As opposed to the current system, which is...not destroying society?

>> As opposed to the current system, which is...not destroying society?

I guess people can have different definitions of "destroying society."

I grew up in the USSR where you literally lacked physical stuff in your life that people in the rest of the world took for granted decades prior. A huge contributor to that was that people's work was rewarded on a metric other than their productive output, as measured by what society was willing to pay for in the free market.

To put it another way - we need people to produce. And we need them to produce the right stuff. The best system we have to deciding what's right is what other people use their dollars for.

If we paid people on some other metric we'd end up with a lot of bullshit work, no aspirations, and physical shortages.

I am sure your definition differs.

> I grew up in the USSR where you literally lacked physical stuff in your life that people in the rest of the world took for granted decades prior.

Define "rest of the world" because for the time period when the USSR was in existence, my part of the world was either actively being colonised or foundering in the neocolonialist wake of independence.

And that's the crux of it, isn't it? The world's foremost capitalist states (and the imperialist states that preceded them and laid the foundation for their current success) aren't less destructive than the USSR or than Maoist China. They simply had/have the dubious luxury of externalising the destruction and misery (and hiding it where it exists at home, in the poor and marginalised). The West built (and still builds) its abundance of "physical stuff" on the sweat, tears and sometimes literally blood of the developing world. Today's "free" market runs on the back of sweatshops, destabilisation and child labour - there has to be inequality and suffering elsewhere for companies to afford to put up the prices that consumers have become entitled to.

But hey, that destructiveness is not in your own backyard, so I suppose it doesn't exist.

Ma'am, this is a a Wendy's. the question was whether people should be rewarded by the value of their output to which the answer is obviously yes.

I am not sure the crazy town you are taking this to. But in case it somehow helps you understand - the USSR was horrible to its own people and to neighboring countries, forced labor and all, and still wasn't able to provide basic shit to anyone but the party elite.