Labour is fine. Just not 40, 50 or 60 hours a week. 10-15, maybe 20 hours should be way enough to live a worryfree life. Change my mind.
As long as we’re shooting for the moon what say you and me and the mates at work all decide together how much, and how often, and even what we produce?
You mean like a worker co-op? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative)
Or co-determination? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination)
Things like Mondragon Corporation, as well as Germany’s quality of life and economic prosperity since their adoption of co-determination laws, shows us that these are not the pipe dreams that capitalists want you to believe they are.
OH! i had heard about how labor gets on the board in germany specifically but never knew the term for it. Thank you friend!
Sure thing. Make sure to tell your friends!
shows us that these are not the pipe dreams that capitalists want you to believe they are.
Could you elaborate?
Also, it was interesting going through those two links and checking out the sections of different countries in the world that have them, and noticing that the United States has almost none of that. Seems like such an outlier, compared to Europe and South America.
What I mean is that the existence, and thriving of these models proves that they’re not only viable, but can provide much better economic outcomes… There is a group of people in the US who work very hard to make sure nothing like that ever gets codified here. At least at the federal level.
Indoctrinating kids into “American exceptionalism” has left us with one and a half generations of “rugged individualists” who think they “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps,” when in reality they’re no different than anyone else. But now they’ve got this warped worldview ingrained in them that makes them believe that everyone who’s ever been successful got there entirely on their own. When in reality, none of them did.
A well-written reply, thank you for that.
“pulled themselves up by their bootstraps,”
When in reality, none of them did.
Granted, your painting with a broad brush, to offer a quick summarization, but I don’t think you’re completely correct.
I’m actually someone who figuratively did pulled himself up by his bootstraps (broken home, high school dropout, etc.), and at the end of my career I do have a small amount of wealth, which I earned all on my own, and was able to retire early.
I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to dox myself accidentally, but there are those, even if it’s just a minority, who do literally work the system to success, the way it currently is.
Shit man, I had this whole thoughtful response typed out, and then my palm must have hit the touchpad on my laptop and I guess clicked a link. When I went back, it was all gone.
I guess I will try to hit the main points… I think I started like:
First, the saying to, “pull one up by their own bootstraps,” itself has actually had its meaning altered over the years into something nearly opposite the original. You see, what they’ve described is an impossible task. It is physically impossible to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. The saying was being sardonic. A witticism. They were basically saying you were doing something absurd/impossible. So the irony there is always fun to point out (would normally get a source for this kind of thing, but literally just google the phrase).
Then I think I said something like…
With all due respect, you didn’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps. It seems as though you’ve worked very hard to get where you are, and that’s great and some may call it commendable. Others work harder for much less, and others do nothing for far more. That’s inequality at work… Regardless, even if you did literally every piece of business yourself, you still cannot claim to have (at least by the current definition) pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, there were many (literally countless) others involved in the events that led you to where you are today.
I’m going to assume you are in the US, but correct me if I’m wrong.
Surely you’ve used township/county/state/interstate roads and highways? Ever cross a bridge and not die? You make use of wastewater and drinking water infrastructure that you don’t even think about the existence of 98% of the time. The countless medications, devices, technologies, etc., that you interact with on a continuous basis, that would not exist if not for government funding. Which ultimately means paid by tax revenue.
Literally being lifted up by everyone who pays taxes in your community, state, and country.
I am glad that you find working that way fulfilling. And that you’ve been able to make something out of it is great. But maybe that’s a similar feeling of fulfillment to what a guitarist might feel when they write a sick riff? Or when a graffiti artist makes a particularly amazing tag (and admires it for a moment before bailing)?
It sucks we live in a system where, in nearly every situation, those people are forced to do the thing that fulfills you (as in you specifically), while leaving themselves no time and/or energy to do the thing that actually fulfills them.
Ideally, in a post-rarity society where there are plenty of food and resources for everyone on the planet many times over, we should be able to do the thing that gives us that feeling; that fulfills us.
Instead, we’re born shackled to this broken system that breeds hate, bitterness, where maybe single-digit percent of people actually get to do the thing that fulfills them, while the rest of us suffer until we die.
Fun stuff. Sorry, lately the brain’s been in the mood for writing I guess.
You mean we’d be in control of the means of production? That’s an interesting idea. We should come up with a recognizable symbol for this new concept. Something simple, like two silhouettes of tools, maybe crossed.
now just wait a goldarn minnit mister, im not talkin godless unamerican commie shit, i’m talking about returning pride to the workin man. self-determination and democracy at work! dont get it twisted now
Communism! Don’t even consider it. Don’t think about it. Those are bad thoughts, suppress them. Get angry at them. Lash out about it! Communism! It’s evil! It’s more evil than the term evil can describe!
Ok, ok. I’m done. I got to be honest, though. I don’t know very much about communism. I’m not asking to learn this very second, I just wanted to throw that out there.
i don’t know much about it either, friend, I’ve just read a certain manifesto, made a brief foray into das kapital, and read a long question about “what is to be done”.
All jokes aside I started reading some theory out of spite (no lie, its sadly why i do most things lol). It just seemed so clearly and thoroughly detested by established economic thinkers, politicians, and pundits that I just had to know what the big effin deal was.
You did what??? Did the government bust down your door and murder you??? Are you a terrorist now??? Have you learned other degenerate habits??? Are you somehow now gay or more gay than you were before???
Absolutey. Terrified.
They have the forbidden knowledge, y’all. You can not trust this person.
Ask Jack London what he thinks about scabs.
