive, and only our current system, or some modified version, can provide that. Or, at the very least, communism (or socialism, even) cannot. That's probably more accurate. I think we're back to "nature" again, I don't know. Do you believe that humans need both a carrot and a stick to get things done? Or do you believe something different?

In my opinion, the people that are motivated to do the things that matter to them, and / or that they happen to specialise in, are all the incentive we need. I think we're an inherently industrious species. That's my view on incentive, generally speaking. Very high level.

I don't think we should worry about the ones who don't want to work. I'd be more concerned about those looking to sabotage the work of others, which we see in the here and now. The "bastardry" that keeps being mentioned. But again I don't think it's some unsolvable problem. It doesn't defeat the concept. I deal with people who are more concerned about how they look, than the actual work they do, all the time. They don't bring down the company I work at under capitalism (and indeed are often rewarded for presenting a successful image), so I don't think they'll bring down people working together to build whatever thing is being built, in the hypothetical future I'd like to see (in some form).

 

[Zardnaar]

I agree. It was originally a throwaway reference around how it factors into peoples' motivations to work (in my opinion), so I'll cover this later on.

So I'm going to move away from the incentives (and discuss that in the last part of my post) and towards the journey. First off, yes, it sounds like a pipe dream, because of the difference between the state we're theorycrafting about, and the state(s) any of us live under now. That's why it sounds like a pipe dream. That's the underlying tension in how believable it may or may not be, even to folks actively considering the possibilities. I get that.

However, the journey is what makes it possible. At the moment the tension between automation and jobs is that people need jobs to live, and automation can be used in place of peoples' jobs, making them (at times) unable to pay for the basics. This would not be an issue in said theoretical society. People would be catered for. Therefore, we could invest more in automation.

Is automation going to fix every problem? Not at all. I'm happy to theorise on a case-by-case basis, but it would fix a lot of problems. A lot of administrative work, when it's not created on purpose, can absolutely be automated. We already have the technology to create machine-readable forms. We already trust electronic signatures (in specific contexts where the contract between the people involved is a known quantity - I'm not going near something like "voting" for my argument here, just like "yes i have digitally signed this receipt from my secured email" kind of thing). These are things we can work at automating, or flat-out eliminating in the case of unnecessary bureaucracy. Cleaning, likewise.

So much innovation is stifled under capitalism because it's not profitable. Or because it threatens someone's existing bottom line. Call me an idealist, but with that removed, and combined with our ability to innovate (look at what we've achieved as a species within a century - a lot of which was done for the theoretical good, and some obviously done under more compromising circumstances, like for money or for a war effort).

Cleaning, again, there have been arguments to this throughout the thread. Folks want their places to be clean. The issue is public spaces, but even under capitalism I can tell you, nobody pays to fix public toilets up properly. At least here in the shining beacon of modernity that is the United Kingdom I'm happy to chalk it up to "why don't we try and see", because it's not exactly something that's solved now that would then not be solved under this new socialist-or-communist-society.

Back to incentives, then. Toilets need to be cleaned. People (let's say) don't want to spend their time cleaning toilets, nobody wants to share a rota, etc. Let's assume any human-centric resolution this problem could theoretically have isn't going to work out.

We're really good at working out solutions for stuff we don't want to do. And with more free time, more minds are able to work out solutions to problems. That's why the matter of "incentive" needs a different framing to the society we currently live under. This stuff happens in stages, we don't immediately just somehow create the end state. I am confident that the species that inside of two centuries worked out computers, powered flight, space travel, splitting the atom, etc . . . can figure out a reasonable solution for sanitation. Because it's a shared problem. Everyone would feel the impact of poor sanitation. Redirecting even a fraction of humankind's innovative output would definitely come up with ideas. The lack of capitalism would also mean it wouldn't need to be profitable to be possible in the first place.

I'm not an expert in it. I can't tell you what that solution will look like. I can speculate at quite some length at what software would look like independent of capitalism, because that's my wheelhouse. Individuals cannot be reasonably, fairly, expected, to be able to model every single aspect of a theoretical system. But people have still, in this thread, including myself, at least tried to present plausible solutions, or paths to get to a point where a solution is possible.

