Your “$30 per hour wage” dreams are delusional and don’t apply across the country. Maybe in a densely populated city center but you’re discounting the reality. Dreams built on delusions.
Local economies dictate prices, wages, living standards, etc. Monopolies aren’t necessarily bad or evil. In fact you should thank monopolization for causing $500-$1000 personal computers, what you’re using right now. “Thank you Microsoft!”
Again, a few or even some exceptions don’t disprove the rule.
The rule is: for the last half a century, wages have been relatively stagnating and the price of essentials, which’re what really matter, are relatively rising, people are getting poorer and poorer.
If capitalism was working for the environment, or for the middle and lower classes, than fine, if statistically I made more this year than last year, and more last year than the year before, excellent, but that’s not the case, and that’s grounds for considering serious reforms, patching up a few holes here or there isn’t going to cut it, the system needs an overhaul.
Capitalism is probably one of, if not the greatest system we have for generating wealth or productivity, I think few people argue this, because people, especially or particularly the middle and working classes have to work really hard, but generating productivity isn’t the sole criterion of the good.
Are the people benefitting, is the environment, are we producing things people really need, or even truly want, or are we just producing shit to produce shit?
Some things I think most people think are great like computers (altho they have their drawbacks, which’s a whole other topic) have come out of the last half a century, so I’ll give you that, but a lot of stuff we really didn’t need has too, and the ecological time clock is ticking.
We need less productivity, for the sake of the environment, the poor shouldn’t be forced to work more than the economy needs them to in order to sustain itself.
Wrong, you are not being honest or realistic. You cannot rent a $650 home on a fixed income of $600. You have to find a place that is priced at $200 like you said. Not $225. Not $250. Not $275. $200 which is what you said exists.
This is blatantly false. Wages have increased and continue to increase. $10 an hour was unheard of in the 1970s. A gallon of gas used to be $0.50. Candy bars used to be dimes and nickles. Employee wages and inflation are strongly linked together. And usually employee wages dictate inflation, even more than loan rates. If the average member of any population gets a $1.00 wage bump, prices will go up for groceries, gas, rent, and other basics. So increasing wages doesn’t necessarily mean “better off”. As I mentioned, the best you can hope for, based on wage along, is class fluidity and moving between rich to poor, or poor to rich, easier.
This thread isn’t about the environment. It’s about the minimum wage.
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
It seems pretty obvious to me that what you think would happen, from $30 per hour wages, wouldn’t happen. Your knowledge of economics is all mixed up, beginning with the fact, that employers and employees dictate average wages, based on their own personal and private interests. Third-party meddling doesn’t necessarily “help” anybody. Especially when there is already a tax system and minimum wage laws were already raised, and continue to raise slowly.
It’s not “magic solution”. It would probably harm your own convictions more than help too, which is what I’ve pinpointed throughout this thread.
So in short, my conclusion is, even if you were to raise the minimum wage $30 per hour then it wouldn’t help in the ways you believe it would, and would probably do more harm in the long run than anything else.
I don’t believe in eternal economic growth. Western civilization is at a point of post-colonialistic progress. Capitalism is running out of areas and avenues to exploit, and henceforth, average people are turning to socialism to gouge more money out of society. But that hurts more than helps, and it’s at the cost of personal freedoms and individuality, which I support. Therefore I’m solidly against it. Average western people have already given up too many freedoms for security.
If people were actually ‘liberal’ then they would agree with me. Liberty is being stripped away by socialism. Economic liberalism is backward. Liberty means less taxation, third-party intervention, and “minimum wage” laws. Today’s liberals are backward, and the exact opposite of what they used to be.
I have a computer, that’s great, but so what?
We have a few more gadgets and gizmos now, but if in order to get that, it means I’ll have to struggle more and more to survive, until we’re back in the 19th century or China, then what difference does it make?
I’d rather not have my computer and not be a slave.
It’s the essentials that matter, them being artificially scarce is what keeps the hamsters running on the wheel producing mostly junk that largely not only does not benefit the diminishing middle and lower classes, but doesn’t really benefit anyone, even the rich.
