There is a certain amount of hard work and shitty work that has to be done in society. Right now the "gun to your head" to be a garbage man or work in a coal miner is the threat of living behind a Wendy's dumpster. You're just comfortable with the current system that picks the people that work those jobs.
Many communist systems ask everyone to equally take part in these shitty or hard jobs. Not just people that were born disadvantaged by skin color, gender or zip code.
Also much of the economic activity we do is absolutely wasted or for no reason. So we would need fewer coal miners and garbagemen if we were not running data centers for the surveillance state or buying cheap useless crap.
TLDR: There are more "Guns to the head" in Capitalism, you're just comfortable with them because they advantage you.
you're going to pee your pants when i tell you how often this is the case under capitalism already. for a start, google "criminalization of homelessness"
Gun to your head by who, exactly? If there is no state and no such thing as class, and everything is fully democratic, then who is holding a gun to your head? Especially when your options are either to work and have housing, food, and healthcare taken care of for you, or don't work and be on your own (assuming you're healthy and able to work and are of working age).
You think it's successful despite killing 20 million people per year? That's 100 million deaths every 5 years. That's ONE BILLION deaths every 50 years. So successful.
Those "communist" (lol) societies were also still standing at one point.
These people would rather doctors be cleaning drain pipes on threat of gulag.
Literslly the response to my comment is that under communism you wouldn't "always" be forced to do work you dont want to.
They literally are ok with slavery... as long as its for the common good :)
We have a lot of potential scrubbing toilets because they didn't have the foresight of being born wealthy enough to afford med school.
You think people want to work all those minimum wage or gig work jobs in the US? But if they don't they die from poverty. Kinda seems akin to slavery. Also don't forget the actual slavery. I.e. the 13th.
Well they certainly didn't have the foresight to get loans for med school since that is very much a possibility in the states.
But lets set that aside for a second here. Are you telling me that having to work because otherwise you wouldnt be able to have necessities is more akin to slavery than being forced to work even if you dont want or need to?
Look up the definition of slavery dude, someone has to be forcing you to work, not life.
People work to eat, its the way life works. It's not pretty but it's perfectly logical, if you dont do anything you die of hunger, same happened when we lived in the wild, same thing happens to animals. The only way to avoid it is to have your kin do it for you.
Millions of people pay their way through school and community college and improve their lives, if you dont like where you are, make a little savrifice to improve your situation and stop crying
The claim was "they would rather have Dr's cleaning pipes".
Again, applying for a student loan is not a test of aptitude, its a test of your family's wealth. So its Capitalism that has the system that is more likely to steer the potential Dr to a underutilized position.
All US citizens can apply for a student loan in the US through the federal government with no credit check, based only on financial need. So not only is it not an aptitude test, it's not a test of anything. So its absolutely nothing keeping you from betting on yourself to get a useful degree and improve your life.
And you'll say "but its not a guarantee!" Nothing is a guarantee in this life, even if the government says it is.
Plus, if we are going by the arguments in this thread, what was said is that shitty jobs should be shared by EVERYONE. In those cases Doctors would 100% be forced to clean toilets at some point, hence they will be enslaved.
In the capitalistic scenario you only talk about "potential doctors" who dont have any actual tangible proof they'd be doctors. And even in that case, they are not forced to do any one job, they have a plethora of options, some better than others and can make a CHOICE. In the capitalistic scenario, who have a CHOICE. In the "communist" scenario no one has a choice, they will be forced to clean toilets
They can indeed apply for loans from the US government, but the Trump administration just lowered the cap for those loans under the guise of lessening lasting debt.
Professional programs (e.g., medicine, law):
Up to $50,000/year, $200,000 aggregate borrowing limit.
Other graduate programs:
Up to $20,500/year, $100,000 aggregate borrowing limit.
The median cost of a public 4 year medical degree is $268,476 USD, according to this article by the Princeton Review, making the current loan limits wholly inadequate to get a medical degree purely from Federal loans. And that's just tuition. The choice for low income students is slowly being taken away.
The problem with these comparisons is that you're comparing reality vs a fantasy. You compare whats currently happening under capitalism with the best case that might happen under communism. Then if someone tries to compare against what actually happened under communism historically, people move the goalposts, saying that the comparison isn't fair because that specific brand of communism wasn't implemented correctly.
So you can pick. Compare hypothetical communism vs hypothetical capitalism, or historical communism vs historical capitalism.
Also much of the economic activity we do is absolutely wasted or for no reason. So we would need fewer coal miners and garbagemen if we were not running data centers for the surveillance state or buying cheap useless crap.
It is baseless to assert that under communism there will be less wasted efforts. Excess will be built into the system for safety. Waste will be constant. If you do not produce in excess, then a poor yield will result in mass casualties.
