I guess you’re right. You can say it makes me an asshole if you want, but I don’t think that person deserves the same credit or wealth as a person who got an education and used it to work full time in a specialized field.

I do not see that as a weird or unjust opinion.

[–] ScrivenerX@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not a weird opinion. It is what we have been conditioned to think. Capitalism tells us that our worth is linked to our work.

It's taken me a long time, but I no longer feel that the purpose of life is to be "productive" but rather to be happy. If you are curious about what other assumptions about the world and how things "have to be" I'd suggest reading "the one dimensional man" by Marcuse.

[–] ViridianNott@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I appreciate the recommendation but I don’t see my perspective on this issue as flawed or in need of changing.

I do have a lot of issues with the way wealth is distributed in capitalist societies… our income from work is a downright shitty attempt at approximating people’s value to society. Some people get more than they deserve and others get a lot less.

At the same time, I don’t think it’s wrong that at least a large part of a person’s value and worth should be determined by how they choose to spend their time. I see it as inherently unjust that someone who doesn’t apply themselves in a way that improves or maintains the world should be rewarded the same as someone who does.

The world is full of passions and hobbies that everyone would love to earn money from, but there are a lot of shitty, difficult, and hard jobs that need doing and but won’t get it without some sort of incentive. Thus, inequality, at least to some extent, is an essential feature of human societies that strive to improve over time. Every communist country has been wrought with inequalities under the surface, because they couldn’t motivate people without it!

This is not to say that anyone who honestly tries according to their ability deserve poverty, and I strongly believe in having a social safety net to help those people (I consider myself an Obama/Clinton democrat for reference).

While capitalism is an ultimately bad and inefficient way of rewarding people for their contribution to society, it would be far, far worse to fail to reward those that work extra hard, especially in jobs that are otherwise undesirable.

That’s the perspective I come from, and I think we simply have to agree to disagree.

[–] BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just so you know, Clinton was famously against safety nets, resorting to “welfare queen” propaganda and pushing for the dismantling of the welfare system.

I’d also argue that we do not value those who work extra hard, but those who most efficiently extract others hard work. The highest paid individuals aren’t the ones doing the terrible jobs, nor the important jobs. There’s actually a pretty solid reverse correlation between how hard one works and how much one earns.