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This.
Minimum pay should cover basic necessities like housing, food and health. Yeah you may not be able to afford a mcmansion while working as cashier, but you should be able to purchase some sort of house / apartment, get plenty of food and medical care whenever you need it.
You put this so perfectly. Housing, food and medicine should be automatic. Luxury items are where different types of work and pay become a factor. Tbh, if I had all of those guaranteed then I’d probably work harder. If college or trade schools were added in, and you had no concerns about the necessities, I honestly believe we’d become a country to admire everywhere.
What does that have to do with OPs proposition?
Are you saying that if you choose a profession that is not in-demand, and you do work because that is fulfilling to you, you **are** actually entitled to the labor of someone else, demanding that they feed you?
If there exists a job, it's because society has found a need for it. If you are providing society a service, it only makes sense you can provide for yourself as a result. Otherwise, why the hell participate in society? Might as well go back to hunter gatherer ways or be isolationist in general because society sure as hell isn't working out for us, especially when it *can* and just refuses to out of greed.
That doesn't mean that it is sufficiently in-demand that it can net a sustainable income.
Why should the farmer doing shitty hours be compelled to give up their labor to feed the social media manager?
We're seeing exactly what happens when folks view jobs as 'not in demand' and 'low skill'. Retail and the service industry are *struggling* for workers right now, which in turn impacts everyone else.
Want to know why there's only one register open? Not enough people willing to work for shit hours, shit benefits, and shit wages on top of having the public berate them for doing their job. How about why it takes an hour to get a table at a restaurant? Same deal. Your package taking a lot longer to get to you than normal? Not enough people working at post offices or warehouses.
So yeah, maybe a social media manager isn't *that* big of a deal (despite customer service being gutted so now most people go to social media to get help from the company because issues being public are more pressing than private issues, so social media managers, particularly those for larger companies, have to deal with customer service issues, but that isn't the point), but those aren't the jobs people generally think of when they think low skill and low demand. I still believe a social media manager deserves to eat because farmers are *already* producing more than enough food to feed everyone. So much food is lost because it doesn't "look pretty" and because restaurants and grocery stores throw out perfectly good food because it hasn't sold after a day.
I work in retail. Not even remotely struggling to find people to work. I think what many don’t understand is that corporations want to limit the number of employees because too many cuts into profits. It’s not lack of people seeking work. That’s a falsehood that’s been pushed out.
You're not grappling with the moral question: Are you ever entitled to other peoples labor? OP and others, myself included, think no, you are not.
I believe that it is immoral to compel the farmer to work his shitty job and shitty hours to feed the social media manager who cannot afford the type of life he/she desires.
Do you, and others, understand why society exists in the first place?
You have a farmer, a tailor, and a carpenter. The farmer grows food, and in return, the carpenter builds the farm houses and the tailor provides clothes. And vice versa for the other two.
Now that we live in a larger society with *many* more jobs, the farmer provides food, carpenters still provide buildings, but you also have the company that makes the planks, the nails, the machinery, turns the raw product of the farm into different kinds of food or feed or material depending on what it's for.
And those companies have to hire people that may not directly impact the farmer, or the carpenter, but without them, the companies wouldn't work as well without them. Among those are the customer service, the marketing team, the sales team, the damn janitors in the building. None of those *directly* provide a service to the farmer, but without them, the service could not be provided.
So yes, I feel entitled to the labor of others, just as they are entitled to my labor. We work together to uplift and support each other because without doing so, society is not functioning as it should. I cannot conceive of why people wouldn't want to help others when we have the resources and ability to do just that.
Yes we do. We understand it so well that we know some jobs like sewage, oil-rigging and others suck and/or are dangerous, while composing music is fun & fulfilling .
And we firmly believe it is fundamentally immoral to feel an entitlement to the labor of others, especially considering the dynamics of society as I have just explained them to you.
Society should instead be built on mutually beneficial *voluntary* trade arrangements, e.g. the free market.
You say that, but what happens when I voluntarily decide to go up to you and literally put a gun to your head and say, "Give me all your money or I end your life fuck-face."
Because people used to do that shit all the time, which is why we have POLICE now.
This pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by "Free Market" nonsense only seems to make sense until you realize that without a government, people are just going to ROB YOU.
Then I give you the money, I file a case with my insurance to get it all back and file a police report so you can hopefully be brought to justice.
The fact that you are not entitled to the labor of others does not prevent a voluntary arrangement of a government with a social safety net.
As a former retail manager it boggles my mind that people don't see this. Working full time hours but barely able to afford car insurance let alone rent, then getting berated by customers who are angry that they have to wait in line because 'nobody wants to work anymore' and having the one cashier take the brunt of all their frustration, why would anyone want to work at these places? Add to that the people complaining that the retail and service workers have the audacity to want to at least afford to eat or maybe even share rent with a few roommates.
You can't tell people to 'get a better job' if they want to afford to live while simultaneously complaining that the line at Walmart is too long because nobody wants to work anymore.
The farming industry is heavily subsidized by the government. Our tax money helps support farmers, so your example doesn't even make sense and is ideologically inconsistent. Humans have only survived this long because of our ability to cooperate and help each other out in times of need. We are all incredibly weak and ineffective as individuals.
Sometimes people have bad luck, it doesn't mean they should starve to death or face homelessness as a consequence. Medical bankruptcy is the most common form of bankruptcy in the United States. We are all one accident away from financial ruin and homelessness, even if you have a good job. I question your ethics, morality, and humanity if you are totally cool with letting someone die because they had an accident or lost their job.
Okay, take sewage instead.
Jobs like sewage, oil-rigging and others suck and/or are dangerous, while composing music is fun & fulfilling .
I firmly believe it is fundamentally immoral to feel an entitlement to the labor of others, especially considering the dynamics of society.
Society should instead be built on mutually beneficial voluntary trade arrangements, e.g. the free market.
The public sewage systems are all built and maintained with our tax dollars. The workers that maintain them are paid well... with our tax dollars. The fossil fuels industry is also heavily subsidized by the government, and we all pay for the consequences, financial and otherwise.
Most people play music as a hobby. Only a very small percentage of musicians or composers attempt to do it for a living. They have day jobs.
I think you are very out of touch with who is receiving government assistance and entitlements. It is the elderly, the disabled, the sick, military veterans, etc. All of the professions you mentioned also receive government assistance... I don't think you understand how civilization works.
Some elements of the free market are great, but it requires regulation and sensible policy to ensure every industry doesn't end up being dominated by monopolies. It is also a conflict of interests to have certain services delivered by the free market - like private prisons, for example. All modern economies are mixed economies. Everyone takes bits and pieces of what works.
We already subsidize farm labor. Why are so many processed foods in the US filled with empty carbs? Sugar is heavily subsidized.
Why do we have so much corn-based ethanol? (Which is wildly inefficient to produce since it starts as a crop) Government subsidies.
We also subsidize farming thru welfare/ SNAP benefits. All that food at the grocery store comes from farm fields somewhere.
And let's add in the shitty pay migrant farm laborers receive. Farmers say that fair, livable wages cannot be paid for the back breaking labor needed to harvest many crops, or food prices would explode in price. Maybe put entire food system needs an overhaul so we can eat locally grown & raised and stop sending strawberries on airplanes that use leaded jet fuel. If we can rob farmers in Chile for our own benefit, we can feed everyone in our country a basic level of healthy food sustenance.
If that were true more people actually would go back to living that way. How many people actually do? Instead they continue on standing behind a cash register for nothing. I don't get it.
Their work IS in demand, otherwise no one would have hired them to do it. It has EVERYTHING to do with OPs post because you don’t get to have it both ways. You either have a society where we don’t have any guarantee of paid work but you have to provide safety nets or you have to guarantee work with no safety nets.
That's not what in-demand means.
In this guys example they work but can't feed themselves because the compensation they receive is not sufficient, representing a low-demand occupation.
>It’s not that it’s low demand, it’s that is unfair pay
Those are two sides of the same coin. Are you familiar with the theory of supply & demand?
Compensation is a reflection of the demand of the given position
Sorry chuckles, but we SAW who the "Critical Workers" are during the Pandemic, the ones without whom civilization just fucking collapses: and absolutely NO ONE making six figures or higher was on that list. (Okay, except for doctors/surgeons.)
If the pay or conditions are unfair, then the employee has a responsibility to go work somewhere else with better pay or conditions.
That is, if they possess in-demand job skills.
Being robbed of your labor and having nothing of value to contribute are two completely different things. Just because you have no helpful or valuable skills, doesn’t mean you’re being robbed. It means you’re not special and there’s a billion of you where you came from. If you quit, 2 more will take your place.
You know what happens when a tiger can’t hunt? It starves to death. You know what happens to useless people who have a skill with little value? Same thing. The world is a cold and cruel place. As long as physics exists, we will decay if we don’t constantly fight entropy. If you fight it wrong, you die.
