"Justin Schwartz" wrote:
> So, Pradeep, what's your solution to the free rider problem? Note that you
> do not need to assume that people would rather do nothing and have infinite
> desires to get this offthe ground. All you need is to assume that they would
> rather do less rather than more of relatively unpleasant but necessary work.
> I myself would rather tour European museums and hang out in cafes listening
> to jazz than even doing relatively pleasant work like writing legal briefs.
> Of course in the ideal communist world there would be now laws and no
> lawyers, so you can imagine my analytical skills being in demand for
> something ideal communists would like, whatever that might be. But the fact
> of the matter is that if any signifigant percentage of the populaution is
> like me,a nd I think, as a matter of fact thata lmost everyone is, but
> suppose it is only one third, then there will be a really significant free
> rider problem.
. . .
>
> But
> since much such work is fairly unpleasant, it wil face the same problem as
> any sort of unpleasant work, namely the free rider problem. My examples of
> idle drones were people like me who'd rather be boulevardiers, Malibu
> surfers and the like.
Look Justin this is just not a serious issue -- at least for those us who arent Ayn Rand nuts or geeks with a lot ideological baggage left over from their undergraduate econ. studies. The idea of any revolutionary struggle is to begin the process of reorganizing society and the economy along more rational and humane lines -- to phase out or at least minimize onerous, numbing and debilitating labour in order to maximize free time and leisure as much as is materially possible. Something about fishing in the morning and philosophizing in the evening, I believe. The point is that *we* will be able to decide collectively both the nature of work and the amount required -- democratically and collectively weighing the benifits with the costs of any particular economic plan or set of priorities. Now I am actually surprised that this thread went on for as long as it did before someone - Remick I believe- actually brought up what I thought would have been an obvious point -- that people should be able to engage in useful work or activities that they find meaningful and then share out whatever little of the distasteful work is left over. It wouldnt take much to get people to work such jobs if their obligations were light - a few hours say-- all the while still having access to the material comforts of modern life. In addition, given the fact that onerous labour would be shared out equitably and not relegated to socially powerless groups, labour -in its various forms- would lose much of the stigma it currently carries. Indeed much of what we call toil today would probably be a welcome diversion for us provided we weren't forced to engage in it day in and day out for forty odd years simply in order to survive. So the question Justin is why you're obsessing over non-issues like the threat posed by Malibu surfers-- what should at best be a marginal issue, at least for those of us in the advanced industrial world. Most of what discipline may be necessary can largely arise out of the fact that people are social beings(!) -- and subject to all sorts of social pressures due to their socialization -- and are not little ahistorical bundles of egotistical impulses ready to explode and devour all of civilization if given half a chance. Really! for you to obssess over the need for 'work-police' says more about youre hang-ups than about any serious or inherent barrier to a truly libertarian society.
Now I should probably qualify the above discussion and point out that what we're really speaking about is a relatively advanced economy here, and that a less developed economy with a lower technological and material base and marked by conditions of severe material scarcity, would probably require a greater amount of external discipline to be exerted on labour(preferably in the form of greater differential rewards based on effort) and would probably require a culture fostering a more intense 'internal' discipline -- expressed in the form of a more puritanical culture -- than one would expect in a post revolutionary society in the West.
>
> To those who say we'd do little harm, I say that we'd be parasites, and a
> society of parasites is unlike to survive. I preduct that the anarchist
> coercion free utopia would survive about six months before the people who
> did care about working organized a police force and swept us goof-offs out
> of the museums and off the beaches into the factories under the slogam
> heading this thread.
>
> jks
Man, I can almost see your face -- all scrunched up and severe-- as you typed out the words "coercion" and "police". You know if I were a Freudian Justin I'd probably point out the almost anal preoccupation you seem to have with goof-offs, malibu surfers and general layabouts -- but I'm not so i'll let it go at that.
signed pradeep, the-"I-dont-want-to-be-a-part-of-your-revolution-if-I-have-to-get-up-before-noon"-slacker
PS I'm really backlogged so I apologize to the Collective if this thread has already moved on to better things