Might I suggest the warm embrace of the 80 different social democratic and economic theories stuffed in a single trenchcoat made of forms signed in triplicate as an alternative? No fancy symbol perhaps but we serve cookies at the meetings.
If you want to do that, just start your own business with you and the mates.
and even what we produce?
We can’t even get 4 programmers to agree on how to produce something, if you really think you can get more people than that to agree on what to produce, you are really naive.
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It’s incredible what a huge difference it make to one’s health/mood/etc., having a healthy work/life balance. I think the world would overall be a less angry, spiteful place, if we all worked 4-day, 35-hour work weeks.
Humans were never meant to work 60, 70 hours per week, that’s just insane and stupid. What’s worse are the people who will brag to you about it. That’s how ingrained it is into our culture.
Maybe it’s just because I don’t loathe the thought of going home to my family? It seems like a lot of those toxic work culture people are doing it for reasons like that?
I also find that most of those who are overworking have a bad relationship at home they actively avoid by working as much as possible and get home to eat and sleep nothing more, sure won’t spend time with their kids or wife.
Im with you, but 35h a week are way too much also. At least you should get a really good wage for that much time.
It seems like a lot of those toxic work culture people are doing it for reasons like that?
Some might have ‘drank the kool-aid’, but for others it’s just that they have a strong work ethic, and they enjoy the feeling of hard work completed well, never really stopping to think that their effort is really going more towards the company instead of towards themselves, but still.
I do agree with you though, a strong work-life balance is most important. Especially when you get elderly, you really feel the mileage of all the hard work you put in overly so earlier in your life.
It is not about how long you work, but is the work needed shared equally. I want to work how much it is needed to work and do my fair share. Not that someone in power should dictate how much I should work, regardless on how much work is needed.
Don’t het me wrong. I get your point and it makes perfect sense. But I like my job and the things I do and 40 hours sometimes isn’t enough to finish all the things I want to do in a week. A 20 hour workweek would mean that i would barely be able to do ànything meaninful.
I think that should be your choice. I just think 20h should be enough to make a living wage.
I just don’t think this argument really tracks. If we were hunter/gatherers, we would have no choice but to hunt and gather for food. No it’s not consensual, you have to do it, but would we really say we were being coerced? By who? Nature?
You can say there is bad stuff about Capitalism, and better ideas or systems we should do instead, without this coercion claim.
In the case of capitalism, we are actually speaking about coercion, though. The concept of “primitive accumulation” (or “primary accumulation”), as introduced by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy, refers to the historical process that led to the formation of capitalism by separating the producer from the means of production. This separation is what ultimately pushed people into the capitalist labor market, making them dependent on selling their labor to survive. The coercive forces that pressured people into capitalism and the labor market can be understood through several key mechanisms:
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Enclosure of the Commons: In England and elsewhere in Europe, land that was previously held in common for collective use by peasants was enclosed, privatized, and turned into private property. This process forced many peasants off the land, depriving them of their traditional means of subsistence and making them dependent on wage labor.
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Colonialism and Slavery: The expansion of European powers into the Americas, Africa, and Asia involved the appropriation of land and resources, often through violent means. Indigenous peoples were displaced or enslaved, and their resources were extracted for the benefit of European capitalist economies. This not only facilitated the accumulation of capital but also integrated various regions into the global capitalist system.
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Legislation: Laws and regulations played a crucial role in this process. For example, the series of laws known as the “Poor Laws” in England were designed to coerce the unemployed and poor into working for wages. These laws restricted the movement of labor and made it illegal to refuse work, effectively pushing people into the labor market.
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Destruction of Alternative Economies: Pre-capitalist forms of production and exchange, such as feudalism, communal living, or barter systems, were systematically destroyed or undermined. This was not only through direct coercion but also through economic policies and practices that favored capitalist modes of production and exchange.
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Industrial Revolution: The technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution created a demand for labor in factories. The rural populations, already dispossessed by the enclosure movements, migrated to urban centers in search of work, further entrenching the wage labor system.
Marx argued that primitive accumulation was not a one-time historical event but an ongoing process that sustains capitalism. It involves continuous dislocation and dispossession to maintain a labor force that has no other choice but to sell its labor power. This process ensures a supply of workers for the capitalist system and maintains the conditions necessary for capital accumulation.
In essence, the transition to capitalism, fueled by these coercive forces, created a society where the majority must sell their labor to a minority who owns the means of production, thereby establishing the capitalist labor market and perpetuating the cycle of capital accumulation.
Thanks for taking the time to do this informative write-up.
Yes, that is very well gathered, and something people don’t intuitively understand how it shapes us over (only a few) generations.
Chatgpt is that you D:
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If we were hunter/gatherers, we would have no choice but to hunt and gather for food.
The argument is not that people are forced to labor, but that people are forced to labor on behalf of others. Which is to say, its the difference between a Hunter/Gatherer living off the land and a King’s Huntsman, who is distinguished from a Poacher, in that he has duties and privileges assigned to him by another guy.
You can say there is bad stuff about Capitalism, and better ideas or systems we should do instead, without this coercion claim.
The nature of the Capitalist system is to lay claim to physical property with some threat of violence. It is inherently a dictatorial system, in which a handful of people are afforded the right to claim surplus to sustain and enrich themselves at the expense of their neighbors.
The “bad stuff” is what makes Capitalism a system at all. It is - to crib a joke from Monty Python - the violence that is inherent within the system. If you don’t pay your dues to the King, he gets to beat them out of you.
How can you even discuss Capitalism without talking about this innate coercive mechanic?
