Because even the people who are the most negatively affected by wealth centralization will defend the billionaires that provide them with stuff they like.
Mainly because the wealthy are the ones who co tell the flow of (dis)information and have been making full on attacks against the quality of education we as citizens receive.
When you don’t know any better, and you’re being told the sky is green and the grass is blue long enough, you start to believe it. Them in comes some know-it-all telling you you’re wrong and your belief system has been lying to you, and yeah you’re going to get mad at the know-it-all and cling tighter to your belief system.
Big Scary Man Bad.
It’s not the billionaires doing the providing, it’s just that the economic engine is locked behind a paywall and so instead of laborers getting the value and credit it’s the owning class.
The laborers should be the owning class. This is the core idea of socialism. I don’t get why “small government” types are so big on “own me harder daddy” when it comes to the economy. We spend most of our waking hours in dictatorships.
I don’t get why “small government” types are so big on “own me harder daddy” when it comes to the economy.
Lots of these people are Petite Bourgeoisie, ie small business owners and the like. Their class interests align with larger Bourgeoisie, but the growth of larger Bourgeoisie pushes the Petite Bourgeoisie into proletarianization.
The Alt-Right Playbook does a good job of explaining it in this video, but basically what it comes down to is they believe in a rigid pyramidal structure, with everyone in their ‘proper place’. They also believe that, if we don’t have that rigid structure, our society will crumble.
That’s also why they’re against UBIs, DEI, and other things that ‘promote people beyond their means’.
They are literally parasites.
But they took the risk. The risk of spending loaned money at minuscule interest rates and offsetting any real losses by petitioning the state for handouts. They took the risk of making guaranteed profits on political donations leading to regulatory capture.
The capitalism that people imagine (which I still wholeheartedly reject) isn’t even the capitalism that’s real in practice.
Even putting aside the inherent inequality of risk having a significant coefficient applied to it that diminishes when you come from generational wealth and a family with the right connections.
The myth of capitalist meritocracy is the most blatantly false myth that’s ever been peddled but it works on so many people. It’s mind boggling.
Ironically things like UBI might level the playing field a bit in terms of entrepreneurship becoming more accessible, but for some reason capitalism advocates don’t actually want more people to be able to participate in capitalism.
Because the moment someone is given something like UBI to help lift them up and provide an equitable playing field for everyone, you get some asshole focusing on how they don’t “deserve” it. As if the only thing you can possibly to in order to “deserve” to live is have a job where you are paid the bare minimum your company thinks they can get away with paying you so a few folks at the top get filthy rich and a few in the middle get rich enough not to think to much about the folks at the bottom.
Yep, and tell me how peopke born into richesses “deserve” it…
It’s also the slippery slope towards the idea that some people are worth less and some more, as the rich worthless people with inflated egos needs to have something to project their useless souls onto, wanting to believe they are worth more “because they are inherently better”. And we all know where that leads to.
So they are not just useless, but also dangerous.
your system is working as intended, every true democracy knows that lettings your politians get bought by corporation is a stupid idea, working exactky as written
I keep telling you, people.
I’d like to see someone try a UBI system that was genuinely universal. Literally everyone gets it, employed or not, regardless of income level, but at the same time minimum wage is removed because your living expenses are already ostensibly covered. So if a business can get someone to come in for $1/hour, or even for free, great. All wages just become “gravy” if someone wants luxuries above and beyond basic living expenses.
Under such a system I’d be interested to see how much what are currently minimum wage jobs would need to offer on top of UBI to get people in the door. I could absolutely see things like hobby shops employing people for pennies who’d be happy to be there just due to interest/passion in the subject of their work. Conversely I could see the wages for dreary or abuse prone jobs like gas station attendant or fast food cashier going up because no one in their right mind would want to do it for a pittance if their basic needs are already covered.
but at the same time minimum wage is removed because your living expenses are already ostensibly covered.
Except a UBI doesn’t necessarily cover all living expensives. It’s just a little boost to help people out.
Suddenly every bodies rent goes up about as much as their ubi check
It is really simple if you eliminate social welfare and make UBI part of taxes, you free up a lot of money. Everyone gets $35 000 a year or does not pay any tax on their first $35k. This creates a system that is already less expensive to operate than the current mess and injects a lot of money into an economy. The ruling class hate this idea because if people are not jammed into a corner living paycheck to paycheck or worse, they tend to quit their jobs where their employer was abusing them and get a better education. Or say fuck you to your employer and live poor until you get a new job.
