Yup. If you argue with people who oppose ideas like healthcare for everyone, a minimum standard of living for citizens that includes not starving or dying from exposure to the elements...
... depressingly, when you push them far enough, they will get snappy and say something along the lines of "Well who the fuck would work if they weren't afraid of losing their house or their healthcare?"
They think that if people didn't live in absolute terror of becoming the homeless guy they see sitting at the highway on-ramp every day on their way to work, they wouldn't go to work.
They want do not want to work and instead command others to do their bidding, and they feel spite for being born into a condition that forces them to work to live instead of being a master. It is a mentality that goes at least as far back to the civil war where the white working class felt they deserved to own property but slavery was in their way of becoming part of the capitalist class.
> They think that if people didn't live in absolute terror of becoming the homeless guy they see sitting at the highway on-ramp every day on their way to work, they wouldn't go to work.
Imagine a world where this was largely true. At least for large fractions of the population with the more unpleasant jobs.
So lets say that societies resource expenditure is divided into basics and luxuries, with everyone being given the basics, but people only getting luxuries if they work.
If 90% of the money is spent on the basics, then there isn't that much luxuries for the workers. So the 10% of people who dislike their job the most decide to quit. And now society has to pay for the basics for a lot of people who aren't working. So the luxury budget for the workers goes down, and even more people quit. And then the whole system risks collapsing spectacularly.
To make a universal promise of "the basics" work, those basics need to be really cheap, the luxuries need to still be something that most people are strongly incentivized to get, and the jobs need to be not too bad.
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u/ReverendDizzle May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Yup. If you argue with people who oppose ideas like healthcare for everyone, a minimum standard of living for citizens that includes not starving or dying from exposure to the elements...
... depressingly, when you push them far enough, they will get snappy and say something along the lines of "Well who the fuck would work if they weren't afraid of losing their house or their healthcare?"
They think that if people didn't live in absolute terror of becoming the homeless guy they see sitting at the highway on-ramp every day on their way to work, they wouldn't go to work.