We don’t need to produce all this junk, give people the option, and many will choose not to produce as much as they are now.
So average humans are able to travel 100x faster, communicate 100x faster, work 100x faster than a century ago.
Society almost always goes forward, not backward. It’s only going to get faster and more efficient the next 100 years, not less.
There will always be slaves, now with computers, and a millennium ago without computers. Having a computer or not, doesn’t really impact freedom versus slavery. If you want to be free then you should advocate personal freedoms and individuality, less taxation, and less third-party interventions.
Artificial scarcity is the product of monopolization, but it’s not as bad as you make it out to be. Socialists, such as yourself, have very much curtailed and compensated for corporate monopolization, with the counter-balance of social third-party intervention (government, taxes, policies, regulations). The (human) world is doing just fine.
Socialism used to be about an economic intervention - namely to usurp all the capitalists and carry on doing the same work that workers were doing anyway, but with all the business assets being owned socially instead of privately bought through the use of money as capital, y’know, like when it was first being created and defined and the terms meant what they were made to mean.
But now it’s used instead of the term “Authoritarianism”, basically its exact opposite, where government has authority over your personal life, and instead of the means to work being owned socially/publicly, they’re controlled by a state that’s composed of elites, not “the people”/workers.
Likewise Liberalism used to mean being liberal with regard to social issues, with minimal to no government intervention… but now it’s used instead of the term “Authoritarianism”, basically its exact opposite, where government has authority over your personal life.
Ask any actual leftist what they want, and they’ll usually support what Socialism used to mean for the economy, and what Liberalism used to mean for your personal life.
I’m not in favour of government intervening in the personal and private lives of families - which is how the two terms have been appropriated to mean by not-Liberal-not-Socialists.
I am in favour of them making up for where the “Classical Liberal” ideal of “perfect competition” routinely fails. The “hand of the market” is supposed to keep the economy in check, but Capitalist “success” today basically revolves around avoiding perfect competition scenarios as much as possible. Poor people don’t have the power to keep this in check, they have their iota of consumer influence, but only insofar as they can buy what they’re given or go without - and you can’t go without everything if you want to stay alive. So they elect a government to act on their collective wishes and keep the capitalists in check, but then the capitalists just buy their votes and those who are elected end up as corporate cronies who actually help make the whole situation worse. What ends up happening is more like a kind of Socialism for Capitalists! Any breaks the poor get are just to maintain their ability to carry on working and getting paid less than they earn their employer so they can profit off more people for longer - therefore getting even richer than they otherwise would.
I am against this kind of intervention.
I want intervention against this kind of intervention.
But back onto “taking advantage of the (economic) success of others”: be as productive as you like, whatever your politics. You will anyway - regardless of the financial reward, because internal satisfaction is what drives the productive anyway.
And if they produce or help produce physically way more in the way of goods and services than they need (as so very many do with all the technology, infrastructure and working methods that we now use), then is it immoral for that to be shared with those who don’t produce as much as they need or anything at all for whatever reason - given that the surplus of production is so vast that it’s easily possible to do so? Whenever I’ve had more money than I need, I’ve been quite happy for it to go towards others - and many other people think so too.
As is always the case, your issue will be with consent. Share the fruits of your labour, sure, but not because the government is forcing you to, right?
Well the problem is that not all people “think so too” - they are unhappy for the massive surplus that they’ve helped create to be shared with others.
Let’s not forget that the “art” of paying people less than they earn your company is NOT productivity - nor is the knack for finding the best ways to do this. It’s a redistribution technique like taxation, but with no accountability. “It’s the market, not me!” If it’s the market that “dictates” the wages of your employees such that they are less than what they earn you, then you don’t have to feel any responsibility (something of which you claimed to be in favour) for taking from people and giving to yourself: it’s “your” company. But somehow, if the distribution is visible and accountable, suddenly then it’s awful! It’s only “your” company because you were rich and connected enough in the first place to buy the stuff you needed to start and fund its operations, and it’s “others” who actually do the operations for you - it’s more theirs than it is yours, just because you happened to start off richer than them.
