Labour is fine. Just not 40, 50 or 60 hours a week. 10-15, maybe 20 hours should be way enough to live a worryfree life. Change my mind.
As long as we’re shooting for the moon what say you and me and the mates at work all decide together how much, and how often, and even what we produce?
You mean like a worker co-op? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative)
Or co-determination? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination)
Things like Mondragon Corporation, as well as Germany’s quality of life and economic prosperity since their adoption of co-determination laws, shows us that these are not the pipe dreams that capitalists want you to believe they are.
OH! i had heard about how labor gets on the board in germany specifically but never knew the term for it. Thank you friend!
Sure thing. Make sure to tell your friends!
shows us that these are not the pipe dreams that capitalists want you to believe they are.
Could you elaborate?
Also, it was interesting going through those two links and checking out the sections of different countries in the world that have them, and noticing that the United States has almost none of that. Seems like such an outlier, compared to Europe and South America.
What I mean is that the existence, and thriving of these models proves that they’re not only viable, but can provide much better economic outcomes… There is a group of people in the US who work very hard to make sure nothing like that ever gets codified here. At least at the federal level.
Indoctrinating kids into “American exceptionalism” has left us with one and a half generations of “rugged individualists” who think they “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps,” when in reality they’re no different than anyone else. But now they’ve got this warped worldview ingrained in them that makes them believe that everyone who’s ever been successful got there entirely on their own. When in reality, none of them did.
A well-written reply, thank you for that.
“pulled themselves up by their bootstraps,”
When in reality, none of them did.
Granted, your painting with a broad brush, to offer a quick summarization, but I don’t think you’re completely correct.
I’m actually someone who figuratively did pulled himself up by his bootstraps (broken home, high school dropout, etc.), and at the end of my career I do have a small amount of wealth, which I earned all on my own, and was able to retire early.
I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to dox myself accidentally, but there are those, even if it’s just a minority, who do literally work the system to success, the way it currently is.
Shit man, I had this whole thoughtful response typed out, and then my palm must have hit the touchpad on my laptop and I guess clicked a link. When I went back, it was all gone.
I guess I will try to hit the main points… I think I started like:
First, the saying to, “pull one up by their own bootstraps,” itself has actually had its meaning altered over the years into something nearly opposite the original. You see, what they’ve described is an impossible task. It is physically impossible to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. The saying was being sardonic. A witticism. They were basically saying you were doing something absurd/impossible. So the irony there is always fun to point out (would normally get a source for this kind of thing, but literally just google the phrase).
Then I think I said something like…
With all due respect, you didn’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps. It seems as though you’ve worked very hard to get where you are, and that’s great and some may call it commendable. Others work harder for much less, and others do nothing for far more. That’s inequality at work… Regardless, even if you did literally every piece of business yourself, you still cannot claim to have (at least by the current definition) pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, there were many (literally countless) others involved in the events that led you to where you are today.
I’m going to assume you are in the US, but correct me if I’m wrong.
Surely you’ve used township/county/state/interstate roads and highways? Ever cross a bridge and not die? You make use of wastewater and drinking water infrastructure that you don’t even think about the existence of 98% of the time. The countless medications, devices, technologies, etc., that you interact with on a continuous basis, that would not exist if not for government funding. Which ultimately means paid by tax revenue.
Literally being lifted up by everyone who pays taxes in your community, state, and country.
I am glad that you find working that way fulfilling. And that you’ve been able to make something out of it is great. But maybe that’s a similar feeling of fulfillment to what a guitarist might feel when they write a sick riff? Or when a graffiti artist makes a particularly amazing tag (and admires it for a moment before bailing)?
It sucks we live in a system where, in nearly every situation, those people are forced to do the thing that fulfills you (as in you specifically), while leaving themselves no time and/or energy to do the thing that actually fulfills them.
Ideally, in a post-rarity society where there are plenty of food and resources for everyone on the planet many times over, we should be able to do the thing that gives us that feeling; that fulfills us.
Instead, we’re born shackled to this broken system that breeds hate, bitterness, where maybe single-digit percent of people actually get to do the thing that fulfills them, while the rest of us suffer until we die.
Fun stuff. Sorry, lately the brain’s been in the mood for writing I guess.
You mean we’d be in control of the means of production? That’s an interesting idea. We should come up with a recognizable symbol for this new concept. Something simple, like two silhouettes of tools, maybe crossed.
now just wait a goldarn minnit mister, im not talkin godless unamerican commie shit, i’m talking about returning pride to the workin man. self-determination and democracy at work! dont get it twisted now
It’s incredible what a huge difference it make to one’s health/mood/etc., having a healthy work/life balance. I think the world would overall be a less angry, spiteful place, if we all worked 4-day, 35-hour work weeks.
Humans were never meant to work 60, 70 hours per week, that’s just insane and stupid. What’s worse are the people who will brag to you about it. That’s how ingrained it is into our culture.
Maybe it’s just because I don’t loathe the thought of going home to my family? It seems like a lot of those toxic work culture people are doing it for reasons like that?
