Yeah, well, I’m no communist! There shouldn’t even be a minimum wage, let the free market decide!
— Temporarily inconvenienced billionaires at my workplace.
There shouldn’t be a minimum wage! The free market should decide!
If everyone had a baseline standard of living, capitalists could pay whatever they wanted. And if their proposed wage wasn’t worth doing, then no one would do it.
No one would do it
Unskilled labor does not have the luxury to just “not do it”. The capitalists know this, which is why they depress wages as far as they can to keep an entire class of workers under water.
If I were to lose my job, which can happen at any time working in a non-union shop in an at-will state, I would not be able to go anywhere and receive comparable wages in my area. I am studying to get certifications in a different industry that would give me some amount of freedom. For now, I work at the mercy of my employer.
The free market is a scam. It will take massive changes, paradigm shifts, to create an environment where the workers are free to go work where they choose, and be given actually competitive compensation.
Unskilled labor is a myth created by the ownership class.
Unskilled labor as in, I do not have any degrees or certifications that I can simply take to a new employer to leverage anything above starting at the bottom. This will almost always mean making less money. At-will employment mixed with unequal application of company rules and policy means that any day at work could be my last. Unemployment checks are a joke, and would not even cover my rent.
What would you call that?
Labor
It’s really not, there’s jobs out there that can be learned in a week on the job, and people who don’t have any qualifications to do much else. If you’re one of those, you’re a special kind of fucked, because you’re among the easiest people to replace.
There’s trained and highly trained labor. All labor takes some degree of education and training, but some labor takes more dedication than that, such as medicine.
But you’re only obligated to work under the threat of illegal homelessness. That’s not a free market, that’s coercion.
If your basic needs were guaranteed, then unskilled labour especially would dictate the value of work in a truly free market. And if you truly can’t find a job that will satisfy your desired lifestyle, you won’t die or be imprisoned or suffer from illness.
How would my basic needs be guaranteed? If the government is going to provide the social safety nets they owe to us, then why not have them regulate labor, providing basic labor needs being guaranteed? Unions would be great, but there will be plenty of businesses that will not have them. Why not provide a safety net to the workers who will inevitably fall between the cracks?
The government shouldn’t be providing safety nets, it should be maintaining the floor to ensure all citizens’ basic needs are met. There should be no “what ifs”.
The labour needs are already met, and would continue to be met in a free market where labour was optional for the labourer because people have wants. If you believe the government would need to ensure that labour needs are met, you’re believing the capitalist lie that foundational labour must be bought under threat of violence.
That only works if there is a social safety net, or every worker needs to have 6 months worth of savings. Otherwise it’s accepting a low wage vs no food, no house making barely a living. Which would you choose?
The free market assumes abundant choice and perfect information. And that’s why we have monopolies and massive marketing to counter that.
Just say the billionaires are communists
You, I like.
There shouldn’t even be a minimum wage, let the free market decide!
And it did, sadly. 2/3 of the US states still use the federal minimum wage as a guide, even though it doesn’t even purchase a cup of coffee these days.
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pay by allowing employees to take home expired food instead of making them throw it away.
This is a person who thinks society would be better if stores gave workers expired food instead of money.
They meant the food as a bonus, not in place of living wages, which is what they want with unions and healthy worker benefits we all deserve.
No they didn’t, they specifically said workers might accept lower than minimum wage if walmart was allowed to give them expired food in liu of meeting minimum wage, and that somehow this will give workers more leverage and not less. They say they want strong unions, but only mention policy that would help the union’s enemy. Whether they know it or not, they’re a rightwing libertarian trying to pretend blatantly antiworker policy somehow helps workers.
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Why wouldn’t walmart cut wages further if allowed to?
If it wasn’t literally illegal they wouldn’t even pay real money. We know this because its what companies did in the past.
The existence of millions of sub-livable wage jobs isn’t going to make walmart increase its wages, I feel like you’re trying to bend reality to pretend removing restrictions on capitalists exploiting workers somehow helps workers.