The whole thing about "incentive" misses the point about what would and wouldn't be necessary in this hypothetical future. At the centre of it, your disagreement is with the amount of hours that are needed to "keep society going". You think it's a number that can't be reached without sufficient incentive, and only our current system, or some modified version, can provide that. Or, at the very least, communism (or socialism, even) cannot. That's probably more accurate. I think we're back to "nature" again, I don't know. Do you believe that humans need both a carrot and a stick to get things done? Or do you believe something different?

In my opinion, the people that are motivated to do the things that matter to them, and / or that they happen to specialise in, are all the incentive we need. I think we're an inherently industrious species. That's my view on incentive, generally speaking. Very high level.

I don't think we should worry about the ones who don't want to work. I'd be more concerned about those looking to sabotage the work of others, which we see in the here and now. The "bastardry" that keeps being mentioned. But again I don't think it's some unsolvable problem. It doesn't defeat the concept. I deal with people who are more concerned about how they look, than the actual work they do, all the time. They don't bring down the company I work at under capitalism (and indeed are often rewarded for presenting a successful image), so I don't think they'll bring down people working together to build whatever thing is being built, in the hypothetical future I'd like to see (in some form).

You seen more socialist than communist.

I think a big part of the problem with this answer is we have plenty of examples where huma s are willing to live on there on filth.

It's not really until a state intervened tgat cities eg Rome and London had sewer systems.


People are more likely to keep there own area clean but plenty of slums they do that but public areas double as a dumping ground.

You need some form of local government to do that eg issue fines, use the police etc.

 

[Gorbles]

It's not really until a state intervened tgat cities eg Rome and London had sewer systems.

Plenty of Dark Age civilisations managed to keep themselves clean and healthy. The Vikings, for example.

I'm a bit lost as how to those are relevant examples nowadays though. Again, it seems like we're back to some weird tag of "human nature" being used to explain something that is in no way default to our nature.

You seen more socialist than communist.

And you regularly deride socialists as "champagne socialists", so?

You regularly argue against anything socialist as you have in this thread. "pie in the sky idealism" sound familiar?

So I'm sorry, but I don't really understand the point of you making the distinction, especially when I feel I sit somewhere between the two labels. I just suck at theory, so I find it hard to express at times.

 

[Zardnaar]

Plenty of Dark Age civilisations managed to keep themselves clean and healthy. The Vikings, for example.

I'm a bit lost as how to those are relevant examples nowadays though. Again, it seems like we're back to some weird tag of "human nature" being used to explain something that is in no way default to our nature.

And you regularly deride socialists as "champagne socialists", so?

You regularly argue against anything socialist as you have in this thread. "pie in the sky idealism" sound familiar?

So I'm sorry, but I don't really understand the point of you making the distinction, especially when I feel I sit somewhere between the two labels. I just suck at theory, so I find it hard to express at times.

You don't seem the revolutionary type.

Champagne Socialist is your urban liberal type. Here they basically run the Labour party.

Hearts in right place but they just tinker. Bit of cash here little bit there but seem incapable of understanding or fixing the big issues. They specifically ruled out a tax hike on the rich. With a complete majority in a proportional system.

Eg here its cost of living and rent/housing crisis. So they push GST off vegetables, free dental for under 30 and Maori Co covernance with 3 waters (and botch explaining it).

Greens push social policy so once again do nothing but they're a bit more aggressive about raising tax at least.

Labour's being murdered at the polls and their bog policy's mostly landed like a wet fart. Tax brackets haven't been adjusted in over a decade so minimum wage almost hits the next highest bracket.

Still an improvement over UK Labour I suppose. Here the "working man's party" is basically run by upper middle class or better type back grounds. Only 1/120 MPs come from a blue collar background and only 6 or 7 of those 120 don't have property portfolio's (and no capital gains tax for some reason).

