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But if no one has to struggle, how will we know who’s beneath us??
Hint: we’re all at the bottom and there’s only another layer
Lateral poverty
He struggles so the billionaire can own a yacht.
their con man idols tell them that the reason their lives are shitty is because of the mexicans, gays, black people, women, librarians, immigrants…everyone except the people who are literally paying them nothing and laughing at them for it.
and the people are all too happy to believe it
I think a lot about something i read somewhere - “you hate every piece of capitalism but won’t connect the dots to see that’s the picture”.
I have this conversation with people all the time.
Well… You ought to know to listen to your betters, too!
Everything always boils down to people being dumb and if magically the people would become smart, all problems would just get fixed.
Not even smart , in a genius-like sense. I’d settle for merely cooperative.
Like if people could drop the petty “movement purity” squabbles and just rustle up that meme energy “apes together strong” for each other as the working class, instead of individualizing their struggles and settling for misery, we could really get somewhere!
If you work, you and your family should have their needs met, aka, we should all be able to help our community have all of our basic needs met
This same worker should also have capital F free health care a house or condo he and his family like or she and her family, or their family, yours or mine
This worker should be able to have paid leave, both vacation and sick.
…
I’ll do you one better. If you exist you and your family should have their needs met. We have the ability to feed, provide medical care, and house everyone on the planet many times over yet we don’t. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why we don’t.
We should put the psychopaths that can’t care about others in a reserve, where they can make their own hellscape, away from normal people.
So we can have a normal society without some insane psychopath arguing about healthcare, because he happens to not need it.
We will see who’s society is better
We will see who’s society is better
Did you ever read “A libertarian walks into a bear”? It’s a non-fiction book about a bunch of libertarians that moved to a small town, and used their new voting bloc to try to bring about their libertarian paradise. It went badly. There were bears.
The author points out how a nearby town that was otherwise very similar. It had prospered during the time libertarians were driving their town into the ground
I don’t read proper books very often but the title of that book got my curiosity, and tried the first three chapters and I don’t know if I have a really fucked sense of humor but it really got me laughing at how absurd early US history is in hindsight, not having to live through it. Anyway thanks for that, probably gonna finish it.
This sounds like a fascinating read lol. I’ve never heard of that before!
Regardless of ideology, I do find those “let’s start our own society” accounts very educational, because everybody thinks they can do it better, but there’s a lot of pitfalls and footguns to learn from.
We should put the psychopaths that can’t care about others in a reserve, where they can make their own hellscape, away from normal people.
Digitally, we’ve already done this, and called it LinkdIn!
But somehow we got pulled into having to play their stupid games. :(
Boomers still think fast-food jobs are part-time things that teenagers do for some pocket change. They literally do not grasp the idea that there are adults working there to pay rent and buy food.
They dont realize that teenagers dont even have jobs anymore mostly
look can we stop with the boomer crap? that is a myth and disproved so many times. lets work together instead of insulting whole generations of people we don’t know
It’s not a myth. If it wasn’t so disgustingly true across the board I’d be in agreement. Class war over generational and all that, but I’ll also call out the systems and people that are actively (STILL) shitting all over progress. Their generation is at fault in large part to why we’re so utterly fucked and continue to be (see Reagan). The majority of our gov is run by geriatric fucks that refuse to align with their constituents and cling on to their positions until they’re literally in wheel chairs. Those are fucking boomers. They’re in charge still, and they’re the ones holding the reins on voting in any iota of progress in any number of categories, one being minimum wage. Fuck them.
Its a myth. but hey, lets not facts get in the way of anything. y know, like individual circumstances, actual ages of the people in charge running the government and tech companies, etc.
if you believe the myth, then you’ve been led around by the nose by big tech. y know the the predominately gen x’ers who run the tech world.
BTW I’m a gen xer. born in 68. know more about tech than most millennials( though probably less than many here of any age) and less about cars than most gen x’ers. Know what that says? Means I spent my time differently than others in my generation, same as every generation. Stop with the myth.
If a majority of boomers think Thing1, but you are a boomer who thinks Thing2 instead, you are not disproving a myth, you’re being an outlier. If you were to pick a random boomer off the street, there’s a very good chance that he thinks Thing1 instead of Thing2. So “boomers think Thing1” is a perfectly valid (if a bit casual) statment that adequately represents the underlying statistical facts of the situation.
It can be frustrating as a Thing2 boomer, but that’s just how it is. The world thinks Amercans are hateful, disgusting ghoulish greedy misanthopists, and it feels bad to hear that as an American who didn’t vote for Trump, but I accept the logic behind the generalization.
