At the risk of sounding like a class reductionist (I'm not), even things like racism and LGBTphobia are exacerbated by this, because the only reason we don't just eat those ten guys is we're always hating each other. The reason there's so much racism in the US, for example, has a lot to do with slavery -- and guess who benefitted from slavery? Guess who benefitted from the genocide against Native Americans? Who benefits most from calling refugees and undocumented workers "illegal immigrants"?
It's not me. If you're reading this, it's probably not you. It hurts us. It hurts our communities, while these ten people keep brainwashing us into actually defending them and their system while hating each other.
(Ok now I'm going to have my coffee, and I wish to the gods that I could disable inbox notifications after posting this.)
Why do you fear that lol?
Divide and conquer is a thing older than a sum of this thread's ages. If there's no constant infights and smaller issues, we'd figure things out and switch to them. When a poor white guy covers himself in blankets and burn crosses, they laught and applaud, because hating other poor guys is what would occupy him for life. They fund hatred for it lets them stay in power, it brings them easy wins against 'the mysterious other' people fear or don't understand. It props them up alright.
Take insanely long copyright holders and LLMs from the thread I've read previously. We start to take sides and defend overwhelmingy rich companies from which none of them would probably suffer, and both of these suck ass. That'd hold us from regulating each at the same time, if anywhen.
Even coke and pepsi sold and sell us their rivalry as a way to up loyalty to their brand. Generating unrest is a good tool in their box. And I don't think it's a controversial opinion. Especially in economics and politics.
It may not be as bad here, but there are a shit ton of people who defend inherently destructive systems like capitalism, or who excuse systemic racism or transphobia. I've encountered them a lot, even here in the fediverse.
And now I understand you. I've seen persons fanboying for my fucking state, and I'm still open to switch places with them. They aren't so enthusiastic about it after I propose that.
Either way, I wasn't disagreeing with you at all.
Yeah, I get it. Personally, I live in the US, but we're not so great either.
Personally, I think all states and hierarchies are destructive, but I'm willing to talk to people online who at least agree that oppressive systems like capitalism and authoritarianism are bad, as a baseline. In real life, I'm more open to conversing with people and debating ideologies, but being online is my escape from this fascist hellscape where I live.
Wishing the best to you. I keep trying to make things better, and maybe at some point after I'm gone, they will. I like what I'm seeing and hearing from a lot of younger people, so at least there's that.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." -- Lyndon Johnson
I live in the Bible belt and people 100% think a trans kid socially transitioning with a new haircut and different pronoun is a more direct threat to their livelihood than their boss giving them a 1% raise in a 5% inflation environment.
Same. We are surrounded by abject poverty and massive social problems. We could work to address those issues... But no. Bullying and maligning librarians for bullshit reasons is more important.
That hate propaganda is, in my opinion, more continually perpetuated by them, and in some cases created by them, because it offers, as you say, and I agree, a distraction from the pure evil they are for this planet and all life on it. The super villains have convinced us they're not the villains. Where's superman when you need him.
I am very much a class reductionist. Or a class-first leftist, as I prefer to call it. It is absolutely the most important issue, by a colossal margin.
Exactly it’s not our fault for fighting against bigoted poor people, it’s bigots fault for being swayed to fight poor people and not join us against the rich
Yes, I fully agree. Some people act like we need to tolerate bigotry for the sake of unity, which is absurd. That's why I often lead by saying I am not a class reductionist.
I guess to encourage engagement, but it honestly has the opposite effect for me since it makes me squint at my inbox while hitting read all so I don't have to see the debatelords and their hot takes lol
Try to mention that the majority of landlords who go around fixing shit all day are struggling just as much you will get you hung around here.
Mention that the uberrich are the ones behind those firms buying up houses and they want you blaming that 70 year old still fixing shit instead of them.
People are blind to so much shit sometimes and the pendulum swing in other directions like ACAB suddenly being pushed by a bunch of people who couldn't speak English is the cherry on top to realizing so many people on the left are just as easily swayed as the people being grifted the right.
E: I'd like to see what people think are acceptable amounts of property ownership. Each person gets to own a single property? So I can own two properties and rent one if me and my partner each own, right? I wonder how far housing Co-ops can work.
Anyone in a committed relationship should be able to rent a single property. Nothing guarantees that we won't break up, so they will need to keep something just in case. It's also emergency funds for if we lose everything in the stock and people realize the Stock Market doesn't work without the very thing people thing are arguing against. Unsustainable capitalism. What else do people do then? Go full Ron Swanson and put it all into shiny metal and bury it lol?
