In this article we analyze how labor is organized in Babel, why we believe it's much better than today standards and what problems it solves.

🔗Willful labor

Work is all about collaboration. There are very few ventures that can be done in isolation.

True to our core values of freedom, and to our understanding of authority, we believe every person must be free to pursue their own vocation, whatever would it be.

There will be no contracts, no strict working schedules and no owners. It is all based on free association of people.

Everyone will work whenever they want, as much as they want and on what they want.

Willful labor is the only way to maximize work efficiency. It doesn't matter what processes employers try to setup to stimulate their employees to work more, high quality always comes with willfulness.

If I don't like my job, no matter the incentives and punishments, I will always work at a fraction of my ability, constantly battling with the impulse of doing something else.

By disconnecting quality of life from work done, we liberate our full potential. We are free from our individual limitations, able to harness all that society has to offer to achieve what we want, what society as a whole really needs.

By allowing people to work as much as they want on what they are interested, we ensure the best quality of work with the least amount of stress, nurturing a pleasant work environment.

Are you tired of your current job? Just try another venture for some time and see how it goes. There is no need to commit your entire life to a single field. You are free to go as deep and wide as it best suit yourself.

Did you overwork yourself on the last project out of excitement? Disconnect and get some well-deserved leisure time. It is up to you. It's that easy.

🔗Zero hierarchy

Being true to our core values, we reject authority at social level as much as we do on the working place. That's why all decisions regarding a particular production line concerns all workers involved. There are no bosses, no small group of people who decide for everyone else.

There may be small groups entrusted to come up with a solution to a specific problem, but the solution must then be agreed by all workers involved. Small groups have no executive power.

We encourage such groups to be dismantled once the solution is found and to vary the people entrusted to work on the next problem. This will foster a better social knitting between people, avoiding soft hierarchies and urge everyone to try different responsibilities.

🔗Finding a job

Say we are looking for something to do. We connect to the online forum and see what projects are open for help in our area. We find one that piques our interest and join the discussion, asking some question and see if we can be of any help.

We meet with the people already working on the project, we like them and feel it is a good fit for us. We agree on what would be our job and when we can start it.

As you can see, it isn't much different than how it looks today, with the big improvement that we'll chose a job we want to do, rather than one we have to do out of necessity.

Because work is as free as resources, we eliminated unemployment, thus employing the full force available in our society instead of wasting them away.

However we don't have to join an existing job, in case we have an idea, we can start a new production lines, limited only by what society as a whole can offer. This is better discussed in Production projects

🔗Job levels

Many jobs need skills in order to be carried out at their best. Let's think for example of the surgeon, who needs deep knowledge of the human body, a steady hand, and will be subject to a much higher responsibility than the norm.

In order to perform these jobs in a safe manner we first need sufficient training. The educational system already provides courses open to all, which is then integrated with experience on the field.

Most jobs will be divided into levels. Each level requires greater skills, autonomy and responsibility.

Every entry level always includes a base training and is therefore accessible to anyone.

Whenever we feel ready to move to a new level, we should look out for a tutor in our same line of work. The tutor is just another person who acquired already a greater job level than we want to achieve. The online forum will have a section for it.

The tutor is responsible to guide our growth, to suggest what we need to improve and what we should learn. Together with the tutor, we decide when it is a good time to try more difficult tasks. The tutor will supervise our work, further guiding us if needed and to ensure no big mistakes are done.

After some time, when the tutor feels we have reached a good skill level, we are promoted to the next level by opening a job promotion project. This is mostly to keep track of our growth and doesn't require any exam. People we have worked with are invited to comment on it and give further approval to reinforce it.

Once promoted, we are back to full autonomy.

It is important to understand that job levels have no material gains, they offer a concrete path to improve our skills while limiting possible mistakes due to inexperience.

Job levels create a web of trust. People at a higher level are deemed by society to be more trustworthy and have demonstrated their skills on that particular field, that's why they are honored by entrusting greater responsibilities upon them.

However, they will have little to no power over people at lower job levels. They can lead others and suggest complex solution to complex problems, but they can't impose their will over others.

All people, whatever the level, must always use their critical thinking and never follow orders blindly. Inspecting another people's solution helps better understand them, and open the door to further improvements.

Babel encourages inquiries and deep understanding, "it is how it is" should never be considered as an acceptable answer.

Advancement of job levels doesn't have to be monotonic, we can jump several levels if our skills allow us.

Reaching a high job level is not a requirement. There is nothing wrong in staying at the entry level if that's what we want.

Once society is big enough, we would advise to establish the so-called Journeyman years to foster creativity.

Lastly, one person isn't limited to a single job type, we can have as many as we want and all at different levels.

🔗Art

Art is the vehicle of expression of human soul. Babel highly values all forms of art, such as sculpture, painting, dance, gymnastic, music, etc...

More than in any other society, artists will be free to do what they do best: whisper to our hearts, inspire and dream.