This is A very interesting thought. I think you might be not to wrong with your assumptions about jobs. I also would really like to see this in practice.
It’s paradoxical, though, because anti-labour tactics make those jobs paid so badly that it is not worth automating e.g. trash collection, packet delivery, cleaning staff.
Don’t forget that scarcity is literally the goal of many people trying to make sure we avoid climate change.
It’s not my view, but many many people are talking about “reducing consumption” for humanity. They never come out and acknowledge that their economy-shrinking tactics are making life miserable for poor people, but they’d have to be blind not to understand it.
Ideally what we’d do is shift from polluting to non-polluting forms of consumption - such as by switching from coal and natural gas to renewables. Some would claim this is “economy shrinking” because we’d be pushing people away from one and towards the other by artificial means like taxes and subsidies.
But what these arguments fail to recognize is that we’re already doing that. We can’t pretend that the government has nothing to do with setting incentives when it lets coal plants pollute for free, and also gives them free police and military protection to stop any citizens or foreign countries that may be on the less beneficial end of that pollution from doing anything about it. So in essence discouraging and eventually ending the burning of fossil fuels is putting an end to the tax we all already pay in the form of bad health outcomes and lost current and future land value from pollution.
You’re talking about a completely different kind of scarcity.
The artificial scarcity we’re talking about is things like monopolistic industry restricting the theoretical max output of a good solely for profit (i.e. throwing out perfectly good food/product to make way for new, but not necessarily better stock, making farmers re-buy seeds every year through utility patents, making defective-by-design products to require the purchasing of new goods over repairing old ones, intellectual property rights restricting who can manufacture and build upon technologies and ideas, etc)
The “scarcity,” or rather, reduced material use and consumption being promoted by environmentalists is completely different. We should sell and use the stock we already have before we create entirely new products, while claiming the old ones are now irrelevant. We should still sell fruits and vegetables that aren’t as aesthetically pleasing, instead of throwing them away. We shouldn’t buy products solely designed to temporarily relieve us of the effects of the Hedonic Treadmill, instead focusing on building a society where consumption is not the primary means of self-worth and growth.
None of this means you don’t eat, don’t have clothes to wear, don’t have a roof over your head, don’t have transportation to get around, or don’t have luxuries. It just means that those same actions are done using less, and getting more, not for the sole sake of profit, but for the sake of the planet, and the individual themselves.
Artificial scarcity is production that goes straight to landfills, ideas that are restricted from free use, artificially expensive goods, and an inefficient allocation of goods and services in an economy.
Reduced consumption is a reduction of waste, fair pricing, and longer-lasting goods that don’t just serve to provide recurring revenue to a corporation’s shareholders.
The artificial scarcity we’re talking about is things like monopolistic industry restricting the theoretical max output of a good solely for profit
Yeah monopolies are really bad. Which industries do you believe are monopolized right now?
I mean, it’s a pretty long list 😅 Pretty much every industry has major players that engage in monopolistic practices, whether it be software and hardware companies like Apple, Google, or Microsoft controlling operating system and hardware distribution and production in a manner that effectively creates a duopoly for both the smartphone and PC market, or grocery store chains like Kroger buying up all the smaller brands, then using that to jack up prices.
I did bring up a specific case in my prior post that I think is a good example though, and that’s utility patents on seeds to restrict their re-use, primarily done by companies like Bayer (which has bought up and killed off many seed brands over the years to form a near-monopoly on the industry, with only a few other major players) essentially requires that farmers can only use their seeds a certain amount of times before they’re legally obligated to re-purchase new ones. (even though the old seeds still work perfectly fine)
Not only does this mean you have to pay more money for produce (and the goods made from it) because farmers have to raise prices to cover costs, but it also means that the theoretical max capacity for food production is limited by how many new seeds farmers can afford to purchase year after year, and the fact that they can’t gift them to anyone else to help spread agricultural practices to new farmers.
We have antitrust laws, many are already advocating for them to be used against these monopolies, yet the government does nothing to stop them.
It’s disappointing, to say the least.
There are many, many different ways in which the economy could be shrunk. Many have the downside which you mention; making life miserable. But also many, other ways avoid this problem. A few examples how this could look like:
- reduce consumption of the super rich
- reduce production of trash products like plastic toys or single use vapes
- remove laws which enforce waste, such as minimum parking spots
- in urban design: prioritize mass transit, biking and walking over motorized individual transportation
When discussing these things, we should never forget that too little, too late action will certainly lead to what you wanted to avoid; making life miserable for poor people.
