1y ago

What would you do if Capitalism didn't curb your potential and force you to sell most of your time?

I often daydream about how society would be if we were not forced by society to pigeon hole ourselves into a specialized career for maximizing the profits of capitalists, and sell most of our time for it.

The idea of creating an entire identity for you around your "career" and only specializing in one thing would be ridiculous in another universe. Humans have so much natural potential for breadth, but that is just not compatible with capitalism.

This is evident with how most people develop "hobbies" outside of work, like wood working, gardening, electronics, music, etc. This idea of separating "hobbies" and the thing we do most of our lives (work) is ridiculous.

Here's how my world could be different if I owned my time and dedicated it to the benefit of my own and my community instead of capitalists:

more reading, learning and excusing knowledge with others.
learn more handy work, like plumbing and wood working. I love customizing my own home!
more gardening
participate in the transportation system (picking up shifts to drive a bus for example)
become a tour guide for my city
cook and bake for my neighbors
academic research
open source software (and non-software) contributions
pick up shifts at a café and make coffee, tea and smoothies for people
pick up shifts to clean up public spaces, such as parks or my own neighborhood
participate in more than one "professions". I studied one type of engineering but work in a completely different engineering. This already proves I can do both, so why not do both and others?

Humans do not like the same thing over and over every day. It's unnatural. But somehow we revolve our whole livelihood around if.

332 comments

Let's not be confused here. Specialization is what allows for free time. If everyone has to farm and hunt, that's all you'd do. Specialization is a good thing for humanity and diverse institutions and industries to arise.
- Yes, but if we only have to work on our specializations for 16 hours a week each instead of 40+, we would have a lot more time for other good stuff, whether it's personal development, supporting other specialists, or just hanging out.
  
  i've worked for 20h/w and 40h/w. i think 30/32 is a good balance
  
  Think about if you had a flat tire in your car. You go to get another tire to replace the one with a hole in it.
  But the tire factory only manufactures 300 tires a day. Because they only have a handful of employees who feel like making tires and they only really want to work around 10 hours a week.
  Now tires are pretty rare. And that means they are difficult to find. Also, rarity is a supply and demand thing, so now tires are also incredibly expensive. People want a lot of them, but the tire manufacturing plant doesn’t make enough.
  Oh, and while you were inside the shop being surprised at the 22 month wait for your replacement tire, and the $3,500 price tag for just the single tire, the other 3 tires were stolen off your car in the parking lot.
  Cause people don’t want to pay those prices, or wait that amount of time, which has lead to a massive car tire black market
- actually, hunter-gatherer communities 'work' significantly less time than we do in our corporate jobs. farming is a different story: here's one study: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190520115646.htm
  
  You can read that study and see that it only represents one instance where hunter gathers were more efficient than farmers in the same region. You cant use that to say to our current system is less efficient. I hate pop science so much its unreal.
  
  They also have sky high infant mortality rates
  
  That would then mean we would have to support the entire food supply on hunting rather than farming for this to be true, so basically 90% of the population would have to die
  
  if only monke had toilet paper and modern comforts
  
  I remember reading in The Mating Mind that since hunter gatherer societies long ago had more leisure time, they could spend it socializing, and growing their brain.
  
  Yup. Hunter gatherers has a lot of free time. Honestly, I think it was pretty swell, except for lack of medical ability perhaps.
- Yeah, OPs got the spirit but misses the point. We are being pressured to sell our time at a minimum of 40 hours every week. It's thanks to specialization (and the technology that developed from it) that this quantity of of time is grossly over-allocated. Trade and travel allowed people to create better products in less time, so people were no longer very literally working to live, day-in, day-out. Unfortunately wages are kept low, wealth is kept centralized and culture continues to place value on excess so that we're continually convinced that we "have" to work as many hours as we can find.
  
  I don't understand what you think I missed. When I said "specialization", I meant the idea of just doing one thing and one thing only as a "career". This doesn't mean we shouldn't specialize or that people won't. But if I specialize in construction labor, with the extra time awarded to me I could also participate in design if I wanted.
- There's no efficiency while we're supporting a welfare class of bourgeoisie.
- heres what wikipedia has to say:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour
  historically it seems to have been beneficial.. and led us to where we are currently.
- Wish I could upvote this 10x
- Not everyone has to farm and hunt. It was more than 200,000 years ago that humanity figured out how not to get all of us to farm and hunt, way before capitalism ever was a thing.
  Speicalization in the context I used does not mean "be an expert at a thing". It means "Spend most of your time doing just that one thing". I can see why you were confused, I think my use of "pigeon-holed" was probably better than specializetion.
  