The particularly rich get and stay rich because they are unhappy for wealth to be distributed with accountability, which is exactly why they their charity is never enough, and it’s certainly insufficient to undo the distribution-without-accountability that is making and keep them rich. Bill Gates can give so much because he’s admitted he makes money faster than he can spend it - he genuinely doesn’t need it, but you don’t see him trying to undo the mechanism that channels so much money to him. And since none of them do, then we need a body that will: a government. Sorry, if the rich aren’t going to be socially (and environmentally) responsible, then they don’t “deserve” to be fully in charge. It’s the rich who are the entitled ones, choosing to pay themselves more than their employees (profit). They’re all engaged in these petty battles with their counterparts - trying to outdo each other materially in a pissing contest, when there are plenty of others who could be said to “deserve” it more. Honestly, I think beyond a certain monetary wealth, it should be become a points system - it’d serve the same purpose, but not at the expense of society and even the economy.
And who really makes this money anyway? Employers wouldn’t be rich if they didn’t have employees to profit from - they owe their ENTIRE income to them, because that is what their entire income is literally from. And the employer and employees wouldn’t be able to constitute a productive business if it weren’t for all their customers. And all this money has to circulate through all kinds of other businesses and other people too to get back to the money “made” by any particular employer - they owe the ENTIRE economy. Money isn’t made, it is attracted from an existing flow that travels through all people. Indirect causes are still causes.
I have no doubt. So many people of all incomes work their ass off. It’s almost as though there’s no correlation between how hard you work and how much money you get - in so many cases. People who work this hard have to convince themselves that their work was worth it, so of course they think they deserved every penny they made. Maybe you’d have made less if there was no education spending… I don’t know what education you had. Education is just another area that can’t be left to the risks of complete privatisation. It’s all very well taking a moral high ground and saying it’s the parents’ responsibilities to fund the education of their child and children, but since there are inevitably going to be economic losers if there are going to be economic winners, with all of the losers being unable to afford the education, just imagine the sheer degree of incompetence going around… Obviously with no hope, crime becomes tempting - maybe you’re saying you’d be happier to live in a country of even more unemployed criminal morons, but I can’t say I feel the same way.
You have to look beyond just your own needs and your own situation, you have to consider that tough love isn’t an optimal solution for everyone in all situations: for all the people in situations where it does help there are many where it does quite the opposite. In an economy and a society, what goes around quite literally comes around - you have to see ALL the system and know all the potential consequences just to give your own needs and situation any real meaningful context whatsoever. Otherwise you’re just imagining “what would it be like if social responsibility didn’t have to apply to me and others?” which is just fantasy.
I live check to check.
Some wealthy liberals do donate to charity.
I could just as easily say the democracy owns everything, and whatever you have is a privilege.
Don’t get me wrong, everyone has the right to what they need, but if you’re a multimillionaire-billionaire capitalist, it’s a privilege.
That’s absurd.
Again, how can you say that when the richest 1% controls 80% of the wealth?
How can you say that when the overwhelming majority of the 1st world economy is in private hands?
How can you say that when welfare is substantially below the poverty line?
When the middle class is starting to live like the working class, and the working class is starting to live like the unemployed, in spite of, or even because of tremendous economic growth?
How can you say that when we have shopping malls opening up everywhere?
Never in the history of the world has there been more development as now.
And now China, India and much of the third world are attempting to ape western materialism.
No it’s the very opposite, this is still the ‘golden’ age of capitalism playing itself out, just because it’s not precisely as pure as it was in the 19th century, doesn’t mean it’s not fundamentally, it, is.
Here you make it sound as tho socialism is to blame for the disparities.
It’s not.
Conditions for many-most of the workers were akin to slavery in the 19th century before the socialist reforms of the early 20th century.
You used to be able to get welfare a lot easier, and it used to pay a lot more, in Canada and many parts of the states, but since the 1980s, the Reagan and Thatcher era, we’ve seen a resurgence of classical liberalism (neoliberalism) in the Anglosphere.
