So, I just came across some dude spamming reddit with claims that we can solve climate change by reducing our production...but then pushing for a fricking JOB GUARANTEE of all things. Really. I hate how leftists try to shoehorn this into every discussion about climate change. Like, "you know what we really need? more jobs!"
And this wasn't even in the context of like a green new deal type program. Like that I kinda get. We can "create jobs" in alternative energy as an attempt to transition our grid to cleaner sources of energy. I dont support creating jobs for their own sake and see the GND as an overpriced and glorified jobs program, but I get the aim, and I do support some sort of climate package aimed at productively transitioning us away from fossil fuels.
But here's the thing. You have a problem where human activity is causing climate change, and what kind of activity are we talking about? I mean, we're talking about production. We're talking about work, about jobs. And these guys are like....LETS PUSH A JOB GUARANTEE even as they're talking about working less. To be fair, Im half convinced the dude was communist because he seemed to advocate for some sort of system of centralized planning or some crap as the government would have to coordinate production to let this work.
But let's face it. Most americans would explicitly reject that crap. Theres a reason a lot of rightoids reject climate change. Yeah some of it is ignorance, but a lot of it is because the implications are anti capitalist and because they see it as a bunch of communists trying to justify taking control of the economy and forcing communism on us. The public would never go for this sort of thing, it's a non starter, and tbqh, it's not even DESIRABLE to me.
Like, if we can talk about working less, WHY THE HECK WOULD WE INSIST ON GUARANTEEING JOBS?! Instead, what you do is break the link between work and income, you give people a UBI, as well as corresponding basic services like healthcare, education and housing, and then you make work voluntary and reduce working hours.
Like, I dont explicitly use my ideas to advocate for degrowth, but can they be repurposed for that? hell yeah. Would it be better than some weird communist approach to climate change? YES! Because it literally relies on capitalism and at most gently guiding humanity toward working less. if we break the link between work and income and shift the culture away from being obsessed with production and consumption, we can solve the problems with human activity just by....incentivizing people work less.
Im not saying the public would accept that. As we saw with COVID, the Karens and the right would still complain and of course the wealthy wouldnt like it because muh profits and probably do psy ops against that too. But my solution would lead to voluntary action.
You know, one thing I've noticed through my studies of capitalism. Capitalists fear that allowing people to work less will generate sentiment that undermines the entire system. It's like, they fear that if people learn there's more to life than working and consuming, people won't want to work and consume and the problem with capitalism will take care of itself. As productive capacities keep increasing, if we keep putting those productivity gains into maintaining the current output with less effort, we might not grow, and rich people might not profit. because these guys are obsessed with growth, as a result, they've kept us on a cycle of working the same amount for more and more output, and we havent had a reduction in the work week in almost 90 years as a result. We're 6x as productive per person as 100 years ago, but we work about as much. This is due to social engineering. We did this. We created this system. We can solve it without even needing to resort to communism. You take my current ideas, and ramp up the anti work aspects of them.
Like, as i implement my ideas, I basically just assume that people will want to work, and people will want to keep the economy growing and consuming, so I kind of curb my ambitions because I fully recognize that and quite frankly, my ideas can be scaled as we desire.
If we want to maintain a tranditional capitalist economy, we just maybe work a little less gradually and have a smaller UBI. But if we want to really put the brakes on the economy, we could just take my ideas and put them on steroids. Like instead of 25% working less and 75% growth or something, we could be like, nah, let's go full working less and no growth. We could do it. I wouldnt advise doing it, but if climate change forces that reality on us, well....it beats communism.
I just get irritated by these utopian thinkers who are like..."you know what we really need? a job guarnatee". We have the perfect excuse to get rid of work for good and we dont wanna take it because of stupid ideological bullcrap. Really, I just cant wrap my head around leftism sometimes because they just have such bad brainrot on this stuff sometimes.
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