This is falling for the capitalist consent vs. coercion framing. Capitalism doesn’t have to be coercive to be wrong. Even some perfectly voluntary capitalism with a UBI would still be wrong because capitalism inherently violates workers’ inalienable rights to workplace democracy and to get the fruits of their labor (surplus). The much stronger framing is alienable vs. inalienable rights. An inalienable right is one that the holder can’t give up even with consent.
Capitalism doesn’t have to be coercive to be wrong.
Capitalism is, necessarily, coercive. You can find other things wrong with it, but this is an inherent characteristic of reserving ownership to a “landed” class.
Even some perfectly voluntary capitalism with a UBI would still be wrong because capitalism inherently violates workers’ inalienable rights to workplace democracy
But it achieves that end through the process of “Capital Strikes” (ie, lockouts, hiring freezes, speculative hording, etc). And capital strikes are only possible via coercive force (ie, putting a guy with a gun in an industrial site who shoots any worker that tries to enter and engage in production).
The much stronger framing is alienable vs. inalienable rights.
Rights are legal fictions. There is no such thing as an inalienable right in a material sense. You show me a right, I’ll show you a guy with a gun who can alienate it.
Here’s the thing: as long as poverty exists, poverty exists as a threat to get people to do things without their full consent. In some cases, like in the case of sex work, that can be actual sex, in which case, it cannot be faithfully said that all sex is fully consensual as long as it’s agreed to out of survival fears. In other cases, like for example minimum wage labor, people are accepting minimum wages out of fear of having nothing, and so they accept anything. This complete lack of bargaining power is behind low wages, dangerous conditions, terrible hours, poor treatment, etc.
Alienated ≠ violated
An inalienable right isn’t one that should not be alienated, but rather can’t be alienated. For labor’s rights, responsibility can’t be alienated at a material level. Consent isn’t sufficient to transfer responsibility to another. For example, a contract to transfer responsibility for a crime is invalid regardless of consent.Legal rights can be fictions but also can be based on ethics.
Workers consent to employment unlike kings. Inalienability shows it’s invalid
Consent isn’t sufficient to transfer responsibility to another.
These are legalistic concepts, not materialistic concepts.
For example, a contract to transfer responsibility for a crime is invalid regardless of consent.
A contract is valid when it is enforced. And any cartel boss will tell you how “illegal” contracts are regularly enforced between criminal organizations.
Past that, the very subject of crime and enforcement is subjective, as illustrated by the various states of the drug trade, human trafficking, and stolen property. More than one pawn shop has subsisted primarily on fenced goods. The legality of their stock does not appear to inhibit the success of their business.
Legal rights can be fictions but also can be based on ethics.
Ethics has no material basis.
Workers consent to employment unlike kings.
This doesn’t mean anything.
Consent and responsibility are descriptive not legal concepts there.
Opposing coercion is an ethic. Certain material facts logically imply ethics. A brain has finitely many states it can be in. The whole state space is finitely representable. Minds can be mathematically modeled completely in principle. The concept of strong attractors and flows in the space of all possible minds is thus coherent. The transcendent truth about ethics is unknowable, but that doesn’t allow denial of moral realism.
Consent and responsibility are descriptive not legal concepts there.
When you’re discussing contracts and property - which is also a legal concept - they absolutely are legal concepts.
Minds can be mathematically modeled completely in principle
https://www.amazon.com/When-We-Cease-Understand-World/dp/1681375664
I cant agree with you, by the simple fact that no one says you have to work for someone else.
You could argue that even if you own the company you still have to work for someone else to get paid, but likewise everything you need to survive needs to be made or produced by someone.
The hunter gatherers would get food, but they don’t make their own Healthcare. Doctor’s don’t make their own food or houses, and builders don’t work the land. Bet you didn’t make the device you typed that comment on.
Capitalism allows people to work in one aspect, and trade for what else they need. You could easily argue that late stage is exploitive, more regulation is needed and people are greedy, but that’s a whole different arguement.
no one says you have to work for someone else
Primary accumulation says you have to work for someone else. You never got to be there when all the free land was handed out.
You could argue that even if you own the company you still have to work for someone else to get paid
“Everyone works for someone” is a going line in modern business. But this ignores the folks that are legacies of the fortunes of prior generations. The British Royal Family gets to fuck around however they please. The Vanderbilts and Hiltons and Kennedys and Bushs have no economic obligations, just enormous trust funds fueled by the labors of their peers.
The hunter gatherers would get food, but they don’t make their own Healthcare.
The primitive hunter gatherer worked 3-5 hours a day with the rest reserved for leisure. What this amounted to over time was the explosion of art, language, and culture that formed the foundation of the modern scientific movement.
For millennia, the information primitive people accumulated - understanding of seasonal cycles, crop cultivation strategies, navigational techniques, linguistic techniques, the development of simple tools - was passed down and matured, until we could enjoy a life better than any other species on the planet. That absolutely included health care. Greek and Chinese physicians were doing surgeries 4000 years ago. Egyptians and Persians were mastering anatomy. We’ve got evidence of dentists dating back to 10,000 BCE.
What we’ve developed in the modern era is an accumulation of historical knowledge that’s accelerated thanks to a boom in population and a period of relative global peace. But we wouldn’t have been in the position to capitalize on a population boom / peace dividend if we’d never had the leisure time to make those original scientific discoveries.
Capitalism allows people to work in one aspect, and trade for what else they need.
It does not. It forces one (large) group of people to surrender their surplus gains to another (significantly smaller) set. It prevents people from working for themselves and saps them of resources to trade with one another.
You could easily argue that late stage is exploitive
Every stage is exploitive. The Late Stage of Capitalism just happens to be the one where the folks closest to the imperial core begin to suffer a fraction of what folks on the periphery endured.