The social safety net has gotten smaller and smaller, to the point now where it’s almost a joke, yet wages have stagnated, relative, to the ascending cost of living.
If it weren’t for a safety net, the working class would have all the more trouble becoming middle class, and members of the middle class would have a tougher time bouncing back from hard times.
Unfortunately the rich have skirted around some of the taxes while small businesses haven’t, because democrats in the states, or liberals in Canada, have both long since been bought and paid for by the corporations, and so have republicans and conservatives.
If we want more/real socialism we have to start voting for alternative parties, and becoming activists…which’ll probably never happen…but all this isn’t the fault of socialism, it’s mostly the fault of capitalism (and the hoodwinked masses) that created these enormous disparities in the first place, making them partly immune from the necessary socialist interventions that had to be implemented later on down the road to correct them.
So?
Is that really so horrible?
Would you prefer some people die on the street?
I’m a minimalist, I care as much about the environment as I do the lower classes.
I never cared for material things, never had any interest in them.
I always sought to maximize my free time and knowledge rather than the amount of stuff I had.
It’s not a slippery slope for me.
I said people who can’t work deserve a one bedroom apartment, some decent food to eat, enough bus faire to get around the city, you have not and will not ever hear me say we should all live like kings.
I believe needs and the environment ought to come first, not greed, that everyone who can’t work or is working should have their needs met, and that capitalists don’t need to have a 10th of what they have, and I have some well thought out ideas about what constitutes needs.
Wages have stagnated, relative, to the cost of living, as I’ve already demonstrated in prior posts, and which you haven’t countered.
Here, you’re changing your tune, you’re starting to sound like a relativist.
So socialism or other economic systems might work for other countries, just not America?
Are you sure?
What about in 50 years time…what about in 100?
Things are always changing, the America of the 19th century, when capitalism really started coming into its own, isn’t the America of the 21st.
Perhaps more socialism is exactly what America needs.
Just the state and infrastructure?
How come?
Why not privatize those things too?
Are you so certain these two areas are the only ones that shouldn’t be privatized?
Where do you draw the line and why, you haven’t given us an account.
Do you unthinkingly draw it there just because it goes against conventional dogmas you’ve been brought up with?
I like computers, but they have drawbacks, but I really don’t want to get into all that here/now.
As for cars, yes they’re nice, but there’s trade-offs, they cause accidents, noise, pollution, traffic.
They cost trillions of dollars in resources to manufacture and drive, a heavy toil on our environment, plus climate change, a heavier toll, which scientists are saying, if left unchecked, will likely be the death of civilization, if not life itself as we know it.
Cars make us fat, lazy.
They’ve become a prison, because we’re forced to commute longer hours to work.
We never get to enjoy our products because of artificial scarcity, food and housing being way overpriced, workers underpaid.
This is plainly not true for anyone with the roughest knowledge of history.
We can argue a lot over whether humanity is ultimately progressing or heading towards destruction.
We almost annihilated each other during the cold war.
WW3 over power and dwindling resources may be around the corner, it’s a real possibility.
Add to that climate change, the annihilation of a nature that has value of itself, intrinsically, and a nature that we’re still fundamentally dependent on, extrinsically.
A coronal mass ejection could wipe out all electronics overnight, sending us back into the dark age.
But even if we are fundamentally progressing, which I doubt, we at least certainly took many, many steps back temporarily on our way to utopia.
The Minoans and Mycenaeans rose and fell, the Greeks and the Romans rose and fell.
Grand and glorious civilizations are often followed by equally grim dark ages.
Not just in the west, but the Mayans withered away, scientists still aren’t sure exactly why, Egypt, Sumer, Persia, China, they all collapsed or nearly so at some point, and some of them are no longer with us today, Egyptians no longer speak the language of their ancestors, the ones who built the pyramids, or resemble them in any way culturally.
There will always be slaves, but sometimes we can help partly or fully emancipate our class.
If the people are fundamentally in control of their democracy, than whatever laws they make, will ultimately, in all likelihood serve them, that’s not slavery.
