I was reading an account between liberal abolitionists, practical people and ideological abolitionists, dreamers in pre US civil war years. The question of banning slavery and the perceived burden of a materially poor population being thrown off the plantations but needing support seemed insurmountable to the practical people. They suggested that the African freed from the whip would not work, but become dependent on the more productive segments of US society and it would be better to use more humane whips and basically incrementally remove slavery over time.
Of course the civil war freed those slaves at once and the burden perceived by the practical people didn't arise, in fact the former enslaved were industrious and provided for themselves and the only regret was that they didn't receive full equality and land allotment.
We will be facing this next pass of eugenics here in America, this was considered a necessary “technology”. My faith isn’t in the tender, yt academic communities as there remains a primal hook of generalized comfort that fully prevents those who have ideas to fully enact them but we do get to witness the factions of these classes “return to nature”, raise artisanal greens, find their truth and chase the gory “wellness” ring of retreats and trauma industries while the clamp gets tighter..
The Peaceful Revolutionary replied to your comment on Neither Angels Nor Demons - Cooperation vs Coercion27m
"You are right - a lot of what is called 'innovation' is destroying the world. There is definitely a huge amount of technology which is dangerous - either because of what it wastes or what it produces. However, I think some technology can provide solutions (think some medical tech & mass transit…"
Kk. We wouldn't need mass transit if we didn't have cars. And how much medical technology would be necessary if we weren't being poisoned by pollution? Humans survived just fine without technology for over 200,000 years.
I'm not a primitivist, but I realise it is some peoples ideal, and I think living simply alongside nature should be an option (and would be many peoples preference).
By mass transit I mean like trains, trams etc. but my ideal would be for everything to be in walking distance. I'm lucky enough to live in such a place now, but Americans living in the suburbs aren't so fortunate and it would take a while to make such a transition.
I agree somewhat on the medical technology too - certainly as far as pollution goes - according to one estimate a fifth of all people die early due to pollution.
One need only look at the "Big, Beautiful Bill" that passed yesterday — through coercion — in the very heart of today's coercive capitalism, the US.
It cuts medical assistance to the poorest, and gives the richest big tax breaks. It increases by some 1,500% the budget of the coercive ICE that is rounding up people with the wrong colour skin or the wrong native tongue, shipping them off to remote prisons, far from their family and legal advice. This, regardless of the legitimacy of their being in the US.
And while most thinking people know all this, The Beast appears in our email and crushes the thought of any progressive change — a nice note from the Social Security Administration, letting us know what a victory this is for Social Security recipients. This, from an organization now run by sociopaths, whose own budget was cut in this bill. This, from an organization that has been DOGEd and whose private database has been breeched, in the interest of "efficiency".
How soon will we who are a bit eccentric, a bit out-of-place, find our Social Security under attack? Those with a foreign address, or perhaps, just a foreign-sounding name?
My question would be how you innovate or improve technology? if everyone lives in communal subsistence, what need is there for phones, computers, etc. Despite this, I can definitely agree that your proposed system does sound more appealing than current capitalism.
Howard Odum taught us that Technology is an artifact of excess energy.
When fossil sunlight goes into permanent, irrevocable decline, so will technology. Today's newborn will be lucky to have ox carts in their retirement years.
Even the stodgy EIA admits that fossil fuel will be down by 20% by 2050 — many experts think it will be much lower by then.
The door may be closing on establishing subsistence communities while there is excess energy to ease the transition.
Mind you, everyone will be living sustainably sooner or later. It's how all humans lived for some 993,000 years, prior to the advent of grain agriculture, which brought us hoarding, withholding, power-over, social stratification, hierarchy, and wealth and poverty.
Let's call the neo-hunter-gatherers, "the survivors".
They won't be subsisting with the help of cell phones and computers.
Technology must regress. That doesn't mean there won't be innovation!
There are thousands of things to explore, learn, and implement in a subsistence life-style! Figuring out how to live with much less technology is an innovative thing!
To be clear, "commune" is a term-of-art in the intentional communities movement. It is a community where almost everything — including income, assets, resources, food, housing — is shared. (You can keep your own toothbrush.)
This may well be where humanity is headed — it's been that way for hundreds of thousands of years — but it's still a small minority among the communities movement, as indexed in http://ic.org.
That is fair worryh - especially if we think of communes as small isolated rural groups of a few people.
However, I’m envisioning something which has many similarities to our systems now in terms of continuing the complexity of manufacturing at the high end, but without the demands of shareholders or owners, and organised in a more accountable way by those with the expertise having greater input that they do now, but also with more local power in our local (communal) communities.
Now I see owners without expertise and shareholders demanding profits over usefulness often getting in the way of innovation, and unnecessary duplication through competition even holding it back, with the workers and communities impacted by waste and pollution having no power to stop it. This is where I think a better model will have better results for most people.
You are right - a lot of what is called 'innovation' is destroying the world. There is definitely a huge amount of technology which is dangerous - either because of what it wastes or what it produces. However, I think some technology can provide solutions (think some medical tech & mass transit) which can be used in a way which helps and frees people without destroying the planet.
I guess when we think of a commune we tend to think of everyone living in an agrarian village, and some successful communes definitely live that way. However, there are also communes of communes with hundreds of thousands of people across larger areas with every modern convenience.
I've tried to address some of the complexity, organisational and transition issues in a few articles -
It evokes a humanity we want to believe in: one that throws ropes to drowning strangers and nourishes children without profit. But the framework collapses under the weight of its own assumptions. Beneath its warmth lies a dangerous naivety.
The appeal to pre-modern villages and communal instincts may stir nostalgia, but it ignores well-documented realities:
Many historical societies treated vulnerability not with care, but removal: infanticide, abandonment, exclusion.
Communal solidarity often operated within narrow tribal or kin boundaries, not universal principles.
These failures weren’t occasional—they were patterned and profound. Agencies and governments emerged in response to systemic neglect, not to replace functioning compassion.