You have raised a number of points here, and unfortunately I don’t have the time to debate all of them.
The key takeaway i have from your comments is that your only focus is on those who succeed. You’ve ignored all of those who took the same risks and didn’t make it. You see the success, but you don’t see the time and history they (originally) put in to make it happen.
The company I currently own started off with the equivalent of about 8 hours minimum wage in assets, and one contract for 1 hour a week - I technically now no longer need to work and can sit on my ass and take minimum wage. What you, and my staff didn’t see was the number of sleepless nights I had, how many weekends and public holidays I missed, how many times I worked a 10 hour day, then got up again at midnight because more work came up. You don’t see the extra 20 hours a week I take on unpaid to build or invest for the next thing. I am considering passing on a contract for 15% annual growth not because I am too tired, but because there is physically not enough hours to do everything between 5pm and 8am when our work needs to be finished by, and that’s before I start the next days work.
If you want to be upset about those who are at the top, who get trust funds, literally put your money and body where your mouth is. I can tell you right now that you won’t benefit from it, you will suffer immensely, and it could be all for nothing, but your kids might have it easier.
What you, and my staff didn’t see was the number of sleepless nights I had
My guy, you’re not the only one who has ever had a sleepless night. You don’t think I’ve pulled all-nighters for my assorted employers? You don’t think I’ve driven overnight in the rain to an office in a different city to fix a machine that went down in the storm, so my boss could keep collecting on a contract? You don’t think I pulled all-nighters preparing for job interviews in anticipation of proving myself to assholes like you?
Idfk if you cut yourself in the bathtub between meetings with investors. That’s not something I think anyone should have to do, but I’m not the one running JP Morgan Chase likes its my own piggy bank. I’d just like equity in what I got my hands dirty building. And that’s one thing no employer seems to want to offer.
My boss and I can be side-by-side in the trenches, trying to keep the lights on. But at the end of the day, he’s the owner and I’m an “at-will” employee. My work goes into his pocket first and he pays me back a fraction of what I earned.
If you want to be upset about those who are at the top, who get trust funds, literally put your money and body where your mouth is.
What do you think every employee does every fucking day?
You blew right past his final point.
Im at the point where I wonder both “what is the world coming to” and “am I turning into a boomer”?
In what reality does an employee turn up to work in a building they didn’t lease, use equipment they didn’t pay for, inputs they didn’t buy, logistics they didn’t develop, to fill contracts they didn’t aquire, done through loans they aren’t responsible for and a business plan they didn’t back, and expect the lions share of the profit from utalising this, ironically being paid by someone they didn’t hire and with money they didn’t collect?
Then stop arguing with internet strangers and go out and do it yourself. I can’t make this any clearer - if you think its unfair, that they take a disproportionate amount, that you work soo much harder, quit bitching and quit. Because I can guarantee you won’t - the job security, less responsibility and ability to let someone else worry if you have work or not is far too comfortable. At will works both ways.
~95% of businesses fail in the first 5 years. Have fun.
Because I can guarantee you won’t - the job security, less responsibility and ability to let someone else worry if you have work or not is far too comfortable.
~95% of businesses fail in the first 5 years. Have fun.
You are right about some people being too comfortable (or not knowledgeable on how) to start their own business, but that’s not the whole story.
A business will always fail if it doesn’t have the quality employees to run it. A business cannot function without employees.
Just because one side has more risk upfront doesn’t mean they should keep the vast majority of the profits for themselves, forever. Long-term it’s still a team effort.
There’s nothing wrong with sharing the wealth that’s produced from the effort which is done by all.
Anti-capitalism does not fail because of the many senses of working *for* someone else. What anti-capitalists means by working for someone else in this case is a specific set of property relations where workers jointlyuse up the inputs to produce the output, but are denied the property rights to the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs. Having the choice to be individually or jointly self-employed does not undo the violations of inalienable rights of employees
It only tracks because you can’t get consent from nature. You could have gotten consent from fellow humans. The humans who put this structure in place were people that could be negotiated with and spoken to. Not some blind force.
Is your argument is that our needs have been imposed by nature rather than society and therefore our society is not coercive? I think this doesn’t work because our option to meet our needs in the traditional way has been removed; in most cases living as a hunter-gatherer has been rendered impossible (natural sources of food depopulated/destroyed) and illegal (all land is privately or publicly owned and you can’t live on it without meeting expensive requirements).
And even if that coercive situation hadn’t been created, it would still be our collective responsibility to remove unnecessary naturally imposed hardships that cannot be efficiently dealt with on an individual level.
Hunter/gatherers worked less hours and ate better food then those working the land. But the coercion here is meant by one group making others work more then necessary so they can get richer. Just because there are difficulties in nature, doesn’t mean it’s ok for humans to make it harder for other humans.
I can keep a good attitude in bad weather, but when it’s a felony conviction because every stage of the process is just people looking to profit, I’m mad about it.
But we aren’t hunter & gatherers anymore (not that back then there were capitalist). That age is gone (for now).
Nothing about capital (something someone can own & accumulate) is required to have and sustain cities, technology, services, etc. And it all comes from the propaganda that people are lazy & don’t work if they don’t have to (the opposite is true, but the distinction is that often what you want to do can’t be monetized for various & fairly random bullshit reasons - like, you will always find people that will want to bake/cook/serve, but most of the people that would enjoy that just get a different job that pays better & the ones that don’t like it get stuck with it … and we all get the worst part of that deal, even as consumers, except the people with incentive to maximize sales & minimize wages … like that is a good long-term goal for society or something).
