this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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Under capitalism, a lot of the time, highly dangerous jobs are also highly paid. Kind of a balance that the individual decides to engage with. Same idea behind getting an advanced degree in STEM or law. I think of my job by example, I'm a power plant operator at a large combined cycle plant. No fucking shot I'd be doing this if the pay wasn't good. I'm around explosive and deadly hot shit all day.

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[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Read closer. It said:

  1. we don't know the exact forms and processes that communism will take as it is still being built for the first time in modern history

  2. during the transitionary phase, which all communist countries you can name are in and no country has ever yet left, incentives are and have been compensation, meaning money

  3. prior incentives from pre-capitalist societies were violence

  4. prior incentives from primitive societies were the outcomes of doing the work

  5. without monetary incentives, primitive societies didn't wonder about how to incentivize people to do dangerous work, they wondered about how to make dangerous work less dangerous

  6. as communism is built from capitalism, compensation is the incentive that will be used while society also works on reducing the need for incentives by making dangerous work less dangerous or making it obsolete. A communist society will be one where the incentives are sufficient to get the work done without being so large that they create an upper class of rich people

I also should have said the richest among us under capitalism have never done dangerous work and that people who do dangerous work rarely become capital owners anyway.

There is nothing contradictory about people who do more difficult or dangerous getting special privileges (which is all extra salary really amounts to) under communism.

[–] Chippys_mittens@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I will read and respond to this properly by adding an edit to this comment. Im busy at the moment but I do want to genuinely thank you for putting the amount of time and effort into your answers in this thread. I know I'm answering in a kind of snarky way to most comments. Don't take the snark as disdain for you, just a skeptical and generally snarky guy.

Edit~ thank you for the response and all the time you took crafting it. What I understand from your response is essentially the following. We do not necessarily know what compensation for less appealing/dangerous/years of specialization jobs will look like. However, it's likely there will likely be a quantifiable difference in quality of life. I accept that answer as its the most reasonable I've seen in this thread. The people saying things like "some people just enjoy a hard days work" still infuriate me though....

[–] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Was any of it ~~capitalism~~ communism? It still reads as being focused on the transition and basically using resources, pride and threats

Edit: Corrected "capitalism" to be "communism" 🤦‍♂️I probably should just get off the internet for the day

[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I understand your question. Was any of what capitalism?

Yes allocation of resources is essentially how a large number of human needs are met and that would not be different under connunism. Only the system of resource allocation changes, not the basic science of how humans operate. Need chemicals, need energy, can't do that without allocation of resources.

I don't think I mentioned anything resembling pride, but I also don't know that pride is a sustainable way to run a society. Threats are also sort of universal regardless of system. They exist in all societies. It would be the system of threats that would change

[–] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

🤦‍♂️ Sorry, I meant communism and wrote capitalism. I've probably made larger errors here though so don't feel the need to respond

But for "pride" I meant a very broad generic doing it for others / prestige / feels good / vision / ideology.

[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago

was any of it communism?

It would be better to say that all of it was the movement for communism but none of it was a communist economy. In that way I think it becomes clear. It's like training for football. Is any of the physical training "football"? No. But all of it is towards football and the actions are specific to the movement for football.

Similarly, all of what we call communism in our day to day discourse is the actual communist movement working on the process of bringing about a communist economy (or just "communism") but, since communism hasn't been achieved yet, it's still very experimental and unknown. Every step produces new empirical learning which gets studied by communists all over the world to analyze what works and what doesn't.

[–] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 0 points 4 days ago

I see you didn't mention anything like that. I just assumed a "carrot" to your mentions of "sticks"