Until people start unionizing to the point where people don't require their work to put into their retirement and get paid enough to actually save so they can't generate money from hoarding, then you'll need stock. You'll need diverse portfolios which include property ownership.
Landlords are not a special case. If you don't like your job you can quit. Sell the property if it is such a burden.
That's the point, they often can't because unlike you and the other people putting money into the magic money making machine which requires unsustainable growth based GDP to work, aka the stock market, they put theirs into equity.
Selling 1-2 houses for $150,000 isn't going to let them retire lol. They also bought houses for generational income so they can gift them to their children or grandchildren.
And just like the reactionary fun both of you are going with, you pretend like it's still not a class issue lol.
They're still part of the rentier class, let's not start sucking their dicks too hard because they're petit. They have a contradictory class position, but the fear of returning to the proletariat makes them the worst exploiters of the working class. You see the same thing from small producers under market pressure from supermarkets. Up yo analysis bro.
the majority of landlords who go around fixing shit all day are struggling just as much you
Nah, this ain't it, chief. They're not struggling like me, and they're exploiting a resource that should be a basic human right for profit. For every landlord who's tRyInG tO pAy MoM's NuRsInG hOmE fEeS, there are multiple tenants who can't because they're being sucked dry by these vampires.
People can fix shit without exploiting housing.
Edit: YIKES I just saw your username. Blocked, blocked, BLOCKED! Holy fucking shit!
You keep YIKES-ing that hard, you're going to give yourself a hernia. It's just a username.
As I've said, the death of nuance lol.
You're welcome to google the name and find out blankets with smallpox was never a thing though!
E: You're also welcome to read any number of my well sourced comments or discussions about landlords and class warfare elsewhere.
Yes indeed. I have multiple references to that one instance at Fort Pitt in my thread which historians believe to be bullshit. To be clear, this is the one verified attempt we can point to since dude replaced a couple of blankets and a scarf later which came from the smallpox ward. As you said, there's no possibility he was able to spread it that way. It's just not how smallpox works. Any smallpox already in the native population was due to contracting it conventionally exacerbated by the closeness of combat in warfare.
Blankets with smallpox was never a thing that decimated swaths of natives. Smallpox was able to do that all on it's own. People weren't handing them out left and right trying to kill natives. The US government did that all on their own through widespread genocide and cultural erasure.
Blankets with smallpox, was never a thing to deserve it's cult childish joking status like everyone likes to pretend it did. People repeat it because it sounds plausible and it's essentially a historical ear worm.
Settlers weren't handing them out trying to kill people. The US government didn't have a policy to use them to trick natives. None of it was a thing.
E: Clarity.
instance at Fort Pitt in my thread which historians believe to be bullshit.
I scanned your links and there was refutation of Churchill's claim about Plains indians and blankets but there was no refutation of Pitt. Your links only showed corroborating evidence that Pitt happened.
The attempt was made, that's verified. The actual ability to give someone smallpox via blankets is bullshit. I might have made that more clear. Apologies.
For fixing shit, there are plumbers and electricians and carpenters. They are workers.
Landlord earns money not from fixing, but from renting out a house first and foremost. And this is a passive income, or, to put otherwise, exploiting a resource and dragging money from something that doesn't produce anything for society.
This is very class reductionist. Rich people are still hurt by bigotry, especially celebrities. Not every rich person is a cis, hetero, white, man.
These issues predate capitalism. Not making full use of minorities and oppressed people actually hurts the capitalist economy especially in terms of innovation. It would be much more efficient for the rich if everyone were giving their best.
These divisions are far from the only reason people don't turn on the rich. People just don't support socialism and I can see why. Things like the USSR and China are what happened when marxism was tried. We need to come up with better economic and political systems that actually work if we want to get anywhere. We then need to remove the stains these previous systems caused. I don't think that's gonna happen with the current crop of leftists as they are idealists still using 100s of years old ideologies.
You don't understand what I am saying do you? These issues predate the rich people we have now, and even hurt some of them. Billionaires are still bad people, but they aren't the only problematic people in societies.
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They have a vested interest in keeping the working class divided amongst itself.
Obviously other problematic people exist. But the wealthy are literally spending money to make sure we care more about being mad at each other than being mad at them.
I hear this said a lot. To me it sounds like different billionaires support different causes because of what they believe and what's in their best interest. Obviously they are against the working class; I am not trying to deny that. That doesn't automatically mean they support bigots.
Do you have evidence that most billionaires support bigots? If not your words are nothing but conjecture.