While I agree with the sentiment, saying that it’s been hundreds of years in the making is just wrong. If anything, labor rights are at historic highs, and that’s been centuries in the making.
both are correct. As long as their has been expropriation of labour there has been struggle for liberation, also enclosure and forced market participation has been a project of centuries.
As in all things it’s push and pull. If you want to learn more read about enclosure of the Commons and at least the bits of Debt: the first 5000 years that deal with imposing currency.
I often think of this famous line to remember that there’s been a whole lot of improvement: “he must a king, he doesn’t have shit all over him.”
Capitalism is just feudalism with a glow up
Technically feudalism is a separate system of resource extraction. Someone who owns the land basically just takes a percentage cut of your goods or earnings for being on their space and leaves you to do whatever you want as long as you survive .
So arguably being something like a content creator on a platform or working for uber is closer to feudalism than capitalism.
Capitalism is more the complicated system of landholders wanting to profit from selling, holding, leasing and developing land for profit as an investment good forcing people to perpetually earn to afford to live as individual family units.
It’s a subtle distinction.
Capitalism is supposed to put the worker at the top
It doesn’t because the people with capital make decisions
Christianity straight up opposes wealth, but it doesn’t play out that way because people with wealth make the decisions
It’s the same for every system/ideology because a power vacuum will always be filled
Capitalism is supposed to put the worker at the top
No it isn’t. It’s supposed to put capital at the top. It’s right in the name!
It’s supposed to take money away from the owning class (lords) and give it to the working class (craftsmen)
The idea is that no matter what you do, you are paid based on hours put into it
So then billionaires are just simply putting in more hours than everyone else, is that it?
Refer to my first comment for why that’s not the case
You are assuming someone always has to be in power over someone else. Historically most communities where run without anyone in charge, but with direct democracies. It just became harder with bigger cities, because it was harder to communicate with everyone else. Perhaps we can change that with the Internet.
Historically you are incorrect
If you don’t put power over someone else then someone comes in and puts it over you
The vehicle for change was just how easily that other person can get to you
You can go back to bronze age kings to demonstrate how what you said was false in all of recorded history
There is a good yt channel talking about egalitarian societies in prehistory called What is Politics
If you want to go far enough back that we use theory
Then we can say prehistoric nomadic humans still had fights with other clans and territorial disputes because our genetic ancestors (chimps/monkeys/apes) also have those
And if you were there with a gun, would you be able to dominate them? If so then you are able to put power over people without a power structure
Territorial disputes where only common after agriculture in humans, because territory wasn’t as important before as mutual aid.
Centuries of violence? Try prehistory. Humans have always used violence if someone takes more than they contribute.
Humans have always used violence if someone takes more than they contribute.
In the grand scheme of things, using violence against those who take more than they contribute (i.e., the upper class) is one of the things we do least often.
And yet give two kids a cookie and a knife and watch how carefully they divide that cookie. Fairness is a very old instinct.
Humans are for the most part inherently fair and cooperative.
But sociopaths aren’t, so they think no one else will do anything without the threat of starving to death.
And the sociopaths have been making the rules since the mid 80s.
Untold damage done to humanity and civilization just so a handful of old white men can be ridiculously, unspendably rich.
And we are taught to idealize them.
Calling anyone who does this stuff a sociopath is such a simplistic way to view things. You know beside the fact a sociopath isn’t an official diagnosis. It’s a fallacy to call everyone of these people mentally ill, sure it’s easier to otherize people rather than accepting some of these pieces of shit of sound mind. It’s hard to believe people can be capable of these things without something mentally wrong with them.
Not really, and it used to be a diagnosis. This is not a formal academic setting and I am not talking exclusively to mental health professionals.
There is study after study showing that people who rate high on the Hare scale, who the layman would call sociopath/psychopath are SIGNIFICANTLY overrepresented per-capita in positions of highest power such as politician, or some flavor of executive officer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpyIZ4DGIK8
Other studies have shown that sociopaths are very effective at acquiring power, but are TERRIBLE at using that power to forward the company’s goals, because they are raging narcissists.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-022-05303-x
I’m not exactly sure why you are defending the mentally ill power brokers that are turning our world to shit, you may want to re-examine your values.
But you probably won’t.
There isn’t study after study saying that, hell the one study that people point to have been pulled apart. I don’t like calling every asshole a mentally ill person, it has nothing to do with defending pieces of shit CEOs. Spreading bad research is also a problem. This idea of speaking up when people throw around terms Willy nilly is me defending the behaviour or the people is ridiculous. This little gotcha at the end is also pathetic. “Reexamine” my ass.
This has been going for centuries…
We had a brief progressive period where citizens were protected and supported, I was referring specifically to the reagan-thatcher era.
Honestly the entire world was going much more progressive then, even the middle east.
Neoliberalism and oil greed started the current fire we are roasting in. And it started with reagan
I’m not giving knives to children, not after last time. Nice try Child Protective Services.
You look away for TWO seconds and they’re already mid-goat-sacrifice.
And somehow it’s YOUR fault…
Very vaguely related, I had a somewhat-friend in college who told me about her, her twin, and her year younger sister would fight constantly all the time. Imagine 3 close aged kindergardeners just constantly at each other’s throats when you were really not ready. They were so fed up that they went into the kitchen placed the three of them in equal distances away from the center, and then gave them each a knife and said “Go! If you hate each other so much, kill each other!”
The all started sobbing and hugged each other, and got along a lot better after that.
That’s…def trauma territory, but, it’s an example that human instinct to divided resources (emotional attention from a parent is REQUIRED for children’s psyche) isn’t darwinian. America specifically touts Survival of The Fittest as THE default human psyche and I find that it’s just not true.