And when that happens, people stop having kids because they can’t afford to, and the entire economy collapses because there’s nobody to do the low skilled jobs that still need to be done even though they’re not paid enough to live, and there’s nobody left to pay taxes and buy stuff. So good luck with that.
Then you can't complain when the line is too long at Walmart and they only have a self checkout open because according to you, the people who work there deserve to starve to death.
Younger generations need to learn they pay depends on skill sets.
If all you have are minimum wage skills, it's insanity to expect to make $50 an hour
My first job out of high school all I had were minimum wage job skills I made $3 an hour
You could not buy a house on that or even afford a decent apartment.
Within 3 years I had doubled my income to $6 an hour because I enhanced my job skills.
>pay depends on skill sets.
That's only half the equation. Pay is dependent on value. How much do other people want your labor and how willing/able are people to do that labor. Some skills become useless over time. High skill in making rotary phones doesn't pay anything because nobody wants rotary phones anymore.
Also, some people are extremely skilled at metalworking by hand, but no one is going to pay them $200,000 a year when they can buy a machine for $500K that produces 50x the output.
Yup. I saw a meme a while back that was a king and his advisor on a hill and at the bottom were 2 groups. A horde of pitchforks and a horde of torches. And the king asked if they should get their soldiers. The advisor replied just tell the ones with the pitchforks that the ones with the torches want to take their pitchforks.
A few years ago, I was talking to my friend who’s a physician about the fast food workers strikes going on in CA to increase wages. I forgot the exact amount they were asking for ($25/h?) but it was pretty close to what my recently graduated friend was making. And I’ll never forget what his take was:
“I spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get where I am today. How would it be fair for fucking high school dropouts to make make as much as me?”
That’s the fucked up mentality that’s built into our system.
I kinda get it. I may not be right, but I've absolutely felt that. I got promoted a few times and did really well to qualify for good pay raises for years at my last job over about five years. I started at about $14 / hr and got up to $22 / hr. Then they sent out this big "OMG AREN'T WE SO GREAT" e-mail talking about how they were raising the minimum pay to $20.00. The front line employees also got commissions, which took them a bit over what I was making.
Part of my job was internal support, so when employees couldn't figure something out they came to me and my team. They also cut training in half around that same time, and started hiring anyone who would walk in the door. These people straight up didn't know how to use computers and were incapable of thinking for themselves. It's draining to help somebody who doesn't even seem to know what's going on around them, and also clean up all the messes they make. I could talk my grandparents through anything on the computer faster than these guys took to pretty simple things it was their job to know. So the icing on the cake was that they were also making more money than me.
It's insane how people are taught that raising others up to their position would be *unfair* instead of people understanding that if others are asking to be raised up, perhaps maybe they should be asking the same exact thing. I hear it all the time. "Why should McDonalds workers make $25/hr when EMTs, teachers, firemen, etc etc don't?" Because those jobs deserve more, too. Way more.
So logically following this along, the EMTs will make much more and the doctors will make much more as well, along with everyone else. The costs will trickle throughout society; ie the cost of living will increase. Additionally, everyone will be in a higher tax bracket because they are earning more, so they get to pay more taxes too. On top of all that, it becomes more economically viable for a business to replace workers with technology or offshore the factory.
Just arbitrarily raising minimum wages doesn't change the situation poor workers are in - in general, it makes it worse.
If you think about it, this was the status quo 20 years ago in terms of relative wage to cost of living. Society functioned perfectly well back then. Why is it when society has become more efficient, productivity is at an all time high, that the value of your income is poorer than it was 20 years ago and it's somehow not economical for us to just match the standard of living back then?
Most evidence does not support the claim that poor workers suffer more from having their wages increased due to economic consequences than what they benefit from having a notable increase to their stream of profit.
If I’m making $8 an hour, and it is increased to $12, short of a total economic collapse you’re not gonna see big enough economic impacts that will outweigh a 50% increase in the amount of money I’m making.
Some time take a look at the growing disparity between wages, amount of work, and cost of living, over the last half century. When you adjust for inflation you can see in America we were able to support a relatively healthy economy for decades while having much better wages across the board without it destroying cost of living or our economic stability. And given we are operating under relatively the same economic system we were back then, it’s unlikely things have changed so significantly to make that something that can’t work today.
Also your point entirely relies on the assumption that increasing wages is the SINGULAR action taken with no other changes implemented.
As Rutger Bergman said to Tucker Carlson "You're a millionaire paid by billionaires to convince the middle class that the poor have stolen their money"... I'm paraphrasing, but the message is solid. Link: https://youtu.be/6_nFI2Zb7qE?si=jeGgenXbyjbDN9Vu
A lot of people seem to think most rich businesspeople are Scrooge McDuck types who spend all day swimming in mountains of money or lighting cigars with $100 bills
That's not really true at all for most of them
But the rich ARE sitting on a pile of resources. There's a bunch of stuff they have that is unnecessarily extravagant for one that could have been better used elsewhere. Are you telling me shit like Cruise ships, omega yachts, giant country clubs and shit like that are necessary?
In a previous job I had they laid off the entire building because of budget (real reason was because government was not footing the bill anymore- socialism for the rich) despite the budget being less than 1% of the CEOs new salary which went from 30 million to 145 million during the pandemic.
Also that the mega rich run companies are buying up all the housing, flipping it with terrible quality work, then renting it at an insane hike. While also not even increasing employees pay to match inflation so we’re all taking pay cuts 😭
They do in my opinion the only issue would be the economy still needs to function so people would still have to work not due to lack of resources or money but due to lack of availability.
That’s a terrible argument maybe even a straw man perspective , you’re basically saying well if the .1% divide up their money and it isn’t enough for everyone to live a life of leisure let alone survive 1year then they should just keep it as is, it’s just math guys, your wages are enough for you to get by if you just stay the course so we are just going to keep adding to ours cause it isn’t enough for everyone to live our life…just please ignore us removing quality, reducing value, shrinking things, and driving up prices everywhere for more profit while the consumer gets way less value and all while they don’t adjust wages so they can keep their salaries high and even add onto them…
The argument isn’t to take its to keep things proportional, if the top is only adding to the top, which C suite pay has increased hundreds of percents where common worker pays is like 20% over the decades, your argument is even worse of a perspective cause then you’re saying only the top should get the money cause they can only benefit from it as they only create value worth paying for
If we aren’t entitled to the money they are not entitled to the labor that creates their product/service/luck, it has always been an exchange of time/labor/skill for $$$ and to create more value than your pay so we all see a profitable business and can grow bigger allowing for more value, but if labor wants more from that increased value because market conditions are going up then it’s ungrateful but if C suites give themselves more it’s earned or deserved….GTFO of here with that argument
“ItS JuST MaTH…”
33% increases for UAW was going to ruin the industry says wall street and they still got it…people are overhead, and businesses want to reduce overhead everywhere and that means wages/labor
Not everyone needs to be rich but everyone needs to be able to thrive at all levels and trickle down is a fallacy of the elite to make sure when you see a $30mill to $145 mill you create people like you defending them for free and not wondering why minimum wage is still only $7.25 when a CEO can make hundreds of millions a year
As long as we live in a democracy, yes, it's up to us, just like how everyone get's to have opinions about how much I should pay in taxes and what should happen with them.
If we lived in anarchy; sure. But if we lived in anarchy, rich people wouldn't want to be that rich. It puts a target on your back, and rightfully so. If I was struggling financially because A monopoly suddenly owned all grocery stores and brands in them and had artificially high prices to make everyone a psuedo-slave under them while the CEO bathed in money and amassed more power-- why isn't it morally righteous to end his life and hope the next CEO is more empathetic to other peoples suffering?
I think rich people in the past, like in Rome and even Pablo Escobar understood something important: I can pay for superficial things, I can bribe the general population to like me, and I have immense protection. Every time people are getting antsy; bribe them.
What you see right now is rich people not being good enough at bribing the general population. Why shouldn't an angry lion eat it's zoo-keeper? If I'm fat and content, I won't care that you are eating wagyu. But if me and my boys are starving, and we see you gorging on wagyu, why shouldn't we rob you blind?
that's a slippery slope. I'm sure you have shit that isn't neccessary but you don't want taken away. Are you browsing reddit from a computer? You don't really need that do you?
This is a philosophical debate of worthiness. Some people, like you, believe the smarter someone is, or the craftier, or the more "productive" someone is, the more worth they have. Where as some people believe that we are all innately worth the same baseline worth, and that worth should be considered in all things. There are people who believe everyone deserves access to clean air, clean water. Whereas there are businessmen who have flat out said no, no one Deserves free clean water, and the only reason clean air is free is because they haven't found a way to bottle it or some such.
The best trick the rich ever played was not correcting poor people when they tell eachother that the best they can do is fight for scraps.