To claim that humans once lived in harmony until markets and states “distorted” them is not historical analysis—it’s myth-making.
The vision assumes that if people are kind, the necessities of life will simply be available. This ignores the cost of production. Food must be farmed, often in harsh conditions with low margins. In the UK the indigenous population won't take part in farm labour/ harvesting because of the hard work involved. Farms hire predominantly Eastern European seasonal workers.
Healthcare requires infrastructure, specialised skills, supply chains, and constant training. It is also tough, dirty, emotional, and with no clear end point. Housing demands labour, regulation, safety standards, and maintenance.
These systems don’t run on goodwill. They run on effort, risk, sacrifice—and persistent reward. To guarantee access without acknowledging production is to erase the labourer, the planner, the front-line provider. It is moral rhetoric unanchored by logistical reality.
The claim that “most people naturally engage in labour” is contradicted by history and data. Basic income pilots (e.g. Finland, Ontario) show disengagement from work when basic needs are guaranteed. Even in post-scarcity zones, people avoid work if effort exceeds perceived return—especially in high-demand roles. Entrepreneurs routinely forgo ventures where risk outweighs reward, despite possible profit. There are deeply unpleasant roles in society that pay quite well - they pay quite well because they cannot attract workers. Even paying well, they struggle. Crime scene cleaners earn around £50k, although you face exposure to trauma, biohazards, and emotional distress. Embalmers can easily earn £60k but you are constantly in the presence of the dead (unless you are really going wrong) and grieving families. Slaughter house workers earn a third above the national average. These are easy entry roles (no qualifications, etc), hungry for staff, that pay well above the national average and yet really struggle to recruit.
Meaningful contribution is not synonymous with socially necessary contribution. Many opt out—not out of laziness, but rational calculus. The system must account for that, not pretend it vanishes in moral fog.
This model insists it doesn’t need angels, only environments that reward cooperation. But the fallback mechanisms he proposes—conversation, peer pressure, and exclusion—do not scale or resolve chronic under-contribution. Social disapproval can be damaging, unevenly applied, or ignored. Exclusion isn’t benign when basic needs are contingent on participation.
Without enforceable standards, social accountability risks becoming moral gatekeeping—where access is conditional not on need, but on virtue as judged by prevailing norms. That is coercion by another name.
Capitalism is painted as requiring “massive daily violence” to preserve scarcity. The examples—evictions, patent protection, resource extraction—are real. But the term “violence” is stretched into metaphor. Legal enforcement does not equal brute force. Courts, contracts, and regulation maintain order and rights, often peacefully.
Scarcity isn’t always artificial—it’s shaped by demand, environmental limits, and the complexity of allocation. Mutual aid requires its own form of exclusion, discipline, and enforcement. Calling one “community accountability” and the other “coercion” is rhetorical sleight-of-hand, not ethical clarity.
The redefinition of productivity—based on contribution to collective wellbeing—sounds noble. But:
- Who defines “wellbeing”? Who adjudicates effort? What if socially critical roles go unfilled?
- The most essential workers (cleaners, carers, farmers) often avoid or leave roles not because of capitalism, but because compensation fails to match toil.
Valuing people morally is one thing. Sustaining systems that require high-effort labour without appropriate reward is another. Idealism doesn’t resolve burnout.
Citing examples like community gardens, housing co-ops, and tool libraries proves that microcosms can work. But it says nothing about managing:
- Global supply chains
- Critical healthcare infrastructure
- Disaster response
- Long-term planning for ageing populations or climate adaptation
These require coordination, leadership, accountability, and yes, sometimes hierarchy.
Society thrives not by dismissing coercion but by embedding it within just institutions—ones that protect rights, distribute burdens fairly, and reward contribution without moral blackmail.
Let us build systems where compassion is universal, labour is respected, and guarantees are guaranteed, not hoped for. That means laws, policies, and yes, structures. Not just sentiment.
You're right that we can't just wave away the real logistical challenges of organising complex systems. You're also correct that some essential work is genuinely difficult and that people will rationally avoid it if they can & I agree totally that mutual aid networks do need accountability mechanisms, pretending everything will work out through pure goodwill is naive. All of this shows that short replies in comment threads miss out so much and rarely resolve the issues they try to address.
However, I still believe your scenarios are setting up a false choice, you keep framing it as either capitalism or complete chaos, hierarchical states or total disorganisation. But (almost) no-one is arguing for a free for all dog-eat-dog world.
When it comes to basic income (which I do not support) of course people disengage from bullshit jobs when their survival isn't threatened! That's not proof that people won't work, it's proof that most wage labor under capitalism is alienated drudgery that people only do because they're coerced into it. Look at how much unpaid labor actually keeps society running: caregiving, community organising, open-source development, disaster relief. People absolutely work when the work is meaningful and voluntary.
The whole ‘who will do the dirty jobs’ argument you're making is always framed as if capitalism actually solves this problem well. Those slaughterhouse workers and embalmers you mention, they're mostly poor people with few other options, often immigrants or people from marginalised communities. That's not voluntary choice, that's structural coercion with a paycheque attached.
You are also overlooking how non-hierarchal / non-capital organising actually works. Mutual aid networks have accountability mechanisms, they're based on horizontal relationships and collective decision-making, not top-down enforcement. When a housing co-op has conflicts, they don't call the cops, they work it out through mediation, restorative justice, or worst case, the person leaves. That's fundamentally different from state coercion.
The whole ‘global supply chains’ scare is just an argument from complexity. Complex systems can absolutely be organised through federation, delegation, and horizontal coordination. The internet basically runs on anarchist principles: decentralised networks, voluntary protocols, collaborative development. on open source operating systems. We don't need CEOs and state violence to coordinate at scale.
I would argue that even if you believe that people (with no reward motivation) will do something, it would not be meaningful in a society sense nor align with its needs. It would be more akin to a retiree who potters (including people who retire in their 50's who travel and play golf).
