this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
355 points (81.4% liked)
Showerthoughts
30367 readers
550 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- If you feel strongly that you want politics back, please volunteer as a mod.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You think working for a corporation is the same as living under a dictatorship?
Yeah, this thought is someone trying to compare apples to oranges.
Then there’s the throw away comment of how you barely know anyone there, that’s a personal thing. I work for a small company now but I used to work for a hospital with over 2,000 employees, I didn’t know most of them but I knew the 100 or so people I interacted with pretty well and did things outside of work with many of them on more than one occasion.
As I walk through the front door of my air-conditioned office building and say hello to the receptionist I can't help but feel this is just what it was like living under Marcos or Pinochet.
/s
Plenty of people live comfortable lives under dictatorship, you can compare that office worker to a citizen in Qatar and they'd probably live similar lives materially.
You could also compare the sweat shop worker for the company that office workers company contracts their manufacturing out to, to the migrant pseudo-slave workers in Qatar.
Think you had a typo there^
To the level that the corporation has control over your life, yeah. What do you think banana republics are? The more the company can control your life, the more its undemocratic nature becomes apparent. Working for a small company in a competitive market might not look like a company town, but it has the same fundamental structure as one. The main difference is that the small company has to offer a good deal to their employees compared to competitors. If the company is the only hirer in town, then they'll suddenly not have as much motivation to treat you well. If they control the housing, means of travel, and cops as well, you're basically enslaved.
Exactly. It's soul-crushing, but generally not body-crushing.
The CEO can take away your livelihood at a whim, destroying your future career, and everyone has to tug the forelock.
Dictatorships are not bad in and of themselves. A benign dictatorship could be the most effective form of governing, there's just no mechanism to stop them when they stop being benign.
And on the flip side a CEO can improve and expand many people’s careers and therefore wealth.
A dictatorship like Mao Zedong, Mussolini, Hitler, etc can flow all the wealth and power to themselves, oppressing the people under them.
The point it: You can’t talk about best case scenario of one and not the other. Usually, as it’s human nature, both are going to sequester wealth and power for themselves over the people under them, but a bad dictatorship is leagues worse than a bad company/CEO.
Yeah, there's good CEOs and bad ones. But the hierarchical power structure is the same.
CEOs are like kings of their empire.
HR is like the court jester