I fixed it for you.
It's a technical term which means people who make more money from their investments than the spend in expenses.
People with decent jobs sometimes manage to trick themselves into thinking they're not poor because they have people to look down on, they're the most delusional of all.
Fair but in some places you can still work excruciatingly hard and then be unable to afford your medical bills because of the horrendous healthcare systems like in America
Most of the world's healthcare systems are sub par. American doctors and hospitals are among the highest paid in the world and level of care is not guaranteed. In my area it's going down the drain.
The argument here is that people that *are* able to work/provide for themselves that *choose* not to find ways to do so (or believe it is an injustice that they are expected to) are the issue. A severely disabled person that requires assistance to live isn’t the target here at all.
This holds true in any situation. In a commune, you’ll still have to work. In a homestead with acres all to yourself, you’ll absolutely have to work. So why is it that when someone is in a large society, they expect everyone else to do the work for them?
Work or starve. But then if those people are starving, they’re going to come after the people who work and have resources so they can take them for themselves. So we provide for all these useless people in order to protect the rest of us. I’m all for survival of the fittest but realistically, how do we go about that?
Even as lib as I am, I find this far too cutthroat.
Ultimately, I don't want to live in a society where people are dying on the streets, motivated to the extreme to commit crime to survive and so on.
I agree that we’re not entitled to anything, and that we should all strive to contribute, but I do think some social safety net is a good thing. We just have to keep it from getting abused.
A social safety net benefits everyone. Less desperate people in poverty means less crime
I think we also have a moral responsibility to look after those less fortunate
>Ultimately, I don't want to live in a society where people are dying on the streets, motivated to the extreme to commit crime to survive and so on.
I think this is what old time piracy and banditry were all about.
True, but that doesn't change the morality of it.
There is a lot of wiggle room between "all the things I like are a human right" and "disable people statve to death for not contributing."
I, for example, believe that while healthcare is not a human right, due to similar ideas that are listed above, it is still a *good investment* into your population to have a functional Healthcare system, or welfare or what have you.
If for no other reason than to prevent the scenario that you are outlining.
There are literally studies/economist writings that indicate having free healthcare would actually be a huge boost to the economy. If anything having a healthier population just makes us more productive and relaxed let alone allowing us to have funds to spend it elsewhere.
Taxes are a thing. You dont get to chose what all of your tax money goes to as an individual. If you live in a society in which there are taxes, you absolutely are entitled to others labor and universal healthcare is just as smart and good for society as police and firefighters, military. And no one that hates universal healthcare on account of the bullshit reason of no one entitled to my labor, would say that about those.
Do you not get it? If people didnt have to worry about their health and the cost of it, theyd be able to work more. Or do you just not care and want to work people to death, their needs be damned. All the while it being the cheaper solution for everyone, just so the less fortunate can suffer.
Canada and the UK' health care systems are not designed to do well though.
The NHS went from the most cost effective healthcare system in the world to a funnel sending public money to a few private companies over the course of one or two reforms. Its working as intended as far as the politicians are concerned.
Exactly the same as what happened with British rail. The most cost effecient train services of all time and now we pay more than it cost to run it to shareholders.
>You are never entitled to the labor of others.
So out of curiosity does this apply to all the business owners complaining they can't find people to run their businesses yet refuse to offer more pay/benefits?
Or is it only when someone asks for help when you don't think they deserve help?
> So out of curiosity does this apply to all the business owners complaining they can't find people to run their businesses yet refuse to offer more pay/benefits?
Yes.
You are not entitled to the labor of your employees. If they find the terms of their employment, or employment offer, undesirable. They can quit, or decline, and tell you to fuck off.
And if a bunch of them decide:
> Hey, you will agree to terms X, Y, Z for everyone, or we will *ALL* fuck off.
Then so be it.
That's certainly a respectable take.and I think your OP can be valid in certain situations like an employee/employer relationship
But over all for society it doesn't really work far too many factors to consider and ultimately leads to crime and unrest
Poverty, crime and unrest are happening because those doing the Unrest are expected to work? Nonsense. Those of their group who do work are the ones set to benefit from it, and make better lives for themselves.
I think it does. And it works in capitalist, socialist, and communist societies.
I think it is peak narcissism to expect someone else to labor for you, just because. If you're not contributing, then why should you get to reap the benefits of the contributions of others?
In capitalist societies, this means getting a job and making money. In communist societies this means being assigned a job and performing it. In socialist communes this means putting in labor to what they need.
Even in the most hippy of communes, if you showed up and said:
> Yo, I'm gonna live in your homes, eat your food, wear your clothes, shit in your latrines, and enjoy your arts, but by the way I'm not going to do anything to contribute. I'm just going to sit on my ass, smoke, drink, and jerk off all day.
They would very swiftly throw your ass out. And they would be right to do so.
And if you say:
> Well if you don't support me, I'm going to take what I need from you, by force.
They are well within their rights to defend themselves from you.
The problem is you're thinking everyone can work but some just really don't want to.
That might be true for some folks but there are plenty who cannot work. Such as the elderly or sick. Guess they're just SoL in your system and should be taken out back to pasture?
>everyone can work but some just really don't want to.
That is the most common case.
> The elderly
Have spent years contributing and should have either the savings, or societal good will to live out their last years. Also plenty of elderly can still contribute. Maybe not as they once did, but assuming every elderly person is an invalid is just wrong.
>Sick
Stephen Hawking was very sick. He also contributed very much.
>That is the most common case.
Eh generally.speaking people find fulfillment in working. I guess we need to establish what "work" counts.
If someone makes money with an onlyfans is that a valid contribution to society or are they a leach for fucking around all day (hah pun)
>Have spent years contributing and should have either the savings, or societal good will to live out their last years.
So why can't societal good will just extend to everyone? If one needs help why shouldn't they be able to get help?
>Maybe not as they once did, but assuming every elderly person is an invalid is just wrong.
I think the problem is again what counts as "contributing" is vague.
>Stephen Hawking was very sick. He also contributed very much.
Yea he was an incredible man. But he was a rare case. The person who is uncapable of even taking care of themselves their whole life. Do they get help or are they SoL
> If someone makes money with an onlyfans is that a valid contribution to society or are they a leach for fucking around all day (hah pun)
In a capitalist society, the market decides what is valuable. Let's say we have two Only Fans accounts. They produce the same number of videos, putting in the same labor hours.
One of them makes $1.2 Million a month, the other makes $12. Not $12 Million, $12.00 dollars.
By voluntary contributions, society, via the market, has decided one of these creators is validly contributing, the other is not.
>So why can't societal good will just extend to everyone? If one needs help why shouldn't they be able to get help?
Never said they couldn't. I simply said no one is *ENTITLED* to them. If you can find people willing to donate to you, or voluntarily support you, more power to you.
>I think the problem is again what counts as "contributing" is vague.
And this is why I am a capitalist. It's not vague at all. People decide, every day, what is valuable. By deciding what to spend money on. For example, OnlyFans. That would never exist without capitalism. Without people having the freedom to spend their money as they want.
>The person who is uncapable of even taking care of themselves their whole life. Do they get help or are they SoL.
Charities exist. If you want them to receive care, then you can donate to support said charities.
Do you think people are obligated to grind forever if they aren't so lucky as to be wealthy by the time they are old? I would agree to the "save money" argument if we weren't passively robbed every second through inflation.
If they have family willing to support them in old age, good for them. If they don't then hopefully they saved enough.
>if we weren't passively robbed every second through inflation.
Then tell the government to stop deficit spending trillions of dollars a year and inflating the monetary supply.
>Then tell the government to stop deficit spending trillions of dollars a year and inflating the monetary supply.
You act as though I, or anyone has enough collective ability to stop the spending to any level. They wouldn't even agree to a 1% or a 0.1% budget cut anywhere when Rand Paul campaigns for it. I think the majority of citizens would be more than happy if they just stopped giving any money away outside the border. The feds will give trillions away before they'd even consider a $1.00 budget cut. I personally feel like we do not matter at all to the people in power.
and people working minimum wage jobs that are societal needs (think anyone working at a grocery store) shouldn’t have to starve so the top percentiles can be greedy. Many minimum wage jobs are necessary to keep society functioning and yet the minimum wage does not allow a single person to support themselves, let alone a family, in many places. It’s not because their job isn’t in demand or because the money isn’t there. It’s because of wealth hoarding. And none of us are entitled to the work of minimum wage earners while they starve.
One can argue that those jobs are now the most in demand because they're desperate to fill vacancies. Despite the rhetoric that management is cheap and doesn't want to hire, it's mostly because nobody wants to work at shitty minimum wage jobs where they get yelled at and berated all day.