Yes capitalism brings people into roles purely for the reward - but why is that bad? Unpaid labour does exist but the fact is that so few people choose to do it means that it leaves huge gaps that financial incentives have to plug.
There are large areas in most western countries of large-scale unemployment. There is not evidence of large scale volunteering in these areas (that coincidently need it desperately).
You suggest that the poor are exploited in the awful jobs that I have listed. As I state, these are exceptionally well paid roles BECAUSE they are unpleasant - and the evidence is that middle class professionals are also being attracted to these roles:
- HGV Drivers in the UK: During the 2021–2022 driver shortage, many professionals—including former IT workers and engineers—retrained as lorry drivers due to salaries exceeding £50,000 in some cases. The appeal was simple: high pay, low formal qualifications, and immediate demand.
- Warehouse and Delivery Roles: Amazon and other logistics firms offered signing bonuses and hourly rates that rivalled mid-level professional salaries. Some workers in education, hospitality, and even healthcare moved into these roles for better pay and flexibility.
- Construction and Trades: Skilled trades like plumbing, scaffolding, and roofing often outpay junior professional roles. In tight labour markets, professionals have retrained or shifted into these sectors, especially when facing underemployment or burnout.
If there is no hierarchy or capital organising, how do you get me to work? I don't want to. I want to do my own thing. You suggest 'soft' solutions but ultimately point to "... or worst case, a person leaves.." That is a euphemism. I don't want to contribute, or you don't like my style of contribution, and I don't want to leave. Your answer, if you are truthful, is no different to the capitalist position that you criticise - no work = no food. I know people who have lived on communes. Past tense. Always comes down to one thing - not pulling weight. Either they were fed up being criticised and 'organised' or they resented how they did all the hard or dirty work and others didn't contribute fairly.
You're actually making my argument for me here! You're absolutely right that capitalism forces people into roles purely for financial reward, and that's exactly the problem. When HGV drivers and warehouse workers are getting paid more than teachers and nurses, that's not the market efficiently allocating resources, that's a system that prioritises profit over human need.
And those high-paying 'awful jobs' you mention are far more awful because they're organised under capitalism. Slaughterhouse work is traumatic because it's designed for maximum profit, not worker wellbeing. Construction is dangerous because safety cuts into margins. These jobs could be organised completely differently - with job rotation, better conditions, democratic control over the work process.
You're also proving my point about unemployment areas. Of course there's no large-scale volunteering in places with mass unemployment, people are struggling to survive! When you're dealing with poverty, eviction threats, and social breakdown, you don't have the security to engage in unpaid community work. But look at what happens when people do have that security, after disasters, in tight-knit communities, in spaces where mutual aid networks exist. People absolutely step up.
I would encourage you to read the book, Humankind by Rutger Bregman, for many examples of this. It is also a well written interesting book too.
Your 'I don't want to work' scenario is interesting because it assumes scarcity and competition. But in a society organised around abundance and cooperation, other kinds of more rewarding work is possible, especially due to more onerous work being shared and divided. And of course communes fail, usually because they're trying to create islands of cooperation in an ocean of capitalism. That's completely different from transforming the entire social and 'economic' system with different incentives and rewards.
You're right to challenge coercive labour structures but your argument risks moral misattribution.
When HGV drivers are paid more than teachers, that isn’t capitalism valuing profit over human need, it’s markets responding to relative scarcity and aversion. Few people want to drive for twelve hours a day, sleep in cabs, or navigate depot logistics, so compensation rises to attract labour. Meanwhile, teaching, despite its societal importance, offers emotional reward, schedule regularity, and social status. That desirability suppresses wage urgency.
Markets aren’t moral arbiters; they’re reflections of preference, effort, and reluctance. People don’t resist slaughterhouses because capitalism organises them poorly, its because killing animals is emotionally and physically traumatic. You could rotate tasks, democratise oversight, and wrap the factory in community bunting, but the core discomfort won’t dissolve. It’s the nature of the job, not the architecture of governance.
You’ve invoked security as the precondition for voluntary action, but I challenge that premise. I’ve worked in communities with entrenched unemployment, where the need for civic contribution was immense and the time available abundant. Yet social volunteering was minimal. These weren’t just financially poor communities, they were often civically disengaged, fractured, and alienated. The problem wasn’t lack of security, it was lack of alignment and motivation.
Tragedy creates short bursts of solidarity. But systemic participation, the kind needed to run clinics, clean streets, or care for elders, rarely emerges organically, even when survival is subsidised. Without structured incentives or norms, public needs go unmet. I've worked in charities: charity staff are paid well.
Your model proposes that if enough people willingly shoulder unpleasant work, others can pursue “rewarding” tasks. But how do you reconcile the disparity in sacrifice?
If I opt out of unpleasant labour and pursue artistic expression while others manage sanitation, your system rewards withdrawal. If I redefine my contribution unilaterally and resist accountability, I exploit community goodwill.
Without calibrated reciprocity, this becomes a moral arbitrage, where effort is uncoupled from obligation and hard labour subsidises leisure under the banner of collectivism.
You seek a system where cooperation replaces coercion, and dignity replaces extraction. That’s admirable but real systems must recognise that needs don’t distribute evenly, labour isn’t equally attractive, and human nature is not uniformly altruistic.
Markets aren’t perfect, but they’re attempts to allocate effort where it’s lacking. To discard that mechanism without a superior replacement is to romanticise participation while ignoring its historical volatility.
If you expect saintly behaviour from people you'll be disappointed. Design for predictable behaviour, then embed fairness when idealism falters.
I think you may be confusing several different issues. First, on markets and wages: you're treating current market outcomes as natural reflections of scarcity and preference, but markets don't exist in a vacuum. HGV driving pays well partly because of artificial scarcity, such as strict licensing, age restrictions, and working conditions that are isolating and exhausting. Meanwhile, teaching is systematically undervalued through public funding decisions and cultural assumptions about it being a 'vocational calling.' These aren't neutral market forces; they're policy choices and profit incentives that shape what we consider scarce or valuable.