  Specialization has always been a thing. Probably more so before. A carpenter wouldn’t just wake up and “nah, I’d rather work with pottery today”. The carpenter probably became a carpenter because their parents passed on their carpentering skills to them, so that’s what they do until they die.
  
  Money was invented before written history began.[1][2] Consequently, any story of how money first developed is mostly based on conjecture and logical inference.
  We don't actually know when money started so it's hard to say.
  But even before money the person with more stuff could acquire more stuff through barter. Even if they weren't using money it's still basically capitalism.
  
  But the same result would occur in socialism. Even communism. I don't know what you expect to happen in any societal economic structure that would suddenly give you the freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want. Jobs existed the same way all the way back then as they do now. And that was the birth of capitalism, not before it. Most didn't own their land. It belonged to a king or emperor. Sure there are exceptions and caveats, but to say capitalism didn't exist back then isn't accurate. Capitalism isn't bad. It's how it's implemented that makes it awful. I think we need to migrate to socialism via capitalism. But it requires winning of the minds of the populace and that won't happen until folks have an accurate understanding of both capitalism and whatever system you want them to transition to. I don't even know what system you're supporting with your question. It sounds like you're trying to describe some sort of star trek utopia that supposedly is advanced beyond economic systems (yet how many episodes revolved around trade deals between planets and races.... but I digress).

I work as a software engineer and I'm also one of these people that just gets a kick out of making things. So I'd probably do some more of that, just not for an employer. Even more contributions to open source would be likely as you've already highlighted.
Would probably build more physical machines/contraptions/electronic doo-dads that I don't have the time or energy to make today. That and I'd probably make more music, or more accurately, finish more music.
Probably grow more vegetables too, but currently that's limited by space anyway.
- or more accurately, finish more music.
  I felt that one in my bones
  
  art is never finished, only abandoned
  
  If I just had one more synthesizer...
- I'm very similar. I got into home automation and building custom IoT devices as part of that.
  
  Haha we're very similar indeed, I've got Pis dotted around my house doing various things, and recently jammed one of those tiny D1 mini ESP modules into a cheap IKEA air quality sensor so I could track it over time in home assistant.
  Not done much more than that in terms of custom IoT devices currently, I've got a few more of those D1 minis left and thinking of putting one in my coffee machine (and covering it in a big blob of silicone). What have you built? I'm always open to ideas
- I've almost been getting upset with engineering as my career because I really enjoy doing it, but am absolutely exhausted with doing it at work that I can never bring myself to do it at home. All my hobby PCB designs or programming projects take a back seat because they require a lot of time and thought.
  It really is a shame that STEM pays so highly that it may as well be a requirement if you're not going to do trades or something with a boatload of overtime attached to it.
- If I was born 100 earlier, I’m pretty sure I would have been building all sorts of crazy contraptions out of wood and metal. I would have like a collection of different mouse traps, valves, pumps, engines, turbines and all that. Instead, I have code and calculations now, but that’s ok too.

I would cut cars in half and weld them into the other halves of other cars
- Lenght or width wise?
  
  Diagonally.
  
  Like imagine taking a big ol dump truck, and putting the back from a regular pickup on it so it’s just a monster pickup. Saw one like that once.
  Or imagine a sports car front, with a station wagon back. Like a shooting brake but more shootier.
  Or utes like they have in Australia, love those
  
  Yes.
- You jest, but my dad actually had a friend who did this for a living with Ford Pintos back in the day, and one time an inspector of some kind remarked that he made them safer than they were when they rolled off the factory floor.
  
  Not jesting 100% serious
- Make hybrids?

I'd still be a programmer. I'd work on open source projects 100% of the time. It's something I love to do.
Man's got to eat though. I still work in an area that makes the world slightly less shitty though, so it's not all bad.

Humans do not like the same thing over and over every day.
Speak for yourself, I like routine and being rewarded for working hard.
- Do you really get rewarded for working hard? Every time I've gone above and beyond for my job it becomes and expectation with no increase in pay. There is no reward for us "no skill" jobs that somehow are the very foundation of this god forsaken societal system we uphold.
  