So now you’re telling a guy who lived the experience that he is mistaken. Kid. Enough. You have no idea what you’re talking about, like, at all.
You enjoy your evening.
People will point out that it makes more sense to punch up than to punch down but the later is significantly easier and better paid.
Punching down gives the monkey brain that sweet squirt of dominance when you see the suffering of your subject. Punching up is unrewarding because you don’t get results unless everyone else does it, and then you have to share the victory with everyone else.
Focusing your wrath where it belongs doesn’t make the million year old monkey brain squirt the reward chemicals.
These is why the alt right pipeline for women is transphobia/TERF shit.
Sexism is real, lots of teenage girls and young women feel frustrated and powerless, but they get easy wins going after trans women. They can’t get Dobbs reversed, but forcing trans people to detransition is an explicit goal of conservative power structures. They get to feel like they “won” with that UK court ruling - that “women’s rights” were won by something that did nothing to actually meaningfully help women.
It’s this, and it’s also more than this: there has to be a limitation put on profit, a place at which the corporation achieves balance and success- enough to not feel the need to continually chip away at wages and working conditions or increasing enshittification in search of immediate short-term profits.
If enough profit is never enough, it will forever remain a constant battle between corporations and workers, and corporations and the public.
This is even my problem with the system when it comes to “the little guy.” Say you make a coffee shop, or release art, or a videogame, or an invention… There’s always this looming pressure to scale . No matter how much of a home run, that success is almost designed to “dry up.”
Wow, one in a million success! You can chill now right? No, it’s gotta be bigger, better, repeated, infinitely! Franchises, chains, out of place sequels nobody asked for! Overly enthusiastic merch destined for the Pacific Garbage Patch!
It feels like the system forces greed upon people as the state religion because they are not naturally greedy themselves if they’re otherwise taken care of. Savvy business of the modern age has the mentality of cancer.
Even the wealthy need to be imbued with the pathological fear that all they have might get taken from them, so they must amass more and more. It doesn’t even end with their own lives! They must aim for generational private wealth now.
It’s feels like it’s such an outlier mentality to want to find “just enough success to support my people and do some good.”
And you’re right about the adversarial relationship between employers and workers. “Honest work” is almost an oxymoron anymore, because it doesn’t matter how nice a person sits in the manager’s chair. Their win condition to provide for themselves is to screw you as much as possible and get away with it.
Yes. Minimum wage is supposed to cover every basic living necessity at the very least - from rent to food to even a modest amount of leftover money meant for a bit of fun here and there. It’s not supposed to allow a lavish lifestyle or allow one to eat at restaurants every day, obviously, but it should allow you to live modestly and support your household regardless of you living with others or alone.
So for these McDonald’s overlords who live lavish livestyles thanks to the thankless work these workers put in, then why should they even work at a McDonald’s in the first place? With inflation constantly rising and wages staying where they are someday even a McDonald’s job won’t be worth the hassle for the non-livable pitance of money they receive in return.
Down with overly rich billionaires living off other people’s misery. If your business allows for you to live the most lavish and extravagant life while your workers barely have enough to make ends meet, you are not a successful businessperson, but a grifter to society and use your power to keep the status quo as it currently is. Flipping burgers on a McDonald’s or working in garbage disposal are still essential jobs to serve society, and people are needed for them.
So they should still be properly valued and compensated as humans trying to live their lives while they supply the vital workforce for those same jobs - those positions have to be filled anyway and are of importance to society at large, so let’s not pretend we don’t need people for them and treat them like less-than-humans. Plain and simple - there’s more than enough for the rich to still be rich and live their lavish lives while regular people maintain a satisfactory level of life, and no need to ghoulishly hoard all the wealth (in many cases through tax loopholes which should not be legal whatsoever) like they were gonna live eternally.
And no, I’m not a minimum wage worker, so with this I’m not advocating for myself, but for what’s right for us as a society.
Right-wingers remind me of that meme template where the dog has the ball and it’s going “Throw! No Take! Only throw!”
They want a thriving economy, but they don’t want to pay people wages. No pay. Only spend.
they run them down a conveyer belt or something now i think, they got a location thats totally automated and has no employees
I wanna work in a library. Not much people, quiet, simple.
But it doesn’t pay, like, anything.
Then again, nothing I have ever done pays enough. Not even the things that used to be considered well-paying back in my father’s time.
I loved working in libraries. But even after becoming a manager, I couldn’t feed my kids on the pay. It sucked. I miss it.
I always wanted to be a teacher. I have a passion for teaching people new ways of looking at the world. I manage a team and used to open every Monday call with a chat about science news until the higher-ups started cracking down on “unproductive time.”