Your point about communities with high unemployment misses the deeper structural issue (which I know well having come from such a community). Civic disengagement in these areas isn't just about individual motivation, it's about decades of disinvestment, institutional abandonment, and social fragmentation. When communities have been systematically stripped of resources and agency, of course volunteer participation drops. But this actually supports my argument: people need genuine security and social connection to engage in collective action.
You're right that any system needs accountability mechanisms. But capitalism already creates massive exploitation of good will where capital owners extract value from others' labor while contributing little themselves. The question isn't whether to have reciprocity, but how to structure it fairly.
Your challenge about 'saintly behaviour' misses the point. I'm not expecting people to be saints, I'm arguing that different systems create different incentives and possibilities. People respond to the structures they're embedded in. Design systems that reward cooperation and mutual aid, and you'll see more of both.
The historical record shows that humans are capable of remarkable cooperation when the conditions support it. The challenge of creating those conditions at scale is a possible one. Markets could be one such mechanism (there are Market Socialists and Mutualist and Participatory Economic models that use them), or other systems such Cybernetics which was largely adopted by Walmart and Amazon internally (although intended for a very different purpose and outcome).
You said - 'Your model proposes that if enough people willingly shoulder unpleasant work, others can pursue “rewarding” tasks. But how do you reconcile the disparity in sacrifice?' There are several ways to answer this question -
1) This assumes that all work divides neatly into 'unpleasant sacrifice' versus 'rewarding tasks,' but that's a false choice created by capitalism. The 'disparity in sacrifice' largely exists because we've organised work to be as alienating as possible.
2) Different types of contribution deserve different types of recognition and support. Someone doing sanitation work might work fewer hours, have more social support, or rotate into other roles. When work is 'democratically' organised, rotated, and embedded in community purpose, much of what we consider 'unpleasant' becomes manageable or even meaningful.
3) How does capitalism reconcile this disparity? It doesn't. It just forces people into unpleasant work through economic coercion while others inherit wealth and never work at all. At least a cooperative system would be trying to solve this problem rather than hiding it behind 'market forces.'
As I said I've written five articles on the subject if you'd like to see how I've answered this with examples and references. Change the conditions change the outcomes.
I find value in many of your intentions, especially your concern for building systems that are humane, reciprocal, and socially embedded. Where we diverge is not in moral aspiration, but in the route by which such systems become viable and sustainable.
You’ve argued that capitalism misallocates value by rewarding unpleasant jobs while undervaluing socially vital ones like teaching or nursing. I disagree. Compensation in market economies doesn’t stem from morality, it reflects scarcity, skill demand, and aversion. HGV drivers and warehouse staff don’t earn more because they’re prized ideologically, but because fewer people want to do that work under the conditions required. Teaching, meanwhile, retains applicants despite relatively lower pay because it offers social status, emotional fulfillment, and occupational stability. Markets, while imperfect, attempt to reconcile effort and reward—something no society can afford to ignore.
Even if scarcity is caused by artificial barriers – ignoring the necessity of these – it still proves the point that it is not moral value but the choices people make around these barriers that then result in scarcity, that is then corrected with financial compensation.
You also describe how mutual aid thrives when people are secure. Yet in high-unemployment communities with abundant time and urgent local need, we do not observe large-scale voluntary engagement. I’ve worked in such spaces and seen firsthand the absence of contribution, even when necessity is obvious. Civic disengagement isn’t simply the result of disinvestment, it reveals that meaningful participation doesn't spontaneously emerge in a vacuum of hierarchy or incentive. In a way, you are requiring utopia to enable utopia. Tragedies may inspire temporary solidarity, but sustained labour, especially hard, undesirable labour, requires consistent reinforcement. Your model assumes that once need is decoupled from survival, people will fill critical roles. But that’s not how labour motivation functions. People are not just shaped by structure; they are limited by effort, desire, and the friction between personal choice and communal necessity.
If your system depends on certain individuals willingly shouldering unpleasant tasks while others pursue “rewarding” ones, then you’ve created a framework that inadvertently rewards withdrawal, and speaking personally, I wouldn’t choose to do hard or dangerous work without compelling reason.. That isn’t cooperative, it’s moral arbitrage, where effort becomes optional and fulfilment is selectively distributed. The idea of democratic rotation or reduced hours doesn’t resolve the discomfort, it just delays its concentration.
The deeper issue here is that you frame coercion as capitalist, but sidestep the functional coercion embedded in horizontal systems. You say that if someone refuses to contribute or disrupts the consensus, “worst case, the person leaves.” But what if they don’t want to leave? What if they feel their role is valid, even if the group disagrees? At that point, your “non-coercive” structure is operating under the same logic as the system you critique: no contribution, no access. The difference is rhetorical, not substantive.
Finally, we must confront a more honest truth: almost all work is compromise. Whether bureaucratic, emotional, intellectual, or physical, labour is shaped by time pressure, task repetition, and social friction. There is no utopia where every role is intrinsically fulfilling and neatly aligns with public necessity. The notion of purely meaningful work is as illusory as the idea that unpleasant jobs will be filled through goodwill alone. All systems must negotiate that tension—not romanticise its resolution.
If mutual aid is to be the foundation of a future society, it cannot rely on idealised behaviour or deferred discomfort. It has to integrate accountability, incentive, and realism—not as a betrayal of its ideals, but as a mark of its maturity. I’m open to those designs. But not to frameworks that ignore the historic, psychological, and logistical gaps they must overcome.
I was reading an account between liberal abolitionists, practical people and ideological abolitionists, dreamers in pre US civil war years. The question of banning slavery and the perceived burden of a materially poor population being thrown off the plantations but needing support seemed insurmountable to the practical people. They suggested that the African freed from the whip would not work, but become dependent on the more productive segments of US society and it would be better to use more humane whips and basically incrementally remove slavery over time.
Of course the civil war freed those slaves at once and the burden perceived by the practical people didn't arise, in fact the former enslaved were industrious and provided for themselves and the only regret was that they didn't receive full equality and land allotment.
