Some people are predisposed to be followers. It’s okay to follow structure and authority but do not have blind obedience.
What makes you say that?
I know many people who fawn over an authority figure without question. There is kind of a psychology in which some people are happy to be number two to the top person.
I mean, what do you think is causing this? I don’t really agree with the premise, but more than the premise, an underlying reason is necessary.
It’s kinda down to evolutionary psychology. I’ve read it sometime ago that some people are happy to be followers because they gain access to the resources that could be given by the leader. Also, the follower or the second in command has the benefits of access to resource, but without the responsibility of running the group, while also being privy to the private information relating to the leader which could be leveraged.
I don’t like the implication that some people are genetically predisposed to accepting authority. This seems to be a eugenecist explanation for why organizational structures form, not actual science.
I’m not saying genetics is end all be all but nature is still a dominant influence whether we like to admit it or not. It’s why cults of personality persist. That’s why there are plenty of bootlickers for the wealthy, especially on social media (assuming they’re not shills and/or bots).
I think theories of false consciousness are more accurate.
If you work you are not a capitalist.
The whole point of capitalism is making money without working.
The petite bourgeoisie exist as laboring capitalists, they aren’t really working class but they aren’t haut bourgeois either.
Haut, Bourgeois is masculine.
Ah, thanks!
You are not a capitalist. You are capital.
The issue even more dire, those who exploited by capitalist, most of them doesn’t even understand “word” anymore.
Many GenZ-ers can’t even read at a basic level expected from an adult. It’s by design.
I wouldn’t say it’s by design, but a convenient coincidence or side effect.
This is the dialogue people should be having with the ones who are misguided, if even a few people understand it that’s progress
Honestly we need to explain this shit more often. As soon as people understand exactly how much a billion dollars is they get visibly angry.
to put in perspective, a million seconds is about 11 days or so. a billion seconds is 31 YEARS
“You know what the difference is between a million dollars and a billion dollars? About a billion dollars.”
Yeah, well, I’m no communist! There shouldn’t even be a minimum wage, let the free market decide!
— Temporarily inconvenienced billionaires at my workplace.
The free market assumes abundant choice and perfect information. And that’s why we have monopolies and massive marketing to counter that.
There shouldn’t be a minimum wage! The free market should decide!
If everyone had a baseline standard of living, capitalists could pay whatever they wanted. And if their proposed wage wasn’t worth doing, then no one would do it.
That only works if there is a social safety net, or every worker needs to have 6 months worth of savings. Otherwise it’s accepting a low wage vs no food, no house making barely a living. Which would you choose?
No one would do it
Unskilled labor does not have the luxury to just “not do it”. The capitalists know this, which is why they depress wages as far as they can to keep an entire class of workers under water.
If I were to lose my job, which can happen at any time working in a non-union shop in an at-will state, I would not be able to go anywhere and receive comparable wages in my area. I am studying to get certifications in a different industry that would give me some amount of freedom. For now, I work at the mercy of my employer.
The free market is a scam. It will take massive changes, paradigm shifts, to create an environment where the workers are free to go work where they choose, and be given actually competitive compensation.
Unskilled labor is a myth created by the ownership class.
There’s trained and highly trained labor. All labor takes some degree of education and training, but some labor takes more dedication than that, such as medicine.
It’s really not, there’s jobs out there that can be learned in a week on the job, and people who don’t have any qualifications to do much else. If you’re one of those, you’re a special kind of fucked, because you’re among the easiest people to replace.
Unskilled labor as in, I do not have any degrees or certifications that I can simply take to a new employer to leverage anything above starting at the bottom. This will almost always mean making less money. At-will employment mixed with unequal application of company rules and policy means that any day at work could be my last. Unemployment checks are a joke, and would not even cover my rent.
What would you call that?
Labor
But you’re only obligated to work under the threat of illegal homelessness. That’s not a free market, that’s coercion.
If your basic needs were guaranteed, then unskilled labour especially would dictate the value of work in a truly free market. And if you truly can’t find a job that will satisfy your desired lifestyle, you won’t die or be imprisoned or suffer from illness.