-
reduce consumption of the super rich - interesting idea. sci fi at this point. all the consumption-reduction is hitting the poor so far
-
reduce production of trash products like plastic toys or single use vapes - eliminating those jobs, removing choice from people over what they use
-
remove laws which enforce waste, such as minimum parking spots - agree, zoning in general means enormous deviation from market equilibrium, meaning tons of economic value wasted
-
in urban design: prioritize mass transit, biking and walking over motorized individual transportation - as usual, ignores the time cost to people. Time is people’s most limited resource. Taking away people’s time makes them poorer
-
My understanding is that issues like universal healthcare and paid leave for parents poll at around 80 percent. The reason the US doesn’t have those things is not because the people don’t want it. So the representation we elect are center right and don’t actually support the will of the people. They represent the will of their donors.
I agree with what you say, but we should also be very careful of expressions like “center right”.
If we have issues where the vast majority of the people agree, that should by definition be the center. However, quite clearly that’s not how the words are used. Instead, mass media and politicians always refer to everything in reference to the two-party system, when representatives of both parties are actually way off in the fringes, at least some of the time, on issues like these.
*60 hours a week
Laughs in European
I know its just a meme and I think you’re right to point it out but I feel bad for laughing.
In the UK, as one example, its default unlawful to work more than 45 hours a week. You have to choose to sign this away. Refusal to agree can’t be used as a reason to fire you or choose not to hire you, unless its like the police or army or something.
The UK is worse in different places and has this too. So, its not about being superior or any of that BS. But the US is full on, mask-off, you are cattle and the mega rich are your ranchers. You can’t even just simply move to a different country to escape paying for gargantuan corporate benefits. They own you and they don’t care if you know it.
In the UK, as one example, its default unlawful to work more than 45 hours a week.
It’s 5 hours more than in Russia. Please fix.
There’s functionally no enforcement of what was formerly the EU working time directive being voluntary to opt out of. If a company wants you to sign (and in some fields, they will, even if they’ve got no reason to) they can always pretend to have found some other reason not to hire you.
I worked 12h shifts for 7 days a week, as a european. Hoping to gather enough money to buy a house…guess what, my 40h job barely covers the cost of living nowadays and i’m not fit to work more hours. Plus i ended up running short with every passing year, when i needed a 200€ wage increase to afford a mortgage by the time i got that i needed another €150 wage increase.
A single family home used to be 150k, now those go for 500k and my wage ended up in the exact same spot where i started at the age of 21. (Before that it was a youth wage and surprise surprise i could rent a bigger house back then than i currently am on my adult wage)
Somedays i just want to stop showing up for work and stop paying rent, weaponize myself and keep the house by force.
Fuck this shitshow we are in.
What does your union think of that?
The fact that my wage has no value or that i want to go nuts?
Right. I work 37.5 hours a week in a job I love and I hate working. I can’t imagine doing almost double.
My partner used to do 60 hour weeks. She was working outdoors, in the desert (41° on average), and only worked 4 days a week. The work culture in this country sucks…
It’s not the standard view because, in America, consumption is inherently tied to your identity.
You are seen as more attractive if you have trendy clothing compared to “outdated” clothing. You are seen as more financially successful if you overpay for “luxury” handbags. You are seen as having “made it” based on how much stuff you have.
Corporations know they can exploit this. They play up the value of purchases to your identity in advertising, then use that to distract you from the fact that your labor is being allocated solely to fuel this seemingly endless (solely monetary) growth, while they continue to siphon off more and more of your wages because, well, they “deserve” it for being the founder of the company, or being the shareholders that are “invested in its success.”
The only solution to this problem is degrowth. If we show corporations we don’t care about all this excess junk that nobody really needs, the available labor pool remains the same while demand craters. If everyone is working x hours a week, but demand drops to only necessities and minor luxuries, without the products advertised as “needs” holding any demand, suddenly, each individual has to work only, say, half of x hours a week to accomplish the same requirements to sustain society and individual wellbeing.
That, and we need to give the means of production back to the workers too, of course.
Except people are getting squeezed on housing and the basic necessities now, people are having to work long hours just to live. I can’t even imagine how my young adult life would play out if I were experiencing it now, paying ridiculous rents and making the shitty wages. Sharing an apartment and affording anything else was hard enough back then, I can’t even imagine how people are making it out there nowadays. I got lucky and got into a home when prices were semi-decent, it’d be a severe strain on finances if I had to pay current rates.
