poets in the Soviet Union would take on small jobs like being a janitor

imagine opening an app and you see the local soup kitchen and pet sanctuary as listings

the soup kitchen posted an event for lunch and you hit "volunteer"

you help pack boxes and get a meal

your labor directly benefitted someone

your social credit increases

  • TheBroodian [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I would hope that it wouldn't be 'the gig economy', and would rather just be, 'an ordinary day in life where I do shit in my community because it sounds good to me and because I want to do it'

    • Wojackhorseman2 [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I mean under socialism all the shitty exploitative stuff that “the gig economy” connotes would ostensibly be irrelevant.

      I imagine it’d just be a sector of the work force that uses technology to disseminate info about jobs that need to be done to people who like doing random odd job/temp kind of services.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I think the biggest problem with a social credit economy is that people who are really good at blowjobs would end up forming a blowjobopoly.

    • VolcelPolice [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      This could be avoided if there was some kind of organisation created to stop it, maybe call it something like the Don't Cum Cops?

  • opposide [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    What you dumb tankies fail to understand is that there’s no incentive! They’re stealing your labor! That’s why it’s better to work three times harder in order to get 5% salary increase like in america

  • weirddodgestratus [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I honestly really enjoyed doing food delivery back when I lived in the city. The pay was shit but I got to ride my bike around all day, meet interesting people, see the sights, with no manager hovering over my shoulder the entire time. If their business model wasn't dependent on shafting their drivers as much as possible it'd be a pretty sweet gig.

  • RedArmor [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    It would not be considered a “gig economy” like we have now tho, it would just be considered labor or providing a service for fellow workers

  • curmudgeonthefrog [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Sounds like a mutual aid app of some kind. Anyone know if something like that exists?

      • quartz242 [she/her]M
        ·
        4 years ago

        The part in the beginning where he travels around working various jobs that need to be done that sounds so amazing. Yea it could be hard but you got to see the world, meet new people, and most importantly self-determinate

  • HarryLime [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Surely with the elimination of poverty there wouldn't be soup kitchens in the same way there are today.

    • raven [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      In a way soup kitchens make a lot of sense. Why have 40 people go home and spend an hour making dinner when you can just make one huge dinner for 40 people?

      "Go home" being the difference I suppose

      • Des [she/her, they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        i like the idea of community kitchen-cafeterias where chefs rotate in and out of and volunteer. they can use locally harvested foodstuffs when in season or use excess daily overages from the local food distribution stores. just a cool place to hang, eat, and chill when you don't want to cook or are too tired or it isn't your thing. you can take home a meal if you want.

        • HarryLime [any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          You could do a thing that's a combination of a Soviet Stolovaya and a modern Ghost Kitchen (which I guess is just a Ghost Kitchen with a large cafeteria) where local cooks can trade use of the kitchen space. The problem with Ghost Kitchens is that they're being used by food delivery apps to undercut restaurants and drive them further out of business, and it's ultimately self-defeating because the whole business model is unsustainable, but they could be repurposed with a modicum of public financing.

      • ChapoBapo [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Yeah even Kropotkin proposed that the bulk of cooking would be done in large community kitchens and that families would take the food home and customize it to their taste with like different spices and accoutrements or whatever.

        • hazefoley [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          That's a cool idea for the 1800s but I think we can still have restaurants under communism no?

          • Nebbit [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            What's the distinction? Large community kitchen serving food, seated indoors, doesn't sound too dissimilar to a restaurant?

            • hazefoley [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Because it's this utopian forced social communization thing that just rubs me the wrong way. Like the soviets tried communal kitchens and people hated it.

              So much of the fantasizing revolves around us living in twee little smurf villages. I like living in the city. I like having variety in my restaurant options. And why can't we keep these comforts?

            • shitstorm [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Restaurants work fairly well in Cuba. It's something you have to apply for and obviously you can only have one. If basic needs are met by welfare, then small business tyrants lose their power and can operate something like a restaurant. After all, some people enjoy going out to dinner and not having to worry about preparing food themselves, I don't see why that has to change if it's a sustainable system.

      • HarryLime [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Not that we should copy everything they did, but the USSR already did this with Stolovaya, which were a lot more than simple soup kitchens.

        • ScrubsFloorsInHyrule [comrade/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          So basically like school cafeterias. I can get behind that being more normalized for quick and healthy meals. Use this as fast food when you're too lazy to cook.

    • Kresimir [they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Maybe just as a temporary thing, cause stuff like that takes time, even with everyone on board.

    • Qelp [they/them,she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I mean under communism I assume people still want like fast hot meals for lunch and stuff, so I assume it would be more like working a shift at the People’s McDonalds rather than a soup kitchen

      • Nebbit [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Yeah it's not a soup kitchen that exists to alleviate severe poverty, rather a public kitchen that just serves soup for people.