The condition of having to sell ones labor can for many people at many times/places be akin to slavery, especially if left unchecked by state, social or syndicate interventions.
Artificial scarcity should end, if 30 dollars an hour doesn’t cut it, if we can’t properly manage the consequences of that (we might be able to), than one alternative is, and I’ve already brought up a couple before, to have universal food and housing, similar to how Canada has universal education (but not postsecondary) and healthcare.
Food and housing are more important than education.
People will still have to work, but not nearly as much, food and rents will be much cheaper.
What people do with their free time will be up to them, if they want to continue working and inventing they can, but they won’t have to and many-most won’t as much as they are now.
We’ll produce a lot less stuff, much of it garbage anyway, but be able to use the stuff we do have to its fullest, enjoy it, instead of just using it to work us even harder and more efficiently, which’s how it’s largely being used now.
I agree, a lot of ‘Modern’ terms have been inverted, perverted, and twisted around, for political purposes and also lack of education and common sense. Public ignorance and apathy, general laziness, wears away civil liberties.
Competition is a good thing, and the very force that has led to western success and surplus. You make it sound like a bad thing. Competition means higher wages for workers, when employers compete for skilled, educated, loyal, and competent workers. Competition means lower consumer costs, when companies compete to sell the same good. Capitalism is good for these reasons. Success leads to monopolization, domination of a few corporations over small businesses and smaller corporations. Average people all enjoy the benefits of this. Thus it is hypocritical for you and others to speak against it, or speak of it negatively.
In the US, taxes are between 10%-30% from state to state and including federal taxation. I’d say the average person gets 22% taxed in the US, which is very low for a developed country, and even lower for a military power house. Perhaps taxes could go up. Perhaps they should stay the same. I don’t see them going down. Therefore your point, and Gloom’s point, are both moot. “The government”, society, third-parties, already receive a large chunk of people’s income, productivity, and welfare.
And you’re right to say, they’re not asking for it. You pay, or you go to jail. That’s force. So people asking for charity on top of this, as Gloom does, is rather insulting. Don’t you have a big enough piece of the pie as is, but you want more? That’s the socialist agenda, wanting more.
I disagree entirely.
After the employer or company owner pays you for the wage you shake hands upon, the employee owes and owns nothing. The deal is done. If employees want stock or ‘ownership’ of their work after wages, then that’s up to the employer and employee to decide. Some companies do offer stock options for their employees, especially in tech related fields where engineers could potentially copyright their work. It varies from field to field. A shoemaker isn’t going to have interest in selling the individual pairs of shoes, as it would be inefficient for employees to do so. Thus it is the business owner who benefits from companies as a whole.
I disagree and it sounds to me like you don’t know rich people personally. I know a few, and upper middle class people. Most of the rich are regular people. It’s not until the top 1% that elitism really becomes apparent, and even then, some of those people actually did work for what they gained. Or took risks for it. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, did they not earn what they made?
They took risks. They reaped the reward. It’s like roulette, where socialists want a cut of the earnings of the guy who bets it all on a number. That’s unjust.
Isn’t that the point I made to Gloom, that he needs to address macro-economics and not just his own inner-city dense population?
I understand that there are levels of responsibility, that many people are born in the lowest rims of society. That’s no excuse though. That’s the way morality, accountability, and responsibility work. Kant was right. It’s universal. It doesn’t matter how rich and silver-spooned you were. It doesn’t matter if you were born a slave. If individuals don’t take responsibility for their own lives then they are going nowhere fast. This applies economically too. The first thing Moderns should learn is their value in the work-force, and the wages to compensate. If you are not being paid what you’re worth, then quit. It’s perfectly legal, and, the fruits of capitalism and western industriousness.
That’s where your wrong. Workers don’t necessarily owe anything to “democracy”. It’s only until democracy forms mob rule, and threatens the working man with jail, that ‘taxes’ are enforced by the State. Democracy is the criminal. You have things backward.