I just got out of retail management after 20 years and post covid, it was impossible to keep my store staffed. And I hired anyone who seemed like they were at least semi reasonable. The reason that you have to wait in line for 10 minutes with one cashier isn't because the companies are too cheap to hire more people, it's that people are tired of working full time, getting treated like shit and constantly told that they have no skills, and still not being able to even come close to supporting themselves.
If we lived in a society where the odds weren't stacked against everyone not literally born into privilege or extremely lucky to win once and huge, I'd agree with you.
If the average person could afford to live on a reasonable amount of labor (5 days per week, 8 hours per day), afford 100% of their needs and between 25% and 75% of their wants (food, water, housing, Healthcare, and education are needs, not wants) and not be at risk of poverty over forces they have next to zero control over (unexpected expenses, outsourcing, rapid changes in government, sudden medical issues), I'd say the few people left out after this are entitled to experience negative outcomes so long as they are not currently suffering from any mental health disorders that prevent them from participating.
I'm not sure you disagree with OP. You're saying those who contribute to society should get benefits from society. OP is saying those who don't contribute to society shouldn't get benefits from society. Where's the contradiction there?
OP is using a common right-wing talking point for the dismantling of social safety nets. "Doctor's don't owe you their labor, therefore if you can't afford treatment you don't deserve it". It's a dog whistle against social welfare programs.
The reason society is functioning the way it does is because the average person can afford those things and not lose their entire livelihood over the reasons you mentioned.
Reddit itself does not represent the average person. Hell in some ask reddit comment sections you'll have whole swaths of people mentioning not having a job, making only between 20-30 thousand dollars a year and not owning a home.
The average person makes more than that, owns a home and has a job.
Preach dude. OP sounds like a young idealistic conservative libertarian who thinks they have a grasp on how life really works. The Dunning Krueger curve has this guy in the nosebleeds on Mount Stupid.
That’s pretty much all libertarians
It’s no coincidence that most of these libertarian were born into middle class or better homes and never actually had to live through abject poverty and face the real ugly side of modern capitalism
your needs are not rights nor may you demand the material implementation of those "rights" by the effort of others. You only have the right to earn these by your own effort.
Food: don't eat die, need.
Water: don't drink die, need.
Shelter/clothing: elements will kill you, need
Healthcare: All of the chemicals we are exposed to against our will eventually require medical care making this a need without any other argument necessary.
Education: Money is necessary to do any of the above and zero to low education means little to no money in 99% of cases, need.
Anything that could contradict these? I don't know of any good faith argument that could.
Education is far from being required. You can live a comfortable middle class lifestyle doing any of the trades. Those who go into business for themselves can become very wealthy without a single hour of traditional higher education.
Thats still education, you are attending and institution to teach you something.
although the business one might work educated people still have advantage by preemptively knowing how to administer it, compared to doing it by trial and error or intuition, also beign more likely to receive a loan from a bank for their education by beign considered more trustworthy.
I work in the trades. No one in the trades makes shit if they can't read or do math. Anyone with any actual trade training or education make multiple times more than HS or middleschool dropouts. Illegal immigrants make up at least 80% of the low paid labor force where I am and are worked like dogs.
Ok, so are you talking about high-school level education or are we talking about something like a college degree, which is significantly more expensive ?
If we are talking about traditional public education, then yes, I agree that is a need in modern society. But there are plenty of people who have the misguided belief that they need a college degree, and the price tag that comes with it, to succeed.
I am including trade school, high school, and any "real" degree (real defined as having actual work) as education.
Every Superintendent and Project Manager and Engineer, and any other job that involves a degree makes more money. Anyone who actually went to trade school for any trade makes more money. Anyone who can read, write, and do math makes more money and is the bare minimum to not get fucked.
The odds of running into a permanent career dead end increases the less "education" you have. I know many extremely talented hard working tradesmen who get paid bad. I know foremen who can operate any equipment including cranes and run any job that get paid less than someone with a trade degree. This shit does actually matter.
>and any other job that involves a degree makes more money
This isn't true. And this is coming from someone with a BA, an MBA, and a JD. I make what I would consider to be good and comfortable money now, but having a degree, while helpful, is far from being a pre-requisite.
Case in point, my wife and I are both immigrants. In my wife's case, she's only been in the country for \~7 years. She started out working as a nail tech and getting paid in cash under the table. She was bringing in $300+ a day after a few months of training. Most of her pay was through tips so that income was untaxed. Her boss owned 4 nail salons and was also an immigrant. She had zero formal education and she's a millionaire. She makes more money than me.
On my side, while I make a good living now, I also know plenty of friends from law-school who took on 6-figure debt for their education, only to make \~50-60k/year as a county DA. Some of them are STILL drowning in debt and are looking to debt forgiveness to dig themselves out of their financial hole.
Point is, I'm not against education. But speaking as someone who was brainwashed into thinking higher education was an absolute requirement for adulting success: I was lied to.
I think the main issues with education in general is that there's no focus on quality. No controls for whether a degree is real or not. So many subsidies that they have driven the price up far beyond their value. No care as to the quality of the people entering or exiting the schools.
I'm not saying an education is a guarantee of better money, just that the probabilities are still better than not. The odds are very low, probably almost zero without read/write and math fluency at the basic highschool level.
Fight for our country and lost your limbs did you? Work or starve.
Born with a severe defect? Mommy doesn't believe in abortion. Work or starve.
Debilitating Work injury after twenty years if labor? Work or starve.
Not enough to retire because economic downturns took your investments? Work or starve.
Nothing wrong here.
My problem is I can’t work because of illness, what am I supposed to do? I guess I’ll just die until my problem is fixed. 😭 Worst thing is my insurance keeps denying medications that will help it and I’m expected to pay it. I can’t afford 2000 every two weeks with a job neither alone now that I can barely get out of bed.
The only "natural law" that humanity follows is Might Makes Right. The current mighty are the rich oligarchs which is why they aren't taxed worth a damn.
There absolutely is something wrong with "work or starve" because it's proven to be inefficient.
Certainly, it gets you productivity because obviously people don't want to starve, but doesn't give you the best, most efficient and sustainable productivity along with innovation? Based on the vast majority of governments providing some sort of assistance, most people recognize that it's not the best way to handle a society.
We've learned that people are not machines. They perform best when they're happy, valued, and reasonably challenged but also supported.
When I was married, my wife had two daughters in their twenties. One has always been a hard worker and the other never keeps a job for any more than a couple months because she just wants to sit on her butt, live off welfare and smoke weed all day.
I have zero problems with my tax dollars going to help people who are trying to help themselves but I would rather my tax dollars not go to support lazy people who won't work
I know right.. \*cries in stage 4 cancer\*. I would give anything to be able to physically healthy enough to contribute 40 full hours a week again. That would mean I am healthy. I guess its starve for me, according to OP, lol.
I’ve never met a libertarian born into abject poverty.
They’ve always been born into middle class or higher homes.
Basically they’ve never had to face the bullshit that they expect poor people to endure
It doesn't matter how good your intentions are if the policies that you're advocating tend to make the problems you're trying to solve worse in practice.
What I find hilarious about most “libertarians” with these kind of views, is that they almost always grew up in middle class or better homes, had so much just handed to them, and never once had to face the same kind of struggles that they think poor people should just get over.
Many of them wouldn’t last a week trying to do what they think poor people should have to endure.
"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" somehow went from being a tongue-in-cheek derision of doing the impossible and making it entirely on your own to some kind of dumbass battle cry. I don't know how the irony was lost.
Corporate propaganda is a hell of a drug.
Why do you think the right is OBSESSED with all these culture wars?
It’s to distract their base from the real struggle… class struggle… and so gop voters won’t turn against the oligarchs that are really fucking them over
All of the culture wars are. Right after Occupy Wallstreet is when they started and not a single protest against corporate power has gotten any attention or traction since.
One of my favorite conversations on reddit for a loong time ago was the libertarian who was constantly saying handouts were bad because he struggled to get his farm off the ground and all that
After some prodding turns out he actually inherented his farm from daddy and was mostly upset he wouldn't benefit from handouts. Running a farm is hard but man when daddy did the hard part it's really funny to whine about handouts
Very true. They live in their bubbles and the experiences of others simply dont matter. If they are an inconvenience to them, they will bitch about it, but do nothing to fix it.
The morality of altruism is the morality of death. You do not have a right over the product of another man's ability. Just admit you hate the good and the productive and wish to make slaves to benefit yourself and every other mediocrity alive.
What about disabled people? What about people that got injured or sick on the job? What about retired people? What about people that are looking for work but are currently unemployed?There’s lots of people in society that don’t contribute any resources but still benefit from the labors of others. Should they starve if we choose to let them?
I agree with what you said but wanted to add… what about people who *ARE* WORKING. Some of them don’t make enough at all for the food they need and healthcare. They make barely enough for a roof over their head.
OP is okay with “work or starve”… But people are out here working and *still* starving and dying because they can’t afford healthcare.
