Jobs that either don’t contribute in any meaningful way or jobs where one would be better off if they were paid to be on call.

  • blackbirdbiryani@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I hate capitalism as much as the next lemming but banks and insurance companies, at their base level, definitely provides a service. Banks help you spread the cost of things over time at the expense of interest, and insurance companies do something similar with risk.

    Its only when they do warped shit like lend money at zero interest or force consumers to pay for insurance (thereby negating the need to be competitive) that they start to leech off the system.

    • Narrrz@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I would distinguish between providing a service & creating value. the service that banks and insurance provide is useful, but only in the context of a money-centric society. they don’t create anything that has a purpose deprived of context, it’s only the moving around of numbers.

      • blackbirdbiryani@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        But we do live in a currency-based society. That’s like saying food only has value in the context of a chemical-energy based society. It’s a pointless semantic argument here.

        • Narrrz@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          perhaps it is, but I’m not convinced. if food, eating, whatever were an unnecessary and wasteful system then the growing of food and processing, production, etc would likewise be a waste of resources, human labour included. a lot of our work does go towards food production, supply, processing, etc - if you could switch to an alternate system that dispensed with food but didn’t otherwise alter our lives, that would surely be massively preferable. it’s hard to imagine because eating is such a fundamental need, but that’s just a limitation of this comparison.

          if we could dispense with money but otherwise have society look much the same (or better, which I think it undoubtedly would be), that would be an improvement, to me, just by virtue of freeing up the labour of all the people who work solely in the overhead of the system. to imagine how else we might function as a society, I think it’s useful to identify ways in which the present system is inefficient.