this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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Yes, haha very funny, let's all become cannibals of the rich. I'm sure that everyone will get a mouthful of that yummy long pig. What are the poor going to eat after that?
Yeah, it's not like food grows on trees!
Is it fair to assume you have those trees growing outside your house?
Personally, I have a flock of chickens running around the yard, but only one sad little plum tree that has a couple years yet before I will have enough extras for neighbors or canning. Thinking about putting some potatoes in the ground in the spring though.
Yes?
Why is that so hard to believe?
It isn't. That is why I mentioned my own plum tree and chickens. Was just curious if you were trying to blow smoke up my ass.
Even if I don't have those trees, those that have excess can share with those who do not.
Growing enough food to feed even one family takes time, effort, and resources. I am sure they would be glad to share, if you are willing to trade one of those things. Pretty quickly we end up working for or bartering with those guys though.
You just have the workers go to the same plants produce the same food and give it away instead of allowing profits to go to the billionaires. The system is in place we just need to ignore the dumb fucks siphoning everything away. We already produce excess, and we can continue to do so....
We produce excess of something things, but usually that is in trade for not producing enough of others. Scarcity is not a creation of the uber rich, it just exacerbated by them.
Someone would have to decide whether the avocado farm, almond farm, or the winery got more water in California. Right now it is mostly decided by economic power and a byzantine set of rules and laws dictating who owns the water. Unless we want farmers killing each other over it, we would need to put a new system in place.
40% of food is thrown out in the US every year, food scarcity is not an issue in the US at least. Sure there are certain decisions that need to be made but once again, these decisions are not required to be done by the billionaire class and are already being handled by your lower level municipality workers. It wouldn't delve into chaos because Joe stopped telling investors why they should invest, we simply need to forget about there bullshit profit motives and manage resources without a dollar valuation and instead based on how scarce the resource and its utilitarian value is when utilized in a specific process.
Exactly scarcity is the the means at which we can judge how something can be utilized, when you complicate that with dollar valuations instead of the utility and efficiency it can generate you end up in a corrupt broken system extracting wealth to those who can name prices, instead of proper resource allocation that can benefit all.
As stated it's currently handled by municipality workers who can continue with the current process or switch to one which values the utilitarian output of a decision versus its economic value. None of the issues described are solved by or aided by the inclusion of a billionaire class, instead they, as you stated, exacerbated by such classes of individuals.
If you live in the eastern part of the US, you might find it interesting to look up water rights west of the Mississippi; it is an absolute madhouse.
Spent a year in Colorado not long ago. The water that fell from the sky was owned by someone else before it even hit the ground, though I think I heard that there were some changes specifically in regards to rain barrels since I left.
I'll have to check out how the west coast allocate water than should be an interesting rabbit whole to dive into.
I mean, even if that's the case, who enforces the rights to "sell" that water? I'd assume it's some lower level employees or still municipality government that could just also up and not give a shit that some billionaire has staked claims to sell this water to whoever they please instead of allowing it to flow to those in need. Almost all the claims of ownership from those obscenely rich are more or less just expected to be respected and enforced by those who suffer from their exploitation, most systems could continue on tomorrow and gain efficiency I'd we gave the middle finger to the wealth hoarders and banks.
I don't really know how true it is, but my horticulture buddy up there made it sound like the water flowed through a number of small farms that really weren't worth much until the population boom made land prices sky-rocket over the last 20 years.
The bigger issue in the area is that it is more how long the water rights have been retained. If your family bought your farm 150 years ago, you will get your water before the person that bought theirs 20 years ago. It doesn't matter in wet years, but as soon as a drought hits the 150 year farm will get 80-100% of their water, while the 20 year farm will be lucky if they get 20%. If you bought water rights last year, you better conserve your seed and sell your animals quickly because you aren't getting any water.
In a way it is completely fair, it isn't the long-term farmers fault that the state is having an unsustainable population explosion. However, as one of those new residents who really didn't understand the local laws when I moved there, I hated it.
And the problem with that is?
I don't have a problem with it, but it is just a simplified version or maybe predecessor of what we have now.
Without billionaires hoarding their wealth, yes.
Will they though?
The same food they are forced to slave away to produce. Are you fucking stupid? Poor people are literally the foundation of your society not some executive flying around to talk to clients. Literally fuck off. IT has access to security controls in an org. Accountants can access funds if they need as they have the rights. Billionaires add nothing of value to this society nor to its functioning. The driver who delivers your produce, the farmer who produces it, the factory worker who packages it, the restaurant employees who cook and serve you, the gas station clerk who turns your pump on and off, the grocery store workers, the municipality workers managing waste water and electrical infrastructure, all the jobs foundational to a society are not done from billionaires and seeing the rich gone tomorrow would not change that instead it would release a burden and allow progress. Honestly it takes just a miniscule of common sense to understand this, which shows how disconnected and stupid the billionaire class and those who defend it are.
Please stop arguing against your own fantasies of what I might think and actually comment on what I said. Doing the former makes for nice campaign speeches, but we aren't politicians.
Nowhere here did I say billionaires are a good necessary parts of society and we should support them. Crashing the economy will cause mass starvation, but not by those who have the resources and foresight to prepare for turbulent times.
Agreed, but those poor people depend on having a useful currency to trade for tools to make more food. If you crash the economy the little piece of paper we trade around right now will become worthless and we will be back to bartering until someone prints new paper or mints a new specie to use.
The guy making the tools can't do anything with 100,000 heads of lettuce, he needs something he can pay metallurgists with, who in-turn need something to pay the miners with. That lettuce is going to rot before it changes hands enough times to get into someone's belly.
You are too ingrained with a monetary system you cant even imagine a system in which one doesn't exist. The miner doesn't need a currency when his food and tools are provided for. The metallurgist doesn't need to sell tools when they can give away the excess. The farmer doesn't need to sell his food when he can give away the excess. We don't need constant accumulation to distribute resources in an efficient manner. Especially when the only reason these excess products weren't given away in the first place is profit motive. Not to mention most of the labor intensive work could be outsourced to robotics where we not hoarding the physical resources for profit and war time motives, making them overtly expensive.
We live in a time where automation and robotics could allow us much more freedom and dignity however we have allowed those at the top too use that efficiency to hoard profits and resources as power management tools instead of utilizing these resources for growth and equity across our species.
I can imagine it, but only in a post-scarcity society. It just doesn't seem plausible to me until we are at least a Type 1 Civilization, more likely Type 2.
When two people want or need the same limited resource how do you decide who gets it? Money solves that issue. While it is a poor solution, I have yet to see something that wouldn't have just as many problems, though admittedly different ones
Even if we had post-scarcity potential, I am not at all sure human nature would allow it. Some people have a fundamental need to stand above other people, others have a fundamental need to collect things, and then there are takers. Takers being those who would gladly take from others but would never give away their own stuff without being forced, even if it was pure excess.
I agree that we are definitely approaching an era where robotics/automation could replace the need for most human labor. Though I don't really think we are there yet. One of my favorite sayings a few years back was, "humans should be in the business of thinking and creating, not laboring." Sure I can buy a "perfect" machine made wooden chair but there is a certain character and richness to having one an artisan made.
I was a fan of taxing the labor of robots that replaced humans and using those funds to cover a UBI long before I ever heard the name Andrew Yang, though even that doesn't get rid of the monetary system.