I’d say violence is much more often used by people to take more than they contribute than the converse. Violence against the takers is so rare they write about it in history books.
I should have said more than they need. Humans will look after people who can’t look after themselves.
Which does make you think. For example if one person who has the knowledge is trying to build a bridge and they need a lot of resources to build it and someone else keeps coming along and taking some of that large pile because they think the person has too many resources, then that person can’t complete the bridge and noone gets the benefit from the bridge.
Humans have used violence for lots of stuff including taking or taking from takers or because the other tribe looked at em funny or whatever else. I wished we could be free of our worst instincts.
Humans naturally practice mutual aid and are good to each other. It is hierarchical systems that make them fight for power. Humans used to collectively fight everyone who got too greedy and powerful. It is only relatively recent development of agriculture that made it possible for violent people to grow huge armies and take over less connected tribes. Hopefully Internet can make as unite together on a global scale against the powerful, instead of fighting each other based on regions we live in.
K so that’d be the billionaires.
Humans used to give to those who needed, regardless of how much they contribute. That is the whole point of tribes and why we are social animals. We help each other. They did however take from those that have significantly more then others.
Ah yes. The Always Sunny argument for UBI.
We are slaves. We just don’t like in a big plantation. No. We live anywhere where there are “jobs”. No jobs means we become homeless eventually. And who has these “jobs”? The rich assholes do. Just like we were forced to work for their forefathers in plantations, now we work for them in “jobs”. The job is basically a metaphorical plantation.
I understand your sentiment, but I wouldn’t liken working a fast food or retail job 40 hours a week to working the fields every day in the hot sun and under the crack of a whip.
Some people are still forced to work under the sun. But yeah, crack of a whips was worse. They are a bit nicer to slaves nowadays.
This is actually a batshit insane comparison. You’re fucking crazy, man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
Similarities between wage labor and slavery were noted as early as Cicero in Ancient Rome, such as in De Officiis. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery, and engaged in critique of work while Luddites emphasized the dehumanization brought about by machines. The introduction of wage labor in 18th-century Britain was met with resistance, giving rise to the principles of syndicalism and anarchism.
But we have our freedom.
Freedom to work at a selection of under paying, exploitative places that will take from you every ounce of effort, strength, and time, so that you can “earn” a living… Because nobody is going to give you a living; you’re not worth anything unless you work and earn your life.
Freedom to choose from a number of ways to live, how to travel from place to place, either by buying an overpriced automobile, and paying for every interaction any professional repair person has with it… Or you can choose to pay to ride transit, where you have to conform to their schedule and if you’re late, you’re left behind… And you get to pay for the privilege. Or you could, IDK, walk? But wait, it’s MILES away from your home, because it’s in a commercial zone and you live in a residential zone. We couldn’t possibly mix commercial and residential. Tsk tsk. That’s just not okay.
You can also choose to buy food at the grocery store where the lowest prices are not in the shareholders best interest, so we’ll do everything we can to convince you that you’re getting the best deals by offering lower prices on your food, as the quality slips away, and products are shrunken down to the point where it’s almost not worth buying it anymore.
But because you have been given a choice, you are “free” and not a slave. Clearly.
… Late stage capitalism is just slavery with extra steps. They’re making the slaves figure their own shit out, rather than give them food and a place to sleep… Just, here’s your barter (pay) for today, go figure out where to sleep and what to eat on your own fucking time.
Best explanation I’ve heard yet. Every time I try to counter everyone I always get Capitalizm=/=Slavery and it’s like just because it’s not racist doesn’t mean it’s not doing more damage to hard workers and slavery was never racist just because a short history recently was. Capitalizm=Slavery doesn’t really say how bad capitalizm is and that’s not denoting how horrible slavery is.
As far as I can tell, the only significant benefit that modern “slaves of capitalism” (if you will), have is that, compared to actual slaves, we can’t be beaten, sold, or outright murdered on a whim.
The physical abuses are no longer allowed.
Mental and emotional abuse is fine though, as long as it’s filtered through a thin coat of “corpo-speak” so that HR can rubber stamp it.
You’re missing starvation, homeless, oh and, the fact that police do all that shit you deny being done…
Except that the Amish exist…
Are you saying the poor should kill the existing land owners so they can colonize Pennsylvania?
Are you suggesting the Amish don’t participate in the labor market?
No. I’m suggesting that the Amish are not enslaved to capitalists.
Huh. Ok. I mean they sell their goods so that they can pay their taxes just like the rest of us. Being Amish doesn’t get you any sort of pass or anything in that regard.
Who’s ancestors got large areas of free or cheap land when they came to the United States. They also work regular jobs in their communities.
…hand-made, Amish produced goods are sold to the wider world. And that’s a selling point for those goods. They very much so participate in wider capitalism.
They participate voluntarily because they benefit from it. You don’t have to work for anyone else, but the same is true for farmers - they don’t have to grow your food.
No they don’t. They have to own their land and pay taxes just like everyone else. They can’t farm dollar bills; they must participate in capitalism to obtain money to pay their taxes. They’re no different than a person of any other religion or social group choosing to live a homesteading lifestyle. Even communist communes must participate in capitalism for the exact same reasons. It doesn’t matter if you’re producing a good to sell or selling your time as a service. This is a capitalist country; you cannot completely opt out.
The Amish pay their taxes.
If you want peace and safety, you need to participate in society. That means paying taxes and voting in elections. Too many people only did the paying taxes bit, and now our society’s fucked.
I don’t think that lack of voting was the problem, it was lack of direct action. You always get voting choices that both make things worse, so you have to fight outside of the voting booth. And for taxes, I shouldn’t have to give my money to the powerful rich that are running the state, but should be able to take tax from the rich that have more then others and make them share with everybody.