In market societies in particular, art must appeal the taste of people, it is constrained by the material needs, castrated in its expression. Babel breaks all boundaries and gives full freedom to the artistic soul.

Just think about how many artists that we now consider as masters, died without experiencing much recognition. True genius is often misunderstood.

It doesn't matter if nobody understand a product of art, as long as the author is satisfied with their piece. It doesn't matter if a book is read by two, ten or a million people, as long as the writer was able to give life to their thoughts.

🔗Humble and hazardous jobs

If we can all do the job we like, who will do the humblest and most tiring jobs?

🔗Short-term

The short-term answer is "everyone". Many of the jobs that today we find tiring can often be eliminated by organizing properly.

For example, everyone should learn how to clean their home, as well as the many common facilities. In public toilets there should be a sanitization system available to be applied before use, so that we leave it cleaner than we found it.

Thanks to collective effort, we will no longer need janitors, or at least that type of work will become much easier to do.

If nobody wants to work as a waiter, restaurants can be structured in a way that let diners bring food to their table once it is ready, as it often happens in fast-food chains.

Certain jobs can be made more communal, such as harvesting the fields, and should be done with the help of the whole society. These activities help us remain humble and give a sense of conviviality; for thousands of years these were moments of celebration where people shared the fruits of the earth. Hard labor done all together is lighter and more pleasurable.

Overall it is important to encourage cooperation through social responsibility, and we could employ gamefication strategies to further incentivize it. For example, we could setup an achievement system as those available in all major gaming platform, which give no benefits other than personal gratification and social recognition.

Hazardous jobs such as miners are already heavily regulated to ensure the least amount of risks and to increase safety, however these measures are often discarded by capitalists because it is more profitable in that way. This way of thinking has no space in Babel Society.

Given that there is no profit to be made and that people have full control over their jobs, it is natural to employ all the best precaution to ensure even dangerous jobs are done in a safe manner.

All of these changes are easily applied in a small, involved society that grows in a sustainable way.

🔗Long-term

The long-term solution is automation. Babel focus heavily on research in order to eliminate those chores that nobody wants to do, especially those that are repetitive or considered dangerous and high-risk. For example, there is already a robot capable of cleaning up toilets.

🔗Scaling

What explained so far isn't limited to only small ventures, but scale as much as needed once we factor in locality.

Conglomerates such as Alphabet, Meta and Amazon have no reason to exist in Babel. They exists in capitalism because a few owners must reign over many more, forming a strict hierarchy of power to ensures all sub-companies are dedicated to the well-being of the masters.

This centralization of power creates many issues, because those who have power to make decisions are often too removed from the actual problems, causing severe inefficiency.

Decentralization is key to every large-scale project, and in Babel we fully embrace this principle. Rather than having a single company composed by hundreds of thousands of people, it is much better to split them where it makes sense, keeping an eye on cohesion to ensure frictionless development.

This is more or less what conglomerates tries to do anyway, we only removed the unneeded complexity imposed by strict authority.

Our focus on collaboration and integration allows production lines to come together whenever needed to efficiently solve a problem. This is further facilitated by our flexible work arrangements, that makes it easy to move from one endeavor to another. Even better, people that so far worked in different production lines can temporarily team up together to better solve a common problem.

That's how we can scale indefinitely, by solving issues at the right level.

🔗Critiques

🔗People are all lazy, nobody will work

If nobody will work, then all will die.

Because society's well-being directly impact everyone's quality of life, there will always be people that don't mind doing something if it ensures them a better life, notwithstanding that we are a crafty species that hardly tolerates boredom.

🔗What about parasitic people? Those who let others do the hard work

Well, in capitalistic societies they get all the honors. The top 1% is the most parasitic of them all.

In Babel we approach it differently.

The worst people are those who think they are entitled to everything society has to offer. We already said that everything is a gift, hence people will frown on such behaviors, and they could be socially ostracized if they don't get a hold of their character.

Nonetheless, under the influence of capitalism, some people are unjustly considered as parasitic. It is often the case with artists and other humanistic fields, such as history and philosophy.

We recognize their value and fully support them. They will say that art and thoughts can't be eaten, but it is exactly through art and thoughts that we evolved.

They will say that many so-called artists are full of themselves and just waste time creating worthless pieces. Sometimes it is hard to discern a genius from the chaff.

As long as we can all afford a good quality of life, we much prefer to care for the chaff rather than kill a genius.

Even if only 1% of the population produced all the practical goods required by society, while the remaining 99% worked on art, we will be ok with that.

First, it means that automation is so good that little effort is enough to provide for all. Second, because labor is based on freedom, the 1% have as much choice as anybody else to dedicate to art but preferred not to.

Ultimately it is up to society to decide what's good and what's bad. If at some point the 1% will change their mind, then a different arrangement will be discussed. There where is freedom, there is possibility.

Do you have any feedback on this article? Let us know at /r/babelsociety or send us an email to feedback@babelsociety.org