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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.
Third yacht.
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.
Yes, generalizations are usually bad, and there are exceptions to literally any group. Doesn’t mean it’s a myth. The term wouldn’t exist if it was a myth, and wouldn’t be so widely used if there wasn’t a large amount of truth attached to it. I’m also not discrediting the issues we have with corpo bullshit. Thats obviously it’s own issue, but I will point out that part of the reason corp interests are in our politics at all is again because of the same group voting in the ability for lobbying by those corps.
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.
ok boomer
L+ratio
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Is it Gen Z or the Boomers?
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I cannot remember the last time I saw a high schooler working at a fast food joint.
Don’t worry. With Republicans working hard to repeal child labor laws, you should see more in fast food and also in the mines soon!
Every food service place in my area fired their under-18 staff. Apparently it was a manager fad to declare minors “too much trouble” and so the only high schoolers I see are bagging groceries or camp counselors for little kids. My kids are 15 and want to start working but the best job in town that allows them is serving dinner and doing laundry at the fancy retirement community.
Agree with them “Sure. Then they should be closed during school hours, right?”
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How out of touch are you?
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nobody works there because it’s their life dream. If they work there it’s because of some benefit like having some money vs no money.
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who should be working there then? Like, someone has to. Who do you think belongs there?
Personally, I don’t mind doing an reasonable amount of work - it can be cathartic like exercise or give a sense of purpose. The problem is, the employers want people to be like hamsters on a wheel, driven to exhaustion and then disposed of for the next rodent to be worked to death.
Workers are being abused - ghost jobs, inconsiderate scheduling, impossible requirements, no overtime pay, manipulation, and so forth has corroded the social contract. At some point, there is just no point in working.
I belong there, as would many other people, if society was willing to treat us fairly.
I agree. I wasn’t trying to shit on the job itself, but point out how fast food workers are treated. If fast food workers were treated like human beings, i bet people would love to work there.
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If I don’t do something, than fuck everyone who does it, let 'em burn. Definitely big brain time.
The root cause of the problem IS the mega-corp fast food chain that sells us expensive shitty unhealthy food and pays slave wages to its labor force that it treats like annoying obstacles and constantly threatening to automate away. They take away jobs from real restaurants too, until they shut down, and all you have left is fucking McDonald’s.
Dismissing that people work there out of desperation is out of touch, but to disagree with “let fastfood restaurants go bankrupt” is where the REAL BIG brains are at.
Why can’t we just have a discussion without insults. These corporations are the problem, convincing them to pay you more until they automate you away is not a solution, the solution IS for them to be bankrupt.
I also don’t eat there, and think it’s morally outrageous to give them any profit that helps them achieve the distopian future they’re working so hard towards.
Why can’t we just have a discussion without insults
Let’s be honest, “I don’t eat fast food so they should be allowed to pay slave wages” isn’t really a compelling discussion with nuanced talking points.
Why is it on the shoulders of the desperate to not take any job they can get, and on the shoulders of the desperate to not get whatever food they can afford and have time for in between their 3 jobs?
You know what would also kill the business model of “under pay and over work staff for low quality results then just replace them”? Laws preventing such behavior.But they didn’t say that, they said the opposite… They’re saying they’d rather not support this awful business, and would rather watch it die so it can be replaced with real jobs that people can live off of. That’s how I interpreted it anyway.
Close. The issue is corporate socialism
there ya go. here’s a guy/gal who understands the issues.
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Brother if you’re ever in the UK I’d love to link up and see if you’re so quick to talk to people like shit IRL, cause you’ll quickly get your shit rocked.
HMU if you ever in Manchester.
It’s obvious from this thread that they get little to no irl interaction.
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You seem really offended at the idea that “someone who works a job should be able to afford living” for some reason…
No, nobody has to. The problem of them under paying would solve itself if nobody was willing to work for them at those low wages.
Maybe if we had UBI or something, which is why the powers that be are so against it, because being homeless and hungry are powerful motivators to put up with more bullshit.
Collective action? Now that sounds like communism to me…
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Why should a full-time employer be permitted to pay an employee less than it costs to merely survive? It’s like you WANT to live in a culture where humans are exploited and thrown away when they break.
Edit: NVM, I see from the rest of the thread that you are not participating in good faith, and your responses will be blocked from reaching me.
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Hourly can be fulltime.
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No, you’re a fucking idiot.
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You are wrong and have always been wrong. It is based on worked (scheduled hours) in a week. Above a threshold, and it is considered full-time.
You sounds like you’ve never held a job before and these terms are brand new to you. You’re using them wrong.
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You still don’t realize how ignorant you come across
I get paid by the hour, 50 years old. And the same job for 20 years. Full time.
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Fulltime is typically defined as 40 hours a week max, but the threshold is lower for definitions like the ACA, you can be eligible as low as 30, and sometimes employers have to make you eligible as high as 36, it’s complicated.
It’s not really complicated, it’s just that companies want to find (or make!) loopholes to shirk their responsibilities.
50 hrs ago week isn’t full time? Get fuckt
I’m hourly and make a good living wage, are you implying that hourly means you don’t work full time or should be entitled to a livable wage?
