The most commonly asked question:

So when debating reactionaries, the ask a question which seems so uninteresting I have never thought about it in detail before.
"If someone don't work, why do you wanna give 'em free shit?" (Keep in mind this question is in the context of lower phase Communism.)
If someone just stays at home (Not elderly, disabled, etc.) what's the protocol for this? Do we let them do it for a certain amount of time and then make them stop? Do we let them do it until a case of mass unemployment/scarcity? Do we do it no matter what at the most basic level? Do we do nothing? What do we do?

Declare it to be illegal to unemployed. Problem solved.

to be*

So does that mean putting them in the most basic living conditions?
As in, putting them only in the most basic living conditions minus some freedoms?

How extreme is the shortage of labor? All of the people who don't want to be helpful are welcome to carry on as they please if they don't mind dining on nutrient gruel, receiving plain t-shirts and cheapo jeans when they need clothing, and not receiving any media but communist theoretical works at least until such time as automation advances to where there simply aren't any more outlets for labor to be found

Living conditions should be equal for everybody with boni for people who achieve something great. Not working in socialism is anti-solidarity. Remember that socialism is also the reduction of working hours, and if you have unemployment, those who work will have to work longer. I don't really see why someone would not want to work though, as jobs in the respective fields are guaranteed. Usually, humans strive for some sort of meaning in life.

Are you saying that mass unemployment/scarcity wouldn't happen or are you not answering? I don't think people would work completely voluntarily until higher phase Communism.

Real talk: We wait until capitalism creates a super-AI that implements Communism by making wage labor obsolete.

bump

ah yes, i too am an accelerationist

We will do as we see fit.

So you'd have reasonably miserable unemployment and basically 'motivate' them with the promise of more and better stuff? This reminds me of a specific system I can't seem to recall right now.


There's no going around full employment.

...

If youu don't give them what they need they will just take it. What ia traditionally known as work is done away with in socialism. People will just do what they like. Most of the time it's still contributing to society

By "we" I meant society, not individuals. Society will deal with individuals as it sees fit.

such an interesting ontological problematic you brought up

Really?

If they don't like the idea of giving free shit to people who do not work, ask them why do they support a system that allows people to accumulate absurd amount of money by not producing a single dollar of value.
It's much simpler to convince someone if you make them see by themselves the contradictions in their arguments by making the right questions.

there is no reason not to employ the full workforce unless you are trying to keep labour cost down, which is not something a socialist system would be concerned with. Do you think there's not enough work? There's plenty of work that society needs that is not addressed because it would not provide a livable wage. There is no scarcity of jobs, only of profitable ones.
The same thing for scarcity. The vast majority of scarcity in the modern world is artificial scarcity. We produce something like 20% more food that what we need to satisfy all 7.5 billion people and yet 40% of the population is malnourished. There is no natural scarcity of resources, only artificial scarcity.
The digital industry is based entirely on artificial scarcity, there's literally zero cost of production for software yet it is made artificially scarce purely to extract profit from it.
The medical industry is a less extreme but still a good example.
Our world is full of scarcity because it would not work without it, so we employ a lot of our resources to keep our resources scarce.

People like you who learn to debate from the back of a Cracker Jack box deserve to be no-platformed.

Name and shame. If that doesn't work throw them in communist jail, which is the worst kind of jail.

Instead of pretending intellectualism please provide a reason the respinse is not good or a better rebuttal.

We do nothing, everyone has the right to survival. Nobody chose to be born. It's not like there's a shortage, we are already living in such an abundance that scarcity has to be maintained artificially. With the restructuring of productive forces for fulfilling actual human needs, finding and punishing these people will likely cost more than just letting them be.

Not if you take into account the protected/registered recipes for drugs, artificially bloated prices, etc. Good post otherwise.

le suicide

A civilization worthy of that name lifts everyone higher. If it won't even guarantee basic survival it's garbage.

what I meant with less extreme is that the production cost of new drugs is as low as you want but not insignificant, while the "production cost" of software is literally the current needed to keep the PC alive.
Other than that, yes of course the medical industry is chock full of artificial scarcity.

There's also a more interesting aspect to this: software demanding better hardware tech every year. So if you look at it from a higher vantage point you can include in the software's "production cost" the demand it places on physical production.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I get the impression this messes with the usual temporal order of the LTV, allowing to conceptualize one aspect of the production process (software development) as generating non-monetary debt. It's virtuality would justify this, imo.

I'm not an expert on LTV, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
While I think you are right on this it can also be argued that hardware requirements are not strictly requirements. On a theoretical level computers being (limited) universal Turing machines they are capable of running any software. Of course in reality there are hardware limitations that prevent software to work on some machines.

Also as I said before software is not bound (not directly at least) to physical restraints as far as production goes so there is no pragmatical justification to maintain an artificial scarcity for software outside recuperating the development costs. Even this can be argued however, as there is plenty of free/open source software.

If the society decides to give them free shit then they can have it.
No, we aren't at a point where we can give people what they want, society has to progress first. Kind of like giving a baby toys VS. a ten year old, one understands the value and accepts it, one only wants more. Society must develop from the baby before it can accept the gibs.
No.
If work has to be done, and there are people not working, they will be made to work through incentives.

If they don’t work, i.e. contribute, then they will recieve nothing in return.