Im with you, but 35h a week are way too much also. At least you should get a really good wage for that much time.
Centuries of violence? Try prehistory. Humans have always used violence if someone takes more than they contribute.
Humans have always used violence if someone takes more than they contribute.
In the grand scheme of things, using violence against those who take more than they contribute (i.e., the upper class) is one of the things we do least often.
And yet give two kids a cookie and a knife and watch how carefully they divide that cookie. Fairness is a very old instinct.
I’m not giving knives to children, not after last time. Nice try Child Protective Services.
Humans are for the most part inherently fair and cooperative.
But sociopaths aren’t, so they think no one else will do anything without the threat of starving to death.
And the sociopaths have been making the rules since the mid 80s.
Untold damage done to humanity and civilization just so a handful of old white men can be ridiculously, unspendably rich.
And we are taught to idealize them.
This has been going for centuries…
We had a brief progressive period where citizens were protected and supported, I was referring specifically to the reagan-thatcher era.
Honestly the entire world was going much more progressive then, even the middle east.
Neoliberalism and oil greed started the current fire we are roasting in. And it started with reagan
Humans have used violence for lots of stuff including taking or taking from takers or because the other tribe looked at em funny or whatever else. I wished we could be free of our worst instincts.
I’d say violence is much more often used by people to take more than they contribute than the converse. Violence against the takers is so rare they write about it in history books.
How is this a microblog meme? Can we please not turn this community into unnuanced political opinions?
How is it not a microblog meme? It fits the definition of both a microblog and a meme. Being nuanced isn’t a requirement.
“meme” never meant “has text on it” until the Internet bastardized the term for several years straight
How is this a meme? It’s just a screenshot of someone’s post.
Some blunt hot take of a politically charged opinion, which serves no purpose but to preach to the choir of people who already agree, is not what I’d imagine most people expect from a meme community without a theme other than specifying a source. It’s a meme community, not soapbox for my opinions land.
No humor or entertainement value, no bait and switch, non-sequiteur, or anything to get any sort of reaction other than “you’re right and that makes me upset at the state of things” or “wow that’s a crap take”.
I’m not even going the route of “keep politics and things that remind me of the poor state of the world out of my funny hahas”, and you could probably argue endlessly about what the modern definition of a meme really is, but this ain’t it boss.
There’s plenty of more appropriate communities for this sort of content.
A meme is anything that is spread through sharing and imitation. If you don’t like that definition, take it up to that one biology guy who came up with it
By that (definitely incorrect) definition, all content on any mass media is a “meme”.
That is actually the original definition when Richard Dawkins first coined the term. Basically it is an idea which spreads through the minds of people who repeat that idea. But it’s definitely not the commonly understood definition in a community name like “microblog memes”
Considering how many memes everywhere are just screenshots of a social media post, I’d say it is the practical definition.
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Sorry not sorry, downvoting exists for a reason.
This is the exact reason most communities and subreddits turn to shit. People posting low effort content that is barely relevant to the community and then saying “iF thE PeOpLe dOn’T liKe iT, thEy CaN DownVoTe iT”
I just don’t think this argument really tracks. If we were hunter/gatherers, we would have no choice but to hunt and gather for food. No it’s not consensual, you have to do it, but would we really say we were being coerced? By who? Nature?
You can say there is bad stuff about Capitalism, and better ideas or systems we should do instead, without this coercion claim.
This community is incredibly pessimistic. I know the world is in a hard place already, but I don’t want to be reminded of it every 5 posts on c/all. I have taken to block multiple communities because of it.
While I agree with the sentiment, saying that it’s been hundreds of years in the making is just wrong. If anything, labor rights are at historic highs, and that’s been centuries in the making.
Capitalism is just feudalism with a glow up
Capitalism is supposed to put the worker at the top
It doesn’t because the people with capital make decisions
Christianity straight up opposes wealth, but it doesn’t play out that way because people with wealth make the decisions
It’s the same for every system/ideology because a power vacuum will always be filled
You are assuming someone always has to be in power over someone else. Historically most communities where run without anyone in charge, but with direct democracies. It just became harder with bigger cities, because it was harder to communicate with everyone else. Perhaps we can change that with the Internet.
Historically you are incorrect
If you don’t put power over someone else then someone comes in and puts it over you
The vehicle for change was just how easily that other person can get to you
You can go back to bronze age kings to demonstrate how what you said was false in all of recorded history
There is a good yt channel talking about egalitarian societies in prehistory called What is Politics
If you want to go far enough back that we use theory
Then we can say prehistoric nomadic humans still had fights with other clans and territorial disputes because our genetic ancestors (chimps/monkeys/apes) also have those
And if you were there with a gun, would you be able to dominate them? If so then you are able to put power over people without a power structure
Territorial disputes where only common after agriculture in humans, because territory wasn’t as important before as mutual aid.
Sir this is a wendy’s.
As opposed to communism, where you can just choose not to work and get everything you need for free?
“You’re in a plane crash…”