How would my basic needs be guaranteed? If the government is going to provide the social safety nets they owe to us, then why not have them regulate labor, providing basic labor needs being guaranteed? Unions would be great, but there will be plenty of businesses that will not have them. Why not provide a safety net to the workers who will inevitably fall between the cracks?
The government shouldn’t be providing safety nets, it should be maintaining the floor to ensure all citizens’ basic needs are met. There should be no “what ifs”.
The labour needs are already met, and would continue to be met in a free market where labour was optional for the labourer because people have wants. If you believe the government would need to ensure that labour needs are met, you’re believing the capitalist lie that foundational labour must be bought under threat of violence.
Just say the billionaires are communists
You, I like.
There shouldn’t even be a minimum wage, let the free market decide!
And it did, sadly. 2/3 of the US states still use the federal minimum wage as a guide, even though it doesn’t even purchase a cup of coffee these days.
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pay by allowing employees to take home expired food instead of making them throw it away.
This is a person who thinks society would be better if stores gave workers expired food instead of money.
They meant the food as a bonus, not in place of living wages, which is what they want with unions and healthy worker benefits we all deserve.
No they didn’t, they specifically said workers might accept lower than minimum wage if walmart was allowed to give them expired food in liu of meeting minimum wage, and that somehow this will give workers more leverage and not less. They say they want strong unions, but only mention policy that would help the union’s enemy. Whether they know it or not, they’re a rightwing libertarian trying to pretend blatantly antiworker policy somehow helps workers.
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Why wouldn’t walmart cut wages further if allowed to?
If it wasn’t literally illegal they wouldn’t even pay real money. We know this because its what companies did in the past.
The existence of millions of sub-livable wage jobs isn’t going to make walmart increase its wages, I feel like you’re trying to bend reality to pretend removing restrictions on capitalists exploiting workers somehow helps workers.
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Either because unions force them or because better jobs are available.
And you think removing minimum wage would cause unions to become stronger and better jobs be made available?
The market must be turned to the advantage of the workers.
This is done by forcing the capitalists to operate on our terms, not letting them exploit workers with even less regulation wtf?
Sub-livable doesn’t help. But if sub-mimimum wage comes with a better package, e.g. child care or health coverage or short commute, then it creates a livable competing option that forces Walmart to rise wages.
A company giving its employees expired food instead of money isn’t going to make other companies increase wages.
With enough jobs nobody has to work for sub-minimum wage unless it’s to their advantage.
??? People are already forced to work for unsustainable wages and end up in debt or working while homeless.
It really feels like you started out with the assumption that capitalism is the best possible solution for everybody and then went backwards to figure out why this isn’t matching observations.
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I think more power from having a free market outweights the shame of eating expired food.
You argument is that I should take a pay cut, and all I have to do is lower my material conditions.
You are trending toward slavery. Get your fucking head checked.
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You’re operating on the false premise that a decent wage and decent working conditions are mutually exclusive and that is the primary flaw in your entire argument.
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What is this far right dreck doing in this com?
This is how Sweden works and why Sweden has been blocking an EU minimum wage. The unions are supposed to ensure reasonable wages and working conditions, which they have done for the most part.
Omg, I have to say this way too often. The amount of people who think capitalism is commerce is too darn high.
Basically we’re all serfs.
And increasingly ill-treated ones.
Serfs were tied to the land, and produced what they actually, directly used, as well as traded their surplus for goods. The rise of capitalism came alongside expelling the serfs from the land, turning them into wage laborers.
The serfs could be expelled because while the serfs were not free to leave, it was the lords who actually owned the land.
The analogy is not prefect, but not terrible.
The lords did own the land, but expelling the serfs could not be done simply by telling the serfs to leave. There was a large accumulation that was forced on the serfs. Feudalism was a fundamentally distinct class society from capitalism.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but your tiny ETF portfolio does not make you an investor either.
Why not?
Unless you’re a boomer, as they own most of the economy through their different investments and other holdings. That’s who capitalism is working for. Average American owns jack shit, billionaires all together own abour 10 trillion, baby boomers all together own over 80 trillion. That’s why they’re not just part of the problem, they’re the main course.
There are poor boomers as well. This is not about age, but about wealth
On average, they’re millionaires. That’s why they’re doing their best to pull the ladder up after themselves. Majority of them benefit when you’re paid less.
