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
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
Not only that, before we can even “freely” sell ourselves, we, or someone, has to pay for our preparation/education, because why pay for a slave’s training when you can charge them?
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”
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.
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.
In my view, crazy is a dismissive word used to avoid making an attempt to understand. A lazy word, and I think most who think about it realize this and stop using it.
I can see your perspective, but I believe you’ve made minimal effort to understand the “crazy” ideas you are being presented.
Lazy and offensive is comparing people as property to what we have now. I do understand the hyperbole but it’s so fucking wrong I can’t even respond any other way. Actual property that can be done with whatever the owner chooses, versus the struggles of today. Get out of here with being an apologist on this.
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.
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?
Have you heard of co-ops?
Why are they called rights if not everyone has them
To distinguish between Humans and Human Capital.
Because someone else gets to have what’s left.
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.
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.
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…
Ah yes. The Always Sunny argument for UBI.
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.
The Amish pay their taxes.
The argument that the employment contract is not a consensual transaction is a weak argument against capitalism. The employment contract is voluntary by any normal juridical standard. Even if this difficulty could be overcome, it would only necessarily imply a UBI not abolishing capitalist property relations. A much stronger argument is the inalienable rights argument based on the factual inalienability of responsibility
Might be logically weaker, but it might resonate with more people. I personally haven’t understood your last sentence. It is more valuable for people to grasp the idea you are conveying then be 100% precise.
That argument doesn’t work. It is harmful to the cause to make arguments that initially resonate but fall apart if you think about them.
Did you read my other comments in this thread? Still working on how to best present this idea. Feedback is helpful. The idea is that consent is not sufficient to transfer responsibility. No amount of consent can make someone else solely responsible for the workers’ actions (labor). An argument on that basis can show why a voluntary contract is wrong
Sir this is a wendy’s.
