Those who cannot work?

[u/Outrageous_Big_9136]

I'm fairly new to Socialist thought, but if everyone is contributing what they can... how are those taken care of who are of retirement age or are too disabled to work?

[u/SilentDis]

To each according to their needs
From each according to their means

The individual is paramount. It does not matter what you give back - we all want all of us to have a roof over our heads, 3 healthy meals a day, and a safe bed to rest.

There is no exclusion from the above. It is absolute, and the failure for one is the failure of all as a collective.

That doesn't mean 'throw it out' - that means learn.

How did we fail? What 'crack' did this comrade fall through? What can we do to make sure no one else is in there, and that 'crack' is sealed for all time?

We must all learn to judge our society and government by how the lowest of us are treated.

As for the individual themselves:

I tried and failed to come back to work after a major infection 3 times. I was just so bored I couldn't deal with it, but at the same time I couldn't get work done because I was in too much damned pain. It was maddening.

I'm 100% sure that - because of our current broken, failed society - most of us could sleep for a month, shuffling to the toilet to relief, kitchen for food, then right back to bed. That fact alone should scream to you that there's something deeply broken and failed about the world we live in.

We produce enough for ~10 billion people to eat, and housing stock is either at- or above-demand everywhere. The problem is how much of it is tied up in 'investment property' and the whole 'short term rental market' (think AirBnB and such). We can solve the logistics challenge of moving that food around if we want to. The only reason we don't is because it is far more profitable to let people starve, and let people live unhomed.

People aren't lazy. Sure, you'll get the one or two that try to scam the system, maybe even one or two that succeed. Nowhere near as many as we have right now (the rich).

The retired gave what they had, and they earned their rest. The disabled will find work in their time, in their own way. They will find me supporting them and cheering them every step of the way.

Another aspect of all this is that we absolutely need to slow down. I mean it. We don't need 20,000 funko pops today by noon. We don't need 30,000 sneakers with lights in them. We don't need 50,000 framed "Live Laugh Love" posters.

We have the modern infrastructure such that we can know how many of these things we need, and stop. You don't need more made 'just in case'. I'm not even saying "don't have funko pops" or "don't have sneakers with lights in them" or "don't have a live laugh love poster" - I'm saying you don't need it immediately. Give it a week, if you still want it, put in an order, and get it in a week or two. It was made because you asked for it at that moment, and we didn't have a billion of them sitting in a warehouse somewhere waiting to ship the other 19,999 to a landfill.

The huge drop this would mean in work required would be amazing. We may just hit the fabled 4-day/20-hour week with such a system. Maybe even less.

So, the need to even have every able-bodied person working is moot. There's just not honestly enough to do. We'd all switch to small, local stuff - like taking care of our community, being with them, and maybe finding out that disabled person - that wasn't useful to capitalism - has a wonderfully sweet voice, singing in the park, while you lie under the giant trees, twisting dandelions into crowns.