  I’ve left jobs when I don’t get rewarded for hard work. Thankfully we live in a free market that allows me to also freely choose my employer and occupation.

I'd have more time to become a better artist.
edit: what the fuck was that unwarranted shitty comment.
- dont worry about that other commenter. They're angry that their argument in another comment was argued against, and now they look stupid.
  
  Thanks. It was so out of left field. Like damn, I've never even posted my art on lemmy for anyone to know.
- and still wouldn't
  
  So the question made you so angry, you started projecting your anger over people answering it? LOL

I run a goth night once every other month.
I visit friends quite often whenever I want to.
I get up and start my day when I feel like it.
I play with code and build web toys.
I'm a freelance IT guy. I could, if I wanted to, earn a lot more than I do, but my time is worth more than money. It is possible to do, even in this world where everyone is told that you need a 'career' and to work for a company, although a lot more work is needed to freeing other careers from the obligation of the grind.
Don't give up hope, unionise, demand respect, ~~buy a guillotine,~~ and keep an eye out for a way to get what you need and to contribute to society or your community without signing your life away.
(Yes, some people will never get the opportunity. And that, frankly, pisses me off no end. But don't lose hope until you're dead.)
- Your a freelance IT guy and you are suggesting to unionize? Your the guy companies use when they don't want unions.
  
  I don't work for big companies, I support small businesses where a full-time IT guy doesn't make sense, and old people who are struggling to get their internet working because their internet explorer icon disappeared. Additionally, if I was contacted by a company to cover them whilst their employees are striking, I'd turn them down.

I like my job. It's not a hobby, but it also ensures I don't burn out in my hobbies, which happened when I initially tried to make a hobby my job.

I'd rewrite the game engines for Command & Conquer games so that they could be modernized.
It's a perfectly doable task, but not with the amount of free time I have.
- OpenRA is already a thing, you could contribute to that.
  
  I've thought about it but their vision is pretty different from what I want to do. I want to keep red alert 2 fully original but decouple frame rate and game speed, and decouple resolution from zoom level.
- Is there a good C&C community in lemmy?
  Also, were you a member of PPM?
  
  This comment prompted me to have a look, a couple exist but have basically no content.
  I guess we need to be the change we want to see!
  
  Yeah but I was never very active there.
- I assume you already know, but the first two in the series got the "remastered" treatment a couple of years ago. I'm holding out hope that Tiberian Sun and RA2 are in the works getting the same treatment
  
  Yeah I've been wanting those so badly. If they open sourced red alert 2 I would be in heaven. I'd immediately start work on decoupling game speed from frame rate.
  I wish I could get the generals source code so I could fix the path finding, but until I'm rich enough to retire and remake the engine, or unless they open source it, I can't do it :/

I would be doing more programming and more open source work. I would also spend more time doing physical activities like sports. I wouldn't mind doing gardening for anyone, I also wouldn't mind automating all their systems. Definetely I'd sleep for one extra hour.

I think I would travel or wander a lot more. Not in an instagram backpacker kind of way, just in a dawdle from town to town road trippy kind of way.
- I’ve wanted to RV across the US - spend 5-7 days in any given place - for so long.

I'd do what I'm doing now but I'd be helping hospitals and schools instead of companies.
- I feel the same about my job. I love what I do, I just wish it was targeted towards helping my community rather than generating profits for rich capitalists
  
  What's stopping you? Academia is in dire need of software/computer engineering researchers.

I would sleep a lot more, that's for sure.

Produce documentaries, develop a video game
- I would love to do those too!

If I wasnt working a job for money I wouldn't be doing anything that contributed to making food or providing infrastructure. What I did with my time would probably be considered useless by society and that's why I'm not doing it as a job currently.
- I too would never do anything to serve my interests or the interests of my community!
  Thank God for our capitalist overlords for keeping us in check. We thank them by making them even more mega rich.

Why is there so much communist content on lemmy?
- Not every criticism of capitalism is communism.
  But also, is it any wonder that a platform built without a profit incentive and centred around the concepts of mutual voluntary interaction rather than hierarchical control would attract a more anti-capitalist userbase?
  
