Healthcare’s goal should not be to be profitable. The government should subsidize both the education and pay of medical staff for the wellbeing of their people.
The line I’m drawing is a wall between the value of your skills and the need to spend time using them just to afford to survive. Then if you choose to develop skills and use them for the benefit of others, it will be because you chose to and not because you felt you had no other choice. The time spent will be your own, for your own reasons and no one else’s. Its value will be a value you hold, not relying on the value others perceive it to have.
That’s cool except what happens when there aren’t enough people who find 20,000 grueling hours in med school to be worth it when operating a water slide will give them the exact same lifestyle? How do we make more people want to be doctors? Or drive garbage trucks for that matter?
There are already people who spend years of effort getting less valuable positions. If it was purely about time/money spent, everyone would be competing for the most valuable jobs.
We could decrease the demand for doctors and garbage collectors any time we want, but capitalism says maximum growth, maximum consumption. Getting rid of that system will change the demand for those social roles as much as the supply.
Why are you picking apart this simplification? OP is not suggesting we eliminate money, they are simply trying to showcase how fucked up billionaires are.
Because it’s a dumb oversimplification that doesn’t really add anything to the discussion.
“Imagine you need to work to make money, but some people have more money than they could have ever made working” works just as well and doesn’t introduce a bunch of society-breaking plot holes.
Healthcare’s goal should not be to be profitable. The government should subsidize both the education and pay of medical staff for the wellbeing of their people.
Ok, now do any other form of higher education.
Ok, now disconnect the ability to live comfortably from one’s labor value.
Sure, but that doesn’t answer the question.
I think you can draw a line somewhere between “everyone’s skills are equally valuable” and “billionaires should exist.”
This metaphor doesn’t address the time required to develop skills.
The line I’m drawing is a wall between the value of your skills and the need to spend time using them just to afford to survive. Then if you choose to develop skills and use them for the benefit of others, it will be because you chose to and not because you felt you had no other choice. The time spent will be your own, for your own reasons and no one else’s. Its value will be a value you hold, not relying on the value others perceive it to have.
That’s cool except what happens when there aren’t enough people who find 20,000 grueling hours in med school to be worth it when operating a water slide will give them the exact same lifestyle? How do we make more people want to be doctors? Or drive garbage trucks for that matter?
There are already people who spend years of effort getting less valuable positions. If it was purely about time/money spent, everyone would be competing for the most valuable jobs.
Yes, but how many people? How do you get more people to be janitors or roofers when you need more janitors or roofers?
Equally valuing a position also destigmatizes the role. There are countries with free post-secondary education that still have jobs at every position.
The same argument was made about the USSR, about a mechanic making as much as a doctor. They still had mechanics and doctors.
We could decrease the demand for doctors and garbage collectors any time we want, but capitalism says maximum growth, maximum consumption. Getting rid of that system will change the demand for those social roles as much as the supply.
By… getting less sick and having less garbage?
Well yeah. You think we get this sick and produce this much garbage naturally?
Why are you picking apart this simplification? OP is not suggesting we eliminate money, they are simply trying to showcase how fucked up billionaires are.
Are you here to defend billionaires?
Because it’s a dumb oversimplification that doesn’t really add anything to the discussion.
“Imagine you need to work to make money, but some people have more money than they could have ever made working” works just as well and doesn’t introduce a bunch of society-breaking plot holes.