In defense of empathy

The following is not a plan as such, just a way to try to visualize my idea, to make it a little more concrete. I will use a community of 10.000 people, of which 5.000 can work, but it is just an example, an illustration.

A full time workers annual hours differ a lot across the globe, but let us set it at 1.800 hours per year. This gives us 9 million work-hours per year. I will assume that this community have some start-up resources, like enough land to farm & house this community as well as enough capital to start with.

Then we need to figure out the needs. First there is the need for food. So how many hours does it take to provide food for 10.000 people? Well, Denmark is a net-exporter of food and there are approximately 170.000 people employed in agriculture and related services. With a population of about 6 million people, that means that one years of work can provide enough food for 35 people. Of course, farming in Denmark is extremely industrialized, so let us call it 25 people. This means that we need 720.000 hours per year for food production. This could mean 400 people to work full time in farming, but farming is by its very nature extremely seasonal, so it might mean 200 people work fulltime and the rest is dependent on the season. Also, a lot of people might not want to do the same job day in and day out. By using work-hours instead of full-time jobs as the guiding principle, we can open it up so people are not forced to be stuck, doing the same thing all the time. I am also certain that we can have a fully functioning community without everyone having to work full-time, giving room for education and doing more things for joy.

This food needs to be cooked. In our present system, everyone cooks by themselves or goes to restaurants, very ineffectual. By sharing and doing things communally, we can lower the amount of work-hours considerably. So how many people can one person cook for? Having done a little googling, it seems clear that the answer is not very clear. But, 2 cooks, working 4 hours each, should be enough for 200 people. So, 8 work-hours per 200 people, per meal. Let us say 4 meals a day (the 3 standard plus snacks). That is 32 work-hours per day per 200 people. That is 1.600 hours pr day for our community or about 580.000 per year. Could be more, could be less, it is just ballpark. If this example-community were ever created, the true number would arise through simple day-to-day living.

This means that we would need 1.3 million work-hours per year to feed a community of 10.000 people. Leaving us with about 7.7 million hours to cover the rest of the needs. I am not going to continue this thought experiment, this is just a way to show how we might approach the issue of providing for everyone in a fairly rational manner.

I do not believe that it takes 40 hours of work per week to provide for all of the needs. Probably only 20 hours. Of course there will also be a need for export-work (for profit or exchange), but no more than 10 hours per worker per week. So that means that in a community where half of the residents can work, no one needs to work for more than 30 hours per week, for 45 weeks a year. Which means that there will be a lot of time for other stuff, like new projects or arts & entertainment.

Another way of viewing this is to say: How much should we allocate to a given area? Like, how many people would we like to have working in the arts & entertainment? I think this is quite important, so would be willing to work at least 4 hours a week for this.

If we have a system like this, where there is room for extra work, we can also see how new enterprises/projects might come into existence. Let us say someone has a great idea. In order to get it made, firstly they would need to figure out what resources, material & time-wise, would be needed. Then it is simply a question of getting enough people to allocate enough resources for this idea. The people, who support the idea, would not necessarily need to work on the project themselves. If I work as an electrician and I allocate 2 hours a week to this new project, I would just work 2 hours more, freeing up someone else to work the project (of course, for someone to work full-time, 15-20 people would need to allocate 2 hours per week). I do not think I explaining this very well, but hopefully you get the idea: We do not need greed in order to get things done. All we need is to plan & organize better. We also do not need a central planning entity, just for people to, at minimum, do the essential work. If no one wants to work more than absolutely necessary, then we get a basic community. I doubt this would be the case. When we work for our common good, work generally ceases to be a drudgery. Especially if you can see that the fruits of your labor remains in the community.

The way to decide things should be based on direct democracy of some sort. Maybe as I have outlined earlier or maybe in some other fashion, the important thing is to ensure everyone is involved to some degree. This insures accountability and enthusiasm. It makes it a just system.