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It's not about supporting bigots, and I didn't say that. It's almost as if you're deliberately obfuscating the point with bullshit.
I'm saying they're paying for messaging with the goal of manipulating the working class in to fighting amongst itself. It's literally the reason outlets like Fox News exist in the state they currently do.
What percentage of billionaires support fox news or similar organizations?
How am I obfuscating anything? You made a claim that billionaires support people who divide the working class based on things like race, gender, sexuality and so on as many others gave claimed. I asked for evidence as is my right. That seems simple enough to me.
If you can provide the evidence then I will accept what you are saying. Until then I am not gonna take you seriously. I see no reason why billionaires wouldn't also be divided on political lines since everyone else seems to be.
They literally are, not because they are firsthand committing moral atrocities like murder, but because they intentionally keep structures in place that bring about moral atrocity, despite being the only people capable of changing them.
You don't seem to know what you're talking about since if anything there's been a wealth of leftist literature within the past couple of decades, and if anything ideologies such as anarcho-communism and anarcho-primitivism are experiencing a renaissance.
I also find it highly suspect that your first go-to example of leftism is a failed authoritarian state like the Soviet Union rather than groups like the Zapatistas, the anti-fascist movement in the US, Food Not Bombs, many horizontally structured local coalitions, or other much better examples of leftism manifesting in helpful and vibrant ways.
Class reductionism is harmful, though -- I'll agree with you there.
You don’t seem to know what you’re talking about since if anything there’s been a wealth of leftist literature within the past couple of decades, and if anything ideologies such as anarcho-communism and anarcho-primitivism are experiencing a renaissance.
Anarcho-communism comes from Krapotkin, right? He wrote the book on it. He died over 100 years ago. Sure there might have been newer literature but it's still based on 100+ year old ideology.
Anarchism is better in many ways than Marxism. The issue I have is that they get steam rolled by more organized regimes in places like Kronstadt in the USSR, or what happened to anarchist communes in Spain and Ukraine. I don't think they can stand up against a well organized army. I would love to be proven wrong obviously. As long as regimes like fascism, marxism, capitalism are still around it will be difficult to make communes stick without some external force to defend them.
I choose the USSR as Marxism is far more popular in the UK (and I think the US too) than Anarchism. It's the most obvious example of a failed Marxist regime.
Don’t give a fuck about rich people regardless of race, sex, or anything else. Just because a group of rich people can also inadvertently harm themselves doesn’t mean they are not effectively 100% to blame.
I want evidence rich people caused this mess. It's said all the time that they are at fault for rascism, sexism, homophobia, etc but never proven. These ideologies go back to slave times, long before the world of capitalism and billionaires. It's possible some are exploiting existing divisions to suit their own ends, but that's different from being the sole cause of a problem.
The USSR was what happened when dictators pretended to be socialist and victimized their subjects. This has little to do with Marx’ economic theories.
Then why did it happen in almost every country with a socialist revolution lead by marxists? The USSR is only one example, you could look at China or North Korea for example.
I agree with you here. I’ve started to see the left/right spectrum as not very useful, and the authoritarian/anarchist spectrum more appropriate. If peace, stability, and sustainability are ever achieved, it won’t be at the point of a gun or the order of an authoritarian.
Anarchism is great until a well organized army comes around and invades them. If someone can find a way to build a commune without it getting invaded by tankies or fascists or the USA then I am all ears.
If you make a serious claim the least you can do is provide some evidence. Otherwise why should I take anything you say seriously?
I've often wondered if anarchism is actually more just. How do you deal with things like criminals without resorting to vigilantism? You must have a solution to this if you want to build stable communes. I don't read much anarchist literature as I don't care for 100 year old books, so there might be a solution there.
Dismissing the practicality of an idea as being unimportant is not great. If you support something you know won't work you aren't helping anyone.
Edit: also I don't know how you can call me an apologist for the rich. I am all for eating billionaires for breakfast, I just want it to be for the right reasons not something people have made up.
You know like a study or financial documents proving the majority of the bourgeoisie or even just billionaires support or fund rascist, sexist, homophobic or other kinds of organizations that attempt to divide people.
Even then I expect there to be exceptions like Bill Gates who are known for their philanthropy. Exceptions aren't a reason to keep around billionaires of course as no individual should have that much power, money, or influence.
Sort of true. The rich also expand their dynasties. For example, Walmart now supports 10 billionaires instead of 1 as they are the children of the founder. I am sure we have all noticed the lowering of quality in our purchased goods.
