Charles Shea :
The current system of labor enslavement which is the enforcement of obedience under threat of violence is not a "solution" to societal problems; it is the ultimate admission of systemic failure. When a society relies on the threat of a physical cage, the slow death of starvation, or the exposure of homelessness to ensure that children are raised, the elderly are cared for, or the gears of the economy keep turning, it has ceased to be a community and has become a labor camp with a PR department.
The argument that "we can't just let people abandon their responsibilities" is often used to justify the money grinder of capitalism. However, if a responsibility is so naturally abhorrent or the conditions so miserable that people would only fulfill it under the threat of annihilation or existential precarity, the problem isn't the "laziness" of the individual—it is the toxicity of the structure.
When the means of production—the land, the farms, the water, and the building materials—have been unironically seized by the rich then "freedom of choice" becomes a cruel joke. If you must work a dull and repetitive job just to access the basic calories needed to keep your heart beating, you are not "free"; you are a captive negotiating for your life.
The Only Real Solution is Voluntary Consent:
Any solution that requires even a drop of slavery or forced obedience under threat of violence is immediately poisoned because it requires a societal machine to enforce enslavement or violence. To actually solve this problem, participation in community or parenting or labor must be consented to at all times while also being economically supported and the environment nurturing so that people choose it, never forced under threat of violence because that would be literal enslavement.
If the only way to keep society running is to threaten your "citizens" with the street or the cell, then your society is actually a slow-motion hostage crisis. If you introduce force, you stop solving the problem of how to live together and start solving the problem of how to keep the cattle in the pen.
2026-04-09 17:41:13