You can read this story and others here:- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-are-we-good-enough
We will be facing this next pass of eugenics here in America, this was considered a necessary “technology”. My faith isn’t in the tender, yt academic communities as there remains a primal hook of generalized comfort that fully prevents those who have ideas to fully enact them but we do get to witness the factions of these classes “return to nature”, raise artisanal greens, find their truth and chase the gory “wellness” ring of retreats and trauma industries while the clamp gets tighter..
The Peaceful Revolutionary replied to your comment on Neither Angels Nor Demons - Cooperation vs Coercion27m
"You are right - a lot of what is called 'innovation' is destroying the world. There is definitely a huge amount of technology which is dangerous - either because of what it wastes or what it produces. However, I think some technology can provide solutions (think some medical tech & mass transit…"
Kk. We wouldn't need mass transit if we didn't have cars. And how much medical technology would be necessary if we weren't being poisoned by pollution? Humans survived just fine without technology for over 200,000 years.
I'm not a primitivist, but I realise it is some peoples ideal, and I think living simply alongside nature should be an option (and would be many peoples preference).
By mass transit I mean like trains, trams etc. but my ideal would be for everything to be in walking distance. I'm lucky enough to live in such a place now, but Americans living in the suburbs aren't so fortunate and it would take a while to make such a transition.
I agree somewhat on the medical technology too - certainly as far as pollution goes - according to one estimate a fifth of all people die early due to pollution.
One need only look at the "Big, Beautiful Bill" that passed yesterday — through coercion — in the very heart of today's coercive capitalism, the US.
It cuts medical assistance to the poorest, and gives the richest big tax breaks. It increases by some 1,500% the budget of the coercive ICE that is rounding up people with the wrong colour skin or the wrong native tongue, shipping them off to remote prisons, far from their family and legal advice. This, regardless of the legitimacy of their being in the US.
And while most thinking people know all this, The Beast appears in our email and crushes the thought of any progressive change — a nice note from the Social Security Administration, letting us know what a victory this is for Social Security recipients. This, from an organization now run by sociopaths, whose own budget was cut in this bill. This, from an organization that has been DOGEd and whose private database has been breeched, in the interest of "efficiency".
How soon will we who are a bit eccentric, a bit out-of-place, find our Social Security under attack? Those with a foreign address, or perhaps, just a foreign-sounding name?
My question would be how you innovate or improve technology? if everyone lives in communal subsistence, what need is there for phones, computers, etc. Despite this, I can definitely agree that your proposed system does sound more appealing than current capitalism.
Howard Odum taught us that Technology is an artifact of excess energy.
When fossil sunlight goes into permanent, irrevocable decline, so will technology. Today's newborn will be lucky to have ox carts in their retirement years.
Even the stodgy EIA admits that fossil fuel will be down by 20% by 2050 — many experts think it will be much lower by then.
The door may be closing on establishing subsistence communities while there is excess energy to ease the transition.
Mind you, everyone will be living sustainably sooner or later. It's how all humans lived for some 993,000 years, prior to the advent of grain agriculture, which brought us hoarding, withholding, power-over, social stratification, hierarchy, and wealth and poverty.
Let's call the neo-hunter-gatherers, "the survivors".
They won't be subsisting with the help of cell phones and computers.
Technology is useless without an environment.
Sure, but i'm just saying that I find innovation to be an unlikely occurrence in communes.
"Innovation" is a big word.
Technology must regress. That doesn't mean there won't be innovation!
There are thousands of things to explore, learn, and implement in a subsistence life-style! Figuring out how to live with much less technology is an innovative thing!
To be clear, "commune" is a term-of-art in the intentional communities movement. It is a community where almost everything — including income, assets, resources, food, housing — is shared. (You can keep your own toothbrush.)
This may well be where humanity is headed — it's been that way for hundreds of thousands of years — but it's still a small minority among the communities movement, as indexed in http://ic.org.
That is fair worryh - especially if we think of communes as small isolated rural groups of a few people.
However, I’m envisioning something which has many similarities to our systems now in terms of continuing the complexity of manufacturing at the high end, but without the demands of shareholders or owners, and organised in a more accountable way by those with the expertise having greater input that they do now, but also with more local power in our local (communal) communities.
Now I see owners without expertise and shareholders demanding profits over usefulness often getting in the way of innovation, and unnecessary duplication through competition even holding it back, with the workers and communities impacted by waste and pollution having no power to stop it. This is where I think a better model will have better results for most people.
Who gives a fuck? Technology has destroyed the environment. That's fine though, right? 🤦♀️
You are right - a lot of what is called 'innovation' is destroying the world. There is definitely a huge amount of technology which is dangerous - either because of what it wastes or what it produces. However, I think some technology can provide solutions (think some medical tech & mass transit) which can be used in a way which helps and frees people without destroying the planet.
I guess when we think of a commune we tend to think of everyone living in an agrarian village, and some successful communes definitely live that way. However, there are also communes of communes with hundreds of thousands of people across larger areas with every modern convenience.
I've tried to address some of the complexity, organisational and transition issues in a few articles -
* I Pencil (industry without capitalism) - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/i-pencil-the-true-story
* Organising Without Rulers - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/organising-without-rulers
* How Anarres Works - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/how-anarres-works
* Antillia's Utopia (set in the past) - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/antillias-utopia
* An AI Anarchist Manifesto (with my comments) - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/an-ai-anarchist-manifesto
* A Better World Is Possible - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/a-better-world-is-possible
It evokes a humanity we want to believe in: one that throws ropes to drowning strangers and nourishes children without profit. But the framework collapses under the weight of its own assumptions. Beneath its warmth lies a dangerous naivety.
The appeal to pre-modern villages and communal instincts may stir nostalgia, but it ignores well-documented realities:
Many historical societies treated vulnerability not with care, but removal: infanticide, abandonment, exclusion.
Communal solidarity often operated within narrow tribal or kin boundaries, not universal principles.