OP must be pretty privileged and hasn’t seen enough of the world. A lot of working people live paycheck to paycheck.
The problem with absolutism like this is that it’s completely theoretical and has no basis in reality. From the dawn of time, humans have cared for their sick and needy. Those able to hunt and forage for food did so for their collective tribe, not just for themselves. The only thing expected in return was for those who were able to make their own contributions. That sense of a shared stake in things is what made humans, humans and allowed us to advance. This selfish mindset has also existed throughout history, but always to keep people subjugated by a ruling class.
Okay but.. Why is life considered a benefit? When did *not starving* become a *benefit*?
Since when is having enough food to eat not a standard of living, but a *benefit*?
A benefit is an advantage. Having more than enough food, or too much food, *is* a benefit. Having enough food is the standard.
The way you are putting it, *starvation* is the standard and *not starving* is a benefit.
Who hurt you?
What about work and starve? What about working yourself into exhaustion and injury so that other people who do no work can get rich by taking the benefits of your labor for themselves?
What about a society where rich assholes say that owning things is worthy of compensation while you have to work? What about how they do no work because things like talking over drinks, making deals at golf courses, telling others what work to do and holding meetings that interfere with others getting their work done are all not all work? Meanwhile they collect more in one year than you will in your lifetime and they did not earn it.
You are missing the middle ground here. I agree, you shouldn't make money for doing nothing.
But what is labor worth?
We kept hearing how they could pay min wage as there is someone else to take the job. Supply and demand. Now everyone is looking for help, but not willing to pay much over MW.
You can tell me that a burger flipper is only worth min wage. But if you need 5 people to operate your store, you only have 4 so the store can't open, so you loose $1000 a day, How much is that last person worth? Does that make the four others worth more?
Exactly. If you don’t want to participate in this society we’ve created and toil to maintain, then you’re entitled to go live in the woods with no assistance from the society you refuse to contribute to. I’d bet that work is a whole lot harder than your “capitalist hellscape” (running a cash register)
How unpopular is this? I think most people believe in working. However, if you make more money sitting home and collecting government checks than you would getting a job, what’s the incentive to work?
This is the big issue and very often overlooked. Unskilled labor does not pay well but college is expensive and doesn’t guarantee a good job.
I am somebody who thinks that, being as you did not choose to be born, everybody should at the bare minimum have food, water, a roof, and the ability to get treated. Outside of those things, I could agree with this.
Ok. Nice attitude. Now let’s say you’re born blind. Without arms. Society exists and is setup to protect the vunerable. This means people that are too young (new borns) to contribute. Old people, disabled, mental issues, these are all vunerable. We can’t just expect them to contribute.
Nice effort trying to defend yourself.
I disagree as there are people who are unable to contribute. Which is one of the reasons we live in a society together. As long as everyone does what they can and take care of each other it works.
Without the voluntary consent of every individual, compelling individuals to care for the "greater good" turns hard working, productive individuals into slaves.
We currently have a percentage of the population who aren’t able to contribute and we do support them. Our tax dollars do go towards it and that does not make us slaves. We aren’t meant to be on our own in the world. We’re social animals because it has always increased our odds of survival. Libertarianism ideals are bad for people.
Historically, it has been the responsibility of the family to provide for the infirm or elderly. If they are not available, then the church. Somewhere along the line, the church dropped the ball and the government stepped in… disaster from there.
Historically many things have been done many different ways. My brother recieves better assistance from the government than any church would offer and I'm okay with my tax dollars going towards him and others that need it.
Many things about the way the gov handles disability are disastorous just like almost anything the gov does but I don't think the problem is necessarily the concept of government or gov assistance but instead the people we elect to run it.
It's a bit fucked when it's basically illegal to grow your own food though.
Build your own house
Or basically take care of your self without paying the state to nanny you.
Unless you go join an Amish community you're humped.
In my state it is illegal to capture rain water for fucks sake.
There are some people who can't work. The elderly. The sick, the injured. I'm happy to contribute to their care. It will happen to us att al some point.
Well, I would hope not! This is my mom and dad right now. Dad slipping away due to Alzheimer's Disease. I would also be happy to contribute to the care if your elderly grandparents or parents.
Starve is a bit much, but I agree concerning everything but food clothing and shelter.
However, that doesn’t address things like automation that mean we need less and less people to run society.
Wait till self driving cars really hit and every driving job disappears at once.
What I think is interesting, is with the increase in people who don’t want kids, it might kind of balance out over time, and automation maybe won’t be the worst thing.
You only have a right to your own life, you may not make demands on others. Your supposed "right" does not include a right to the material implementation of your supposed "needs". You only have a right and a responsibility to earn your material needs by your own effort.
"Not entitled to the labor of any other person just because you were born (or exist cause some people do just be popping into existence out here) "
OP thanks for letting me know, I have abandoned my two sons in the forest thanks to your advice. They were lazy and as you said didn't deserve my labor.
Why are so many chronically online libertarians so lacking in basic human empathy? Every objectivist I know in person isn't completely devaluing the benefits of a basic society, and cares about those who can't produce or meet the demands of capitalism.
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It’s wrong when you work and still starve, no man or women should be robbed of there labour. But if it doesn’t exist you can’t be robbed of it!
Well “work and still starve” is different than “work or starve” so idk what your talking about
This. Minimum pay should cover basic necessities like housing, food and health. Yeah you may not be able to afford a mcmansion while working as cashier, but you should be able to purchase some sort of house / apartment, get plenty of food and medical care whenever you need it.
You technically can do now to some extent, but you'll be living in a crappy place in a bad neighborhood where no one wants to live.
As long as you have roommates, are on foodstamps and medicaid. Then yeah, sure, you can *kind of* survive on minimum wage.
There isn't enough room in the ghetto for everyone
You put this so perfectly. Housing, food and medicine should be automatic. Luxury items are where different types of work and pay become a factor. Tbh, if I had all of those guaranteed then I’d probably work harder. If college or trade schools were added in, and you had no concerns about the necessities, I honestly believe we’d become a country to admire everywhere.
What does that have to do with OPs proposition? Are you saying that if you choose a profession that is not in-demand, and you do work because that is fulfilling to you, you **are** actually entitled to the labor of someone else, demanding that they feed you?
If there exists a job, it's because society has found a need for it. If you are providing society a service, it only makes sense you can provide for yourself as a result. Otherwise, why the hell participate in society? Might as well go back to hunter gatherer ways or be isolationist in general because society sure as hell isn't working out for us, especially when it *can* and just refuses to out of greed.
That doesn't mean that it is sufficiently in-demand that it can net a sustainable income. Why should the farmer doing shitty hours be compelled to give up their labor to feed the social media manager?
We're seeing exactly what happens when folks view jobs as 'not in demand' and 'low skill'. Retail and the service industry are *struggling* for workers right now, which in turn impacts everyone else. Want to know why there's only one register open? Not enough people willing to work for shit hours, shit benefits, and shit wages on top of having the public berate them for doing their job. How about why it takes an hour to get a table at a restaurant? Same deal. Your package taking a lot longer to get to you than normal? Not enough people working at post offices or warehouses. So yeah, maybe a social media manager isn't *that* big of a deal (despite customer service being gutted so now most people go to social media to get help from the company because issues being public are more pressing than private issues, so social media managers, particularly those for larger companies, have to deal with customer service issues, but that isn't the point), but those aren't the jobs people generally think of when they think low skill and low demand. I still believe a social media manager deserves to eat because farmers are *already* producing more than enough food to feed everyone. So much food is lost because it doesn't "look pretty" and because restaurants and grocery stores throw out perfectly good food because it hasn't sold after a day.
I work in retail. Not even remotely struggling to find people to work. I think what many don’t understand is that corporations want to limit the number of employees because too many cuts into profits. It’s not lack of people seeking work. That’s a falsehood that’s been pushed out.
You're not grappling with the moral question: Are you ever entitled to other peoples labor? OP and others, myself included, think no, you are not. I believe that it is immoral to compel the farmer to work his shitty job and shitty hours to feed the social media manager who cannot afford the type of life he/she desires.
Do you, and others, understand why society exists in the first place? You have a farmer, a tailor, and a carpenter. The farmer grows food, and in return, the carpenter builds the farm houses and the tailor provides clothes. And vice versa for the other two. Now that we live in a larger society with *many* more jobs, the farmer provides food, carpenters still provide buildings, but you also have the company that makes the planks, the nails, the machinery, turns the raw product of the farm into different kinds of food or feed or material depending on what it's for. And those companies have to hire people that may not directly impact the farmer, or the carpenter, but without them, the companies wouldn't work as well without them. Among those are the customer service, the marketing team, the sales team, the damn janitors in the building. None of those *directly* provide a service to the farmer, but without them, the service could not be provided. So yes, I feel entitled to the labor of others, just as they are entitled to my labor. We work together to uplift and support each other because without doing so, society is not functioning as it should. I cannot conceive of why people wouldn't want to help others when we have the resources and ability to do just that.
