Is the house really free if it's part of a contract where you do hard labor in exchange for it? This really just sounds like a threat disguised as an offer. What really happens if they say no, I don't want to mine coal in exchange for the same reward as the dude washing dishes at McDonalds? Just give him the house anyway? Let him die of exposure/starvation? Put him in the Gulag?
You recieve the house regardless of your ability to fulfill you end of the bargain. A sense of social obligation is more than enough to persuade people to give something in return.
What about people with no training/workable skills? Do we just assign them jobs that they may or may not have any passion for? Or do they sit at home drinking beer and watching TV while I shovel fish? I understand that I could justify this by telling myself that shoveling fish for the rest of my pathetic life is my true purpose, but realistically speaking if I was fully accommodated to watch TV and drink beer all day I'd probably be more relaxed and happy albeit with a small factor of guilt in the back of my mind that says I could be shoveling fish right now instead.
Besides the fact that we have the capability to mechanize the insanely mundane tasks, think of it this way. Bill Gates has a net worth of damn near $100 billion. If the people controlled that wealth, there would definitely be enough spare resources to accomodate the lazy and the disabled. However, you seem to misunderstand something fundamental. Why would laziness exist, if you were free to pursue training in whatever you wished? Unless you feel your life purpose is drawing extremely obscure special interest art, there is going to be a desire
somewhere for the service you offer. You are contributing to society by fulfilling another's wants, while pursuing a hobby. Let's kill two birds with one stone, though. Let's say you don't know what you want to do, and society is short on food handlers. The people get together and decide they require food handlers, and are willing to offer higher rewards for currently unemployed people to work as food handlers. You feel indifferent towards food handling, but you enjoy becoming a more valued individual for handling that food.
What do we do with the bad apples? The people who say forget it, it's not fair that I have to mine coal while somebody else just gets to sit around and drink beer and watch TV. I'm not going to work anymore until the government gives me a Lamborghini. Obviously, the guy is an starfish for ignoring his primal and instinctive will to follow his divine purpose, and probably isn't that much of a problem on his own, so just let him be.
But this behavior probably spreads pretty fast, right? I mean how hard can it be to convince someone that they deserve more for harder work? What if it causes instability in the community, I.E. all the coal miners refuse to mine coal and we all lose power and heat because of it? Should we take their house and food away for failing to keep up their end of the bargain?
Socialism is founded on collective bargaining. If coal miners feel they are being short-changed, they exercise their right to have a say in the democratic process. Society will work to accomodate them. What I don't understand, however, is what reason these coal miners would have to be greedy. Keep in mind, there would be no such thing as a commodity, only an item produced to meet human need. There would not be stuffty mattresses and luxury mattresses distributed based on percieved value of the recipient, there would be a standard mattress. Mattress isn't good enough? Ask the mattress producers to make better mattresses. Why wouldn't they? They use those mattressess too, you know. There's no incentive to create lower quality mattresses to encourage the buying of a more expensive mattress like there would be under capitalism.
If this all sounds idealistic, it's because this state cannot be reached until society begins to understand the merit of this system, whether naturally as a response to the inevitable worsening of conditions under capitalism (
http://www.massline.org/PolitEcon/crises/Crises01.htm) or a competent leader persuading masses. It is possible, and it is worth working towards.
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