These failures weren’t occasional—they were patterned and profound. Agencies and governments emerged in response to systemic neglect, not to replace functioning compassion.
To claim that humans once lived in harmony until markets and states “distorted” them is not historical analysis—it’s myth-making.
The vision assumes that if people are kind, the necessities of life will simply be available. This ignores the cost of production. Food must be farmed, often in harsh conditions with low margins. In the UK the indigenous population won't take part in farm labour/ harvesting because of the hard work involved. Farms hire predominantly Eastern European seasonal workers.
Healthcare requires infrastructure, specialised skills, supply chains, and constant training. It is also tough, dirty, emotional, and with no clear end point. Housing demands labour, regulation, safety standards, and maintenance.
These systems don’t run on goodwill. They run on effort, risk, sacrifice—and persistent reward. To guarantee access without acknowledging production is to erase the labourer, the planner, the front-line provider. It is moral rhetoric unanchored by logistical reality.
The claim that “most people naturally engage in labour” is contradicted by history and data. Basic income pilots (e.g. Finland, Ontario) show disengagement from work when basic needs are guaranteed. Even in post-scarcity zones, people avoid work if effort exceeds perceived return—especially in high-demand roles. Entrepreneurs routinely forgo ventures where risk outweighs reward, despite possible profit. There are deeply unpleasant roles in society that pay quite well - they pay quite well because they cannot attract workers. Even paying well, they struggle. Crime scene cleaners earn around £50k, although you face exposure to trauma, biohazards, and emotional distress. Embalmers can easily earn £60k but you are constantly in the presence of the dead (unless you are really going wrong) and grieving families. Slaughter house workers earn a third above the national average. These are easy entry roles (no qualifications, etc), hungry for staff, that pay well above the national average and yet really struggle to recruit.
Meaningful contribution is not synonymous with socially necessary contribution. Many opt out—not out of laziness, but rational calculus. The system must account for that, not pretend it vanishes in moral fog.
This model insists it doesn’t need angels, only environments that reward cooperation. But the fallback mechanisms he proposes—conversation, peer pressure, and exclusion—do not scale or resolve chronic under-contribution. Social disapproval can be damaging, unevenly applied, or ignored. Exclusion isn’t benign when basic needs are contingent on participation.
Without enforceable standards, social accountability risks becoming moral gatekeeping—where access is conditional not on need, but on virtue as judged by prevailing norms. That is coercion by another name.
Capitalism is painted as requiring “massive daily violence” to preserve scarcity. The examples—evictions, patent protection, resource extraction—are real. But the term “violence” is stretched into metaphor. Legal enforcement does not equal brute force. Courts, contracts, and regulation maintain order and rights, often peacefully.
Scarcity isn’t always artificial—it’s shaped by demand, environmental limits, and the complexity of allocation. Mutual aid requires its own form of exclusion, discipline, and enforcement. Calling one “community accountability” and the other “coercion” is rhetorical sleight-of-hand, not ethical clarity.
The redefinition of productivity—based on contribution to collective wellbeing—sounds noble. But:
- Who defines “wellbeing”? Who adjudicates effort? What if socially critical roles go unfilled?
- The most essential workers (cleaners, carers, farmers) often avoid or leave roles not because of capitalism, but because compensation fails to match toil.
Valuing people morally is one thing. Sustaining systems that require high-effort labour without appropriate reward is another. Idealism doesn’t resolve burnout.
Citing examples like community gardens, housing co-ops, and tool libraries proves that microcosms can work. But it says nothing about managing:
- Global supply chains
- Critical healthcare infrastructure
- Disaster response
- Long-term planning for ageing populations or climate adaptation
These require coordination, leadership, accountability, and yes, sometimes hierarchy.
Society thrives not by dismissing coercion but by embedding it within just institutions—ones that protect rights, distribute burdens fairly, and reward contribution without moral blackmail.
Let us build systems where compassion is universal, labour is respected, and guarantees are guaranteed, not hoped for. That means laws, policies, and yes, structures. Not just sentiment.
Go fuck yourself😤
You're right that we can't just wave away the real logistical challenges of organising complex systems. You're also correct that some essential work is genuinely difficult and that people will rationally avoid it if they can & I agree totally that mutual aid networks do need accountability mechanisms, pretending everything will work out through pure goodwill is naive. All of this shows that short replies in comment threads miss out so much and rarely resolve the issues they try to address.
Organising Without Rulers - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/organising-without-rulers
However, I still believe your scenarios are setting up a false choice, you keep framing it as either capitalism or complete chaos, hierarchical states or total disorganisation. But (almost) no-one is arguing for a free for all dog-eat-dog world.
When it comes to basic income (which I do not support) of course people disengage from bullshit jobs when their survival isn't threatened! That's not proof that people won't work, it's proof that most wage labor under capitalism is alienated drudgery that people only do because they're coerced into it. Look at how much unpaid labor actually keeps society running: caregiving, community organising, open-source development, disaster relief. People absolutely work when the work is meaningful and voluntary.
Universal Basic Illusion - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/universal-basic-illusion
The whole ‘who will do the dirty jobs’ argument you're making is always framed as if capitalism actually solves this problem well. Those slaughterhouse workers and embalmers you mention, they're mostly poor people with few other options, often immigrants or people from marginalised communities. That's not voluntary choice, that's structural coercion with a paycheque attached.
Who Will Do The Dirty Jobs - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/who-will-do-the-dirty-jobs-after
You are also overlooking how non-hierarchal / non-capital organising actually works. Mutual aid networks have accountability mechanisms, they're based on horizontal relationships and collective decision-making, not top-down enforcement. When a housing co-op has conflicts, they don't call the cops, they work it out through mediation, restorative justice, or worst case, the person leaves. That's fundamentally different from state coercion.
The whole ‘global supply chains’ scare is just an argument from complexity. Complex systems can absolutely be organised through federation, delegation, and horizontal coordination. The internet basically runs on anarchist principles: decentralised networks, voluntary protocols, collaborative development. on open source operating systems. We don't need CEOs and state violence to coordinate at scale.
