this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024

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Late Stage Capitalism

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They keep our value (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by K1nsey6 to c/latestagecapitalism

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[–] HeyJoe 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I haven't given my full value in years... they stopped raising, and I stopped caring.

[–] Agent641 5 points 2 days ago

They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

At some point the trade is going to be less than the cost of rent

[–] K1nsey6 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

At some point

That time is now

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Well, not quite

22.4 million households who, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, pay more than a third of their income in rent.

Paying anything above the standard 30% threshold is commonly considered a cost burden.

What’s more, 12 million of those renters are severely cost burdened, which means they are spending more than half their income on housing.

We are still below 100% for now, for most people, but it will get worse

[–] CluckN 4 points 2 days ago

Those money pins are so cool

[+] damnedfurry -10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (6 children)

How is he receiving the "full value" of your labor if you're getting paid? Do you know what "full" means?

[–] rockSlayer 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The only way to extract profit is to produce degrees of separation from the workers and the products of their labor. They receive the full value of your labor and then act like it's a generous gift to get paid a small fraction.

[–] K1nsey6 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They are entitled to no value of someone else's labor

[–] damnedfurry -4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Okay, so no, you don't know what "full" means, got it.

[–] K1nsey6 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

OK, so no, you don't know what full value of labor means, got it.

[–] damnedfurry -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

By your logic, if you gave me four quarters for my dollar bill, you'd then complain that I made out with the "full value" of your quarters, and treat it like I stole your coins, instead of the mutually-agreed-upon trade that actually occurred.

Even if you gave me five quarters and I gave you one dollar bill, an uneven trade in my favor, I didn't end up with the "full value" ($1.25) of your money. I ended up plus only 25 cents.

Learn what "full" means.

[–] K1nsey6 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You are struggling so hard. Just go read some basic Marx and come back.

[–] damnedfurry 0 points 16 hours ago

It's very amusing for you to pretend I'm struggling while failing to grasp my very simple analogy.

[–] Evolith 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Who has access to the sum of a payout before choosing the scraps to divvy out? About as much logic as I'd expect from a degenerate whose online fetishisms are perpetuated by capitalistic commerce.

[–] damnedfurry 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There is no "payout". It's a trade. You're receiving a wage at the same time that they are receiving your labor. That's how it works.

Also, you've chosen what to accept as payment beforehand, you're treating it like you have to accept just beginning to work and hope that you are paid what you believe your labor is worth after.

No one is stopping you from creating a co-op if you don't like any of the offers presented to you, either, by the way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What's a coop? And are there really no barriers to entry?

[–] damnedfurry 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A business started by 2 or more people who agree to equally split everything. So for example, if you hire someone new, everyone's share of ownership/profits/etc. is divided up such that the new person now gets paid/equity the same as everyone else.

There are no specific barriers to entry for that, no more than there are for starting a business any other way.

But there is a reason that despite all the rhetoric about evil employers stealing labor, this arrangement is quite uncommon, and tends to scale up very poorly. Here is an article with some pros and cons: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-business-cooperatives-24608.html

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ahh, yes. There's no upfront investment, skill, free time or anything more than a regular job. Nothing is stopping anyone.

[–] damnedfurry 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, all of those things are why you don't get, nor are entitled to, 100% of the value created when you work for a business you didn't create. Your labor wouldn't create the value it does without the infrastructure you're working within. Infrastructure that none of your resources went into creating or maintaining.

And in addition, as a regular worker you're also not on the hook if the business is not profiting. Amazon existed for over a decade without turning a profit, but its employees still got paid that whole time.

That's the trade-off. Work for yourself, or understand that is a combination of your labor and your employer's infrastructure that makes your labor as valuable as it is, and that therefore neither side is entitled to 100% of that value.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, we know. And it's also why "nothing is stopping you" is just a lie

[–] damnedfurry 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

That's my point. There's no legal barrier, but it's not so easy to put all that in place. Most people are straight up incapable of it.

Those people should stop complaining that they don't get 100% of the value they obviously are not 100% responsible for creating, when they labor within a framework built and maintained by others, with others' resources, said framework being the primary reason that their labor is valuable to begin with.

You can get paid for digging a hole where the one who's paying wants you to, but no one's gonna pay you for digging random holes in your own backyard no one but you wants there.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

That's not nothing then, stop lying. Just say "it's perfectly legal to start your own business alone or together when you don't like the jobs available to you" or something

[–] damnedfurry 1 points 9 hours ago

Or you can understand that I obviously was talking about legality the whole time and not obsess over an irrelevant semantic detail in a desperate attempt to evade the actual substance of what I said.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Because they’re paying you to work not you paying them for the equipment

[–] BrotherL0v3 0 points 2 days ago

He takes the full value, and gives some fraction of it back.

This is a great explanation:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YMdIgGOYKhs

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Full in this case is all the value that you bring trough your labour. That means none of the products you make, or services you provide benefit you. Just your employer.

[–] damnedfurry 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You are compensated for your labor with your wage/salary. It's a trade.

If you trade me your shovel for my rake, it wouldn't be accurate to describe either of us as having made out with the "full value". We exchanged our two objects of value.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The trade is unfair though. If I pay you $10 an hour for some widget you produce. I turn around and sell that widget for $1000. You have made $80 for the day of work and I have made $920. I'm not sharing that $920 with you though. Even though you produced a widget that is worth $1000 you will never realize the "full" worth of your work you will get $10 per hour. If you were paid what you were worth there would be no profit in it for someone to employ you.

[–] damnedfurry 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Okay, so then why am I not simply creating that widget myself and selling it for $1000 on my own, if it's that simple? Likely because of both of the following, to name a few:

I don't have access to the raw materials and tools needed to create it, they were provided by my employer
I haven't spent the money on the marketing that would make customers willing to pay me $1000 for that widget (see: Apple infamously, and largely successfully, charging significantly more for products than comparable equivalent products of other brands)

The bottom line is, there is much more than "your work" that goes into that widget ultimately being successfully sold for $1000, and that's why you can't accomplish the same on your own (or else you would, right?), and it's why you do not have a rightful claim to that $920.

Now, if you're able to create and sell that widget for any more than the same $80 of time/resources, then you should go into business for yourself, and can reasonably say that the business offering you only $80 was ripping you off.

But in the real world, that's rarely the case for very long. Those situations are extremely rare, and when they're discovered by individuals, they're capitalized on (pardoned the pun) pretty much instantly--all it takes is one person to 'close the gap', generally speaking.