Interesting thought. I think most issues stem from bigot assholes who consume the produce but are not allowed to due to their background/upbringing/social "norms". And those within their normative set not willing to provide, because of the same background/upbringing/social context.
Also, w/o currency there will be other forms of compensation, like a certain amount of work time, or... (p.e.) a handful of apples... due for a certain set of services.
Additionally there is always a percentage of plain idiots who would socially not be able to ascertain this kind of services w/o paying, and these seem to need to demonize the servicer to feel better about themselves.
Sry if I busted this comment, brain is fried after work.
There can be other forms of compensation in currencyless societies, so not necessarily. There's also just the personal fulfillment aspect, which is supposed to be the main thing motivating people to work in this hypothetical.
Edit: Other forms of compensation would re-introduce ethical questions, so that's probably a bad suggestion. It would have to be a post-scarcity society, as others have pointed out.
It does if they formally define it as their career path and treat it as such.
Sex work is more than just having sex with people for fun. There's layers, specializations, and skill to it. Not all of it is strictly physical. Someone might want to just go on a date after their spouse passed away, for instance. Handling that situation requires a lot of emotional maturity and your skill in those situations improves with experience.
Edit: better examples would be sex surrogacy or porn creation.
While I agree with you that I don't think OP has correctly described what they're actually thinking about, there is plenty of sex work that doesn't involve actually having physical sex with anyone. Like a solo porn model, or erotic dancers
They keep saying people will continue to perform sex work if there's no economic gain, but at that point it's not work. Then the counter argument to that is "there's many different kinds of sex work", but the point still stands that having sex voluntarily, being an exhibitionist, or having a hobby of filming sexual encounters are all things that people do for personal gratification and are not considered a career now, or in this hypothetical post-scarcity civilisation.
Like someone else said, it sounds like they are just fantasising about sex slaves. To me it also sounds like OP is overcompensating on the whole "I respect sex workers" virtue signalling.
Other commenter is right, I was thinking more things like creating pornography or sex surrogacy, things that people would find fulfilling and choose to do irrespective of what incentives may or may not be on offer, and would qualify as more traditional "work".
I don't agree, I think it's possible to compartmentalize certain sexual activities as not romantic and also not obligation-based, while still being fulfilling and work-related in a post-scarcity society. Like helping clients overcome sexual insecurity or barriers with sex surrogacy, for instance.
It seems like you mean a post-scarcity society rather than a currencyless one. Sex work done to earn a living is still done to earn a living if it's in a society that distributes goods and services in another way. I'd hope that the sex worker in question is getting personal fulfilment from it, but unless their basic needs are covered regardless then it seems foolishly optimistic to assume that it's the case
The stigma with sex work is that you're having sex with someone because you want paid, and otherwise wouldn't be having sex with that person.
If there was no need for money or an exchange for goods and you wanted to have sex with a bunch of different people, we already have that in today's society. It's a tinder user.
It's also related to sex being a "special" or "sacred" act. If it was just something that could be potentially dangerous by resulting in STDs or unwanted pregnancy, like say, driving your car can be potentially dangerous by resulting in accidents and death, then no stigma would exist. But people give it this special character beyond any other human activities, and put it on a pedestal essentially.
Without that pedestal, a delivery driver delivering to someone they don't like, for the money, is just ... their job. Sex being a job is just ... a job a person can have. Why make it special?
People basically want to put the pussy on a pedestal, and you don't really need to be doing that. It doesn't actually make any sense, it's just tradition for some folks. Who then want other people to follow their tradition too.
The joker isn't the disease in Gotham, he's the symptom. In a world where the effort of an individual results in proportional gains, where people have a home, family, and attachments to their community, there is no joker. The populace is innoculated against his desire to tear it all down, because they have a stake in "it all". The few that are vulnerable to his views, are getting the support and care they need from trained staff, and the people around them are keeping the joker away. Batman isn't in Gotham because of the Joker; the Joker can exist in Gotham because of Batman, a billionaire who spent his efforts and resource on violence, instead of outreach.
Plus, giving OSHA some teeth, and forcing corporations to compensate fairly for workplace accidents, and regulations requiring the inspection and certification of toxic chemical plants would have stopped the joker, and countless other tragedies, at a fraction of the cost.