Then I got to know a few teachers, and the way they have to work one or two other jobs on the side so they can afford to bring their kids art supplies and science books and I just don’t have it in me. Massive respect to the men and women who stick with their teaching careers despite not being paid, respected or honored in any way by Western society.
Massive respect to the men and women who stick with their teaching careers despite not being paid, respected or honored in any way by Western society.
America isn’t the entirety of western society
I think it should come paired with a heavily unionised workforce, otherwise you end up like the UK where the minimum wage keeps going up, but salaries of people who were previously not on the minimum wage stay the same, so now everyone else is actually earning less because prices are rising but salaries are only rising at the top and bottom, eliminating the middle class entirely. A doctor is NOT a minimum wage job, and yet doctors in the UK are earning almost below the minimum wage, given the number of hours they actually work.
In the US, people we have the same problem with college degree+ level jobs being underpaid, but people without them are just impoverished for life. And some of the ones with the college degree jobs too!
I know it’s not for everyone, but if you’re reading this maybe it’s for you. The trades! Be an electrician, HVAC, plumber, mechanic, etc. It pays well. I mean you’ll probably never get rich, but you’ll definitely be able to support a family. And, once you’re established you could open your own shop. Be your own boss. Know the satisfaction of building something, working with your hands.
Not everyone needs college. I suspect we have enough art historians to get by. We definitely need more trades homies!
This comment doesn’t really mean a lot without context. The pay for doctors in the UK varies quite a bit depending on which level of their career they are at. Resident doctors (Foundation Year 1 & 2) earn anywhere between £33k and £37k, Trainees (training in a specialized area of medicine, CT 1-3, ST 1-9) can earn between £43k to £63k. All of these are considered Junior Doctors, who work under the supervision of a Senior Doctor. When they have completed full medical training in a specialized area of medicine (7-10 years), they are Consultant level, which is a Senior Doctor. This can pay between £93k and £126k per year.
For further context, the median individual wage in the UK is £37,430, which is about what second year Resident doctors earn on average. Much like the US, this can be good or bad, depending on where you live. In the North of England, an FY2 earning £37k is solidly middle-class. In London? He’s working-class, but still making far more than minimum wage, and his income will only increase from there.
Speaking of minimum wage… For people 21+ years old, it’s £12.21 an hour. At 40 hours a week, that’s £25,396 per year, or about £7k a year less than a first year resident. There are ZERO doctors in the UK earning “almost below the minimum wage, given the number of hours they actually work.” Unlike in the US where doctors work a billion hours a week, doctors in the UK are unionized (most with the BMA, but there are other unions), and their contracts prevent this. On average, the workload for FY1 & 2 (Residents) is 48 hours per week. They do occasionally get hit with longer weeks, but it’s not normal. Their union contracts are designed specifically to prevent overworking and allow them time to work and study/take exams. Doctors working 80 and 90 hour weeks is mostly a thing of the past.
The bottom line is that Doctors in the UK generally make a good living and have strong unions that ensure they continue to do so. That’s not to say things can’t or shouldn’t improve, but their situation is far from bleak. If the only reason you’re getting into medicine is to get rich, then please get the fuck out of medicine. There are much easier ways to get rich than spending the next 20 years studying while you watch people die in front of you.
Also UK doctors do not start out $250-500k in debt nor are they paying 25% of their practice’s income to malpractice insurance.
Yes, both are very important points. I’ve never met a British doctor who had to drive for Uber or suck dick on Backpage to pay off student loans.
“McDonald’s is a job for high schoolers, it’s not a career!”
Then why are they open during school hours, and why do you go there during your lunch break, Gladys, when kids are “at school” and can’t “flip burgers”?
I’m glad you asked, the answer is:
CHILD LABOR
I’m chill with safety nets for poor people and regulations on large companies
what I consider far left is when people start saying that the govt should own everything and there shouldn’t be private property. that’s an extreme and I am against that.
The rational left (i.e. not the authoritarians) only want the “government” to own everything insomuch as the “government” is a profoundly democratic representative body, in an administrative capacity.
Don’t confuse “private property” (industrial machines and other means of production held privately by an investor class in order to extract profit via the arbitrage between the productive value of employees and their flat wages) with “personal property” (your house, car, clothes, dishes, toothbrush, etc.). There aren’t many leftists who think there shouldn’t be personal property.
Private property that isn’t personal is someone elses property, and if I want to have my own property it makes sense for others to also have it
I don’t want the govt owning my home, or having to rent from a govt, and I dont want to drink water from govt owned companies because at that point it truly is authoritarian simply because the govt has way too much power over your life
There aren’t many leftists who think there shouldn’t be personal property.