Walmart now supports 10 billionaires instead of 1
The Waltons own 20x as much as they did a generation ago and split it among 10 people.
I am sure we have all noticed the lowering of quality in our purchased goods.
Their products were always shit. That was the Walmart gambit. Sell someone a $1 plastic piece of crap for $8 rather than a durable piece of $8 metal for $10. Pocket the difference and claim you saved people money.
But the broader consequence of Walmart and its "Buy up / shut down the competition" model is that everyone who sells to Walmart is obligated to produce crap. Because if you can't sell to them at $.50, they're not buying. And if they're not buying, you lose access to millions of customers.
I think it was either Catepiller or John Deere that had a knock-down drag out fight with Walmart, where they wouldn't budge on their wholesale price and Walmart began kicking them out of all their stores as a result, that effectively broke the back of the union-lead opposition to price cuts.
Dude, they have fucked up batteries so bad. I have batteries that are 2 years old, new in packaging that are leaking. Almost every time batteries die in a remote, it's because they exploded.
There are definitely two classes of batteries now.
The batteries sold to oems to go in a product last forever just like they did 20 years ago when they came with "no leak warranties". Because Roku doesn't want leaking batteries in their box that sat unsold on a store shelf for a year before the consumer bought it.
SUPPORT. SMALL. BUSINESSES.
you might not get very price competitive products, but these companies often still have the consumer in mind.
small online shops, phone companies like fairphone (or even nokia), video streaming platforms like floatplane (dankpods is hilarious).
voting with our wallets is pretty much all we can do.
Before you the only time I had heard people “say vote with your wallet”, were from right leaning family members who are now upset about “cancel culture”
Even entertaining that cancel culture is a thing and not just a reductionist view of accountability in general, then what they’d be describing is voting with your dollar on a larger more organized scale.
Pardon my tangent and I completely agree with you.
Yeah, although I'm not sure why they're calling Nokia a small business. They're a publicly traded corporation and my searching tells me their revenue last year was $25 billion.
I was a bit surprised by that statement as well. When someone says "small business," the first thing I think of is a mom and pop shop.
I'm not sure about 'online small business' either. Most of the ones that are not actual corporations are selling via Amazon or eBay or Etsy, so you're still supporting megacorporations. If you're lucky, your town still has small businesses you can support with prices you can afford.
And that last part is a big part of the problem. The person above says you might not get very price competitive products. When so many people live paycheck-to-paycheck, you have no choice but to get the most price competitive products.
Consumers should not be shouldering the blame here.
I agree with you. Also, even small local businesses often support the systems that are at the root of the problem. I'm not going out of my way to shop at the local grocery store when the owners are actively harming my community by expressing and supporting all manner of bigotry.
At the farmers' market in a nearby town, there's a big to-do because a white supremacist farm opened a stall there and the farmers' market is allowing it. It even resulted in a second farmers market forming. It's ridiculous. They should kick the Nazis the fuck out of their farmers' market.
It's a really hard concept for some people that by inviting people like Nazis to the table, they are de facto excluding marginalized groups. For people not in one of these groups, I think it takes an effort to understand why that is.
loving this thread here and (most) everything in here! as a tiny ass farmer, that shit doesn't surprise me. I'll try to keep this comment specifically focused on an issue we've had with "farmer's" markets:
used to sell at a couple of em before covid, since then, we only sell on-site at our little shop. one of the larger, better markets a few years back starting letting this distributor begin selling at market, masquerading as one of us. they even wore fucking shirts about promoting local blah blah. they weren't from the area, they buy up bulk stuff (often not in season), then set it out in these pretty baskets like they just got done harvesting it that morning.
people would line up to buy their shit, while the 4-5 actually local ops that are honest and give a shit had to stand by and watch. tried to get the market organizer to care, of course they didn't. but, hey, people can take pics of their brave treks to the Local Farmers Market to post on the socials, so they can hear how great they are at supporting small businesses.
if I sound bitter, it's only because I kinda am 😂 carry on, love y'all who look below the surface and go out of your way to build community!
i'm pretty much exclusively ordering stuff from "smaller" online shops that aren't "mainstream". i mainly find their products through an amazon link on duckduckgo, but order it on their website. it's often way cheaper too.
stuff like filament from esun's store
keychron keyboards on their own website instead of some reseller
and occasionally a reseller, but then it's usually otto, coolblue, notebooksbilliger, or similar websites. whichever have decent prices.
buying stuff locally is literally impossible in most cases. many stores went insolvent long ago, and the ones still remaining have a 2x markup most of the time. if they even have it in stock.
hobbyist shops might be possible to buy raw materials from, but (my niche of) PC accessories and 3d printing stuff ar hard to come by locally.