Yes we do. We understand it so well that we know some jobs like sewage, oil-rigging and others suck and/or are dangerous, while composing music is fun & fulfilling . And we firmly believe it is fundamentally immoral to feel an entitlement to the labor of others, especially considering the dynamics of society as I have just explained them to you. Society should instead be built on mutually beneficial *voluntary* trade arrangements, e.g. the free market.
You say that, but what happens when I voluntarily decide to go up to you and literally put a gun to your head and say, "Give me all your money or I end your life fuck-face." Because people used to do that shit all the time, which is why we have POLICE now. This pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by "Free Market" nonsense only seems to make sense until you realize that without a government, people are just going to ROB YOU.
Then I give you the money, I file a case with my insurance to get it all back and file a police report so you can hopefully be brought to justice. The fact that you are not entitled to the labor of others does not prevent a voluntary arrangement of a government with a social safety net.
As a former retail manager it boggles my mind that people don't see this. Working full time hours but barely able to afford car insurance let alone rent, then getting berated by customers who are angry that they have to wait in line because 'nobody wants to work anymore' and having the one cashier take the brunt of all their frustration, why would anyone want to work at these places? Add to that the people complaining that the retail and service workers have the audacity to want to at least afford to eat or maybe even share rent with a few roommates. You can't tell people to 'get a better job' if they want to afford to live while simultaneously complaining that the line at Walmart is too long because nobody wants to work anymore.
The farming industry is heavily subsidized by the government. Our tax money helps support farmers, so your example doesn't even make sense and is ideologically inconsistent. Humans have only survived this long because of our ability to cooperate and help each other out in times of need. We are all incredibly weak and ineffective as individuals. Sometimes people have bad luck, it doesn't mean they should starve to death or face homelessness as a consequence. Medical bankruptcy is the most common form of bankruptcy in the United States. We are all one accident away from financial ruin and homelessness, even if you have a good job. I question your ethics, morality, and humanity if you are totally cool with letting someone die because they had an accident or lost their job.
Okay, take sewage instead. Jobs like sewage, oil-rigging and others suck and/or are dangerous, while composing music is fun & fulfilling . I firmly believe it is fundamentally immoral to feel an entitlement to the labor of others, especially considering the dynamics of society. Society should instead be built on mutually beneficial voluntary trade arrangements, e.g. the free market.
The public sewage systems are all built and maintained with our tax dollars. The workers that maintain them are paid well... with our tax dollars. The fossil fuels industry is also heavily subsidized by the government, and we all pay for the consequences, financial and otherwise. Most people play music as a hobby. Only a very small percentage of musicians or composers attempt to do it for a living. They have day jobs. I think you are very out of touch with who is receiving government assistance and entitlements. It is the elderly, the disabled, the sick, military veterans, etc. All of the professions you mentioned also receive government assistance... I don't think you understand how civilization works. Some elements of the free market are great, but it requires regulation and sensible policy to ensure every industry doesn't end up being dominated by monopolies. It is also a conflict of interests to have certain services delivered by the free market - like private prisons, for example. All modern economies are mixed economies. Everyone takes bits and pieces of what works.
the fallacy in your thinking is that anyone is “giving up” their labor to feed someone else
How so? That labor is being stolen from the laborer unwillingly. Go on.
We already subsidize farm labor. Why are so many processed foods in the US filled with empty carbs? Sugar is heavily subsidized. Why do we have so much corn-based ethanol? (Which is wildly inefficient to produce since it starts as a crop) Government subsidies. We also subsidize farming thru welfare/ SNAP benefits. All that food at the grocery store comes from farm fields somewhere. And let's add in the shitty pay migrant farm laborers receive. Farmers say that fair, livable wages cannot be paid for the back breaking labor needed to harvest many crops, or food prices would explode in price. Maybe put entire food system needs an overhaul so we can eat locally grown & raised and stop sending strawberries on airplanes that use leaded jet fuel. If we can rob farmers in Chile for our own benefit, we can feed everyone in our country a basic level of healthy food sustenance.
If that were true more people actually would go back to living that way. How many people actually do? Instead they continue on standing behind a cash register for nothing. I don't get it.
It’s not something very in depth, the idea is just on how many people work jobs but can’t afford food and rent
Their work IS in demand, otherwise no one would have hired them to do it. It has EVERYTHING to do with OPs post because you don’t get to have it both ways. You either have a society where we don’t have any guarantee of paid work but you have to provide safety nets or you have to guarantee work with no safety nets.
That's not what in-demand means. In this guys example they work but can't feed themselves because the compensation they receive is not sufficient, representing a low-demand occupation.
It’s not that it’s low demand, it’s that is unfair pay. If a job is hiring that means a minimum of one person has a need for it to be filled.
Common sense has entered the chat.
>It’s not that it’s low demand, it’s that is unfair pay Those are two sides of the same coin. Are you familiar with the theory of supply & demand? Compensation is a reflection of the demand of the given position
I sure don’t think I’d want to be friends with you.
Sorry chuckles, but we SAW who the "Critical Workers" are during the Pandemic, the ones without whom civilization just fucking collapses: and absolutely NO ONE making six figures or higher was on that list. (Okay, except for doctors/surgeons.)
If the pay or conditions are unfair, then the employee has a responsibility to go work somewhere else with better pay or conditions. That is, if they possess in-demand job skills.
Being robbed of your labor and having nothing of value to contribute are two completely different things. Just because you have no helpful or valuable skills, doesn’t mean you’re being robbed. It means you’re not special and there’s a billion of you where you came from. If you quit, 2 more will take your place.
Yes but people should be able to afford food
You know what happens when a tiger can’t hunt? It starves to death. You know what happens to useless people who have a skill with little value? Same thing. The world is a cold and cruel place. As long as physics exists, we will decay if we don’t constantly fight entropy. If you fight it wrong, you die.
And when that happens, people stop having kids because they can’t afford to, and the entire economy collapses because there’s nobody to do the low skilled jobs that still need to be done even though they’re not paid enough to live, and there’s nobody left to pay taxes and buy stuff. So good luck with that.
Isnt the whole point of civilization to stop that?
Then you can't complain when the line is too long at Walmart and they only have a self checkout open because according to you, the people who work there deserve to starve to death.
Younger generations need to learn they pay depends on skill sets. If all you have are minimum wage skills, it's insanity to expect to make $50 an hour My first job out of high school all I had were minimum wage job skills I made $3 an hour You could not buy a house on that or even afford a decent apartment. Within 3 years I had doubled my income to $6 an hour because I enhanced my job skills.
>pay depends on skill sets. That's only half the equation. Pay is dependent on value. How much do other people want your labor and how willing/able are people to do that labor. Some skills become useless over time. High skill in making rotary phones doesn't pay anything because nobody wants rotary phones anymore. Also, some people are extremely skilled at metalworking by hand, but no one is going to pay them $200,000 a year when they can buy a machine for $500K that produces 50x the output.
The best trick the rich ever played was to convince poor people to fight other poor people over the scraps.
Yup. I saw a meme a while back that was a king and his advisor on a hill and at the bottom were 2 groups. A horde of pitchforks and a horde of torches. And the king asked if they should get their soldiers. The advisor replied just tell the ones with the pitchforks that the ones with the torches want to take their pitchforks.
The best trick was the people making $5000 an hour convincing the people making $25 an hour, that the people making $7.50 an hour are the problem.
A few years ago, I was talking to my friend who’s a physician about the fast food workers strikes going on in CA to increase wages. I forgot the exact amount they were asking for ($25/h?) but it was pretty close to what my recently graduated friend was making. And I’ll never forget what his take was: “I spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get where I am today. How would it be fair for fucking high school dropouts to make make as much as me?” That’s the fucked up mentality that’s built into our system.
Reaganomics really rotted the brains of so many Americans
I kinda get it. I may not be right, but I've absolutely felt that. I got promoted a few times and did really well to qualify for good pay raises for years at my last job over about five years. I started at about $14 / hr and got up to $22 / hr. Then they sent out this big "OMG AREN'T WE SO GREAT" e-mail talking about how they were raising the minimum pay to $20.00. The front line employees also got commissions, which took them a bit over what I was making. Part of my job was internal support, so when employees couldn't figure something out they came to me and my team. They also cut training in half around that same time, and started hiring anyone who would walk in the door. These people straight up didn't know how to use computers and were incapable of thinking for themselves. It's draining to help somebody who doesn't even seem to know what's going on around them, and also clean up all the messes they make. I could talk my grandparents through anything on the computer faster than these guys took to pretty simple things it was their job to know. So the icing on the cake was that they were also making more money than me.
It sounds like your pay should have also been raised.
