this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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Mucking out sewers, garbage collection, manually excavating Fatbergs:
Robots. The solution for the disgusting jobs nobody really wants to do is to build machines to do it.
Or, or perhaps until these jobs can be automated, or remotely performed, you incentivize people to do them by offering privileges. Perhaps luxury items, or vacations, etc. Or, perhaps you make it something everyone in the community has to take a turn doing. Like jury duty. Could still also incentivize it.
These are necessary albeit disgusting jobs that people should be praised for doing instead of looked down on like they often are. Garbage collectors, sanitation workers, janitors and the like are some of the most important work that someone can do.
Nursing, and Doctoring often entails just as disgusting of work as the aforementioned jobs. Some are only willing to do the work for the money. Some will always be willing to do it for the desire to help society, and the recognition they receive. As long as their fundamental needs and more are met, people will be willing to do disgusting jobs for the greater good.
You don't think people would volunteer to maintain sewers or collect garbage if the alternative was shit/trash everywhere?
To me it just looks like an easy way to do your community a service.
100% people would volunteer to collect garbage.
Community cleanups occur regularly in my local area.
Let me put it this way: maybe society is so filled with angels that things like this wouldn't be a problem.
Regardless, we should probably set up incentive structures such that pro-social behavior is rewarded rather than depending on the kindness of everyone's hearts, and being completely fucked otherwise.
Also, it's still going to be more efficient for one person to go around collecting their neighbors' trash and driving it to the dump, and it kinda sounds like someone's gonna still end up doing that, they just won't be getting paid for it.
I dunno, could just be like jury duty. Terry's on trash truck this week.
That could work for something like garbage collection, where the stakes and skill level are relatively low. But there's also jobs that are critical and high skill, like operating a power plant. You're probably going to want the same people doing that consistently, and again, it's relying on skilled people sacrificing a lot of time and energy, with no clear reward or incentive.
I never get this argument. "...with no clear reward or incentive.", isn't having electricity enough of a reward and incentive. The same goes for everything else. Why wouldn't having the product or thing you rely on in daily life be incentive enough to produce it? Like why do you need a specific reward for working a power plant? What's that reward now? Money? There are enough other jobs they could work to make money. They chose to work in a power plant because believe it or not, some people just find that shit interesting.
For other things like garbage collection that doesn't require too much job specific expertise I believe a rotation system would be the best solution though if you don't find enough people doing it voluntarily, but maybe you would. People do free labor for community events all the time, sell or make food and beverages, plan the event, help build stuff for it. For many people the community recognition would be incentive enough.
I just believe we have enough people with diverse interests and goals to make this work. Some people thrive on community interaction, some people like to do technical labor or science, etc.
Imo in the end most things would naturally balance out.
The issue is that we're not talking about pitching in occasionally, we're talking about like a full time job that you do for no pay. And the difference isn't necessarily electricity on or off, maybe you end up with a skeleton crew that isn't able to keep up with maintenance and the like, leading to more frequent outages.
And if your answer is mutual aid, then you're basically just suggesting that everyone gets paid via GoFundMe. Instead of a consistent salary, that you can spend on whatever you like you get whatever and however much the community decides to give you. You'd have to worry as much about making sure everyone knows that you're keeping the lights on, as you do about actually keeping the lights on.
Is everyone going to be recognized by everyone else? There's so many thankless but essential jobs. I have no idea who works to keep my house powered now, and I'm not sure how I would.
The fact is that there's a certain demand for jobs and there's a certain supply of people who are interested in those jobs, and what you're suggesting is that the supply and demand is going to happen to line up perfectly for every job. There's no reason why that would be the case. Of course you can just say, "well some people find garbage collection really fun" for any job but the chances that there will be exactly the right number of volunteers, who are willing to work that job 40 hours a week long term with no pay, for every single job that needs to exist, the chances of that are infinitesimally small. This just seems like wishful thinking. I don't think we should set up systems where plan A is everyone being angels and plan B is society falls apart completely.
If something needs to be done reliably and consistently, then you need to make sure there are reliable and consistent incentives. I don't see how it's different from saying, "We should cut food stamps and let donations cover it." Donations and volunteer work are never going to be as consistent as an actual program.
You are underestimating the weaponised autism.
If the option of college was open to me and a life of corporate drudgery wasn't forced upon me, I would have happilly served my country by becoming a nuclear reactor operator/technician, that shit is dope.
i feel like every discussion about capitalism ends up like the wkuk skit about anarchy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fibDNwF8bjs
Yeah, love that sketch!
Unplugging your toilet?-> yes.
Unclogging a hot guy/gal's toilet?-> yes.
Unclogging an old gramma's toilet -> nah, I pass thank you!