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Either because unions force them or because better jobs are available.
And you think removing minimum wage would cause unions to become stronger and better jobs be made available?
The market must be turned to the advantage of the workers.
This is done by forcing the capitalists to operate on our terms, not letting them exploit workers with even less regulation wtf?
Sub-livable doesn’t help. But if sub-mimimum wage comes with a better package, e.g. child care or health coverage or short commute, then it creates a livable competing option that forces Walmart to rise wages.
A company giving its employees expired food instead of money isn’t going to make other companies increase wages.
With enough jobs nobody has to work for sub-minimum wage unless it’s to their advantage.
??? People are already forced to work for unsustainable wages and end up in debt or working while homeless.
It really feels like you started out with the assumption that capitalism is the best possible solution for everybody and then went backwards to figure out why this isn’t matching observations.
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I think more power from having a free market outweights the shame of eating expired food.
You argument is that I should take a pay cut, and all I have to do is lower my material conditions.
You are trending toward slavery. Get your fucking head checked.
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You’re operating on the false premise that a decent wage and decent working conditions are mutually exclusive and that is the primary flaw in your entire argument.
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What is this far right dreck doing in this com?
This is how Sweden works and why Sweden has been blocking an EU minimum wage. The unions are supposed to ensure reasonable wages and working conditions, which they have done for the most part.
Omg, I have to say this way too often. The amount of people who think capitalism is commerce is too darn high.
Honestly we need to explain this shit more often. As soon as people understand exactly how much a billion dollars is they get visibly angry.
“You know what the difference is between a million dollars and a billion dollars? About a billion dollars.”
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You are not a capitalist. You are capital.
Basically we’re all serfs.
And increasingly ill-treated ones.
Serfs were tied to the land, and produced what they actually, directly used, as well as traded their surplus for goods. The rise of capitalism came alongside expelling the serfs from the land, turning them into wage laborers.
The serfs could be expelled because while the serfs were not free to leave, it was the lords who actually owned the land.
The analogy is not prefect, but not terrible.
The lords did own the land, but expelling the serfs could not be done simply by telling the serfs to leave. There was a large accumulation that was forced on the serfs. Feudalism was a fundamentally distinct class society from capitalism.
This is the dialogue people should be having with the ones who are misguided, if even a few people understand it that’s progress
these are important distinctions that are often glossed over and obscured: capitalist vs supporter of capitalism; Republican vs Republican-aligned voter. terms that make one seem like part of the in-group when they’re not; terms that are nouns rather than verbs, that make an idea seem like an identity, so that changing your mind seems like uprooting your whole personality
Technically small companies also are just employees. Risks outsourced and it can be easily killed away when the bigger company doesn’t need them anymore. That’s so fucked up and governments all around protect this behavior.
That’s a very narrow view.
Many or most small companies have many customers - they’re not subcontracting to a single upstream provider.
In the case of small subcontractors, what you’re talking about is a necessary risk management strategy. It’s not a sneaky underhanded contrivance on the part of large companies. Its how “limited liability” is intended to work.
Of course governments protect this because it’s essential to a functional economy. You may as well complain about insurance or something.
to be fair there is a lot to complain about the existence of insurance, too
insurance is usually necessary when essential services like Healthcare are not fully nationalized/subsidized.
only exception I can think of is maybe some kind of fire or other destruction insurance, but even so it should be government provided.
There may be more exceptions i am not immediately thinking of, but basically, insurance how it exists right now is extremely fucking predatory and one of the worst things about capitalism - especially health insurance.
Health insurance is an exception amongst insurances.
The primary form of insurance is paying a third party to take on a risk on your behalf.
For example, if my business owns a truck, but I don’t want to take the risk that it might be stolen or be involved in an accident, I can pay someone else to take that risk. There’s nothing wrong with that and it’s a normal part of business.