Speaking of eat the rich, I’d like a rich market. A market for the rich we can transfer the wealth from and impoverish them.
Whole Foods already exists. But of course it’s owned by Bezos so it only transfers wealth from the rich to the super rich.
Costco is employee owned
Costco is the best. They’ve saved me thousands of dollars in the past, by looking out for their customers over the companies of the products that they sell.
How is this a microblog meme? Can we please not turn this community into unnuanced political opinions?
How is it not a microblog meme? It fits the definition of both a microblog and a meme. Being nuanced isn’t a requirement.
How is this a meme? It’s just a screenshot of someone’s post.
Some blunt hot take of a politically charged opinion, which serves no purpose but to preach to the choir of people who already agree, is not what I’d imagine most people expect from a meme community without a theme other than specifying a source. It’s a meme community, not soapbox for my opinions land.
No humor or entertainement value, no bait and switch, non-sequiteur, or anything to get any sort of reaction other than “you’re right and that makes me upset at the state of things” or “wow that’s a crap take”.
I’m not even going the route of “keep politics and things that remind me of the poor state of the world out of my funny hahas”, and you could probably argue endlessly about what the modern definition of a meme really is, but this ain’t it boss.
There’s plenty of more appropriate communities for this sort of content.
A meme is anything that is spread through sharing and imitation. If you don’t like that definition, take it up to that one biology guy who came up with it
By that (definitely incorrect) definition, all content on any mass media is a “meme”.
That is actually the original definition when Richard Dawkins first coined the term. Basically it is an idea which spreads through the minds of people who repeat that idea. But it’s definitely not the commonly understood definition in a community name like “microblog memes”
Considering how many memes everywhere are just screenshots of a social media post, I’d say it is the practical definition.
“meme” never meant “has text on it” until the Internet bastardized the term for several years straight
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Sorry not sorry, downvoting exists for a reason.
This is the exact reason most communities and subreddits turn to shit. People posting low effort content that is barely relevant to the community and then saying “iF thE PeOpLe dOn’T liKe iT, thEy CaN DownVoTe iT”
wait till AI helps them to control us by learning our habits from social media
Already did.
While I agree that wages, employee treatment and benefits stand to be much better, Im having trouble understanding the argument. At the end of the day someone needs to do work to get anything
The exchange is for that labour is extremely disproportionate to the value produced, especially in our modern environment of record breaking profits and runaway wealth gaps.
If we look at the whole result of production instead of its value, the situation is more disproportionate. The employer owns 100% of the produced outputs and holds 100% of the liabilities for the used-up inputs while workers as employees receive 0% ownership claim on the produced outputs and 0% liability for the used-up inputs. Capitalism is based on someone else getting what workers produce
That’s not an inherent trait of the concept of labor though. That’s a direct result of exploitation. The solution isn’t to ban hiring a person for a wage; it’s labor regulation and unions.
The inherent trait that distinguishes labor from other factors of production is that the actions of persons (labor) come with responsibility for their results. The services of things (capital and land) no matter how effective in increasing output can’t be responsible for anything. They merely conduct responsibility back to their human users.
The solution is to have legal and de facto responsibility match. Consequently, all firms should be structured as democratic worker coops @microblogmemes
someone needs to do work to get anything
The issue isn’t that someone needs to do work, it’s that some people are forced to do more than their share of work so that other people can do less. There’s a class of people who get money without having to lift a finger just for owning stuff (land, residential buildings, companies, etc.). When there are people who get money without having to earn it through work, that means there must be other people elsewhere in the system who are paid less than their work is worth. And there’s not a damn thing they can do about it, because the owner class can simply refuse to pay them more, so the workers’ choice is between being exploited or starving. The workers can’t just go and find some land to claim as their own, it’s all owned already.
The alternative is to abolish the employer-employee relationship and have everyone be either individually or jointly self-employed as in a democratic worker coop. On top of that, since land and natural resources are not the fruits of anyone’s labor, there is no fruits of labor based claim to it. As a result, land and natural resources can be subject to collective ownership arrangements with revenue from this collective ownership as a UBI
There exist people at the top who are obscenely wealthy, despite doing zero work. In contrast, workers who produce everything of value are badly underpaid, entirely due to the fact that all the surplus value goes to the few fabulously wealthy.
The proposal is that of all the unnecessary, overpaid, worthless positions in society, there are none more worthy of elimination across the entire market than CEOs, executives, and shareholders. There is no reason for a scant few to gorge themselves upon all the resources and money. Instead, we ought to make all businesses the equal and collective property of the people who work there, with management positions promoted and removed by worker elections only, with term limits. One worker, one vote.
The alternative is everyone grows their own food, builds their own houses, makes their own clothes, gathers firewood, yadda yadda.
You certainly wouldn’t have the Internet in such a paradise.
That said, with all that we now have, 4 6 hour work days should be the norm.
The alternative is everyone grows their own food
The alternative is that when you grow food or build homes or make cloths or gather firewood, you own the real material you create plus all the surplus, which can then be used in trade.
When you’re working in an industrial agricultural system, you produce orders of magnitude more food than you could ever consume. But as a tenant farmer or field hand, you barely claim enough income to buy enough to sustain yourself personally, because so much of your work product is claimed by your employer.
You certainly wouldn’t have the Internet in such a paradise.
When you’re enjoying an industrial surplus, why wouldn’t you have access to a cheap and efficient means of mass communication?
You should not confuse capitalism with markets, and you should not confuse markets with working together.