I read it as
small ones, or even bigger ones like Nokia
So I think it's not saying that Nokia is small, but that Nokia is not in the same category as the few big big corporations.
they're very underrepresented in the phone market atm. the company behind it is huge, but the phones are very customer conscious.
not a small business at all, but still.
They don't.
I thought so too so I bought one.
They are made by HMD Global which is a bad company that uses generic Foxconn smartphones designs with bad battery life, the worst cameras on the low-mid market, and terrible USB ports, puts shitty unsupported software on it, then licenses the Nokia name to sell to people who can't afford a mid-tier and don't know any better because they trust the name.
I had to manually replace the USB-C port on my Nokia 7.1 5 times in 2 years because they refused to offer any support at all when it broke 6 months after I bought it because they quite literally use the cheapest components possible.
Screw HMD Global. Do NOT support them. They are as bad or worse than any big phone company. Buy a Fairphone.
In addition to this, try to support co-operatives, unionized workplaces, and FOSS development! Even go out of your way to try to reject corporations as much as you can, reduce consumerism, and focus on local organization.
All of these help Workers have more power and build up your community.
especially donate to FOSS devs whose software you're using. even if it's just a little bit. these people do it out of passion, and your donation will let them continue working on it.
and definetely sign up for a worker's union.
Instant Pot. Great company, reliable products, going out of business because they didn't fuck consumers. You can't beat capitalism by playing the game. You have to break the game.
I love how the capitalists apologist brain rot gets downvoted like crazy in this comment section
It does in general on Lemmy, given that Lemmy is structured along leftist principles and there's already a Capitalist, centralized Lemmy called Reddit.
Yeah but that has nothing to do with wanting rational discussion and everything to donwith wanting to keep the circlejerk going. Completely fine, just be honest about it.
No. It's an exaggeration. But the truth is still obscene:
A 2021 Oxfam report found that collectively, the 10 richest men in the world owned more than the combined wealth of the bottom 3.1 billion people, almost half of the entire world population. Their combined wealth doubled during the pandemic.
I do not understand why not a single politician has talked about THIS. Not in the US, not in Europe, I don't hear any politicians about this. If they do, they're whispering because this should be top 5 news next to climate change every day.
I do not understand why not a single politician has talked about THIS.
At least in the US, we saw what the "left" party did to the last guy who tried it.
Twice.
Poor defined as $10k-100k is pretty..odd? I don't know that I'd define people making $100k as poor.
Sure. But I think it's still a worthwhile evaluation. 100k is not what it used to be by any means unless you are in a low col area.
I'll be out of debt by the end of this year. I'll outright own everything that I've been calling mine. So given my luck this will happen just after I pay off everything.
And I'll still celebrate for the same reason I'd celebrate if everyone's student loans in the US were forgiven even though I paid mine off a while ago. Because it's the best thing for all of us.
Ownership of land is a bullshit concept anyway. The first person to claim it stole it from the commons, and everyone since then has just been pretending it's not stolen.
Or to quote Rousseau:
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
But a reset of a faulty system gives times to re-evaluate and makes it at least work again. Temporarily.
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What a wonderfully crafted sentence. "Complacency" is a word I've never used, yet it has always struck me as such a slick word to work into conversation. I'll have to be more diligent and work it into my vocabulary going forward.
Lest I become complacent.
I didn't say "that's the solution", but a temporary band-aid to ponder about bettering things.
I hate to say it, but a large number of people are ignorant, or even downright simple enough to be completely satisfied with the bandaid and will stop desiring positive change - leading to the exact same events playing out over again
Tyler Durden was on the right track, but Elliot Alderson took it much further. We'd need both to do it right.
It would seem logical, that the adaption of that concept to modern times, would also require technical terrorism. Not just physical. And a wider spread. An effort most likely not being possible at all...
Depending on the country, that could end worse, could it not? Try that in china. Try that in the USA. In some it might work, but wouldn't change anything because we aren't local anymore.
yeah the rebellion needs to be global. but it depends on the ones with access to weapons to also rebel. but imho terrorism only makes things worse.
Usually. And also totally unrealistic on a global scale. Look how futile it usually is locally. Only digitally it could lead to something. But that's also basically impossible.
1 billing USD (in one-dollar-bills) weighs 2,204,622 pounds. How much fiber does that add up to???
