this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
455 points (92.8% liked)
Political Memes
9573 readers
2498 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Money is made up. The only reason people have to be paid for their work is because the capitalist system requires it for those workers to survive. All the capitalist system does is put the allocation of resources in the hands of a minority of powerful people. It happened under kings before that. There’s nothing special about capitalism. It only changes the concentration of power from lineage to who exploits the capitalist system best. It could just as easily happen under a socialized system that actually benefited workers in far more equitable ways. It sadly gets quashed by the greedy monsters of this world with manipulation and violence.
Naw, people like being paid for their work.
Having food is nice, having a home is nice, having a car is nice, having a vacation is nice.
People like being paid for their work.
Capitalists giving you those privileges only exists in a capitalist system. Do you think people in communist systems or centralized state systems didn't get to eat, or have homes, or travel? Just because capitalism is the way we are allocating resources and privileges in a lot of countries today, doesn't mean it's the only way these things can be distributed to people. People act like capitalism isn't only a 300 year old economic system.
People don't like getting paid, they like to get things with the money.
In a decommodified economy you would not need this.
We shouldn’t confuse the use of currency with the capitalist system.
In a decommodified economy, any sort of "currency" would not even be money in the modern sense of the word.
Describe this “decommodified economy” if you could. What does that mean to you?
An economy where goods are not produced to be sold at a market.
For example a communist society (classless and moneyless) would be one such system.
If you go straight to giving people the end things, the payment is the food, home, car, vacation, etc. People like being paid for their work.
You are still thinking of it in terms of commodity production
If you include 'food', 'shelter', 'transportation' in 'commodity production', then yes, people want things like food, shelter, and transportation. People like being paid for their work.
These things should not be directly associated with work
Of course rewarding people for work is good in some sense in every economic system, just putting it in the sense of being paid just makes it very stuck in that sort of capitalist mindset.
Other economic systems can exist.
Unfortunately for humanity, food, shelter, and transportation doesn't place itself in front of you. People have to work to make/gather those things.
I would also love to live in a place where nobody had to work in order for shelter to exist. But, someone has to work to build the home.
I would love to live in a place where nobody had to work for food to exist. But someone has to grow and gather the food.
I would love to live in a place where nobody had to work for cars/trains to exist, but someone has to work to build the car.
And in those systems, people will still be working for food, shelter, transportation. People like being paid for their work.
"Source: it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."
Can you perhaps go back over this and explain what these words actually mean? I actually want to understand what you mean better. Because money is not identical to capitalism. And workers need to be paid for their work because they need to eat to survive. What is it that capitalism specifically is requiring here? I’ve seen one or two replies that are like “sure yeah people want to be paid but that’s capitalism’s fault too” and I genuinely don’t understand the point you are trying to make. Compensating someone for their work is a very basic concept not necessarily tied to capitalism. Even in the natural world there is very little labor that is not focused on some reward outcome. There is even compensation between species in symbiotic relationships. Compensation doesn’t seem like some weird forced artificial thing to me at all. It’s primal.