That's your champagne socialists. But diversity they're spot on for that. Yay?

In American terms I respect Bernie Sanders and AOC for than or collection of clowns. Maybe we need AOC here left can't win with a male (since 1987) and right can't win with a female (ever) it seems.

 

[Gorbles]

You don't seem the revolutionary type.

I bet you say that to all the boys.

The reality is I have no idea how I'll react to actual material circumstances. I know how I want to react, and that's good enough for me for now.

Champagne Socialist is your urban liberal type. Here they basically run the Labour party.

It's funny how you seem to think that rural folk are inherently hardworking, working class farmer types, and not people sipping literal champagne in their villa houses because they've voted Conservative (in the UK) for the past 50 years.

But yes, you think "socialist" in some fashion equals "liberal". That's probably a part of the problem, and again why the labels you assign to me are pretty meaningless. Sorry again.

 

[Zardnaar]

I bet you say that to all the boys.

The reality is I have no idea how I'll react to actual material circumstances. I know how I want to react, and that's good enough for me for now.

It's funny how you seem to think that rural folk are inherently hardworking, working class farmer types, and not people sipping literal champagne in their villa houses because they've voted Conservative (in the UK) for the past 50 years.

But yes, you think "socialist" in some fashion equals "liberal". That's probably a part of the problem, and again why the labels you assign to me are pretty meaningless. Sorry again.

I wasn't labeling you one.

Rich rural folk aren't champagne socialists generally they're not liberals most of the time.

Mostly it means they're out of touch and have never worked a blue collar job outside of maybe collage. They've gone to university and straight into politics or white collar job from a middle class or better back ground.

Our former PM was from a farming background (average farm here 7 million dollars), went straight into politics interning for Tony Blair, came back here and entered parliament.

Think she worked in a fish and chip shop in high school. PM before her was worth 20 million. Big on theory no real world experience really at least working class.

Similar thing here as UK. Rural goes blue, urban goes read but it's proportional here so it's swing voters vs swing electorates.

Political class in most countries is increasingly out of touch. Happens outside democracies as well.

That leader of NZ First. He was a prodigy of Muldoon. Muldoon got voted out 1984. Not a champagne socialist but out of touch. Ones on the right don't even pretend anymore.

 

[Gorbles]

Rich rural folk aren't champagne socialists generally they're not liberals most of the time.

I'm not saying rich folk are

I was commenting on your stereotyping of urban liberals when "urban" actually has more working class / blue collar jobs than "rural" does a lot of the time (simply by the maths of population density alone, perhaps if you adjust for density NZ is all individual family farms and no dedicated agtech / larger business types).

I know you mean "out of touch". I know exactly what you mean by "champagne socialist". But it doesn't matter if you weren't labelling me one, because you do by generalising every single time you talk about CFC OT posters and how they've never worked on a farm or some nonsense.

Which is why it doesn't matter if I'm a socialist or a communist. The label you give me doesn't matter, because you're going to argue nomatter what, and you're going to take potshots at my experience nomatter what.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm not saying rich folk are

I was commenting on your stereotyping of urban liberals when "urban" actually has more working class / blue collar jobs than "rural" does a lot of the time (simply by the maths of population density alone, perhaps if you adjust for density NZ is all individual family farms and no dedicated agtech / larger business types).

I know you mean "out of touch". I know exactly what you mean by "champagne socialist". But it doesn't matter if you weren't labelling me one, because you do by generalising every single time you talk about CFC OT posters and how they've never worked on a farm or some nonsense.

Which is why it doesn't matter if I'm a socialist or a communist. The label you give me doesn't matter, because you're going to argue nomatter what, and you're going to take potshots at my experience nomatter what.

It's somewhat relevant to the thread though. Producing food is the ne big weakness in Communusm as attempted.

Ideal communism in factories is make more consumer goods vs tanks.

Someone has to do the drudge work though and the farm work and no its not 100% mechanized espicially produce and fruit.