I Pencil (industry without capitalism) - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/i-pencil-the-true-story
I would argue that even if you believe that people (with no reward motivation) will do something, it would not be meaningful in a society sense nor align with its needs. It would be more akin to a retiree who potters (including people who retire in their 50's who travel and play golf).
Yes capitalism brings people into roles purely for the reward - but why is that bad? Unpaid labour does exist but the fact is that so few people choose to do it means that it leaves huge gaps that financial incentives have to plug.
There are large areas in most western countries of large-scale unemployment. There is not evidence of large scale volunteering in these areas (that coincidently need it desperately).
You suggest that the poor are exploited in the awful jobs that I have listed. As I state, these are exceptionally well paid roles BECAUSE they are unpleasant - and the evidence is that middle class professionals are also being attracted to these roles:
- HGV Drivers in the UK: During the 2021–2022 driver shortage, many professionals—including former IT workers and engineers—retrained as lorry drivers due to salaries exceeding £50,000 in some cases. The appeal was simple: high pay, low formal qualifications, and immediate demand.
- Warehouse and Delivery Roles: Amazon and other logistics firms offered signing bonuses and hourly rates that rivalled mid-level professional salaries. Some workers in education, hospitality, and even healthcare moved into these roles for better pay and flexibility.
- Construction and Trades: Skilled trades like plumbing, scaffolding, and roofing often outpay junior professional roles. In tight labour markets, professionals have retrained or shifted into these sectors, especially when facing underemployment or burnout.
If there is no hierarchy or capital organising, how do you get me to work? I don't want to. I want to do my own thing. You suggest 'soft' solutions but ultimately point to "... or worst case, a person leaves.." That is a euphemism. I don't want to contribute, or you don't like my style of contribution, and I don't want to leave. Your answer, if you are truthful, is no different to the capitalist position that you criticise - no work = no food. I know people who have lived on communes. Past tense. Always comes down to one thing - not pulling weight. Either they were fed up being criticised and 'organised' or they resented how they did all the hard or dirty work and others didn't contribute fairly.
You're actually making my argument for me here! You're absolutely right that capitalism forces people into roles purely for financial reward, and that's exactly the problem. When HGV drivers and warehouse workers are getting paid more than teachers and nurses, that's not the market efficiently allocating resources, that's a system that prioritises profit over human need.
And those high-paying 'awful jobs' you mention are far more awful because they're organised under capitalism. Slaughterhouse work is traumatic because it's designed for maximum profit, not worker wellbeing. Construction is dangerous because safety cuts into margins. These jobs could be organised completely differently - with job rotation, better conditions, democratic control over the work process.
You're also proving my point about unemployment areas. Of course there's no large-scale volunteering in places with mass unemployment, people are struggling to survive! When you're dealing with poverty, eviction threats, and social breakdown, you don't have the security to engage in unpaid community work. But look at what happens when people do have that security, after disasters, in tight-knit communities, in spaces where mutual aid networks exist. People absolutely step up.
I would encourage you to read the book, Humankind by Rutger Bregman, for many examples of this. It is also a well written interesting book too.
Your 'I don't want to work' scenario is interesting because it assumes scarcity and competition. But in a society organised around abundance and cooperation, other kinds of more rewarding work is possible, especially due to more onerous work being shared and divided. And of course communes fail, usually because they're trying to create islands of cooperation in an ocean of capitalism. That's completely different from transforming the entire social and 'economic' system with different incentives and rewards.
You're right to challenge coercive labour structures but your argument risks moral misattribution.
When HGV drivers are paid more than teachers, that isn’t capitalism valuing profit over human need, it’s markets responding to relative scarcity and aversion. Few people want to drive for twelve hours a day, sleep in cabs, or navigate depot logistics, so compensation rises to attract labour. Meanwhile, teaching, despite its societal importance, offers emotional reward, schedule regularity, and social status. That desirability suppresses wage urgency.
Markets aren’t moral arbiters; they’re reflections of preference, effort, and reluctance. People don’t resist slaughterhouses because capitalism organises them poorly, its because killing animals is emotionally and physically traumatic. You could rotate tasks, democratise oversight, and wrap the factory in community bunting, but the core discomfort won’t dissolve. It’s the nature of the job, not the architecture of governance.
You’ve invoked security as the precondition for voluntary action, but I challenge that premise. I’ve worked in communities with entrenched unemployment, where the need for civic contribution was immense and the time available abundant. Yet social volunteering was minimal. These weren’t just financially poor communities, they were often civically disengaged, fractured, and alienated. The problem wasn’t lack of security, it was lack of alignment and motivation.
Tragedy creates short bursts of solidarity. But systemic participation, the kind needed to run clinics, clean streets, or care for elders, rarely emerges organically, even when survival is subsidised. Without structured incentives or norms, public needs go unmet. I've worked in charities: charity staff are paid well.
Your model proposes that if enough people willingly shoulder unpleasant work, others can pursue “rewarding” tasks. But how do you reconcile the disparity in sacrifice?
If I opt out of unpleasant labour and pursue artistic expression while others manage sanitation, your system rewards withdrawal. If I redefine my contribution unilaterally and resist accountability, I exploit community goodwill.
Without calibrated reciprocity, this becomes a moral arbitrage, where effort is uncoupled from obligation and hard labour subsidises leisure under the banner of collectivism.
You seek a system where cooperation replaces coercion, and dignity replaces extraction. That’s admirable but real systems must recognise that needs don’t distribute evenly, labour isn’t equally attractive, and human nature is not uniformly altruistic.
Markets aren’t perfect, but they’re attempts to allocate effort where it’s lacking. To discard that mechanism without a superior replacement is to romanticise participation while ignoring its historical volatility.
If you expect saintly behaviour from people you'll be disappointed. Design for predictable behaviour, then embed fairness when idealism falters.
