That’s what the tenth-day rotationals are for on Anarres, no? Every tenth day you do a different job from your usual. I do know some folks who do cleaning as a sort of ten-day rotational job and enjoy it (not necessarily toilets in particular, but even fun jobs have parts that are less fun that you nevertheless do to get the job done).

Yeah, I was thinking that. Also cool: the change of gender, when back-translated, gives us socialschism. Commence jokes, please.

Meanwhile, Tim, I think your plan falls down at the first hurdle. If zooming requires “the willingness to vote for a system on the basis of mature reflection”, how can we ever hope for that to happen? Especially since ‘vote’ actually means ‘acquiesce in a major reshaping of social mores and economic opportunities, carried out over a number of years, in the teeth of determined ideological opposition’…

A.S. Byatt makes the same point in Babel Tower, I think fairly definitively. Socialism doesn’t work because nobody likes to clean toilets. (I can’t persuade myself to agree with Ursula Le Guin that “making order where people live” is sufficiently satisfying when that means cleaning their toilets.)

Yes, small-scale socialism/social provision is pretty common—Hutterites, kibbutzim, and many extended families are fairly strong-form and many of the Plain people generally are weak-form socialist.

Read Red Family, Blue Family by Doug Muder. The Red Family model is a lot more socialist. Basically, liberal values—self-ownership values—at the state level tend to damage the small-scale socialisms.

Which is why I’m in favor of political liberalism/libertarianim/minimal government. I think it strengthens the workable small-form socialisms.

That’s maybe the technology we need: an effective way of presening leisure time as an ultimate luxury good.

PS: maybe even better: so-shall-(s)he-zoom, ‘cause we want equality of zoom, don’t we?

On the contrary, I was quite pleased by it. But then, I am also irritating, inadequately homophonic, and at-best tenuously relevant. :-)

Maybe people don’t work as hard if they don’t have payment by results (as most don’t really).

Yep. And we can probably get by as a species working less hard than we do, if we share resources according to a reasonable scheme. People can work a little and get by with the basics, or work ‘more’ and get more luxury goods. Taking leisure time to be a luxury good, we can envision some rough equality of satisfaction resulting. So-shall-he-zoom, in its intuitive form, is just not that hard to comprehend as an appealing ideal.

Back on the core topic, I haven’t yet read the book, but:

1. Democratic So-shall-he-zoom (at least of a 2nd-best variety) doesn’t necessarily depend on individual cooperative tendencies in daily life – just the willingness to vote for a system on the basis of mature reflection – almost a kind of Odyssean tying-to-the-mast kind of commitment.

2. Depending on what you mean by So-shall-he-zoom, presumably the point some are making is that free-riding (not to be confused with widespread choice of leisure over other goods per se) might, via the prisoner’s dilemma, give rise to – aaargh! – one of those suboptimal outcomes (as opposed to one of countless incommensurable Pareto-optima). That could as necessary be dealt with by non-private-market incentive structures – insofar as those are considered compatible with So-shall-he-zoom, of course.

3. Only if that is not possible for whatever reason does the issue of ‘human nature’ (which we of course know all about now – as according to some did Adam Smith) arise. And before we even get to altruism such things as public service ethoi, professionalism and the enjoyment of work well done come into play (mpowell – have you considered a career change?). These are all routinely frustrated by management under capitalism, at a terrible cost in demoralisation and (I’m going to say it) alienation.

The ‘profit’ (or ‘wage’ as we proles call it) motive needn’t be replaced by some kind of permanent Dunkirk spirit for for people still to go to work. Maybe people don’t work as hard if they don’t have payment by results (as most don’t really).

But first, that isn’t necessarily a problem – presumably (by the economists’ own logic) they benefit from not working so hard. Hard work never killed anyone, they say – but as the standard retort goes, it has crippled millions, and long hours on the career-advancement treadmill affect families, etc etc.

Furthermore, if one has to be at work, it is much more pleasant to immerse oneself in something interesting and challenging (not of course in the management-speak sense synonymous with ‘gruelling’) [edit: @67 makes same point]. Skiving (without detection) can actually be as hard and stressful as getting on with the job – and often makes the day go more slowly, which most people – Dunbar in Catch-22 excepted – do not relish, and regard as an indicator of not having fun.

If jobs were chosen by satisfaction (which is plausibly well-correlated with aptitude) rather than remuneration, a lot of people would probably be happier and more productive – and it’s noticeable that the best paid jobs are largely more fulfilling, enjoyable and high-status, though the last of those is certainly not independent of pay/profit levels, given the money-fetish that’s currently prevalent. Of course we still need those toilet-cleaning robots, too.

4. Even if routine impersonal altruism were required by So-shall-he-zoom, I’m not convinced that it isn’t possible to foster such an outlook (in the relevant sense) through education/socialisation, and without Strauss/Ingsoc/McCarthy- style mythmaking. Though there is considerable potential for extreme creepiness there of course.

(Before anyone else is rude enough to point it out, I do realise that ‘So-shall-he-zoom’ as punny substitute for the S-word fails in a number of ways, including being irritating, inadequately homophonic, and of at-best-tenuously relevant content. That bold experiment at least has failed.)

1. The point I was making about free riders giving lectures on the importance of disciplining free riders doesn’t depend on any such comparison for its truth.

2. Whatever the general benefits that capitalism brings, it can hardly be denied that it has a systemic propensity to use labour-saving innovation in ways that don’t relieve workers of the burden of labour.