this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
1155 points (98.2% liked)

Anarchism

2800 readers
7 users here now

Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.


Other anarchist comms


Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Squirrelsdrivemenuts@lemmy.world 140 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I know someone like that who cannot keep a job because of autism and health issues. Luckily she lives in a functioning country and gets state support including money and guidance. She is the regional pet/pony/alpaca carer and her house is always filled with animals from people on holiday or sick animals from people with full time jobs. She also notifies all the local farmers if one of their animals has an issue.

[–] yyprum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 weeks ago

That's awesome! And I can entirely relate but my ADHD / autism isn't so bad I can't keep a job, but now with hindsight if could choose career path again I would leave the tech world of computers to work with animals. Instead I keep working in tech to afford filling my house with animals (at least as I work remotely I can spend a lot of time with them). Dogs, cats, fish, snakes, amphibians, parrots, ...

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 94 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

I would literally be the jack of all trades

I'd happily do something completely different every couple of weeks

Not very practical with a 3 month notice period IRL

.... And yeah the whole needing to work to not die thing

[–] Medic8teMe@lemmy.ca 37 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Im 51. I've done this my entire life. My resume is vast and strange.

[–] kindernacht@lemmy.world 32 points 2 weeks ago

What's this gap in your resume? Oh, that's the two years I was a jeweler. What about this one? That time I managed a retail store. But you're applying for a manufacturing position sir. Yes, that's why I only left the relevant bits on the resume, otherwise it would be 7 pages long and you wouldn't be seeing me now.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm more or less a professional handyman, it can be done

[–] alk@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Hey can you come over and install smart switches in my house, figure out what 6 light switches that control nothing are connected to, and find out where the 24 cut ethernet cables in my garage go? I'll pay you in setting up a home server, playing video games with you, or letting you pet my cat.

[–] Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Lol, I have rejiggered a mess of Ethernet cables in my lifetime for sure

[–] CannonFodder@lemmy.world 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ah 'rejiggered'. The man knows what he's talking about about.

It's the only way to handle something thats gone squeehawed or, Satan forbid, cattywampus.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Don't forget to take your medication today.

[–] PunnyName@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago

So the capitalist masters can keep me contained‽

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 63 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

I work at a tiny 10 person non-profit. I am by far the most computer literate person here by an order of magnitude, given my completely wasted software engineering degree. I offered in my downtime at work to fix a bunch of laptops used by our kids in the after school program that were malfunctioning in some way or another.

I was told to stick to my job description by our Executive Director, and that they'd contact an external IT person to deal with it. I'm an Admin Assistant, which TBH kind of means I wear many hats anyway so my job description is very broad...

So here I am, twiddling my thumbs, posting on Lemmy instead.

Its not only giant corporations. Its infected every modern manager/executive brain. And I want to say, the executive director at my work I consider "one of the good executives". At least by comparison.

(My immediate superior I like... less. She'll do something wrong, I'll try to fix it, and I'll get reprimanded for trying to fix it.)

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

one of the good executives

...

10 person non-profit.

This sounds incredibly top-heavy for such a small company. The fact that you got micro-managed like that in such a rediculously small outfit is kind of unheard of, frankly. Usually small companies are the exact opposite, where there's one owner/operator, the job titles are largely made-up, and everyone just gets everything done because there's usually not enough expertise-hours to go around to solo every task.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] MeatPilot@sh.itjust.works 43 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Japan sort of has that thing going.

Ningen Kokuhō or Living National Treasures get paid by the government just to keep doing something culturally significant. Like making clay pots or arrows using traditional techniques. Preserving Kabuki or performing arts.

Honestly it's amazing to recognize the significance oby supporting masters of certain crafts. Otherwise some might not find it financially sustainable and cut corners, well this allows them to keep traditions and preserve valuable techniques.

[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 18 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Can we do this for Primitive Technology guy so he can go make iron in the woods full time?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago (25 children)

I'm a big fan of the concept of an universal basic income. Where everyone gets ~1000€ every month from the government. For children, the parents get the money.

And I mean everyone. Every legal resident. Including billionaires.

To finance it I would tax both income and capital gains at ~50%. From the very first € you earn.

The net tax load on most people would not actually change much. But it completely gets rid of situations where if people work more, loose their benefits and end up with less.

1000€ should be just about enough to life a frugal lifestyle. A flat with a partner or flatmate in a small town. Produce to cook a flexitarian diet. A public transport pass and a bicycle. A Samsung Galaxy A17 with an internet plan. And all those other real necessities of life.

If people want luxuries, they will still have to work. Someone still has to produce those consumables after all. But everyone should be able to get all of their basic necessities covered.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 9 points 1 week ago (16 children)

it's a good idea but it requires that costs don't adapt. that 800€ apartment you wanted? well since you're already getting a subsidy it's now 1600€. after all, if you discount the subsidy it's cheaper!