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The workers who are responsible for the continued function of society aren’t owed anything?
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If you work 40 hours a week and paid hourly that is full time. You don’t have to be salary to be full time employee.
Just go away. We don’t want you here.
You’re either a troll or lack all empathy for others. Neither are anything to society.
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Damn. Look everyone, it’s a shit stain of a human
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You’re right. I’ll quit my job tomorrow and apply to be the next Elon Musk. Give me 6 million in seed money now please.
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Yeah i will earn it, and more, at my Elon Musk job. Now gimme.
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Lmao. Look at this poor mfer unable to afford giving me 6 million in seed money so I can quit my burger job and be the next Elon Musk. What a loser.
Maybe he should quit his job and get a better paying one to afford my seed money, like normal people do.
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
Cookie clicker irl
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!
You mean unions?
Communist!
“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”?
Florida: Let’s expand the work experience program to backfill immigrant labor!
I’m glad you asked, the answer is:
CHILD LABOR
Yeah if they pay a living wage to everyone then high schoolers could work part time for real too which would also be better.
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.
Have a look at this: https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
It’s about the book, about that town, Grafton. Great read. The book itself is great too.
Funny enough, I hear it worked decently until then.
A dude died of exposure because he couldn’t afford his heating bill. If you think people who don’t have money should simply die, then I guess it was working decently.
Umm yeah…Libertarians are ok with that. The question is if their society can run at all, and it seems that is unlikely. Now, it is a pretty shit system.
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. :(
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.
That’s the part I don’t understand. Why do they not realize that if you give people enough money to pay living expenses and then some, they will spend more money. What is the point of having all the money stuck at the top? A thriving economy requires money to circulate, but its getting caught between the same handful of greedy assholes. And they seem to just want to make the problem worse. If they do that, the economy will collapse and then all that money will be worthless anyway.
Because the most wealthy people are hoarders. At that point it’s a mental issue. They are it as a zero sun game and think having the biggest percentage of the pie means they win. They didn’t care about making the pie itself bigger.
If a job at McDonald’s doesn’t pay your bills and groceries then who do you think would even do this job?
People who are already wealthy and do it just for the fun of flipping burgers?!
Maybe! I have long maintained that if I ever luck into being obscenely wealthy, I will absolutely open some manner of food service or retail establishment similar to those I’ve worked at in the past, but not give a fuck about turning a profit and make a cornerstone of my business telling off customers for being the rude, self-centered, and entitled little shits that so many of them are. I’ll consider it a much needed public service.
I’ve occasionally dreamt about doing this with a bar. I picture it like the sitcom Black Books, but with booze instead of books.
They are trying to get us to accept the the new American Economic Paradigm that ALL households require at least two paychecks to exist, and 3 or 4 if you want to get ahead.
Of course, employers want us to be enslaved to them for our entire schedule, so they don’t like us working second jobs or side hustle.
Time for Robin Hood economics (take from the rich, give to the poor).
So many people believe those jobs solely exist for highschool college kids to get started in life until they ‘develop skills.’ I can’t even imagine the lack of empathy you have to have for all those not in that position desperately trying to live.
If you think flipping burgers is easy, why aren’t you doing it yourself?
Pay all workers a living wage!
But if I don’t have my boot on somebody else’s face, how am I supposed to accept the boot on my face?
Checkmate, communists!
That’s the neat part .png
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.
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 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 loved working in libraries. But even after becoming a manager, I couldn’t feed my kids on the pay. It sucked. I miss it.
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.
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.
edit: all of you downvoters are actually far left commies and I’m completely correct
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.
what is a shareholder
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.
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.
I’m sure if we asked the billionaires and their paid-for politicians nicely, they’ll start writing and enforcing laws that’ll tax them more and give more rights to unions.
Hard /s
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.
edit: I’m an honestly convinced most of the downvotes here are from people that see a large number and are inheritily inclined to increase it. I really don’t believe 9 people read this and honestly disagreed. And if you did disagree, reply and say why, because this is just iritating
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.
i edited my comment before your reply to note that I simply used water as an example because it came first to my mind and there are better ones
As I wrote in my edited comment (that was changed before you replied) there are better examples of my point that I don’t want too much govt control, for example I wouldn’t want all the farms in my country controlled by the govt
A private org is beholden to no one except shareholders
And their consumers. An orange juice company tries to make their product sold, and at the end of the day they rely on you to buy it. If enough people don’t, they will increase the quality of their juice or decrease the price to increase sales.
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.
You should realize that companies need to compete with each other, and because of that they cant visibly increase the price of a good too much or lower its quality because they will lose sales. Anywhere where this doesn’t happen laws can be written to force them
You should realize that companies need to compete with each other, and because of that they cant visibly increase the price of a good too much or lower its quality because they will lose sales. Anywhere where this doesn’t happen laws can be written to force them
Meanwhile, we have “shrinkflation” and consolidation into fewer and fewer companies.
For vital services, what are you going to do? Not get health care? Not buy fruit anymore?
