this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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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.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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Having to have a job just to get nourishment or a place to sleep shouldn’t be the game
If people can hoard money well beyond this need and could house an entire nation on what 1% make, capitalism as a necessity to survive is a lie.
Eat the rich.
Life doesn't have to be high stakes, there is only artificial scarcity. We have the resources to take care of everyone on the planet and live in harmony with nature.
We can split the atom, put a super computer in every pocket and build a logistics system to air freight me a bowling ball over night from anywhere to my door if I pay enough.
The stars are ours as a species if we choose, but not this way.
Eat the rich.
You can hunt and forage and live for free without a job. But if you want to enjoy the work of others - you must pay.
No one is saying that society doesn't offer efficiencies over rugged invidualism but that the excess value that could go towards benefiting the living quality of all is hoarded by the rich. Eat the rich.
What excess value? Ever tried to produce it yourself?
Yes, every single day my man. I produce excess of the product that I make (I'm a coffee roaster), that is I produce more coffee in a day than I am able to consume myself. Due to my experience I am able to produce at not only a higher yield per hour than an inexperienced person would be able to but I'd also argue a higher quality product. Every single worker does this in some manner I luckily work for a company that shares my values and pays a fair chunk of that value I create back to me, our owners main job is sourcing coffee bean for us to roast and managing the business which he is paid for. In larger corporations the owners are the stockholders who do no actual production or value adding tasks of their own yet they reap a large chunk of the value created by their employees.
If we're talking about "larger corporations" then we're talking about publicly traded companies. The stockholder is YOU. Maybe you should spend a bit of time learning the basics of economics.
That's not how stocks work, in the UK or the US. You've demonstrated throughout this entire comment section that you don't understand what you're talking about with those "basic economics"
A stockholder is someone who buys stocks. Working for a company does not mean you are a stockholder. And you cannot buy stocks with all that freely forged food that's everywhere in the forests around all of us.
You're great at trolling, maybe leave the economics to everyone else tho.
Ahaha! Ok. Maybe you should stop skipping school for once.
I'm not in school, I graduated and now am working for a company. Which I'm not a stockholder in because that's not how it works. I AM a stockholder in other companies because I'm trying to profit off this broken fucked up system in any little way I can.
Maybe you should try buying stocks so you can see what the financial world looks like
You don't know what you're talking about. Confidently incorrect.
Great argument! Shows deep knowledge of the topic and humongous intellect.
No point in arguing with the ignorant. Have a good one mate.
Lol 😅
The problem is not paying others for their labor.
The problem happens when people who labor, starve because of the greed of others.
I am happy to pay amazon to deliver my goods. But how much does amazon pay the deliverer?
The problem is not with the masses, it is with the greedy few.
Billionaires should not exist.
Amazon pays what they think their drivers are worth. If the drivers are not happy about it, they're free to sell their services elsewhere.
So you support unionisation of workers to demand higher wages? Because you seem ignorant of the fact people DO work and are NOT being paid a living wage for that work. The world doesn't owe billionaires anything either.
Where did I say a thing about unions? Also if someone is being paid only X amount of money that means that the value of what they produce is X. Not enough for a living? Try producing better goods and services.
Lol take an economics class.
Capitalism is based on the idea that workers are paid less than the value they create. How do you think businesses make profits?
Nobody who works 40 hours a week should be unable to afford food, rent and savings.
You think McDonalds gives its workers more money for producing better hamburgers? Jfc
You sound like the only conservative kid at your high school who carries a briefcase and eats lunch alone.
There are no workers in capitalism. Commie ignorance is ridiculous.
Well you certainly sound unemployable
I followed from your logic that you should be in support of collective bargaining by the labour force to negotiate a living wage in exchange for the collective labour the provide. But you don't apparently because you either intentionally or mistakenly believe the falsehood that employers willingly pay the full value of the labour they employ others to do. This has been shown to be false through most of human history.
What you're paid is what you deserve.
Lick those boots clean, got it. Or you're the one wearing the boots in which case may I get your neck size in cm for the guillotine please 🥺
This is not true. Workers are de facto responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs in the firm. By the tenet that legal and de facto responsibility should match, the workers should jointly get the positive and negative product of the firm (i.e. the property rights to the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs). Yet, the employer is who gets 100% of this whole product and workers as employees receive 0% @workreform
This is not true. You need to understand that there are no workers, then everything will fall in place neatly.
They're not; that's the big neo-con lie, due to an imbalance of power.
You have businesses and corporations that are enabled to run on fundamentally broken business models by government legislation.
How many banks refused hand outs during the financial crisis they created? Didn't hear shit about the free market then.
Stop pretending that inequality is caused by the workers.
Of course it's caused by "workers".
Now you're just "being" lazy
Where can you hunt and forage and live for free without a job? As much as I’d love to go innawoods, the law tends to frown on farming and sleeping in public parks. I have to pay to park at national parks lol.