[–] bufalo1973@piefed.social 1 points 4 days ago

Public cheap housing, public cheap supermarkets, public free universal health system and public free universal education system.

Free as in payed by taxes.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Exactly. What's to keep the sellers from just jacking everything up?

College was expensive, but affordable, until the government made it easier to get student loans. Colleges responded by wildly jacking up their prices, and now you literally have to voluntarily take on a lifetime of debt to get a college degree for a job that probably won't cover the cost of your loan. And what did the government do? They went right along with it, and demand repayment before anything else.

They recently started a benefit program with Medicare that gives you some money each month to buy health related items in drugstores and such, and they responded by jacking up the prices in Walgreens and CVS.

I'm all for UBI as well, but it has to comes with price controls so the corporate parasites don't just take it all. UBI Gouging has to be a harshly enforced crime.

[–] RamenJunkie@midwest.social 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

What we need is to jail people who do exploitive shit like this. Just like any other harmful acticity we jail people for.

Or maybe jusr, OP's 50% tax deal ramps up the more acxumulated wealth and property you have. Tonstrongly discourage that practice. Like sure, you exploited your rent holdings and you are a ten millionaire. But now we are taxing you at 100% so we can bump people's UBI subsidy up enough to account for your exploitation.

Good job, you accomplished nothing in the end.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (14 replies)
[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago

Im already taxed like 20% in the US and see nothing for it. May as well do 50 and actualy get something of value for society

load more comments (23 replies)
[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 33 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

Sounds a bit naive on paper.

But thinking about it, I want to fact-check wikipedia sources for a living. Also make tools to automate shit. Also I fucking love assembling and fixing furniture so I could do that too.

No need to even pay. As long as I am not homeless or starving to death I would be happy and fulfilled doing those kind of work.

Tho I do think doctors and teachers etc should still make some extra money for the years of expertise before even starting the work.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's a good thing I'm a wage slave, because otherwise, I'd build the Omnissiah.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] phanto@lemmy.ca 32 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

I obsessively/compulsively update and optimize computers. I see a missing driver or BIOS update not installed? A dusty CPU Fan? A security alert? I fix. I literally just went to bed after running "sudo dnf update -y && Sudo flatpak upgrade -y" on my wife's laptop that she doesn't even use! Thankfully, my work lets me tinker on machines all day, every day, and nobody cares if a side project shows up on the bench every now and then. I would do it for free if I didn't need the money. When I'm not at work, I do IT for family, and I volunteer at the library. I don't even game anymore, I self host and tinker. Hell, I spend more time mucking with Jellyfin than watching media. There are people like that. We exist.

[–] BanMe@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago

I was like this, it eventually got kind of boring, now I'm learning beekeeping and old clock repair in the 7.5 hours a day leftover now that I've automated my job. Sorry "waiting for a maintenance window to do a server migration" or whatever it is people think I do.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The problem is that a system like that would benefit a lot of people instead of just the parasitic owner class.

[–] MBech@feddit.dk 10 points 1 week ago

We can't just go around, doing stuff, without our ~~evil~~ divine overlords earning their share! It simply wouldn't be fair to our corporate slave-owners.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] quips@slrpnk.net 24 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

This is why a ubi is so essential when society evolves to a post scarcity state.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I'd recommend reading The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin if you're interested in an in-depth depiction of how an egalitarian stateless society could function without money.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

Idk, man. This reads like something I'd get from a Homeschool Mom who thinks her kids are being held back by their schools' demand to learn advanced literacy and mathematics and physical sciences, instead of numerology and automatic writing. You do, in fact, want people to work outside their comfort zone. Especially when they're young and everything is outside their comfort zone.

Like, you don't actually want a guy with an obsessive desire to fix your plumbing to start work on something they're going to forget about in an hour after they fixate on something new. This is how you get half the plumbing in the neighborhood disassembled while the guy doing the work has gone into a shame spiral and won't leave the house.

You can argue about the merits of the Apprentice / Journeyman / Master system, but every project really does need a certain level of experienced skill involved. Working with a collection of amateur hobbyists gets you predictably amateur results. That's before you even get into what happens when your enthusiast plumber declares a jihad on imperial units and tries to covert half the pipes on the block to metric measures.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

I've done a fair bit of DIY stuff in my home including various plumbing projects and it's all been doable with just reading manuals, watching videos and spending time thinking things through. That said blow torches scare me and I did everything with pipe cutters and sharkbite connectors and such, but it works, and I did what I could to make sure it was done well/correct because I need my plumbing to work.