The natural end state of private ownership is monopoly/cartel. We’ve done all of this before and it sucked. Being “beholden to customers” doesn’t matter much if they’re a captive market, or there’s really only one seller with no vote
Maybe if we actually enforced laws about competition it would be better, but good luck getting people to learn from history.
.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
edit: if people are gonna downvote me, say why 🤦
I’m getting the feeling that you’re from the US based on your distrust of the government, which in your case, I guess is fair.
But I think the person you’re replying to probably has in mind a situation that is much better than the current one in the US before we even start seriously considering buying up private property for the commons. The obvious first candidate would be utilities like water/power/internet. Without a profit motive or investors to pay off, they will offers the best service at the lowest price. Not to say private alternative wouldn’t exist, but that you would always have the cheaper public option to fall back on, and also keep the private alternatives from jacking up prices only the make a profit.
Public housing could work in a similar way, where you have the option out there on the housing marketing, in addition to banks and private sellers. For instance, in my city, we have public housing that is $8/mo. I lived in one of these public cooperatives with my folks until my teens, and it was great. Really gave us a leg up when we needed it.
PS. I recommend turning off visible vote counts. Downvotes were getting under my skin too, but now all I see are comments.
Anyone that states “I’m completely correct” is laughing matter.
you want the govt to own everything? if so you are a communist. that actually is the definition
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.
How does that apply to things like computers? My personal PC can also double up as a server from which I run the applications that I sell to people. The PC is the means of production, and it is mine, but I don’t necessarily write all the code myself.
I’m not sure!
I’d guess maybe the code would be open source, or at least freely shared among everyone who works on it. Then anyone can use their personal computer for the code, like anyone could use their personal guitar to play a song you wrote.
The computer can then remain personal, and the code itself is treated like the means of production that is collectively owned
Private property that isn’t personal is someone elses property
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’
You’re certainly entitled to you opinion, and we’re chill on the same things, but I do think more industry – especially the kind which are utilities – should be nationalised. I’m even open to the abolishment of private property. But I think we need updated democracies (better representation, maybe try local direct democracy nodes?) before we start getting close to seriously considering these questions as policy.
And of course it may turn out that these solutions (nationalising, all property publicly owned, etc) aren’t the best ones for human flourishing, so then we just course correct.
As long as we don’t get tooo attached to any particular ideology, and focus on outcomes, I think we could make a much better world. Kind of borrowing the Meliorism aspect from liberal democracy and running with it here, I guess…
i think a one of the largest problems with democracies nowadays is the influence of money on them. if that were removed we could actually move to a more reasonable world
You’re absolutely right. There’s so much broken with our existing democracies at the higher levels (and municipally as well, I’m sure), that it is maybe too optimistic to try and extend to influence of the political class into more industries.
I have a hunch that workplace democracy (usually in the form of unions) is one of the lowest hanging fruits to improve the situation overall, and it’s still hypothetically within our reach in much of the global North. That is, it’s still a risk, but it’s unlikely that the army will be called in the open fire on strikers (yet).
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.
That is an issue, but it’s still a better world than the one in which only two of the pay bands are making ends meet rather than all three.
Exactly. Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress.
It’s actually frustrating how some version of this “problem” is brought up whenever conditions become better for people who earn the least. Like, yes, it makes people like you or me feel poorer compared to the rich fucks of the world, but would you rather go back to poor folks being literally destitute, unable to care for their families?
Problem’s coming from t’other end, gov. Not those poor chaps.
Sorry not directed at you of course; just took the opportunity to go off lol. :P
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!
Starting pay at many office jobs isn’t much more than minimum wage, but at least young workers can tell their parents that they work in an office instead of running a cash register, and they wear a tie instead of an apron. That’s supposed to be worth a lifetime of student loan debt.
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!
If I could start over that’s probably the route I’d go. I’m in a reasonably good spot - I just know plenty of people who aren’t.
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.
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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.
Doctors do still work more hours than someone in an office, meaning their pay is much lower than their salary would first tell you. Also considering the hours they have to work, and the way shifts are operated, their pay needs to be much, much higher. There’s a reason doctors are fleeing the country to Australia where the pay is better and so are the conditions.
Yeah, this is a big problem with the early stages of practicing medicine in the UK. Once you make it past about the 7 year mark, it’s all well and good, but those early years, you’re kind of on par with retail workers, which can be demoralizing. A big mistake the UK made was when the pandemic hit, they didn’t raise wages for doctors to compensate for the absolute chaos. BMA should have gone to war over that the way the French did over retirement age.
Things definitely could be better, especially for young doctors, but I would still rather be a doctor in the UK than in the US. No amount of money is worth that kind of burnout, and I don’t want to be treated by any doctor who thinks it is.
I washed dishes part time and afforded a crappy apartment and beer. In our neighborhood many of the houses are rented out by invitation homes. We never have a neighbor for long as there is a lot of turnover. It’s bullshit these companies can just take over the neighborhood.
Invitation Homes Inc. is a public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It is headquartered in the Comerica Bank Tower in Dallas, Texas. Dallas B. Tanner is chief executive officer. As of 2017, the company was reportedly the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the United States. As of July 2024, the company owned about 84,000 rental homes in 16 markets.
