Maybe the reason people have this idea that if we didn’t have capitalism people wouldn’t do anything might because they’ve never had a break long enough to get past the exhaustion crash phase.
Two weeks off is barely recovery time after six months of accumulated work strain. You get two miracle months off you’re going to spend that time repairing the damage who-knows-how-long making Excel spreadsheets to the death did to you. Your productivity or lack therof the first time you actually get a holiday break is not representative of what you’re capable of or what you’d spend the rest of your life doing if you didn’t have to go to work 40+ hours a week. That isn’t people are lazy so we have to threaten to withhold essential survival needs so they get off their asses. That’s our brains and bodies insisting that we don’t spend energy resources they’ve learned are hard to come by on anything other than survival.
Imagine where we’d be species if everyone working minimum wage suddenly had the time to study renewable energy sources or write their novel or feed their communities with the green thumb they haven’t gotten to use since that summer when they spent a bunch of time their aunt who had a yard. What if you were sick you were seen by a nurse who was allowed to do their job in a way that made sense and also they typically got enough sleep, had time for hobbies and wasn’t also looking after twenty other people? What if kids went to school with teachers who didn’t spend every evening and weekend marking and planning without compensation and students didn’t have hours of homework because their teachers had the time and resources to teach what they had to in class? What if you had energy leftover for your passion projects?
"But who would make your clothes?"… People who like making clothes? They just wouldn’t work so much they have repetitive strain injuries before they hit their thirties. Or I dunno you could learn a new skill because you’d actually have time for that. People sew and crochet and garden and learn stuff for fun all the time. People like doing the work you don’t think anyone would do if they weren’t scared they’d die if they stopped so much that they do it at the after a day of doing work they’re scared they’ll die if they stop. You ever look around and notice that people just casually do the base labour societies are built on as their hobby? Humans are really well adapted to surviving as a species, believe it or not. Almost like we built a really complicated system to make doing the things we’d already be doing really miserable so a few people could profit. Almost like humans don’t need to be exploited into doing the things humans do. Almost like cutting down a tree to make it grow.
Basically, no one of us are ever at our best the day after a twelve hour shift so when we don’t accomplish much that day that isn’t an accurate representation of what we’re capable of. We overthrow the capitalist regime, we take some time to rest and do the bare minimum, then when we’ve all got it in our heads that taking a nap doesn’t make us worthless we do whatever it is that brings us and our communities value.