As-if it could be another way? As-if risk, competition, sacrifice is not involved to amass wealth? As-if most of the rich do not deserve the wealth they worked for?
That’s the beauty about the US, for now, still. If you work, risk, sacrifice, then you earn the wealth you make. It’s socialists like you who want to cut into that and steal.
I have no qualms against the top 1%. It’s very much to the benefit of everybody. Why do you think oil and gas is affordable? Thank the top 1%. Thank the Bush family.
Yes it is, there is already an excess of socialism in place. Socialism is responsible for the current ~$10 per hour minimum wage. That’s social enforcement and regulation of the economy by mob-rule.
No, just no, not in the US.
I’d rather them die on the street instead of my living room. I don’t think the world’s poor, poverty, discontents are my personal responsibility. I’m not a judaeo-christian, I don’t believe all the Sins of the world are mine to inherit. In fact I see that it’s immoral for people to put and push their own suffering and negative choices onto others. You ought to agree, at least, that people are poor, criminal, and foul out of wrong choices throughout life. Hobos and bums don’t magically appear on the street for nothing. They made choices to get there, bad choices, wrong choices, mostly, for those who don’t want to be there.
You are implying that people who make good choices (have an apartment, job, house, assets, wife, children, etc) owe people who make bad choices and live without.
That’s what I’m against. Bullshit. People who make good choices deserve not to have to worry about taking in the world’s poor into their living rooms as-if their welfare is owed to somebody else, on what principle?
Are you Judaeo-Christian? Are everbody else’s problems, bad choices, yours? Jesus Christ is your idol?
I have $40,000 in school debts. You want to take that on for me? Go ahead, show me your charity.
You haven’t shown that wages stagnated, because they haven’t. Minimum wage keeps going up in the US. Females and blacks make more than ever before, arguably, at the cost of white males, who have ‘stagnated’ economically.
I’m pro-privatization. Scandinavian countries are already socialist for the most part with extremely high taxes.
I’m pro-libertarian/classic liberalism, pro-individualism, pro-freedoms. Smaller or no government, defund public education, defund the police force.
However my ideals are not reality, nor would they work for everybody else. They reflect my personal opinion and values, nothing more. What’s good for one isn’t good for everybody necessarily.
Whether or not US “needs” more socialism is irrelevant to the fact that socialism has already been growing, hence the higher tax rates and repeals of previously enjoyed individual liberties. For example, consider the attacks against the Second Amendment in the US, and the state trying to impose gun laws, restrictions, and all sorts of barriers, attempting to take self-defense out of the hands of individual Americans, to replace that with “the state”. It’s the popular example. Socialism needs rebuked, not encouragement.
US is still strongly classical liberalist. The problem is new generations of entitled whiny beta chumps who want to ‘vote’ themselves more money instead of working and earning it.
The national US minimum wage is $7.25 not $10 and it hasn’t increased nationally since 2009.
Actually US citizens pay more in taxes than Scandinavians do in their respective countries. From what I read, their flat tax rate of around 60% doesn’t begin until one earns 1.5 more than the average income. Do those other countries pay all the national, state, and local taxes on top of their income taxes, such as sales tax, state tax, county tax, hotel/entertainment tax, inheritance tax, tobacco tax, alcohol tax, gasoline tax, etc, etc? No, they don’t and that makes USA taxes accumulatively higher than all other 1st world countries.
Important distinction here: monopolisation in a capitalist environment theoretically leads to higher prices than what they would be if competition undercut them and offered a similar enough product at a lower price, forcing a response etc. Monopolisation by the government in a non-capitalist environment doesn’t have the same effect because there isn’t incentive for any owner to push up prices for more profit (since there’s no comparable product, so you either pay more or go without entirely). In this case competition is a bad thing. No hypocrisy here - we don’t see so much benefit once competitions start to be won, once that happens the benefits we still enjoy were already established and still exist, despite starting to go bad. There is inertia because the products are already “out there” providing value after they were sold at a time when things were better.