However, there’s all sorts of weird things called insurance that are really something else. Life insurance is my favourite awful example. Some policies are ok, like I have $x left to pay on my mortgage, so I can get a life insurance policy for a similar amount and at least if I die my family will have the house paid off. Others are a weird kind of savings plan, where you pay a lot more but get a big pay out once you reach a certain age.
Health insurance in the US is obviously tangled up with politics and profiteering and is more like a complicated extortion plan than insurance.
As a general guide, any insurance you intend to make a claim on is usually problematic.
i mean, that all makes a lot of sense, and you’re not wrong, I just believe insurance ought to be a public service.
If the purpose of insurance is to spread risk so that people can still live their lives when unforeseen events happen, that benefits a country, that is a risk the government should be shouldering.
Anyway, I have found myself on a tangent. I guess fundamentally I don’t disagree with the concept of insurance, my biggest complaints are regarding the execution of it within capitalism, but you already basically said what I wanted to about health insurance in particular.
No, that’s not essential to a functional economy. That’s a predatory thing.
A robust and intelligent rebuttal. I find myself convinced.
If you work you are not a capitalist.
The whole point of capitalism is making money without working.
The petite bourgeoisie exist as laboring capitalists, they aren’t really working class but they aren’t haut bourgeois either.
Haut, Bourgeois is masculine.
Ah, thanks!
De rien mon ami(e).
I hate the “it has existed since caveman times.” Trading is an action and a concept, something we had always, meanwhile capitalism is just a system developed by the spooky scary muslims.
Lots of people back then worked in a version of gift economy. Trade was with outsiders and was more like a mob meeting with backup standing behind the ones doing the bartering. There was no central authority to make trade clean and board toom style.
Why “false class solidarity”. I think it’s honest, if misplaced, solidarity. Temporarily embarrassed millionaire and all that.
Lukacs actually has a term for that - false consciousness and it is a massive problem
The issue even more dire, those who exploited by capitalist, most of them doesn’t even understand “word” anymore.
Many GenZ-ers can’t even read at a basic level expected from an adult. It’s by design.
I wouldn’t say it’s by design, but a convenient coincidence or side effect.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but your tiny ETF portfolio does not make you an investor either.
Why not?
Unless you’re a boomer, as they own most of the economy through their different investments and other holdings. That’s who capitalism is working for. Average American owns jack shit, billionaires all together own abour 10 trillion, baby boomers all together own over 80 trillion. That’s why they’re not just part of the problem, they’re the main course.
There are poor boomers as well. This is not about age, but about wealth
On average, they’re millionaires. That’s why they’re doing their best to pull the ladder up after themselves. Majority of them benefit when you’re paid less.
On average, yes, but that’s distorted by the wealthy having a lot of money.
The median boomer has less than $400k, and most of that is in their home.
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/smart-money/average-net-worth-by-age
Well yeah, the Powell memo set the conservative strategies for convincing working class individuals that they’re investors and it was in their best interest to support pro-corporate legislation back in the 70s
We are all operating under the system of capitalism. Call it commerce, whatever, its commerce in a capitalist system.
Dont get me wrong, Im not going to work everyday to be a capitalist but there is no doubt in my mind Im doing capitalism.
That’s the exact mindset OP is trying to expose. You are a participant in capitalism, but you are most likely not a capitalist. And that is true for 99.9% of people probably
And I agree with them.
The are two definitions of capitalist, one is a person that supports capitalism regardless of their class. It’s possible for a person to recognize that they’re a worker and consumer, and unlikely to ever have any capitol outside of their house and retirement accounts, and maybe not even that, and still think capitalism is the best system for workers to live under. Dumb, but possible, and seemingly widespread.
Supporting it doesn’t make them a part of it. If you want to own a home but dont, you are not a homeowner
Homeowner does not have a second definition of supporting homeownership regardless of whether or not you own a home. You can absolutely support homeownership if you don’t own one.
