Who Will Clean the Toilets?

One of the objections frequently leveled against the proposal for the absence of money is that no one will do any work.  The assumption here is that humans are basically lazy and that, if basic needs are met, we'll all just lounge around in our underwear drinking beer and watching sports TV.  Okay, that's the men.  Probably the women would just shop for useless junk and watch soap operas, if we're going to deal in ugly stereotypes.

But have you ever asked someone (or been asked yourself), "If money were no problem, what would you really like to be doing with your time?"  Most folks will tell you that they'd like to be doing something useful or creative.  I submit to you that in reality, people want to make a difference.  They want to set a good example for their children.  They want to be respected by their families, friends, and neighbors.  And they want to respect themselves.  I think that this is where the key lies.

Everybody knows that there are jobs that need to be done, even though they are or seem unpleasant.  I doubt that cleaning the bathroom, especially the toilet, is anyone's favorite task, but the idea of being stuck with doing it for a living is even more repugnant.  We see someone in a job like that, and we have the urge to pretend that we don't see them; we run the other way.  On the other hand, if we know that someone is cleaning toilets for a day at a homeless shelter, we call it community service and have the urge to thank them.  So it's really about the stuckness, the wage-slavery of it, not about the task itself.  And the saddest part is that the person with the job is probably making minimum wage for it.  In a compassionate economy, that person would be paid more than a CEO.

So could you do it a couple hours a week or one day a month?  Sure you could, with the added bonus that your friends and family would admire you for it.  So if we as a community understand this cluster of ideas, the expectation could grow that a person's reputation is built on what one is willing to contribute to the community. And Reputation is crucial to our argument.  The reasons for this will become clear in a post in  the near future.  Stay tuned!