Competition can be a good thing when the Classical Liberal theory of perfect competition is approached, but in practice companies use things like advertising to exploit consumer irrationality such that they can forge their own pseudo-monopoly from what is essentially the same product as others being seen more as a product in its own right. Economies of scale, mergers and acquisitions, the tendency in a competitive environment is highly in favour of any company that happens to get an edge - the only disadvantages are the possibility of losing track of the minutia and that since bigger sums are involved, things can go wrong in a bigger way. But good management and delegation can prevent that.
There need to be factors that keep competitions from being won. I watched an interesting video on youtube that described how these economic concepts occur in nature with application to vegetation. We really see the benefits of diversity and perfect competition in hostile and poor environments - where there are natural controls to curtail the wins of any one species over another. Once environments become rich and hospitable, winners can pull away, diversity and competition shrivel.
THIS is the reason that Capitalism is so praised - it naturally lent itself to enriching our formerly poorer and more diverse environments.
It’s also the reason why it is no longer appropriate.
We still enjoy the prosperity it brought about because it’s still present in society, but we are coming to enjoy it less and less over time.
I appreciate what it did, but it’s entirely appropriate to speak of it negatively now.
Yes, we have a public sector in western economies. You are not wrong. The point is not whether or not we have too much or too little taxation, it’s that we have measures in place to stem inequality. A society that has the most mobility and takes advantage of as much of the population as possible gives fair opportunity and doesn’t distance the top from the bottom to such a degree that there’s a complete disconnect. Competition needs to be kept in check for optimal outcome - that’s what government should be for, but at the moment it’s not.
When force still doesn’t do the job by itself, and it doesn’t because the government isn’t doing the job its supposed to do (as I just mentioned above), then yes, we still need charity - at least the rich won’t whine about charity as much, because it feels like it’s their own choice, when really they’re just doing it for their own reputation and to alleviate any guilt they may or may not feel. This is quite apparent because throwing money at something isn’t doing actually anything yourself, it’s getting other people to care so you don’t have to, and the money is going towards those running the charity as well as the actual cause - sometimes people are literally making money out of you thinking you’re putting all your money towards people who need it. Also the charities people often choose tend to be in their own interest anyway - if they really cared about the poor, they wouldn’t just donate to them, they’d fight to change the system that makes them poor even though it’s the same system that makes them rich. As if. And it’s not like they wouldn’t be able to continue to offer what they offered to make them rich if the standard deviations of income distributions were shrunk, they’re just being (understandably?) selfish.
What a ridiculous thing to say.
As if that’s not the case for capitalism many times more so.
There is a difference between communicating consent and feeling consent. You can give consent without really consenting if there is a power imbalance and/or a feeling of choice. The deal is done, but that doesn’t fully justify it, I’m sorry. If unemployment was a viable option for anyone, low skilled workers wouldn’t be forced to consent to bad deals just to get by. Funding unemployment is actually a highly valuable economic and moral device. The employed love to hate on them out of jealousy and/or high-horse virtue ethics, but they fulfill an inevitable if not a necessary role nonetheless.
Yes it is possible to get the employees in on some of the boons that the employer enjoys, and in some cases this happens and that’s great. In most case this doesn’t happen and that’s not great. Employers benefit from low skilled work just as much as they do from high skilled work (if not more because it’s cheaper due to high supply), so in the former case this just contributes to inequality even more.
I’m just going by their own words - I believe my comment about a pissing contest was in reference to a quote by Donald Trump who said it wasn’t about the money for him, it was about keeping score. You see examples of the super-rich doing this all the time, trying to outdo each other with the biggest super-yacht for example. I don’t know these people, but there’s plenty of coverage on their petty rivalries. Let them keep score, sure, just not with currency. I grew up in the upper middle class and I know very well how just as pettily competitive they are.