In ancient Greece. The concept of beauty was so ingrained in the hearts of people. That no matter how poor you were - no matter how long the seigh of a city lasted. No one stole the gold that was on the statues located around town. Because to the Greek, beauty WAS life.
Seems like a real good reason to get independent and start doing things for passion instead of for money.
Only issue is you can't eat passion or use it to protect you from the elements. The idea of doing something for passion while tangentially making just enough money to support yourself is and always was a lie under a capitalist system. If we want to do that, we need to change the system first.
You can't eat money either. You can use passion to create food, though.
Also I'm totally living that lie. Might be a crapshoot to try it, but it's working for me. It'd probably work for a lot of miserable 9-5ers.
Doing the math, if you took the wealth of the top 10 people and divided it up among the world's population, everyone would get 153 dollars.
Hey, that is a month's salary for most of the people employed by the people on that list.
So potentially life-changing amounts of wealth for the vast majority of humanity that doesn't live in a first world country, and a nice bump for those who do. Sounds like a good thing then.
Yeah, for most of us on this website, that amount isn't life changing, but for a vast part of people on this planet, it would be highly significant.
For me, I read that comment as being sort of a counter-argument, but in my view, it only goes to show how faulty things are.
Put a cleaning robot in a public space, and count the number of hours until it's been vandalized.
Those kinds of people are a major contributor too.
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So now we’re justifying Luddism?
I can get it when the outcome is clearly worse for the consumer, but cleaning robots work pretty well. We should all strive to replace as much of that work as possible, no one wants to be a garbage collector. The issue isn’t robots, it’s the lack of UBI.
So now we’re justifying Luddism?
As we should if you know anything about luddism. It wasn't anti-technology, it was anti-technology taking people's jobs. Like a cleaning robot taking away a person's job.
no one wants to be a garbage collector.
How do you know? Have you taken a survey of garbage collectors?
I have a friend who is a janitor and is very satisfied in his job. You would have his job taken away by a robot not because a robot would do it better, but because you have decided he doesn't want to work at that job.
Clearly you do not understand how technology works in economics. There's a term called "induced demand", meaning the reduced cost of some thing passes some threshold where it becomes a viable option for new customers - creating new demand.
People who did not understand this thought computers would eliminate paperwork, when in reality more things got paperwork attached to them, when handshakes worked before.
In our janitor example, it's not worth paying humans to pick up trash across arbitrarily large swathes of nothing in my example. Nobody is going to pay your friend to hike The Appalachian trail and pick up every last bit of rubbish hikers left behind. The reality is that you'd just find things better maintained if robots could do that. There are companies trying to do this for less nebulous things like bridge maintenance, which just do not get maintained because of the crazy cost of sending engineers to inspect every inch of them to find out what even needs fixing.
What? They literally pay people to clean national parks.
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/nps-careers-maintenance.htm
There is no reason to build a robot to do that except to save money paying humans. The same with bridge maintenance. You even admitted it yourself about the bridge maintenance. This is about saving money at the expense of people's jobs. And you're okay with that.
You know what we can do to pay for humans to do bridge maintenance without any issues? Raise taxes on rich people. No robots needed. But I'm guessing raising taxes on the rich is a big step too far for you.
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As we should if you know anything about luddism. It wasn’t anti-technology, it was anti-technology taking people’s jobs. Like a cleaning robot taking away a person’s job.
As always, “technology taking people’s jobs” is the natural outcome of progress. As long as the non-human “worker” is doing the job as well as the human one, that’s what we should all strive for. Keeping jobs around just “to feed people” is basically a sort of crooked UBI that isn’t universal, forces people to do useless stuff, and hinders progress.
I have a friend who is a janitor and is very satisfied in his job. You would have his job taken away by a robot not because a robot would do it better, but because you have decided he doesn’t want to work at that job.
Did he say “When I grow up, I want to be a janitor!” as a kid? Did he get out of high school with “janitor” being his dream career? Or did he just happen to find a job they were hiring for which “isn’t that bad”?
Because if it’s the first one good for him, but I think he’s in the extreme minority. Every janitor I met was at most “okay” with their job, and if you told them “hey, we just got a robot that can do your job as well as you, you can go home and do whatever while earning the same pay” they’d do it in a heartbeat.
So because it's not their dream career it's okay to replace their job with a robot? That's what you're saying?
and if you told them “hey, we just got a robot that can do your job as well as you, you can go home and do whatever while earning the same pay”
When has that ever happened when someone's job was replaced with a machine? That's a fantasy. What happens is they go home, spend months looking for a job, get kicked out of their home because they can't afford rent, starve and then take whatever they can for much lower pay because they're desperate and homeless. You must know this.