The word for a person that supports capitalism regardless of class and amount of capital, is capitalist.
And being “a part of it” is something else altogether, separate from whether or not you support it, or have any capital. If you live under it, like it or not, you are part of it, even if you don’t own shit.
There’s been a word for someone who supports capitalism for 200 years, its liberal.
Liberalism encompasses more than just capitalism. The word for someone that supports capitalism is capitalist.
Have you read any serious work by any of the major liberal philosophers or analysis of their works, or are you going off vibes?
The core of liberalism, when faced with its various contradictions, has always been the freedom of the capitalist class to exploit the working class.
Commerce is not capitalism
Wood is not a chair
And, even if I’m not an owner of capital, I think it’s a better system than most of the systems that have come before it.
Capitalism is the result of well-intentioned people looking at feudalism / manorialism and saying “that system is really fucked, let’s see if we can improve it”. And, they did. All out capitalism is horrible, but mix in some socialism and it seems to work fairly well. All out socialism has been tried and inevitably fails.
But, if we’re going to do capitalism, we should really do it the way that the people who originally proposed it intended. They knew that the main benefit of capitalism was that there was competition. Without competition, it inevitably becomes winner-take-all, which just basically reverts to feudalism. For competition to work the government has to actively break up big, powerful companies, and the government has to be significantly more influential / powerful than all the businesses or people that it regulates (otherwise they’ll just corrupt or ignore the regulations).
A proper capitalist system wouldn’t have billionaires, because billionaires are evidence that competition has failed.
Capitalism did not arise because it was invented, it grew out of mercantalists in feudalism planting roots and gaining machinery like the steam engine, which grew into capitalism. This is why political economists analyzed capitalism after it had arisen.
The entire idea that capitalism was “designed” is confusing and incorrect. Capitalism is working exactly as it should, meaning it is working into its eventual demise, as a system that arose from the advancement in human production.
Capitalism required that serfs be allowed to leave the lands that they were tied to to take jobs in factories. Serfs didn’t have the right to look for jobs elsewhere, the law required that they live and work there entire lives on the same patch of land on which they were born.
Allowing serfs to go work in factories required laws to be changed. Getting those laws changed required making an argument to the people with the power to change those laws. The theory of “capitalism” was that argument.
You’re looking at it too much from the superstructure, and not from the base, which is why those laws changed in the first place. It wasn’t an argument that ended feudalism, it was the development of the steam engine and the growth of mercantilists. As these groups formed a budding capitalist class, they overpowered the old aristocracy.
Im not willing to just say capitalism is the best just because it had some good results. I think we can be more imaginative.
I’m not saying it’s the best either. But, it may be the best that we’ve tried so far among systems that have actually worked in a scale bigger than a few hundred individuals, or in a time span lasting at least a decade.
We should definitely keep experimenting and trying to find a better system. In fact, we’ve already found a better system, and that’s a mixed economy with capitalism for some things, and socialism for others. I think only a crazy person would want a capitalist fire department, capitalist food safety inspectors, purely capitalist education of children, etc. And, it’s only the US that thinks that a capitalist health care system is possible. Virtually every other country thinks that’s just crazy.
We should also strive to have the best possible capitalist system, if it’s what we’re stuck with for now. Just because there may be a better system out there doesn’t mean we should give up on trying to regulate privately owned companies and put all our efforts into just coming up with a new system, or overthrowing the system. Monopolies should be smashed, billionaires should be taxed out of existence, and the central government should be reinforced so that it is bigger, stronger and smarter than all the companies out there that it’s regulating. Only then can we have the best possible version of capitalism (or at least the part of the mixed system that is capitalist).
Rarely do i find a gem of a person like you. Its been a pleasure. You give me hope.
… at least this time around =P
I agree. I get the point she’s making but I think she’s wrong about the details. Your skills and experience are your capital, and you sell the products of them to employers. Everybody who has a job is also running a business. I don’t think most people give themselves credit for that.