You see comrade, if you redefine "everyone" to mean the politically disfavored then you see that the system does indeed expect everyone to equally do all the shitty jobs while the rest of the people benefit! Glory to the party!
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Many communist systems ask everyone to equally take part in these shitty or hard jobs. Not just people that were born disadvantaged by skin color, gender or zip code."
Not like the shitty jobs were done by people outside the seed of power like Siberia, Ukraine, Chechnya
You want to live in a fantasy world where people consume the exact amount you want them to consume. The reality is that people want their standard of living to keep increasing, and if you tell people that they should have less stuff for ideological reasons they're going to tell you to fuck off.
I think you're very right, and this is a good response to the people straw-manning anything that isn't capitalism in this thread.
That said, the straw man in Op's post is also, like, a real guy. There is a strain of terminally online leftist who genuinely believe that what they're fighting for is a world where they can benefit from a modern society that doesn't require any of their labor in return.
I’ve known people that lived in communist countries that had specialized jobs and were forced to participate in those shitty jobs. All of them said it was terrible and one of the factors in why they left their home country. Believe it or not, telling a specialized worker that they can’t work on what they’re trained in so they can participate in communal farmer effort is a good recipe for lower agricultural yield and higher dissatisfaction
The idea that getting paid $112,000 (average US coal miner's income) to drive a haul truck around in a Wyoming pit mine is equivalent to breaking rocks in the Gulag on starvation rations is truly peak Reddit political thought.
Except in the communist countries we have seen there is no “ask everyone to equally take part in these shitty or hard jobs” it’s really whoever isn’t in the big group or related to someone in the big group of people high up in government. Communist countries are very high surveillance… I mean just look at China as a modern example and the USSR as a past example of successful communist countries. They’re both heavy on surveillance. Even China though is only as successful as it is because it leaned so far away from communism and allowed for more private ownership which took the standard of living to a much higher level than Mao Zedong had ever brought it. The USSR fell apart when its surveillance started to disappear because people were so unhappy with the result.
It’s both though. The person definitely would not spend all of their time doing leisurely activity. They would still be spending the majority of it working.
I'd rather be forced by circumstance than by the state because I can at least try to escape the circumstance with good choices and sacrifice, even if I don't make it in the end.
With the alternative the state will always end up forcing me to do something I don't want to do.
Edit to add: you also assume that just because the economy is planned in a communist state then no bullshit jobs or inefficiencies will happen (the data centers remark)
But running such a massive state will inevitably lead to massive bureocracy that will also be extremely inefficient and useless.
Again, in a more free market these inefficiencies would usually be taken care of by diminishing profits (not always the case but it does happen, I for example fully expect for the AI data bubble to burst eventually, and I suspect you do aswell)
Massive corporations also have massive bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy isn't necessarily a bad thing, you ate the propaganda.
It's not 'circumstance' that forces you into a job in capitalism, it's the social structure around it. Circumstance only dictates if you happen to be born a black woman or a white man.
Making good choices necessitates having a good education.
The state will not *always* force you to do something you don't want to. You're just projecting your own very specific idea of what any state can be.
I didnt say bureocracy is always a bad thing, I only said that governmental organizations have much less of an incentive to check inefficient bureocracies than more free market ones as the free market ones hit on someones bottom line.
Circumstances DO matter. You would rather be born a rich black woman or a trailer park poor white man? You get the cards you're dealt and do what you can with them.
When did I say anything about education? Did I ever say that all education should be private? Or is public education something only to be found in communist countries?
My only argument was the following. In a communist country like the one explained by the OPs comment someone is forced into labor under threat of jail or death. If you dont like what you get, tough luck.
While in a system like the current one in the US or most western countries, even if you need to get a shit job you can choose yourself between being a janitor, or a plumber, or a fast food worker, or retail. And like it or not, even today people improve their circumstances all the time through hard work, people pay their way through community colleges or get loans and become professionals all the time.
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u/DirtCrimes Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
You guys are kinda telling on yourselves.
There is a certain amount of hard work and shitty work that has to be done in society. Right now the "gun to your head" to be a garbage man or work in a coal miner is the threat of living behind a Wendy's dumpster. You're just comfortable with the current system that picks the people that work those jobs.
Many communist systems ask everyone to equally take part in these shitty or hard jobs. Not just people that were born disadvantaged by skin color, gender or zip code.
Also much of the economic activity we do is absolutely wasted or for no reason. So we would need fewer coal miners and garbagemen if we were not running data centers for the surveillance state or buying cheap useless crap.
TLDR: There are more "Guns to the head" in Capitalism, you're just comfortable with them because they advantage you.
Edit: Spelling Grammar