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And that’s why I said the issue is the lack of UBI. Progress is moving forward whether we like it or not, Luddism can only slow it down and make us waste resources.
Instead of going against it we should spend that effort into building a society where you don’t need to work to live (or, at least not full-time).
Exactly, people are resentful just because they are becoming worthless in the increasingly modern society.
So you think teens spray painted the hell out of new York's subways because they put someone out of work 80 years before that?
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I think the teens spray painting subways has more to do with marginalizing an entire class of people and a failure of public services, which were largely gutted at the bequest of a few billionaires who wanted to watch their number go up. Any dollar spent that doesn't come back to them is a dollar they see as one they've lost. And the number must go ever up.
Kid's vandalism has been studied and that's mostly wrong: propensity to vandalize is most strongly tied to parent-child relationships.
Sure maybe billionaires taking all the resources makes parents less likely to be there for their kids, but the gap between parents who are there and deadbeats who let the wolves do the babysitting is not someone else's fault.
Upbringing cannot be thrown away just so you can blame billionaires for why nice things aren't the norm
When did we get from a cleaning robot getting vandalized to teens spray painting subways?
I've got this big bag of random arguments. Whenever I'm cornered on one I pull another one out.
Vandalism in general, and that can be generally further into people ruining nice things, these are examples
Two different examples about two completely different situations.
And graffiti is almost as old as writing. There is graffiti on the Great Pyramid painted by workers.
Well, i used to stop critique our system, as i can offer no relevant working alternative. Can you? As long as people are involved, nothing really works except dictatorship. And that fails at one person
Sees everyone shouting about needing a stronger democracy, all the research about wealth inequality causing problems, and all the economic theory on how to improve people's lives.
"We've tried nothing and I'm out of ideas. Let's go back to Kings. That was cool. There were swords!"
Even a tepid, liberal political system like Social Democracy would be a step in the right direction. As the post correctly states, massive wealth inequality is at the core of many societal problems. If we simply taxed the rich to make wealth more equally distributed, limiting the effects of labor exploitation somewhat, that would be a "relevant working alternative" as long as you concede that the current system "works" - which it only does by exploiting labor in the global south.
I know. But "if we simply" won't ever do it. Noone will manage to eradicate the ultra-rich (or just taxing them a lil) , hence it's just stupid political talk that leads to absolutely nowhere. Never said I like it.
Even if... If they're suddenly being taxed, they would just move to where they ain't.
It's a simple and efficient idea, yet it won't happen. Those who have the money already, make the rules. Or bend them just enough.
Democracy is pretty good, Dictatorships themselves suck. That's why Democracy should be extended to the work place, and shouldn't be mini-dictatorships.
That's why Democracy should be extended to the work place, and shouldn't be mini-dictatorships.
You could do that. You could even distribute ownership, profits and risk among the workers. Literally nothing prevents someone from starting a business using that model. But then being paid a share of profits instead of a fixed salary is...probably not desirable for most people.
You're making a few assumptions, which unfortunately are wrong.
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There is downward pressure against worker co-operatives. Number 1, Capitalist firms are far more willing to brutally exploit Workers to maintain competitive advantage. Number 2, there is little infrastructure in place to assist with starting worker Co-operatives, unlike Capitalist firms.
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You can absolutely pay a fixed salary in a worker co-operative, and place any excess into funds for expansion or to pay steady salaries when in economic troubles.
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Worker Co-operatives are desirable for workers, that's why worker co-operatives are far more stable, last longer, and have higher job satisfaction than Capitalist firms.
All of that to say that Worker co-operatives are only one form of Socialism, and they still knock the socks off of Capitalist owned and run firms, because it turns out, dictatorship is unnecessary and unpopular.
Dictatorships only suck because every dictator ever sucked. Because getting to this position requires the worst traits of humanity. Imagine a just dictator that couldn't be bribed. Even the thought sounds funny. Democracy might be nice, but where is it really? It's capitalism that really rules the world. Even if democracy is slapped upon as a label.
The Americans are the best (worst) example.
Dictatorships suck because there's no accountability. A just dictator that can't be bribed is still an unjust hierarchy that removes freedom and choice.
Democratically accountable Capitalism isn't Capitalism. If production is democratically owned and controlled, it's Socialism.
Yeah sure. Great. And now? Socialism (one that actually works for the good of all people, not just the leading ones) will never happen.
Said just dictatorship might be wrong, but it might actually work. The same kind of unrealistic ideology that will also never happen. I'd be all for either. Even if I'd be the loosing one in socialism.