I think you may be confusing several different issues. First, on markets and wages: you're treating current market outcomes as natural reflections of scarcity and preference, but markets don't exist in a vacuum. HGV driving pays well partly because of artificial scarcity, such as strict licensing, age restrictions, and working conditions that are isolating and exhausting. Meanwhile, teaching is systematically undervalued through public funding decisions and cultural assumptions about it being a 'vocational calling.' These aren't neutral market forces; they're policy choices and profit incentives that shape what we consider scarce or valuable.
Your point about communities with high unemployment misses the deeper structural issue (which I know well having come from such a community). Civic disengagement in these areas isn't just about individual motivation, it's about decades of disinvestment, institutional abandonment, and social fragmentation. When communities have been systematically stripped of resources and agency, of course volunteer participation drops. But this actually supports my argument: people need genuine security and social connection to engage in collective action.
You're right that any system needs accountability mechanisms. But capitalism already creates massive exploitation of good will where capital owners extract value from others' labor while contributing little themselves. The question isn't whether to have reciprocity, but how to structure it fairly.
Your challenge about 'saintly behaviour' misses the point. I'm not expecting people to be saints, I'm arguing that different systems create different incentives and possibilities. People respond to the structures they're embedded in. Design systems that reward cooperation and mutual aid, and you'll see more of both.
The historical record shows that humans are capable of remarkable cooperation when the conditions support it. The challenge of creating those conditions at scale is a possible one. Markets could be one such mechanism (there are Market Socialists and Mutualist and Participatory Economic models that use them), or other systems such Cybernetics which was largely adopted by Walmart and Amazon internally (although intended for a very different purpose and outcome).
You said - 'Your model proposes that if enough people willingly shoulder unpleasant work, others can pursue “rewarding” tasks. But how do you reconcile the disparity in sacrifice?' There are several ways to answer this question -
1) This assumes that all work divides neatly into 'unpleasant sacrifice' versus 'rewarding tasks,' but that's a false choice created by capitalism. The 'disparity in sacrifice' largely exists because we've organised work to be as alienating as possible.
2) Different types of contribution deserve different types of recognition and support. Someone doing sanitation work might work fewer hours, have more social support, or rotate into other roles. When work is 'democratically' organised, rotated, and embedded in community purpose, much of what we consider 'unpleasant' becomes manageable or even meaningful.
3) How does capitalism reconcile this disparity? It doesn't. It just forces people into unpleasant work through economic coercion while others inherit wealth and never work at all. At least a cooperative system would be trying to solve this problem rather than hiding it behind 'market forces.'
As I said I've written five articles on the subject if you'd like to see how I've answered this with examples and references. Change the conditions change the outcomes.
https://youtu.be/qZA63ckKxXQ
I find value in many of your intentions, especially your concern for building systems that are humane, reciprocal, and socially embedded. Where we diverge is not in moral aspiration, but in the route by which such systems become viable and sustainable.
You’ve argued that capitalism misallocates value by rewarding unpleasant jobs while undervaluing socially vital ones like teaching or nursing. I disagree. Compensation in market economies doesn’t stem from morality, it reflects scarcity, skill demand, and aversion. HGV drivers and warehouse staff don’t earn more because they’re prized ideologically, but because fewer people want to do that work under the conditions required. Teaching, meanwhile, retains applicants despite relatively lower pay because it offers social status, emotional fulfillment, and occupational stability. Markets, while imperfect, attempt to reconcile effort and reward—something no society can afford to ignore.
Even if scarcity is caused by artificial barriers – ignoring the necessity of these – it still proves the point that it is not moral value but the choices people make around these barriers that then result in scarcity, that is then corrected with financial compensation.
You also describe how mutual aid thrives when people are secure. Yet in high-unemployment communities with abundant time and urgent local need, we do not observe large-scale voluntary engagement. I’ve worked in such spaces and seen firsthand the absence of contribution, even when necessity is obvious. Civic disengagement isn’t simply the result of disinvestment, it reveals that meaningful participation doesn't spontaneously emerge in a vacuum of hierarchy or incentive. In a way, you are requiring utopia to enable utopia. Tragedies may inspire temporary solidarity, but sustained labour, especially hard, undesirable labour, requires consistent reinforcement. Your model assumes that once need is decoupled from survival, people will fill critical roles. But that’s not how labour motivation functions. People are not just shaped by structure; they are limited by effort, desire, and the friction between personal choice and communal necessity.
If your system depends on certain individuals willingly shouldering unpleasant tasks while others pursue “rewarding” ones, then you’ve created a framework that inadvertently rewards withdrawal, and speaking personally, I wouldn’t choose to do hard or dangerous work without compelling reason.. That isn’t cooperative, it’s moral arbitrage, where effort becomes optional and fulfilment is selectively distributed. The idea of democratic rotation or reduced hours doesn’t resolve the discomfort, it just delays its concentration.
The deeper issue here is that you frame coercion as capitalist, but sidestep the functional coercion embedded in horizontal systems. You say that if someone refuses to contribute or disrupts the consensus, “worst case, the person leaves.” But what if they don’t want to leave? What if they feel their role is valid, even if the group disagrees? At that point, your “non-coercive” structure is operating under the same logic as the system you critique: no contribution, no access. The difference is rhetorical, not substantive.
Finally, we must confront a more honest truth: almost all work is compromise. Whether bureaucratic, emotional, intellectual, or physical, labour is shaped by time pressure, task repetition, and social friction. There is no utopia where every role is intrinsically fulfilling and neatly aligns with public necessity. The notion of purely meaningful work is as illusory as the idea that unpleasant jobs will be filled through goodwill alone. All systems must negotiate that tension—not romanticise its resolution.
If mutual aid is to be the foundation of a future society, it cannot rely on idealised behaviour or deferred discomfort. It has to integrate accountability, incentive, and realism—not as a betrayal of its ideals, but as a mark of its maturity. I’m open to those designs. But not to frameworks that ignore the historic, psychological, and logistical gaps they must overcome.