You can hunt and forage here in UK. Or in my home country of Latvia. Or pretty much anywhere else.
In my state, and I believe most in the United States, you need a permit in order to hunt. Those cost money and often have limits on how much you can hunt, where and what equipment you can use. Hunting is more of a rich people’s (or at least hick rich) hobby here. Fishing also requires a permit with limitations, although I think those are easier to get around.
As far as foraging, it’s pretty difficult without knowledge of your local area. We had a large influx of Vietnamese immigrants after the Vietnam war, many families died because they misidentified a common mushroom thinking it was the same as a species back home. Can you tell the difference between a wild carrot and hemlock?
So... You're just lazy. Why should society support someone like you again?
I don't know about wild carrots, but I know plenty to forage local berries and mushrooms. Did that my whole life, just like my parents and grandparents.
Okay, awesome, show us a haul! Teach me to get up my butt and go foraging. Are we just eating mushrooms and berries? Not that I mind, it’s giving Pythagoras.
Around here we have pokeberries, which are supposedly edible if you boil the fuck out of them. They can kill you if you don’t do it right though; that’s not something I’m willing to brave yet. You did call me out - I’m pretty lazy and I could grab pecans from random folks’ yards.
All of the edible mushrooms I know of tend to stick to wooded areas - do I need to start walking there to build a shelter now? (I’d drive, but again, nearest wooded area costs $10 to park and I’d rather just buy a rotisserie chicken at that point).
Look, I have no clue where you live, but there are plenty of free resources on foraging online. I currently live in the UK, you can forage mussels, seaweed and pretty much anything else. There are big dedicated YouTube channels with indepth guides and groups which do foraging walks where more experienced members will show you what to pick and what not to touch. Saying that foraging is impossible is just completely false.
The high schoolers and their families I worked with in the inner city had no access to natural areas. I guess they could dumpster dive, but most places lock or contaminate their dumpsters. I’m not arguing that it is impossible everywhere. But foraging requires living an area that supports it, and having the knowledge base specific to that area. Some areas will have kind and knowledgeable people who will be willing to help educate, some will not. Foraging can be dangerous - deadly species can look like edible species. If you use online resources without training, you could easily misidentify a species - there are many many poisonous plant and fungi species that look identical to choice species. Areas can also be contaminated - the area I did my field work had extremely high levels of arsenic and there would have been no way I could have known if I wasn’t doing field work there!
Suggesting that one is lazy by being unable to forage for their survival is, well I’m struggling to find a word less unkind than idiotic but maybe naïve is better.
No one is forcing you to live in the inner city. It's your choice, enjoy the benefits!
Yes, we all have the choice to go rogue, drive to the middle of nowhere with nothing but a tent, bags of lentils and rice, some other basic supplies. You need to find a place remote enough to be not harassed by forest rangers, forgo all medical care except that you can provide yourself, research enough to realistically subsist on nothing but the species indigenous to the nearest possible location one could do this. I think for any of US based folks - maybe Alaska?
I genuinely would enjoy hearing a good faith explanation of how one can do this. I fucking loved reading /k/ shit lol.
Mate, the point is that life is free. If you want to enjoy comforts of a modern society - pay up. But no one is forcing you to do so, just live off nature.
Even if this wasn't condemning disabled people to starve, where do you live where there is any unclaimed land? Also, where do you get your tools from to build shelter and to hunt? Surely you're not suggesting that one person alone can survive in the wilderness and we already know you wouldn't want this person to benefit from someone else making them tools
There's plenty of public land here in the UK. Even more in countries like US and Russia. Make your own tools or learn to pay people who make them for you.
You kinda skipped past this part a bit fast. Where are we getting the money to pay people for tools again? From... learning?
You sell your skills and time. Are you trolling mate or really that dumb?
Wow, that's just an amazing insult, and an even better oversimplification of how jobs work. Having both skills and time is not a guarantee of income, and employers have an obvious incentive to reduce pay in every possible way.
And life is too complicated to guarantee both skills and time no matter how much effort you put in. The person you're replying to mentioned disabilities. I'd add that being young means you don't have skills yet, but you still have to eat. Having kids means you don't have time, having a medical emergency often means no time or money, being born poor means less resources to developing skills, having some skills but not all the ones needed for the particular job you are trying to get, having skills but only the skills for low paying job, I could go on and on.
I'm glad life is so straightforward for you, but it's not for many many people who put in an immense effort into just surviving with very little hope of having extra money to buy things they want like tools.
Then billionaires should Pay a living wage then instead of hoarding it.
marking success where you hoard food and take food out of another persons mouth when there should be plenty of food to go around isn’t a success story. It’s not even qualified to define it as a job.
There's plenty of free food in the forest - go ahead and forage your dinner.