Consider the family unit, it is doubtful that everyone cooks their own single serve or rotates meal duty evenly. Humans can specialise without capital.
Capital is what enables someone to have someone else cook for them, who then has to go cook their own meal. The one with capital isn’t even doing anything for the cook, they are simply taking money that someone working at a widgt factory they own made and giving it to the cook. In so doing they appropriate both the widget factory worker’s meal and the cooks!
you can even have market exchange without capitalism. In the above situation if we remove the capitalist the widget maker could give the cook widgets for a meal. Or even currency from selling widgets for a meal. Materially the capitalist contributes nothing, their role is entirely created by private property law.
I may have misread the end of your comment but are you implying that a market can exist without private property?
A market can exist without private property by having capital be collectively owned and continuously up for auction to the highest bidder. Basically, each holder of means of production self-assess the price at which they would be willing to turn over that capital to another party, they pay a lease payment based on a percentage of that self-assessed price, and if someone comes along willing to pay that self-assessed price, require that they turn it over to that party
Maybe I’m not getting it, bu that just sounds like capitalism with extra steps.
In what I described, the differences are:
- Buyers can compel current holders to transfer the asset to them if they pay enough. This reduces the power of capital holders.
- All self-assessed prices of all capital are public
- A large portion of the value of capital flows into a collective fund
Not implying, outright stating!
Colloquially private property means like “stuff I have exclusive or near exclusive rights to” but that’s not what we mean when we talk economic systems. Something like your clothing, or that neat pot you made is personal property. Private property is a legal construct wherein someone is allowed to claim ownership over means of production, like “this field is mine, it doesn’t matter if I’m using it or not, I have the legal right to control what happens there”.
So an example of a market without private property might be something like:
- a field is held in Commons by a town
- a farming collective submits to work it
- they grow some potatoes
- the community recognises their right to the fruits of their labour
- they go to potato-lack town and sell some potatoes
Obvs that’s simplified but it’s a rough sketch of how farming used to work! you earned a right to use land by using it directly and what you grew on it was yours to do as you see fit (often a maniac with a horse and sword would take some portion first though. Because they’re just better than you or whatever)
So what changes personal property to a “means of production”?
Probably start here for a general overview https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production
It’s about the question who owns the product that labor produced (along with land).
Why can someone be the owner of a production line?
Because someone has to build it. Why would you build something if you couldn’t own it afterwards?
Besides that it gets built with labor and not capital … lots of things people build for all to use, some even pool together to build libraries, schools, etc.
But the short answer why would you build a garden/factory/connect hall/etc is so that afterwards you live in a world/society that now has a place to take a walk, toys, concerts, etc.
You would only like to own those things just because it gets you into the position to exploit others (the main topic here I mean) that were unable to build it. Exploit them to have a more comfortable life in unrelated things.
This relies on nobody taking advantage of the system though.
We pay government for that.
Unless you mean like poets etc - that’s the beauty of it, this would allow that.
But why would I, as an individual, spend my life learning how to build buildings and then build them if I have no more benefit from doing that than I would from someone else putting in all that work? Surely I’d just do nothing and wait for someone else to do it?
What else would you do? You get all your needs met.
And when no money as such having a big role, you get recognized by what you do and accomplish, not by what made the most profit (that is a huge distinction imho).
Recognition isn’t as important as you make it sound. And most people will hardly start to work out of boredom. There’s plenty of ways to spend your time that are not productive.
In addition, there are plenty of jobs literally nobody wants to do, and consequently, nobody would do under your proposed system.
With absence of money as the main ‘power’ it’s your deeds that are the only thing left to define the extra exclusive things like apartments, experiences, etc.
And that is the thing, afaik all studies & experiments concluded that people start being productive regardless. It’s not “out of boredom”. Its just something to do. Sure, not everything benefits everyone, but imagine the impact of all the eg artist stuck flipping burgers. They would seem ‘unproductive’ just “laying about” until they produce a pice the whole world recognizes as something special (and not just because of the marketing budget).
Basically no one just stays still doing nothing, definitely not a significant margin. Same with animals, at the very least they will play.
Eg, could you imagine your life without long-term producing/making/planning something?
This perfectly describes capitalism. The workers are factually responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs. The workers build the positive and negative product, but the employer has sole ownership of the produced outputs and holds the liabilities for the used-up inputs. The workers produce the whole product but are denied the legal rights to it under capitalism
The difference is that in capitalism, you are compensated for your labour in a different way, with wages. That is sufficient motivation to be productive. It does not make a difference in that regard who owns the final product.
It matters who owns the final product. The owner is the party the legal system is holding responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs. There is a tenet that who the legal system holds responsible for a result should match who actually is factually responsible for the result. Capitalism systematically violates this principle. Property rights rest on people having the right to get the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Capitalism also fails there
Who says this principle exists and who says we need to adhere to it? I don’t see what benefit that would bring.
An intuition pump for this tenet is the case where an employer and employee cooperate to commit a crime and get caught. Both the employer and employee are held legally responsible for the crime. The servant in work becomes a partner in crime. The employee can’t argue that they sold their labor so whatever was done with their labor is not their responsibility. The law already applies this tenet. It just fails to apply it in the firm.
What do you mean by benefit?
Have you heard of co-ops?
Not saying op is wrong but why is there so much negativity on Lemmy? I agree capitalism is not a great system but I feel like this horse has been dead for a while and we are still beating it.
Lemmy kinda bums me out tbh.
Be the change you want to see in the Fediverse and start posting funny memes instead of complaining.
I think it is just a lack of a popular alternative platform we can talk about important things in the society without being censored or quietly diprioritized by the algorithm.
