until we meet again!

If you think about the brutality of nature, which we are mostly isolated from, then yeah, organisms in general do have to earn their right to life through overcoming and eating other organisms.

We're always told the people at the bottom rung of society, the people doing "entry level" jobs just need to work harder and harder to earn a proper living...

But how does that work really? Unlike a lot of high level jobs, none of these jobs just exist for the sake of existing, most of these "entry level" jobs are essential to society (we saw that much during the pandemic).

Somebody has to do them or society just doesn't work, so don't the people doing these literally essential jobs deserve to be paid a fair living wage? They're working just as hard as the people above them, yet they're paid peanuts in comparison

I said this on Reddit and they agreed that you don't deserve to be alive if you're not working, it's really a disease of the mind to believe this shit.

I'm pro unconditional basic income, but I would argue that it's more about you having to make sure you have everything you need yourself. No one would say to someone who lives completely self-sufficient that he needs "to earn a living".

Talking to someone who justifies this kinda shit is always a trip. They'll say that people who aren't earning a living wage just need to work harder and pick up a marketable skill to improve their situation. But you can simultaneously get them to agree that many of these low wage "unskilled" jobs need to exist for society to continue functioning, so which fucking is it?

The answer is that the capitalist parasites and their horde of boot lickers believe it's totally acceptable for there to exist an underclass of human beings born to work until their bodies give out for the enrichment of their superior employer.

They can't afford to live a dignified life doing the shit I need them to do? That's fine, just toss 'em into the hole when they stop working and replace them with the next generation.

Honestly man, I'm getting real sick and tired of pretending to be above violent retribution when it comes to these people. My blood fucking boils each and every time I need to look my boss in the eye and pretend to smile as they say farcical shit like "we're all a family here" or "let us know if there's anything you need" while paying me exactly the minimum wage and hiring the exact number of employees it takes for them to avoid giving any of us enough hours to qualify for benefits.

Anyway, Stalin had the right idea with gulags, and we should bring those back. Thanks for coming to my TED talk

I mean if you think about it, the default of humanity is to die of thirst assuming we were to do nothing so 'earning a living' is just a realistic expectation for any society.

Actually, "earning a living" is an example of an idiom, and it is not meant to be interpreted literally. It just means aquiring the income necessary to pay for the basic expenses of modern life. You may also notice that people rarely find themselves inside of pickles or with butterflies in their stomachs, but before you get angry that someone is suggesting you should break your leg, remember that figurative speech is fairly common.

That is 100% true in a capitalist society. You are measured by your ability to produce.

Edit: Apparently this needs some clarification. You are measured by your ability to produce for your owner.

Thank you Mr. Skeletor. It is important to get the occasional outside perspective on living from an undead evil villain. Nyeh.

You need to consume to live. This means you need to manipulate your surroundings in order to survive. So you need to work to have your basic needs meet. You don't just get to live with zero effort.

Youths of today discovering idioms of yesteryear going, "mm technically, this implies..." as if that wasn't the obvious, intended implication to begin with.

And yet we get born. Motherfuckers!

Yes, and fascists will happily say that's a good thing. They like it. They're sadists.

They're morons that don't understand how social species survive and thrive.

In any good society everyone who is able should be expected to contribute something though. Even in the wild you have the right to be alive but you don't have the right to free food, shelter etc without working for it

Similarly under capitalism you're not going to be executed for not working but also unless there's a good reason you can't contribute nobody's going to work to feed you for nothing in return

You do have a right to be alive, if you can gather the food to put in your mouth and get shelter (in most climates), and defend yourself from predators.

'Earning a living' is just some way people can do that. But you still need to defend against the predators.

When you become a billionaire you should be forced to earn a living. Prove to the world why we shouldn't eat you this year

Sword Logic

I suppose it was the same back in the ancient times but you had to ask the saber kitty if you were worthy of passing your genes or not. /S