Bill Gates was instrumental in developing computer technology in its infancy. That’s awesome and I’m so glad for people like that and their hard work - let them be rewarded. But with incomes that are in excess of entire countries’ GDPs? No, that’s beyond ridiculous. How can one person, in themselves I mean, be more valuable than entire countries of people? The inventions he had a part in developing benefited loads of people to a huge extent, I know, but come on - on a human level this has no justification. Warren Buffet - didn’t he just make good investment decisions? I’m sure there’s an element of skill involved, but statistically someone was going to emerge lucky in that one. As if he was the only one with these skills who tried to do exactly the same thing… And as I said, funding enterprises that pay their workers less than the workers earn the company isn’t productivity - there’s no virtue to what he did. Government can fund things too, big whoop.
Very wrong.
Behaviour is entirely a result of an environment-genetic interaction. In a bad environment, no matter how good the genes, this is going to result in irresponsible behaviours. If nothing is done about this and it’s just allowed to perpetuate, there is no better excuse. It’s the responsibility of those who get on the lucky side of this crap-shoot to change these bad environments, but they don’t because of loss aversion and being too worried about themselves losing their advantage that they didn’t choose. And they are usually guilty of the same kind of common ignorance that you showed about behaviour in the above quote. The thing about free will in a deterministic universe is that you are “free” to choose, but you didn’t choose to make that choice - that choice was determined by the environment-gene interaction that occurred without your will. As if poor people are choosing to stay poor
Yes, some slaves and some downtrodden and unlucky starters manage to pull through, equally not out of any Kantian deontology or lofty privileged philosophy, but because of circumstances working in their favour despite the odds being against them - they aren’t 100%, a tiny minority will pull through.
The whole “take responsibility” thing is very popular at the moment, and it works on plenty of people which is great, but it won’t and can’t on many others - don’t assume a necessarily universality of morality when science proves otherwise.
And no, whilst quitting an exploitative role is perfectly legal, the alternatives - or at least the only ones you might know/be able to do - are often worse. So you don’t quit. Clearly, very clearly, this is the case for a great many people or otherwise we wouldn’t still see this sad situation everywhere all the time.
It’s not my responsibility, I didn’t inherit billions of dollars from my ancestors who exploited the environment, the economy and the vulnerable under a largely fraudulent, rigged system.
That’s your opinion.
Property is make believe, each individual and/or collective gets to draw the lines wherever they see fit, if they draw them at all, and then we can discuss the implications and ramifications of drawing them here and/or there.
This is how I see it: just because you pay government to protect a place for you, doesn’t make it yours, if you rarely or never physically occupy or occupied it, than it’s a kind of theft from those who’re occupying it now.
That’s not the point, the point is this is fundamentally a capitalist system, contrary to your assertion that it isn’t.
Competition is also physical.
Capitalists have incorporated corporatism in order to further monopolize the economy.
The rich have money but the poor have numbers, we’ll just have to see which class wins out in the end.
Winning isn’t absolute tho, rather battles are won/lost, class warfare never ends.
There’s no utopia, only better/worse conditions for some/many.
I never said they were your responsibility, I said they were partly the responsibility of capitalists, and I gave reasons.
I’m not a Judeo-Christian either, not only am I an atheist, but I don’t believe we’re all equally responsible for everything bad or wrong that happens to people, that was never my point.
Some poor people are more responsible for their circumstances than others.
You paint the poor with a broad brush, but perhaps I paint capitalists with a broad brush too, some capitalist are better/worse than others, but as a whole it’s a bad, or at least a now largely obsolete system.
This isn’t about charity, it’s about taking back what’s arguably ours, mainly, but also about how we and the environment could probably do more good with it than they could.
The cost of living has gone up significantly more than wages have gone up.
I’m not sure if they’re mostly socialist, I’ll have to do more research on them, from what I know all western countries are basically degrees of capitalist.
I’m either an eco-socialist or an anarchist, what I am is in my signature.
There’s no such thing as an absolute win/win, but in my opinion my ideals would make life better for many-most people living today in the west.
Not all socialists think alike.
Originally socialists were pro-direct democracy and militias, that is to say, if government should exist at all, every able bodied citizen should be a politician, legislator and enforcer, and so pro-gun. I’m pro-gun.
While I hope the state can make life better in some ways, I don’t trust it as much as you think.
The only chumps here are the ones who vote in their own servitude and slavery.