At least you answered you were the only one. I don't mind drudge work as such but the pay has to make it worth it (double minimum wage, time and a half and double time rates etc).

And the really bad jobs I woukd do again for what was offered and sone jobs woukd be a hard no or a one off type deal at absurd rate no one woukd pay (Mr Farmer want me to unload your salt container weeks pay or do it yourself)

 

[uppi]

In my opinion, the people that are motivated to do the things that matter to them, and / or that they happen to specialise in, are all the incentive we need. I think we're an inherently industrious species. That's my view on incentive, generally speaking. Very high level.

In my opinion this is not sufficient. I guess that is the fundamental disagreement and you won't get my support for anything that is based on this assumption.

 

[Senethro]

Why does the idea of 20 hour weeks for "bad" jobs keep plinking off some peoples ears?

 

[Zardnaar]

Why does the idea of 20 hour weeks for "bad" jobs keep plinking off some peoples ears?

For some of tge bad jobs you cant really di that.

It woukd cost you twice as much or in Communist system something similar where you have 2-3 people doing the job one could do.

There's probably not enough labour available to get 2 people to do the job of 1.

You still have to pay one way or another in time, labour, resources etc.

You also have to train twice as many people.

 

[Gorbles]

In my opinion this is not sufficient. I guess that is the fundamental disagreement and you won't get my support for anything that is based on this assumption.

Sure. Would you mind explaining why not?

I'm not saying "and we then agree forever", just trying to understand the perspective better.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Life expectancy is not the best parameter to criticize USSR.
The only time in Russian history when it reached highest developed world standards in life expectancy, was 1970-s.

For those that choose to work in remote mining towns of the Soviet Union, life was much shorter
And Soviet style management for waste, pollution resulted in highest cancer rates
Of course its Soviet so they kept quiet

I would also take most Soviet claims with skepticism
There seem to be problems with the Soviet data, that dont line up, perhaps certain minorities got the very short end of the stick again

Davis is now England's leading authority on Soviet health care, Feshbach the foremost American expert on Soviet population trends. Their study is based on data not from spy satellites, intelligence agencies, or “think tanks,” but rather from reports released by the Soviets themselves.
nearly every age group in the Soviet Union had higher death rates in 1975, the last year in which such figures were published, than in 1960. For men and women over thirty, trends were particularly harsh. Death rates jumped almost 20 percent for people in their fifties, and by more than 30 percent for those in their forties
Measured by the health of its people, the Soviet Union is no longer a developed nation. Caloric intake, educational attainment, and the ratio of doctors to people all seem to be higher in the USSR than in Western Europe, and yet in the USSR life expectancy is six years lower, and its infant mortality rate three times as high. There is not a single country in all of Europe, in fact, in which lives are so short, or babies' death rates so high—not even impoverished, half-civilized Albania.10 In the realm of health, the Soviet Union's peers are to be found in Latin America and Asia

The Health Crisis in the USSR*

Review of Rising Infant Mortality in the USSR in the 1970s By Christopher Davis and Murray Feshbach, United States Bureau of the Census. Series P-95, No 74

academic.oup.com

 

[Senethro]

For some of tge bad jobs you cant really di that.

It woukd cost you twice as much or in Communist system something similar where you have 2-3 people doing the job one could do.

There's probably not enough labour available to get 2 people to do the job of 1.

You still have to pay one way or another in time, labour, resources etc.

You also have to train twice as many people.

So? Why is any of that insurmountable?

Edit: this just reads to me like a guy asking where the whips are of an abolitionist because he cannot/is reluctant to conceive of labour without whips.

 

[Zardnaar]

So? Why is any of that insurmountable?

They tried that already. There's a reason things fell apart.

There's lots of practical things Marx didn't consider. Any system anywhere is still going to be constraints by manpower, available resources etc.

Capitalism could pay you Double for example which is much the same as 20 hour week.

Since you have to essentially invent droiids you can't have have them do tge drudge work and there's not enough labour to employ 2-1.

And a lot of drudge work is location dependent and not enough people want to move there.