At first I thought you were insinuating this post was corpo propaganda, but then it clicked that you were talking about Batman himself lol. I'd like to say that many if not most versions of batman is more gentle and forgiving than the police, his goals are simply to take an impossible problem to fix and reduce harm from it as much as possible, without all the sophistry of purely hypothetical philanthropy and political reform.
He is just a working class guy, both his wife and his own job are probably getting replaced by AI, his mother pension keeps getting lower and his dad died because he couldn't afford proper healthcare.
Martha and Pa both got hooked on Oxy in the 00s, nothing Superman can do about it. He tries writing a big expose as Clark Kent but the Planet kills the story because Perdue buys a lot of ad space with them.
Public got too weird about Supergirl, forcing her to retire as incels kept jumping off of buildings so they could grope her when she saved them.
Bruce Wayne is not like that at all though. He's in a position where he could actually do something about the problems of Gotham City and decides to go LARPing instead.
To be fair, he beats up a bunch of rich criminals too but he whole thing is really more about his ego than about doing good.
That's the internet pop-psychologist interpretation, but the people actually writing him often have him doing his best to better the Gotham around him. A lot of the petty thugs he catches are given chances to redeem themselves via Wayne based welfare programs.
Huh, maybe. Although my point was more batman is part of that class (albeit begrudgingly) so expecting batman in a position of great power and influence to actively take that from other people is just very hypocritical. Not that he shouldn't (or someone shouldn't). Just a very weird position.
He's still Batman. He does detective stuff, doesn't have superpowers, Gotham is appropriately grimdark, etc. Terry doesn't have to learn that with great power comes great responsibility like Peter does. The only similarity is that he's a working class wisecracking teenager with a somewhat agility based fighting style. Peter Parker was never a burly hoodlum before he got his powers, and he doesn't see being a superhero as a way to make up for mistakes he made as a normal. He also didn't steal his powers. Terry is a much more mature and slightly darker character than Peter at the start of his journey. He's not an academically minded geek, he's someone who's experienced the real world and understands it. He's got street smarts, he can fight, and he can lie.
That's what these (alleged) "super heroes" really are... idealized, ubermensch-esque metaphors for the actual power wielded by the rich and privileged.
In fact, I'd say that Batman is the ultimate Objectivist wet dream - he perfectly personifies the fascist (as Batman) and the capitalist (as Bruce Wayne) in one person. Even Ayn Rand's creepazoid ancap sugar-daddy "heroes" didn't manage that.
I would like you to explain how Captain America and Superman are reactionary.
Captain America is an artificial warrior created by a Jewish scientist to fight the Nazis, and Superman is a baby sent away in a basket to be raised by not-dead parents who chose to use his privilege to help people.
Zack Snyder is an Objectivist and that's why his Superman movies stink. He doesn't understand the core themes of superheroes, he only understands the spectacle and surface theatrics.
I would like you to explain how Captain America and Superman are reactionary.
I mean... c'mon. Captain America is low-hanging fruit - the correlation between Captain America and actual US behavior in the world essentially writes itself.
Superman is a far more sophisticated representation of US-style liberalism - but, just like liberalism itself, that doesn't make Super Cheese any less of a reactionary.
However... we can talk about the individual politics of these characters all day long - and we'd be missing the entire point of the metaphor in it's entirety.
The problem with the "super hero" genre is not the individual politics of the characters concerned - it's with how they normalize and justify the concentration of power in the hands of these exalted individuals.
In other words - the problem is fundamental.
He doesn’t understand the core themes of superheroes,
Okay do fucking Spider-Man and tell me how "with great power comes great responsibility" is Objectivist. Rand wanted all the talented people to fuck off and leave the stupid poors to die! Spider-Man's first arc is realising that his powers shouldn't be used for self enrichment.
If you actually read the early comics, it takes Peter a good long while to learn that lesson and he still forgot it pretty frequently. Still, his journey toward learning that lesson was a core part of his character until the writers decided to just make him a flawless Mary-Sue.
I don't think the writers have made him perfect. His most recent movie, No Way Home, is about Peter trying to use superpowers to help his friends get out of trouble. Which backfires and causes a bunch of problems, and Aunt May dies saying "with great power there must also come great responsibility." Seems like a pretty on-theme story.
Inb4 the flood of people who get all their batman knowledge from the Nolan trilogy and the stupid one liners they added to Injustice to try and whataboutism him against superman literally murdering people and installing a fascist autocracy.
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