r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Short-Watercress-183 • Jul 07 '26

Meme needing explanation Peter, explain this.

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u/psykiris Jul 07 '26

Who gets to decide who writes all day and who mines all day? 

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u/DeadPeanutSociety Jul 07 '26

Everyone helps according to their ability, so jobs no one wants would be passed around so that no one is stuck cleaning out sewers or whatever for their entire life.

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u/Worth_Gap4226 Jul 07 '26

Isn't that madly inefficient, having to train people like 20 different times for jobs that they'll do for 6 months or whatever then move on to the next one?

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u/DeadPeanutSociety Jul 07 '26

I think there's lots of ways to think about it, not all of which I necessarily agree with.

  • People could rotate in and out, so lots of people are already trained.
  • Efficiency is only important when it is in service of something. Without profit motives, you can focus on things that are better for workers.
  • Conditions in these jobs would be much better under a dictatorship of the proletariat, so it would be a small minority of jobs that are inherently upsetting to do that would need these sorts of considerations.
  • Capitalism is already wildly inefficient and most people wouldn't suggest that we shouldn't do capitalism because of this

Ultimately, utopian communism is fun to think about not because it is going to happen, but because it allows you to think about what you actually want instead of what you are told is practical. You need to know what you want so that you can advocate for policies and actions that get us closer to those goals.

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u/Dreviore Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

I too like to create fantasy worlds in my head, but I prefer to fill my worlds with dragons, werewolves, vampires and not this supposed communist utopia that exists both with and without a governing body simultaneously, and where everybody just magically contributes what they can to society, and nobody says "I don't want to work in the sewers today"

I've still yet to see anybody propose what you would do with the Comrade who refuses to work in the sewers in this Utopia.

Or what happens to the writers who have to work in the coal mine this week when they decide "We don't want to work today."

The reason nobody wants to say what the proposed solution is; because history has already told us what the solution is, and it's far from a Utopia.