I’ve been on .ml before and theres more than a few people than think NK and Stalin are/were good, and are anti-private property
edit: I honestly kinda think some of you are downvoting this because other people have downvoted this. these aren’t unpopular or insane ideas, and anyway I only used water as an example of govt ownership because that’s the first thing that came to my mind. a better example would be that I wouldn’t want my food to be grown by the govt
I dont want to drink water from govt owned companies because at that point it truly is authoritarian simply because the govt has way too much power over your life
Been drinking tap water straight from government-owned companies for decades. Taste is okay (a bit hard for geological reasons), but it couldn’t be healthier.
Still, though, you’re right that the question of the state not owning everything is a very serious one that needs to be addressed.
What are your thoughts on cooperatives, libertarian socialism, or anarchist communism?
My government owned power utility is selling me the cheapest electricity of all the OECD, and still turning a profit that’s returned in the government’s coffers to invest in research and social services. It’s awful!
What I don’t like isn’t the fact that the profits of the service aren’t going to shareholders, but because it gives the govt more power over you. This is fine if you trust the govt, but at some point there is an extreme of trusting the govt with too much. like I wouldn’t want the chinese govt controlling my finances
edit: why tf am I being downvoted? if you disagree with me then reply.
Yeah you’re right, the shareholders really have my best interests at heart!
Thankfully in this case I AM THE SHAREHOLDER.
no ur not 🤦
your government is
how about you tell me right now what a shareholder is because it really seems like you don’t know
the shareholders only care about themselves, but the system that they collectively create through mutual competition and distrust for each other provides (ideally) cheap and (ideally) high quality products for the costumer. Why isn’t this the case irl? Not enough competition, which the govt can safely encourage with antitrust laws.
I think a major problem with decentralizing too much is that basic goods that the modern world needs, like artificial fertilizers and computer chips cant be produced or if they can be produced they cant be made in large quantities. What I understand anarchist communism to be is many small communities of people that collectively grow their own food and make their own medicines, without much large scale trade. With libertarian socialism and cooperatives there’s still the issues that if the workers own the factories they aren’t going to be incentivized to take risks with the company, the average worker has no idea about macro-economics and how to run the business, and they also wont want to lower their wages if its necessary (like if the company is doing poorly or if there needs to be additional financial motivation for low preforming workers - obviously that can get out of hand but some of it makes sense). To somewhat even out the wealth gap I think higher taxes on the wealthy and more rights for unions is pretty much all that is needed.
Private property that isn’t personal is someone elses property
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Everyone is entitled to personal property, the things they have for personal use (e.g. your house or toothbrush). Private property is not someone else’s personal property, it’s the things for group use which generate value to the group (e.g. the industrial equipment necessary to create your house or toothbrush) which under capitalism are owned and controlled by investors.
The leftist position is that those “means of production” being owned and controlled by investors leads to the investors paying their staff as little as possible while charging as much as possible, so that they can thrive on the difference between prices and wages.
The leftist solution is for those “means of production” to be owned collectively by the people who actually use them to produce things. There’s a whole spectrum of exactly what that looks like.
On one side are those who think the government should own everything. The argument being that, assuming you can trust the administrators to not be corrupt, that is the best way to coordinate resources. This is logically sound, since the resources which would be wasted on marketing, and redundant R&D in competing companies, and other capitalist inefficiencies, could be directed productively. The flaw is in the “assuming you can trust the administrators to not be corrupt” part. That’s a big reason why the USSR failed.
On the other side, there are those who think that the basic concepts of market economics are sound, the problem is simply the capitalist-worker relationship. The argument being, capitalism can be subverted while retaining the benefits of market economies through co-ops: instead of revenue being paid in part to wages with the remaining profit being divided along shareholders, the revenue after costs is divided totally among the employees, who are themselves the only shareholders. This preserves the competitive innovation of the market, while excising the parasitic capital class.
Only the most extreme zealots in the Soviet camp ever push for abolishing personal property. That’s a fringe position even for the left.
after you say this
Private property is not someone else’s personal property…
you say they are this
…are owned and controlled by investors.
that stuff is the investors personal property (or the corporations but that is a technicality) and them selling it to me is fine as long as there is meaningful competition and no monopolies and govt regulations stopping them from putting toxins in it or something. I dont think the best solution to high prices and wealth inequality is taking the personal property away from these investors and handing it to their employees (who lets be honest probably don’t know much about economics) who aren’t motivated to take risks with the company and aren’t motivated to lower their wages when the company needs to save money or isn’t production much money. This lowers the competitiveness of the company, but having a CEO to manage all this while being kept in check with a union is a fine solution to this.