My experience with commercial plumbers, mostly from when I was renting, is overall pretty bad and that they are mostly unwilling to think at all beyond the immediate billable job. There was a whole ordeal where water backing up from the drain kept flooding one of the rooms in my apartment from under the walls, and while fortunately my landlord was honest enough to call plumbers when this happened, just about every time they would use a drain snake, claim the problem was fixed without really checking, and then it would just happen again later. It ultimately turned out to be a problem with the pipes not being connected to the sewer where they met the street, and was finally fixed with city involvement, but it took a hell of a lot of advocating for myself and pushing back on bullshit explanations to get to the point where the real problem was even identified or acknowledged.

I am 100% convinced that just about any anarchist system of plumbing would be a significant improvement, though maybe the plan described in the OP image should be adjusted a bit away from hobbyist plumbers going around taking responsibility for the critical systems in other people's homes and towards a network of free expert advice, guidance, and tools to help people maintain their own living spaces, which they will naturally understand and care about on a level people who don't live there won't.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Kinda similar. I work in HVAC-R. There are a ton of times where I'm working on a system where I would love to just spend a few more hours making part of it better and then another few hours streamlining things to make future work on it easier. But we charge $200 per hour so no customer wants me to spend 12 hours making their system perfect; they want me to spend 2 hours and just get it functional. If I didn't have to charge money for my time then not only would every system I touch run like a dream, but they would also be beautiful. As it is people more frequently wind up with duct taped functional travesties and then refuse any follow up work to fix it properly.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] HurricaneLiz@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

I invent utility and design patents, but am on disability and can't afford to patent them open-source. My brain and body won't let me have a regular job, but I could do this all day long if the social infrastructure was there

[–] OddMinus1@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Honestly, if I was given time for it and a wage where I wouldn't have to worry at all, I would probably be building drywalls.

[–] Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I would be taking care of other people's gardens. I'd encourage them to let me build habitats for native wildlife. And doing work outside is just so relaxing.

And I would build an alarm clock app, that lets you set the alarm according to the weather. It would allow you to set up alarms for snow and black ice. That way you can clear your section of sidewalk and use alternative transportation options to get to work.

Or maybe I'd open a repair-shop. One that also allows people to do the work themselves with tools and instruction.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

People who create and upload torrents

I mean sure it's illegal, but it's a hell of a lot of unpaid work for an uncaring and often ungrateful consumers. You have to rip the Blu-ray, compress it to a standardized size, package it with file lists in some cases, put the appropriate metadata in the torrent and filename, then seed it for years at great personal risk.

I know much of that can be automated, but still...

[–] Lydia_K@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

It's crazy how spot on this guy actually is, this wild dude honestly unclogs drains for the love of it: https://youtu.be/95ATNSkGF3Y

[–] Cruel@programming.dev 11 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

There are plenty of jobs people don't want to do unless they're compelled. Lots of people wouldn't even bathe if there wasn't social pressure.

[–] Aljernon@lemmy.today 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There are a startling number of dudes who don't wash their ass

[–] Tinidril@midwest.social 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Yeah, but there are plenty of dudes that would compulsively wash every ass in a 10-mile radius.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I completely disagree. I think most people want to do something, but they don't have the means and opportunity to do a thing that fulfills them. I fucking HATE having a job. Coming to a place every day to do the same thing, it kills my motivation to do ANYTHING. The only reason I have one is to eat and to do the things I WANT to do. Usually pretty productive things, such as gardening, programming, repairs.

Those are all productive things. Things I COULD earn money for, but then they become work. I have to do them to survive, and so I no longer find the joy in doing them. If I could do them and not have to worry about bills being paid, I would by all accounts be a more productive member of society.

I don't think people are all that fundamentally different. We have some differences in preference, but when you get down to the basics the majority of people are pretty similar. Some will fall through the cracks or abuse the system, but by and large no one WANTS to be useless. That's a learned trait.

[–] RamenJunkie@midwest.social 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

People like the person you reply to probably also don't think "sitting on your ass making art while just existing on the subsidy" isn't "productive enough" or some shit either.

Without realizing just how much of our current working society is built on completely pointless busy work nonsense. But its in an office and done in excel so its "Work" and its "productive" because it makes some rich asshole at the top richer.

If AI is doing one positive thing, its really really showing this out for the reality it is, because AI is pretty good at turning pointless data into equally pointless reports.

And I agree with you, people WANT to do things. I think even those dude who "don't want to bathe" want to do things yoo, they just may not be "productive" things, or maybe they don't want to bathe because they see the banality of everything we do in the world so why bother.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 week ago

Well at least they won't commit crimes out of desperation like joining the military industry complex or worse Nazi-militia groups like ICE

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] echodot@feddit.uk 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And every single one of them would have a YouTube channel.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›