  I’m generally baffled that an anti-capitalist user base even exists to be attracted at all.
  Having criticism is one thing, but this thread just reads like State Propoganda from the CCCP
- I love how the mere idea of thinking about a better world away from capitalism immediately says "communism!" to you people, and you don't see the irony of it
  
  It’s pretty obvious by the language you’re using that you’re a communist ‘selling your time to capitalists’ isn’t really very subtle
- Apparently one of the instances is extremely pro communism.
  Even though communism has been proven historically to be detrimental by nearly every metric. Detrimental economically, detrimental environmentally, detrimental socially, and very much against basic human rights.
  
  The pro-communists call normal people the extremists
- I know, it's crazy. Like all of a sudden capitalism is evil. It baffles my mind. Like do people actually believe this stuff?
  
  All of a sudden? Yeah, if over a century of critique counts as "all of a sudden"
  
  I’m hardly a communist but if this is the first time you’re hearing “capitalism is evil” you live in quite the bubble lol
  At the very least I hope you can be critical of the system.
  
  Look at the state of the world right now. It’s pretty bleak - capitalism is the cause of all of this. It had its good days, sure, but in the end capitalism + greed has ruined it for everyone.
  
  Capitalism has been evil for a long while I would say, and this has been written about for a long while now.

I'd be that guy that makes all those useless inventions, except they'd be incredibly useful to me and like 2 other people.
- That's how many great inventions benefitting the entire world happened :)

Make art and hike more.
Id play more guitar and more piano, and record more. Id take pictures hiking and take videos and stuff. I'd fully automate the mundane from my life, finish my self hosting projects.
I'd be healthier, overall. By a lot. Mentally and physically.

Basic research. I left basic research because research in academia is a lost cause, killed by lack of funding, hyper toxic environment, rat race to the bottom, mafias and corruption.
It is so bad that I feel a much more morally cleaner environment working in finance.
I would go back doing what I used to do, but without the baggage that forced most of us to leave
- I'm trying to change careers into medical science research...
  
  I did a bit in big pharma... But it was 90% paper work unfortunately.
  Probably a smaller firm would have been better, but I was tired of lack of job security and I went for safe bets.
  I am now in fintech. We still struggle with corporate mindset, particularly IT, we are highly regulated as pharma, but at least we are not stuck in the 90s as I was when working with SAS in pharma. And salaries are slightly higher.
  At the end you don't need much to be successful outside academia. In academia it is literally a scammy lottery. Outside, you just need to be a bit pro active. Standards are pretty low. The biggest difficult is to convince hr that you are good fit without industry experience. HR people unfortunately do not think as reasonable beings. They wouldn't do hr if they were reasonable. But once you manage to start, even the most "complex" job in industry is pretty trivial, you'll be more than enough doing the bare minimum. If you put a bit of effort (even not much), you'll be very successful

I too dream of this same future:
https://sturlabragason.github.io/blog/2023/07/04/Decentralized-Autonomous-Communities.html
Quoting this:
"In DACs, knowledge, creativity, and innovation are communal properties. Whether it’s a new AI algorithm, a more efficient building design, or a breakthrough software update, all are shared freely among the network of DACs. This community-wide open-source approach fuels rapid progress and the spread of beneficial developments."

I would contribute to any activity that would ensure capitalism wouldn't start existing.
- It would be pretty difficult to bring back capitalism after its gone. It's like someone trying to bring back feudalism today, beyond individual interactions.

Reading. I have lots of books I want to read but not enough time / energy to do so.

I also jump around with this. Like I would definitely read more. But there's a part of me that would love to write books. But also male music. But also paint. Basically I would do something in the realm of art.
I wouldn't mind having a part time job doing something physical. Like I used to work at a warehouse for a medical supplies company. It was probably one of my favorite jobs. I could see myself doing that again. Gives me a reason to get out of the house, be active, and people will always need the supplies. Ironically I lost the job because we got bought out by one of the world's largest corporations so they could make even more money, and they closed us down. So I lost that job because of capitalism.

Im fortunate. I love my career. I've been doing since I was 12 what I do for a living now at 39. I'd still do what I do if income were a non-issue.
With that being said, I'd probably only do it three days/week or so, being able to pick a more realistic balance between productivity and burnout would be great. I'd also spend that time making something I want, for me, rather than doing what I'm told. I feel like that's significant here as well.

Imma be honest I have no idea. I might legit just sit here and be a leech on society playing video games and watching shows. But I'd like to imagine I would go back to school and try and do freelance repair/maintenance for various things. I just honestly don't know if I'd do enough to consider it a fair contribution to society.