If there is a wealth gap higher taxes on the wealthy is all that is really needed to even it out
Without capital new factories wont be built btw, unless you have a bank or investor financing them. And I don’t think bank tellers should get a say in what the bank invests in (if its run by the workers this would happen, as the bank teller is a worker at the bank), because they very probably don’t know about the finances and economics of the industry the bank is investing in and wouldn’t have an educated opinion on the matter. I would rather have investors (who may have more money than others, but if its too much taxes can fix that, not funky ownership stuff needed) picking small companies, giving them money and later getting back their money as the small companies grow.
I dont want to drink water from govt owned companies because at that point it truly is authoritarian simply because the govt has way too much power over your life
I’m pretty sure private for-profit water is absolutely worse than government run water. Everyone can at least nominally vote to change the government. A private org is beholden to no one except shareholders (if they have any), and maybe laws (if they exist, are relevant, and are enforced).
We already had a gilded age where we learned how low for-profit entities will go. We had saw dust in bread, chalk in milk, and worse.
For profit food production is giving us price gouging and a water crisis. Would government do better? Well, given the current administration maybe not.
.ml folks aren’t far left, they’re full on authoritarian dictatorship apologists. They’re no more leftist than China is communist
I think that depends on what you call far left. If you ask me thats exactly what it is, other than the exception of more libertarian- or even (another exreme) anarchic- communism
I guess I wouldn’t call them right wing either. The authoritarian side of the political compass kinda looks the same on every side, when it boils down to the actual policies they want
You’re a liberal then, pro-market with regulation, maybe a social democrat using Nordic countries as an example? With the overton window changing so much you’re not really a leftist anymore
I kinda dislike all these terms like left, socalist, communism, ect because everyone has different understandings of them.
If you ask a right-leaning libertarian about the differences between socialism and communism, I imagine that they would say that their the same thing, and point to China or the USSR calling themselves socialist, while being communist (china not so much nowadays though)
I try not to categorize myself too much because of that
Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods. (Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism, 1847)
Communists ain’t taking away my beaten up electric bass and my microwave oven
One of my friends described it as there’s difference between private property and personal property. Your toothbrush is personal property. No one cares about that. Your factory where you assemble widgets is private property, where you’re paying people to convert labor into stuff you can sell.
I should read more left-wing theory. It made sense when he explained it.
Modern leftists (i.e. anarchists) are against the government at all.
that’s only the case if you exclude authoritarian communists and other similar systems that want a govt from your definition of ‘leftists’
Sure but we must ask how much should you be able to afford in this position?
I’m sick of talking about a “living wage”. I want a thriving wage.
What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist – the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.
Wow, such a powerful quote.
It touches on something I’m worried about in our time: How we’ve started to monetize hobbies as “hustles” and watch other people enjoy them in our place because we’re too busy to do them ourselves.
It feels like enjoying “the sun and music and art” is now the job of an entertainer, who the audience lives vicariously through, between their shifts. Whether it’s all these shows about celebrities who get to travel, or so simple as streamers getting to sit down and play games…
As the screenshot said, enough to pay for rent, bills and groceries. That’s is, enough to not be homeless, starving or unable to afford healthcare.
I know a lot of people around here aren’t a fan of cars, but minimum wage workers need to be able to afford one. And even used cars have gotten crazy expensive. Even if you can find a cheap used shit box it’ll need expensive repairs quickly.
I know there are places where this isn’t true, but where I live, if you don’t have a car, you can’t get to work, the grocery store, or anywhere really. If you try to ride a bike, you will die. If you try to ride an escooter you’ll get ticketed for riding it in the driving lane, and even if it were legal it wouldn’t be an option in the winter when they don’t even clear the whole road of snow and ice. People go homeless before they give up having a car.
Needing cars is caused by the same capitalist system that produces jobs below livable wage, so I totally get it. But if we were able to push for better salaries and working conditions, surely we’d also be able to push for better urban planning and public transport.
It’s already been built wrong, and redoing those places will take decades and will cost trillions. They have been adding little token projects here or there, but our zoning still doesn’t even require sidewalks or bike lanes for new construction. So honestly we’re generations from it at the pace we’re moving. We could pay living wages now though.
Renting what though? How many bedrooms?
Uh. One? Then if two people had basic jobs…Maybe two?
Maybe someone is able to claw their way above minimum wage and the other can quit entirely, whatever.
Nobody’s demanding McMansions for McDoubles. They just want the concept of a job to be more than an endless void that arbitrarily takes exponentially more than it gives.
Working two jobs and being one major illness or injury away from losing it all is a sick insult to humanity, for all it has achieved up to this point.