Why do you believe its impossible for Workers to democratically own and control the Means of Production? Worker Co-ops already exist as proof of possibility, same with Lemmy and other FOSS software.
You would not be the losing one in Socialism unless you're a landlord or a business owner, in which case I'm sorry but humanity shouldn't hold back progression for your personal sake.
Oh you did get me wrong. I would loose in socialism, because I'm well off now. STILL I would prefer being worse off than now, if everyone would be equally good. I would loose a ton of moneyz, others would win. Only fair. I didn't want this system, I just got lucky in it. But those unlucky in it far outweigh the lucky ones. And yeah, noone should be sorry for those loosing.
Yet, I don't believe BIG changes are possible. Sure, some workers might unite and seize the means of production. But, it's not always just that simple. And surely, the majority of people who would loose would strongly oppose every uprising. And have the means to successfully do so. And let's say it's a car-factory. You might seize the means of production, but who will buy from you? And which bank will not freeze your accounts this day? And which company will deliver you with power? Parts? None. Unless they aaaaaaaallll revolt. Which they won't. As most regular Joes are happy with their few bucks, a TV and a beer. Why risk it all being homeless? What's with your kid that wants food NOW not a hope tomorrow?
No, you would not lose in Socialism unless you are a landlord or business owner. If you're an engineer, doctor, lawyer, or other skilled worker that makes good money, you would be better off in Socialism. Socialism is about worker ownership of the Means of Production. Again, unless you're a landlord or a business owner, you stand to gain. It isn't the bottom 50% against the top 50%, but closer to the bottom 99% against the top 1%.
If you're asking about leftist strategy, Unionization is a big one, see Syndicalism. Anarchists and Marxists, reformers and revolutionary Socialists, there are plenty of strategies for enacting meaningful change.
Sure. Great words. Won't help at all. Won't change a thing at all. Because people will always be greedy, and all societies reward the dark triad of human traits rather than the civilized and honorable ones.
A nice guy like you, who figured it out, doesn't matter the slightest. No offence meant ofc.
"people will always be greedy" is such a lazy response. It's the same as saying "there's no point in trying to prevent violence and murder, because people will always be violent and murder others".
And not all societies worked the way our society does.
A lazy response? So you actually disagree? Have you taken a look around in the world? Even if the majority wouldn't be greedy at all, the minority is always more than enough to fuck up the system (for others)
And we're not talking about homicides. Sure everyone not murdered is good. But do you think, that you and your perfect political ideology will ever change anything? Are you filthy rich? Then you might have a tiny chance. But if you were, we wouldn't be talking here. You're, like everyone else, a toothless cog-wheel.
The system itself heavily rewards greed.
For a metaphor, you cannot look at people growing up in a cheating and lying home and conclude that it's human nature to lie and cheat all the time. We all grew up in capitalism, but there existed societies where things like greed wasn't rewarded, but shunned, and they were different.
And your last paragraph, well, if change can never happen, why even bother voting? You're just one vote in a million? Why form a union? Why do anything? Why do activism? It's too pessimistic and not how the world works. Movements are very much possible.
Yeah sure. Just continue believing in it. No sarcasm here. I just don't. We're ruled by capital and that will never change as long as the regular Joe and Jane at least got their TV, beer and whatever else little they require to be "happy".
"Optimism is just a lack of knowledge" someone once said. Anyhow I'm not pessimistic, but simply realistic. My WISH to change this world to the better, changes absolutely nothing to the fact that I can't. By no means at all. You can't really think, that, in our modern times, there would be big changes possible? Especially when those big changes would mostly be horrible to the big money-bags? We will probably even witness the birth of the first person to be a trillionaire(s). Nothing will stop this.
I'd love to be wrong here.
As you mentioned in another comment, you're at least somewhat well off (I don't fault you for that), which means you very likely have stable housing, food, access to healthcare, etc., great. But that means you aren't experiencing the same pressure that the global average person is. I.e. there's still a few necks between yours and the boot.
So it's easy for you to say this, cry "there's nothing that can be done", to retain your conscience while living out your life in relative comfort.
I don't mean to vilify you. Everyone does this to some degree. Life is short and scary, and it's no single one of our faults for the current situation.
But please understand that rolling over on your back in apathy is exactly what those ten men want. And spreading it through social media even more so.
The world looked completely different 100 years ago, and 100 years before that, and that rate of change has not slowed. There is no reason to think it won't be completely different 100 years from now, and what that will look like entirely depends on what we do now.