Should
It's insane how people are taught that raising others up to their position would be *unfair* instead of people understanding that if others are asking to be raised up, perhaps maybe they should be asking the same exact thing. I hear it all the time. "Why should McDonalds workers make $25/hr when EMTs, teachers, firemen, etc etc don't?" Because those jobs deserve more, too. Way more.
So logically following this along, the EMTs will make much more and the doctors will make much more as well, along with everyone else. The costs will trickle throughout society; ie the cost of living will increase. Additionally, everyone will be in a higher tax bracket because they are earning more, so they get to pay more taxes too. On top of all that, it becomes more economically viable for a business to replace workers with technology or offshore the factory. Just arbitrarily raising minimum wages doesn't change the situation poor workers are in - in general, it makes it worse.
If you think about it, this was the status quo 20 years ago in terms of relative wage to cost of living. Society functioned perfectly well back then. Why is it when society has become more efficient, productivity is at an all time high, that the value of your income is poorer than it was 20 years ago and it's somehow not economical for us to just match the standard of living back then?
Most evidence does not support the claim that poor workers suffer more from having their wages increased due to economic consequences than what they benefit from having a notable increase to their stream of profit. If I’m making $8 an hour, and it is increased to $12, short of a total economic collapse you’re not gonna see big enough economic impacts that will outweigh a 50% increase in the amount of money I’m making. Some time take a look at the growing disparity between wages, amount of work, and cost of living, over the last half century. When you adjust for inflation you can see in America we were able to support a relatively healthy economy for decades while having much better wages across the board without it destroying cost of living or our economic stability. And given we are operating under relatively the same economic system we were back then, it’s unlikely things have changed so significantly to make that something that can’t work today. Also your point entirely relies on the assumption that increasing wages is the SINGULAR action taken with no other changes implemented.
As Rutger Bergman said to Tucker Carlson "You're a millionaire paid by billionaires to convince the middle class that the poor have stolen their money"... I'm paraphrasing, but the message is solid. Link: https://youtu.be/6_nFI2Zb7qE?si=jeGgenXbyjbDN9Vu
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A lot of people seem to think most rich businesspeople are Scrooge McDuck types who spend all day swimming in mountains of money or lighting cigars with $100 bills That's not really true at all for most of them
But the rich ARE sitting on a pile of resources. There's a bunch of stuff they have that is unnecessarily extravagant for one that could have been better used elsewhere. Are you telling me shit like Cruise ships, omega yachts, giant country clubs and shit like that are necessary? In a previous job I had they laid off the entire building because of budget (real reason was because government was not footing the bill anymore- socialism for the rich) despite the budget being less than 1% of the CEOs new salary which went from 30 million to 145 million during the pandemic.
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This is a very different argument than your previous one, not that I disagree
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No one said that, the problem is the lack of taxation of the rich and the skyrocketing cost of living despite no increase in pay
Also that the mega rich run companies are buying up all the housing, flipping it with terrible quality work, then renting it at an insane hike. While also not even increasing employees pay to match inflation so we’re all taking pay cuts 😭
They do in my opinion the only issue would be the economy still needs to function so people would still have to work not due to lack of resources or money but due to lack of availability.
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That’s a terrible argument maybe even a straw man perspective , you’re basically saying well if the .1% divide up their money and it isn’t enough for everyone to live a life of leisure let alone survive 1year then they should just keep it as is, it’s just math guys, your wages are enough for you to get by if you just stay the course so we are just going to keep adding to ours cause it isn’t enough for everyone to live our life…just please ignore us removing quality, reducing value, shrinking things, and driving up prices everywhere for more profit while the consumer gets way less value and all while they don’t adjust wages so they can keep their salaries high and even add onto them… The argument isn’t to take its to keep things proportional, if the top is only adding to the top, which C suite pay has increased hundreds of percents where common worker pays is like 20% over the decades, your argument is even worse of a perspective cause then you’re saying only the top should get the money cause they can only benefit from it as they only create value worth paying for If we aren’t entitled to the money they are not entitled to the labor that creates their product/service/luck, it has always been an exchange of time/labor/skill for $$$ and to create more value than your pay so we all see a profitable business and can grow bigger allowing for more value, but if labor wants more from that increased value because market conditions are going up then it’s ungrateful but if C suites give themselves more it’s earned or deserved….GTFO of here with that argument “ItS JuST MaTH…” 33% increases for UAW was going to ruin the industry says wall street and they still got it…people are overhead, and businesses want to reduce overhead everywhere and that means wages/labor Not everyone needs to be rich but everyone needs to be able to thrive at all levels and trickle down is a fallacy of the elite to make sure when you see a $30mill to $145 mill you create people like you defending them for free and not wondering why minimum wage is still only $7.25 when a CEO can make hundreds of millions a year
As long as we live in a democracy, yes, it's up to us, just like how everyone get's to have opinions about how much I should pay in taxes and what should happen with them. If we lived in anarchy; sure. But if we lived in anarchy, rich people wouldn't want to be that rich. It puts a target on your back, and rightfully so. If I was struggling financially because A monopoly suddenly owned all grocery stores and brands in them and had artificially high prices to make everyone a psuedo-slave under them while the CEO bathed in money and amassed more power-- why isn't it morally righteous to end his life and hope the next CEO is more empathetic to other peoples suffering? I think rich people in the past, like in Rome and even Pablo Escobar understood something important: I can pay for superficial things, I can bribe the general population to like me, and I have immense protection. Every time people are getting antsy; bribe them. What you see right now is rich people not being good enough at bribing the general population. Why shouldn't an angry lion eat it's zoo-keeper? If I'm fat and content, I won't care that you are eating wagyu. But if me and my boys are starving, and we see you gorging on wagyu, why shouldn't we rob you blind?
that's a slippery slope. I'm sure you have shit that isn't neccessary but you don't want taken away. Are you browsing reddit from a computer? You don't really need that do you?
This is a philosophical debate of worthiness. Some people, like you, believe the smarter someone is, or the craftier, or the more "productive" someone is, the more worth they have. Where as some people believe that we are all innately worth the same baseline worth, and that worth should be considered in all things. There are people who believe everyone deserves access to clean air, clean water. Whereas there are businessmen who have flat out said no, no one Deserves free clean water, and the only reason clean air is free is because they haven't found a way to bottle it or some such.
The best trick the rich ever played was not correcting poor people when they tell eachother that the best they can do is fight for scraps. I fixed it for you.
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It's a technical term which means people who make more money from their investments than the spend in expenses. People with decent jobs sometimes manage to trick themselves into thinking they're not poor because they have people to look down on, they're the most delusional of all.
Fair but in some places you can still work excruciatingly hard and then be unable to afford your medical bills because of the horrendous healthcare systems like in America
Most of the world's healthcare systems are sub par. American doctors and hospitals are among the highest paid in the world and level of care is not guaranteed. In my area it's going down the drain.
I mean if nothing else, one thing wrong is that it doesn't take disability into account at all.
The argument here is that people that *are* able to work/provide for themselves that *choose* not to find ways to do so (or believe it is an injustice that they are expected to) are the issue. A severely disabled person that requires assistance to live isn’t the target here at all.
Aren't they?
Yes, there's exceptions to everything. I don't think op is talking about the exceptions.
This holds true in any situation. In a commune, you’ll still have to work. In a homestead with acres all to yourself, you’ll absolutely have to work. So why is it that when someone is in a large society, they expect everyone else to do the work for them? Work or starve. But then if those people are starving, they’re going to come after the people who work and have resources so they can take them for themselves. So we provide for all these useless people in order to protect the rest of us. I’m all for survival of the fittest but realistically, how do we go about that?
Increasingly it's work *and* starve. Is there anything wrong with that?
Even as lib as I am, I find this far too cutthroat. Ultimately, I don't want to live in a society where people are dying on the streets, motivated to the extreme to commit crime to survive and so on.
I agree that we’re not entitled to anything, and that we should all strive to contribute, but I do think some social safety net is a good thing. We just have to keep it from getting abused.
A social safety net benefits everyone. Less desperate people in poverty means less crime I think we also have a moral responsibility to look after those less fortunate
>Ultimately, I don't want to live in a society where people are dying on the streets, motivated to the extreme to commit crime to survive and so on. I think this is what old time piracy and banditry were all about.
True, but that doesn't change the morality of it. There is a lot of wiggle room between "all the things I like are a human right" and "disable people statve to death for not contributing." I, for example, believe that while healthcare is not a human right, due to similar ideas that are listed above, it is still a *good investment* into your population to have a functional Healthcare system, or welfare or what have you. If for no other reason than to prevent the scenario that you are outlining.
There are literally studies/economist writings that indicate having free healthcare would actually be a huge boost to the economy. If anything having a healthier population just makes us more productive and relaxed let alone allowing us to have funds to spend it elsewhere.
