I'd love a society where people have to work less for a start, but also where the blue collar jobs are distributed so that information workers had some physical job to do as well. That way they get to work their minds and their bodies, don't wear out either one, and the diversity of experience allows ideas to cross pollinate.

If an engineer worked in garbage disposal they'd be able to engineer out some pain points of the job. A doctor, physiotherapist, administrator, researcher, lawyer, all could learn and help a lot if they saw how the other side lives. People doing blue collar jobs wouldn't be stuck, continuing education would be normalised, the "prestige" aspect of different jobs would be lessened, service and menial workers would be less neglected, and the "ivory tower" of white collar and academic work would come down.

[–] programmer_belch@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The wages for those jobs would need to go up. I don't know why the most important jobs in a society like cleaning are some of the worst paid and looked down.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Since we're fantasising about an ideal society I'd get rid of wage slavery entirely.

I agree the best jobs are the worst paid, but I think the absolute most important are jobs like child-rearing, and they're usually completely unpaid. It's basically a complete inversion between pay grade and importance.