Yeah, housing’s a huge issue right now. It’s almost entirely the fault of the artificial scarcity produced by landlords, and their influence on what kind of housing gets built.
I’m not sure if this was meant to be your point by the way, but I do want to clarify that my original post was not meant to make it seem like the only reason people are struggling with work and finances is because they buy goods they don’t actually need. That’s certainly part of the equation for some people, but definitely not entirely.
In my opinion, we can see the same effects I mentioned before happening to our necessities as well, but on the corporate decision making side of things, rather than the consumer decision making side. For instance, food is more expensive because companies throw out any produce that looks “weird,” even if it’s perfectly edible. Housing is more expensive because developers prioritize the highest paying customer class over the average working person when deciding the quality, pricing, and size of housing to build. I hope you get the idea.
The only real solution to these issues is unions and co-ops, anti-monopoly action, the elimination of landlording as a practice, and a higher minimum wage. Basically all of this has to be advocated for at a federal level, unfortunately, since we can’t exactly implement these as independent, personal practices.
No shit, the most left-wing politician in the US would be considered a far-right fascist dictator in Europe.
In the US there’s no left, because left would imply socialism that eventually lead to communism and that goes against the ideia of America, the American dream, the constitution etc. The entire country was built and maintained on the ideia of being against any form of communism.
I doubt Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would be considered far right.
They aren’t, Bernie is centre right
No…? 4-day work week with no reduction in pay is very much a left/far left concept even in Europe.
yeah and I could point to his right wing non-economic views
That’s why he ends up a centrist which is far from the guy’s claim of being alt-right
yeah and I could point to his right wing non-economic views
For example? Legit question, I’ve heard him being pretty supportive of stuff like LGBT rights, Climate activism, Gun laws and legalization of Marijuana, but I’m European so I might not have the full picture.
Pro guns - while he supports some restrictions, he is still pro gun
pro war - supported bombing Yugoslavia and invading Afghanistan
pro gender - supports gender identity/roles rather than abolishment
pro oil - recently voted against replacing oil with nuclear for power generation
Anti-illegal immigrant - not really a problem itself but in 2006 he voted in favour of indefinite incarceration. Also tried to make it illegal for the US to notify Mexico about private militias that patrol the border to kill anyone sneaking across
Drug policy - he only supports legalizing cannabis and blames pharmaceutical companies for the opioid crisis but I couldn’t find anything about giving mental healthcare to addicts or treating them like humans not criminals
Well, most of these positions are shared across the political spectrum even in Europe. (Also apparently he regrets his decision about Afghanistan). I’d still say that would place him left/center left in most of the continent, imo.
Thanks for the list though, I rarely see people bring out legit points against Bernie, it’s good to have a nuanced discussion.
The entire country was built and maintained on the ideia of being against any form of communism.
No, it wasn’t built that way, the US as a country predates strong communist movements
You can build after you founded.
Well, yeah, no point in getting semantic, I did mean that it wasn’t founded on anti-communism because it predates most communist movements, but ofc it developed in anti-communism.
You can thank Woodrow Wilson for the anti-communist stuff.
Sorry, I’m Spanish and too lazy to watch a 30-min video about American presidents from 100 years ago, I have enough American presidents on the internet lately for the following… forever? I’m so tired of the fucking bidenkamalatrump thing, I don’t see why as a Spanish person I should even know who Justice Alito is when I can’t name the literal president of the UK. I’d rather blame it all on capitalism since it’s the same everywhere.
Long story short that particular president used his Yale historian credentials and the presidency to push Southern Revisionism, which he wrote, and his racist ideas to fuck up this country a ton, and the rest of the world by refusing to join WWI, and thereby single handedly causing the European theater of WWII, Stalin’s rise to power, Hitler’s rise to power, and the eventual anti communist rhetoric that permeates the US to this day.
As to why you as a Spaniard may want to know this, it helps explain why the most powerful nation in the world keeps having apoplectic seizures, diplomatically speaking.
Explaining how all of that is literally one guy’s fault is why the video is 30 minutes long. Well, that and something like a 4 minute ad in the middle.
the most left-wing politician in the US would be considered a far-right fascist dictator in Europe
I live in Europe. Someone like Bernie would be a labor leftie in every European country. Europe isn’t the leftist walhala you think it is. Or do you really think fascists like Wilders or Meloni would be considered left wing in the US?