On average, yes, but that’s distorted by the wealthy having a lot of money.
The median boomer has less than $400k, and most of that is in their home.
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/smart-money/average-net-worth-by-age
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I hate the “it has existed since caveman times.” Trading is an action and a concept, something we had always, meanwhile capitalism is just a system developed by the spooky scary muslims.
Lots of people back then worked in a version of gift economy. Trade was with outsiders and was more like a mob meeting with backup standing behind the ones doing the bartering. There was no central authority to make trade clean and board toom style.
Well, I’ve recently visited an ancap chat where people were discussing how a charter city project failed because the next government of a host country retracted the law.
Nobody wanted to listen to the simple argument that it can’t be cheaper to buy land for a charter city than to build ancap in your own town. There’s no unowned land. There’s no good cheap land. If you get such a deal, it’s someone else being robbed and you helping launder it, which then backfires (sometimes).
Invoked NAP many times (that, well, when a corrupt government sells you something they don’t have right to sell, it’s both a negligible deal and dealing with a government is ideologically dirty), nobody batted an eye.
One type mentioned Israel, I suppose the unsaid part was that colonizing brown people in dirty ways is fine.
And from the examples I’ve realized that most of those people are not ancap, they are cosplaying “nice life” thinking they might get there doing that. It’s just a “nice life cargo cult”. Real ancap sort of leads you to ideological neutrality (or something like Catholic distributivism) eventually. At least to anarchist neutrality.
Having said that, I’m still ancap morally, in that discussion it’s them who were ignoring the basic stated principles of that ideology. I also know that saying ancap things isn’t Harry Potter magic to become strong enough to build it.
Why “false class solidarity”. I think it’s honest, if misplaced, solidarity. Temporarily embarrassed millionaire and all that.
Lukacs actually has a term for that - false consciousness and it is a massive problem
Technically small companies also are just employees. Risks outsourced and it can be easily killed away when the bigger company doesn’t need them anymore. That’s so fucked up and governments all around protect this behavior.
That’s a very narrow view.
Many or most small companies have many customers - they’re not subcontracting to a single upstream provider.
In the case of small subcontractors, what you’re talking about is a necessary risk management strategy. It’s not a sneaky underhanded contrivance on the part of large companies. Its how “limited liability” is intended to work.
Of course governments protect this because it’s essential to a functional economy. You may as well complain about insurance or something.
to be fair there is a lot to complain about the existence of insurance, too
insurance is usually necessary when essential services like Healthcare are not fully nationalized/subsidized.
only exception I can think of is maybe some kind of fire or other destruction insurance, but even so it should be government provided.
There may be more exceptions i am not immediately thinking of, but basically, insurance how it exists right now is extremely fucking predatory and one of the worst things about capitalism - especially health insurance.
Health insurance is an exception amongst insurances.
The primary form of insurance is paying a third party to take on a risk on your behalf.
For example, if my business owns a truck, but I don’t want to take the risk that it might be stolen or be involved in an accident, I can pay someone else to take that risk. There’s nothing wrong with that and it’s a normal part of business.
However, there’s all sorts of weird things called insurance that are really something else. Life insurance is my favourite awful example. Some policies are ok, like I have $x left to pay on my mortgage, so I can get a life insurance policy for a similar amount and at least if I die my family will have the house paid off. Others are a weird kind of savings plan, where you pay a lot more but get a big pay out once you reach a certain age.
Health insurance in the US is obviously tangled up with politics and profiteering and is more like a complicated extortion plan than insurance.
As a general guide, any insurance you intend to make a claim on is usually problematic.
i mean, that all makes a lot of sense, and you’re not wrong, I just believe insurance ought to be a public service.
If the purpose of insurance is to spread risk so that people can still live their lives when unforeseen events happen, that benefits a country, that is a risk the government should be shouldering.
Anyway, I have found myself on a tangent. I guess fundamentally I don’t disagree with the concept of insurance, my biggest complaints are regarding the execution of it within capitalism, but you already basically said what I wanted to about health insurance in particular.
No, that’s not essential to a functional economy. That’s a predatory thing.
A robust and intelligent rebuttal. I find myself convinced.