If money weren't an object and I didn't have to worry about rent I would love to bury myself in math, chemistry, earth science, medical science, language, and systems development studies. Then I'd spend my free time sharing what I learned with others who want to learn, focusing on under represented. I'd also do more outdoor sports.

Go hiking everyday

What would allow that isn't communism, but a "post-scarcity" society, much like Star Trek TNG. A lot of what we take for granted can only happen thanks to the commercial logistics of fucktons of materials going around.
I'd devote more time into programming, performance optimization, processor architecture and computer graphics. These things are still "magic" to me and there aren't many resources, especially on the "bare metal" graphics part of most recent parts. Once I figured it out enough to feel confident in passing that knowledge around, I would do that in english and portuguese
One thing that I'm already doing thanks to my job giving me a decent salary for only 20h of work is my own game project. Something that I'll probably end up selling, but I'll probably be the first to release a pirate/free version of it, too.
- Yeah it's easy to do whatever you want as a job when matter/antimatter reactors give unlimited energy and replicators can use that limitless energy to create any object.

I would spend my time the same way. Honing my specialization to increase benefit to society. I love software development!

I'd love to spend more time planting trees. I volunteer to do it occasionally on weekends but I really love the process of going from sprout to seedling to planted. I just wish I could do more of it.

my world could be different if I owned my time
Self ownership is the basis of capitalism and you're already playing the game, you're just playing it bad.
if you're on hourly I want you to ask yourself if you would pay someone else what you earn at work to do whatever you just did in the last hour.
if not why not? did you explicitly set aside this time to be unproductive? do you think people doing better than you let themselves slide like that?
Humans do not like the same thing over and over every day
Speak for yourself, I love having a routine and getting in the zone. Autonomy and Mastery are worth more to me than money.
- What a nonsense reply. Describing any rest as "slipping".
  The number one thing, by FAR, that earns money under capitalism is investment. Not work, not skill, not merit. Just having money to invest and shave off your share of someone else's work.
  The "people doing better" actually rest far more than your average worker. They just have money, so they get to make more money even while they are "unproductive".
  
  I said slide not slip. and managing your time is the takeaway. can't slip, or slide, if you are being intentional about your time.
  People who don't think they have the time to do anything are usually not being intentional. you get home from work and kick back with a cold one and that's the whole plan, then the next minute you're back at work again and you don't know where the weekend went.
  and if you know how to make money under capitalism without working why exactly aren't you doing that?
- I would love to respond but I have no idea what you're saying. Sorry. Why would I pay someone for doing my job? I would not be doing it if I could just pay someone to do it lol.
  
  are you working right now? must be nice to have that much free time. let me guess ... Union?
  j/k just having a laugh. (I'm also union)
  I mean when you're off the clock is your time worth the same to you?
  I don't mean to say there's no value in rest but occasionally accounting for your free time is a good idea otherwise you wake up in your 50s and wonder where all that time went.

I would be what I am now, just a more "official" version of it, since what I do is akin to a paid hobby and has no firmly nested societal position. But that's assuming what I do would be valued in other types of societies either (it's just barely valued in Capitalism). I know a Marxist society most likely wouldn't value what I do as it's only a necessity-based job on a technical level. And it would have little relevance in Distributism, I think. Mutualism is a coin toss.
- What do you do now?

I would do loads of degrees. History, English, Psychology, Politics, Spanish, etc. Having the brain space to focus on learning would be amazing. I did my masters part time while working full time and it was a nightmare. Glad I did it but I couldn't do my best as I was bogged down in work stuff.
I would also like to learn more languages. I do a bit of Spanish and Danish when I can but I rarely have the mental energy after work.
Travel too. Maybe write a book.

Gymnastics, surfing, and study and write philosophical works. And maybe practice guitar.

Part of what creates in me so much faith in communism is my profession vs my interests.
I am an engineer. If I didn't need to sell my labor I would be an engineer who solves problems and creates progress. Since I live in America, I don't.
- It's not much better in most places outside of America. Capitalism rules the world.

I would make video games. I'd even do some adult ones, since I've noticed the existing ones aren't super great.

Probably sleep or do gamedev in a full time fashion.
I would love to do more with animation especially non-traditional animation like LED or Pinscreen, but the barrier of entry is just too high.