Work is not completely obsolete, since there’s plenty of stuff that can’t be automated, but imagine if we paid living wages for growing food and build infrastructure. We could afford to eliminate all the useless shit jobs, like middle managers and marketing executives.
Seriously, I can’t be the only one who thinks there’s a better possible society than 1/3rd of workers doing excel sheets
Because it’s actually a corporate oligarchy
Capitalism in decay.
I do not think that the US is a democracy. The electoral college is not in any way democratic.
Gerrymandering, vote caging, mass disenfranchisement, consolidated power in appointed positions…
A very curious was to run a republic.
It is an indirect democracy, rather than a direct one. Its less democratic, but not completely undemocratic.
That being said, I do think the system is broken in a much more fundamental way.
FPTP?
It is an indirect democracy, rather than a direct one.
Ahem. Indirect democracy AKA representative democracy AKA republic is political system, where laws are voted by representatives who are elected by citizens. USA is indirect indirectracy. Or idiocracy. Like Putin’s Russia, but with bells and whistles.
Direct democracy is rare beast. In it laws are directly voted by citizens on referendums.
Its less democratic, but not completely undemocratic.
It’s completely undemocratic. Public opinion has no influence on policy whatsoever. Most Americans are in favour of Medicare for all, of legal abortions, of rising taxes on corporations and the most rich people, and much much more. But study after study shows that public opinion has no influence on policy, as in, they’re not even correlated.
I feel like that’s less of a problem with the way a representative democracy works, but rather with corruption and thus capitalism
Yeah, I wasn’t referring to the concept of representative democracy itself, I was referring to the particular case of the US (though I’d extrapolate it to most liberal democracies in western countries)
They say this like EVERYONE is working 60 hours, like some kind of… reverse strawman? Weird statement to make.
They say this like EVERYONE is working 60 hours, like some kind of… reverse strawman? Weird statement to make.
NO ONE should have to work 60 hours to meet those goals.
Is it pretty common for people to work 60 hours to pay the bills? I’m not disagreeing with you — no one should have to work that much — i’m just saying the way they worded it as if “we all work 60 hours” seems strange, but maybe i’m just ignorant and the odd one out.
I’d say yeah because even if you make enough money to live comfortably(100k usd), the type of jobs that are employing you at that rate are going to squeeze every dollar value out of you. I’ve been doing 60+ hour weeks for about two years now thanks to my first six figure job.
It’s not uncommon for people 20-45osh to work over 40hrs especially over 40 hours at 35 hr part time jobs which leaves then working 70hrs a week and still not qualify for employer insurance or benefits.
Thank you! That’s definitely not cool, if you work around 40 hours you should be set, and if you CHOOSE to work over that you should be, well… MORE than set. Hopefully we can get these kinds of changes made… just need to kick out the MAGA trash that has a stranglehold on this country first.
Well to be fair it’s the thought that it’s a Republican issue, it’s not. Both parties are ran by business monsters and lean right and center right respectively.
Can’t have a view that matters when you are hungry, stressed, are left with like 1 hour a day to yourself, and with constant other random threats to your existence you get to manage.
The system is working as designed, ppl forget how much work such a system needs to sustain itself actually.
The system is working as designed, ppl forget how much work such a system needs to sustain itself actually.
The problem is that Capitalism, and by extension Imperialism, is unsustainable and constantly decaying.
Yes.
And one of the constant maintenance being performed to sustain it is convincing us how sustainable and overall the best thing ever possible it is - how at the same time it has by default only one single goal, a goal of which by default the only end-game of a properly working system is a single complete concentration of power, yet it is widely “believed” how much that is in everyones best interest.
The Nature of Capitalism https://youtu.be/WseyrYuD8ao
Billionaires are doing their part to fix this problem! In the next 50 years you wont be able freeze to death with rising global temps. Problem solved!
Because mEriTocRacY, those wealth
thieveshoardersaggregators worked sooooooooooo hard for their money, they totally deserve every penny. If only people would work as hard as them, they wouldn’t be hungry or cold!US Democrats are the equivalent to our countries conservatives, and US Republicans are basically our rightwing/neo-nazi party pedant. It is noteworthy here that this Republican-equivalent rightwing party here is under active surveillance by the national security agencies for being a threat to our democracy.
And people still wonder why the US f-ups their people up and down.
I keep trying to tell people this but they don’t want to hear it.
![The US is Politically to the Right of [Other] Democracies](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/21301eb3-0348-4db4-9f02-82fd35987e02.jpeg){kind=link}