Quote:
Originally Posted by Giggleton
I would hope the plumber will fix my toilet because the plumber enjoys fixing toilets. And also because the toilet needs to be fixed.
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The problem is that there have always been jobs that no one wants to do. Historically those jobs were either done by people with low skills or by slaves. There have been novels that have made suggestions around these problems. Ursula Leguin's Anarres ( in her novel The Dispossessed) is an egalitarian planet that rotates jobs every couple of months, so that no one has to do nasty work for more than a few months at a time. There is also no government, per se, although there is an administrative body. Generally society is run by social convention or pressures, such as there are no police, but if someone commits a crime that person would either be ostracized or himself become a victim of vigilante justice. People do their work because it connects them to the community, and Shevek, the main character, says that he enjoyed doing the hard manual labor because it allowed him to leave his studies and work outside with his hands every once in awhile. Additionally, toiling at crappy but necessary jobs helped create a sense of solidarity and community. The novel also acknowledges that this type of society would not be as wealthy or as economically productive as a more capitalistic one (although that could just be because Anarres was a barren planet) but people there generally felt a greater sense of security, solidarity, community, and satisfaction with their work.
The downside, however, was that social or community pressure tended to stifle individuality. They developed a bit of an insular, close-minded, mob mentality, where anyone who differed too much from social norms or was too different or weird was subject to ostracization.
Thomas More, in his work Utopia, also suggests ways that the problem of people having to do crappy jobs for a living can be solved. In the first part of the novel he discusses the problems in Sixteenth century England (how the enclosure acts helped create a crime wave); it includes a great line that goes something like government creates criminals and then it punishes them. The second part of the novel is his utopia.
If you haven't read it already you should; it is fantastic and in the public domain so you can download it from gutenberg.org for free.