Same thing I do now, but instead of full-time work / part-time student, I'd flip it to part-time work and full-time student.
I'm hanging on to the bottom step of the medical ladder - this field is fascinating as fuck, and even as just a tech I get a lot of satisfaction in my role (albeit minor relative to doctors or nurses) in helping others recover from whatever sickness/injury they present with.
Without the financial barriers and current need to work till exhaustion to afford rent, I'd be highly interested in going all the way to physician, but at the rate I'm able to actually afford the time and money to take classes, I'll be pushing 40 when I'm able to clear the hurdle from tech to nurse; and it already hurts to move half of my fucking joints, so once this nursing shit is finished, I don't see myself climbing any more ladders, literal or otherwise... at that point it'll just be the counting the days till retirement or planning out the most pleasurable way to commit suicide.
- Same. Almost completely the same except our jobs differ. Work is going to kill my goal to be more specialized in the medical sciences. It's depressing. I'm hoping to at least land in the field of research.

I'd be writing a lot more music

I would, in no certain order:
Work at a coffee shop part time making coffee for people. Preferably a locally owned shop, but it wouldn't matter too much if not.
Work as a bartender similarly as above
Potentially garden if I have the time and interest for it
Create more YouTube videos
Write, record, and release more music
Learn to paint
Get a film camera and take photos with it
Contribute to FLOSS projects
Finally make that D&D table that doubles as a dining table that I've been wanting to make for a few months now
Actually follow through on learning my several languages I'm working on learning
Become an interpreter (probably in ASL)
Develop video games
Create more art in general
Do research on how art and society mingle together and interact

I'm an intellectually overqualified filmmaker surrounded by anti-intellectuals (I routinely get made fun of for being interested in technical stuff)....and right now, I am on workman's comp with a broken foot. So: exactly what I am doing right now is exactly what I would want to be doing.
What's that?
Hanging out with my daughter in my lab,
Learning
Haskell/Plutus
Purescript
using Nix to glue them together
hacking an espresso machine (either with a RISC_V Lychee Pi or an ESP32...haven't decided yet).
Practicing:
guitar
Blazing:
chronic
- Everyone thinks they're smarter than the idiots around them. Most are wrong.
  
  In my case, whether I’m wrong or not, they actively discourage me from using my brain.

I'd play music for my community. It's alright by myself but I love an audience.
Get involved in whatever community food garden is around.
Make art. Give it away.

I'd hang out and enjoy the fruits of other people's time being sold. Pretty hard to think of a hobby that wouldn't cover.

Something new every day. Create. Spend time with my children. Volunteer my time and knowledge.

I think about this at least a little bit most days.
I'd finish some video games again.
Work on more music, ideally practice piani again to get my theory back on track.
Make projects, communal gardening etc..
Outside the selfish self-enrichment kinda stuff, teach kids programming, and participate more in my hema club.

I'd probably still be a mechanical engineer, but maybe I could have gotten some more education in the direction of nuclear power and/or automation. I might have also had another kid instead of just one.
Edit: I'd also like to learn and get good at welding. It would be cool to not only engineer a nuclear power plant, but to help actually build it as well. Then again, I'd probably never get good enough at welding to do so unless I devoted myself to the trade. Maybe I could just get some shifts as a plant operator after it's built.

I would write and draw more. There's so many stories I wanna make. I might even take up some other medium like animation or something physical like sculpture or architecture. It would be fun to design spaces that don't need to have the soul sucked out of them to appear "mature" or "professional"
I feel like the fear of not making profits and not surviving pressures me into watering down everything I do so it's appealing to someone else. That's why art is strictly a hobby for me and not a career I wanna pursue

Rock climbing. I got into over summer but I only have time to go once or twice a week at most. And that's just indoors. A whole outdoor trip would take way too much of my time, time that I don't have.

Without capitalism, I'd probably be serf like my great-grandparents were. There's a lot to criticize about capitalism, but it's still an improvement on its predecessor.
- For a lot of people, it probably still doesn't feel dissimilar enough from serfdom, just with a lot more parties to be indebted/obligated to than your one feudal lord. Still at risk of becoming a landless vagrant if you don't keep up with your dues.
  
  You can also live like many kings of old if you aren't a lazy twat.
- Better than the alternative isn’t the definition of better.

If I could start from scratch, maybe something. In my current condition I would probably just feel unproductive and guilty every day, with no personal direction of my own.

What would you when you get in this undefined yet not capitalist utopia and are forced to work long hours at a job you didn't choose to help further the cause of the revolution?

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