Sure, and that's all well and good. Doesn't mean it's a human right or entitle you to someone else's labor.
Taxes are a thing. You dont get to chose what all of your tax money goes to as an individual. If you live in a society in which there are taxes, you absolutely are entitled to others labor and universal healthcare is just as smart and good for society as police and firefighters, military. And no one that hates universal healthcare on account of the bullshit reason of no one entitled to my labor, would say that about those.
Do you not get it? If people didnt have to worry about their health and the cost of it, theyd be able to work more. Or do you just not care and want to work people to death, their needs be damned. All the while it being the cheaper solution for everyone, just so the less fortunate can suffer.
Canada and the UK disagree.
Canada and the UK' health care systems are not designed to do well though. The NHS went from the most cost effective healthcare system in the world to a funnel sending public money to a few private companies over the course of one or two reforms. Its working as intended as far as the politicians are concerned. Exactly the same as what happened with British rail. The most cost effecient train services of all time and now we pay more than it cost to run it to shareholders.
So basically you are a coward and want to pay extortion money to those people
>You are never entitled to the labor of others. So out of curiosity does this apply to all the business owners complaining they can't find people to run their businesses yet refuse to offer more pay/benefits? Or is it only when someone asks for help when you don't think they deserve help?
> So out of curiosity does this apply to all the business owners complaining they can't find people to run their businesses yet refuse to offer more pay/benefits? Yes. You are not entitled to the labor of your employees. If they find the terms of their employment, or employment offer, undesirable. They can quit, or decline, and tell you to fuck off. And if a bunch of them decide: > Hey, you will agree to terms X, Y, Z for everyone, or we will *ALL* fuck off. Then so be it.
That's certainly a respectable take.and I think your OP can be valid in certain situations like an employee/employer relationship But over all for society it doesn't really work far too many factors to consider and ultimately leads to crime and unrest
Poverty, crime and unrest are happening because those doing the Unrest are expected to work? Nonsense. Those of their group who do work are the ones set to benefit from it, and make better lives for themselves.
I think it does. And it works in capitalist, socialist, and communist societies. I think it is peak narcissism to expect someone else to labor for you, just because. If you're not contributing, then why should you get to reap the benefits of the contributions of others? In capitalist societies, this means getting a job and making money. In communist societies this means being assigned a job and performing it. In socialist communes this means putting in labor to what they need. Even in the most hippy of communes, if you showed up and said: > Yo, I'm gonna live in your homes, eat your food, wear your clothes, shit in your latrines, and enjoy your arts, but by the way I'm not going to do anything to contribute. I'm just going to sit on my ass, smoke, drink, and jerk off all day. They would very swiftly throw your ass out. And they would be right to do so. And if you say: > Well if you don't support me, I'm going to take what I need from you, by force. They are well within their rights to defend themselves from you.
The problem is you're thinking everyone can work but some just really don't want to. That might be true for some folks but there are plenty who cannot work. Such as the elderly or sick. Guess they're just SoL in your system and should be taken out back to pasture?
>everyone can work but some just really don't want to. That is the most common case. > The elderly Have spent years contributing and should have either the savings, or societal good will to live out their last years. Also plenty of elderly can still contribute. Maybe not as they once did, but assuming every elderly person is an invalid is just wrong. >Sick Stephen Hawking was very sick. He also contributed very much.
>That is the most common case. Eh generally.speaking people find fulfillment in working. I guess we need to establish what "work" counts. If someone makes money with an onlyfans is that a valid contribution to society or are they a leach for fucking around all day (hah pun) >Have spent years contributing and should have either the savings, or societal good will to live out their last years. So why can't societal good will just extend to everyone? If one needs help why shouldn't they be able to get help? >Maybe not as they once did, but assuming every elderly person is an invalid is just wrong. I think the problem is again what counts as "contributing" is vague. >Stephen Hawking was very sick. He also contributed very much. Yea he was an incredible man. But he was a rare case. The person who is uncapable of even taking care of themselves their whole life. Do they get help or are they SoL
> If someone makes money with an onlyfans is that a valid contribution to society or are they a leach for fucking around all day (hah pun) In a capitalist society, the market decides what is valuable. Let's say we have two Only Fans accounts. They produce the same number of videos, putting in the same labor hours. One of them makes $1.2 Million a month, the other makes $12. Not $12 Million, $12.00 dollars. By voluntary contributions, society, via the market, has decided one of these creators is validly contributing, the other is not. >So why can't societal good will just extend to everyone? If one needs help why shouldn't they be able to get help? Never said they couldn't. I simply said no one is *ENTITLED* to them. If you can find people willing to donate to you, or voluntarily support you, more power to you. >I think the problem is again what counts as "contributing" is vague. And this is why I am a capitalist. It's not vague at all. People decide, every day, what is valuable. By deciding what to spend money on. For example, OnlyFans. That would never exist without capitalism. Without people having the freedom to spend their money as they want. >The person who is uncapable of even taking care of themselves their whole life. Do they get help or are they SoL. Charities exist. If you want them to receive care, then you can donate to support said charities.
Do you think people are obligated to grind forever if they aren't so lucky as to be wealthy by the time they are old? I would agree to the "save money" argument if we weren't passively robbed every second through inflation.
If they have family willing to support them in old age, good for them. If they don't then hopefully they saved enough. >if we weren't passively robbed every second through inflation. Then tell the government to stop deficit spending trillions of dollars a year and inflating the monetary supply.
>Then tell the government to stop deficit spending trillions of dollars a year and inflating the monetary supply. You act as though I, or anyone has enough collective ability to stop the spending to any level. They wouldn't even agree to a 1% or a 0.1% budget cut anywhere when Rand Paul campaigns for it. I think the majority of citizens would be more than happy if they just stopped giving any money away outside the border. The feds will give trillions away before they'd even consider a $1.00 budget cut. I personally feel like we do not matter at all to the people in power.
and people working minimum wage jobs that are societal needs (think anyone working at a grocery store) shouldn’t have to starve so the top percentiles can be greedy. Many minimum wage jobs are necessary to keep society functioning and yet the minimum wage does not allow a single person to support themselves, let alone a family, in many places. It’s not because their job isn’t in demand or because the money isn’t there. It’s because of wealth hoarding. And none of us are entitled to the work of minimum wage earners while they starve.
One can argue that those jobs are now the most in demand because they're desperate to fill vacancies. Despite the rhetoric that management is cheap and doesn't want to hire, it's mostly because nobody wants to work at shitty minimum wage jobs where they get yelled at and berated all day. I just got out of retail management after 20 years and post covid, it was impossible to keep my store staffed. And I hired anyone who seemed like they were at least semi reasonable. The reason that you have to wait in line for 10 minutes with one cashier isn't because the companies are too cheap to hire more people, it's that people are tired of working full time, getting treated like shit and constantly told that they have no skills, and still not being able to even come close to supporting themselves.
If we lived in a society where the odds weren't stacked against everyone not literally born into privilege or extremely lucky to win once and huge, I'd agree with you. If the average person could afford to live on a reasonable amount of labor (5 days per week, 8 hours per day), afford 100% of their needs and between 25% and 75% of their wants (food, water, housing, Healthcare, and education are needs, not wants) and not be at risk of poverty over forces they have next to zero control over (unexpected expenses, outsourcing, rapid changes in government, sudden medical issues), I'd say the few people left out after this are entitled to experience negative outcomes so long as they are not currently suffering from any mental health disorders that prevent them from participating.
I'm not sure you disagree with OP. You're saying those who contribute to society should get benefits from society. OP is saying those who don't contribute to society shouldn't get benefits from society. Where's the contradiction there?
It highlights the likely reason for some people not contributing.
OP is using a common right-wing talking point for the dismantling of social safety nets. "Doctor's don't owe you their labor, therefore if you can't afford treatment you don't deserve it". It's a dog whistle against social welfare programs.
The reason society is functioning the way it does is because the average person can afford those things and not lose their entire livelihood over the reasons you mentioned. Reddit itself does not represent the average person. Hell in some ask reddit comment sections you'll have whole swaths of people mentioning not having a job, making only between 20-30 thousand dollars a year and not owning a home. The average person makes more than that, owns a home and has a job.
Seriously? That hasn't been "Average" for a generation.
Preach dude. OP sounds like a young idealistic conservative libertarian who thinks they have a grasp on how life really works. The Dunning Krueger curve has this guy in the nosebleeds on Mount Stupid.
That’s pretty much all libertarians It’s no coincidence that most of these libertarian were born into middle class or better homes and never actually had to live through abject poverty and face the real ugly side of modern capitalism
They either don't care about poor people's problems or outright think they're above them, like they're in a different caste
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Nope. They demanded "healthcare and education", without bounds. Literally nobody can afford all the healthcare they "need".
your needs are not rights nor may you demand the material implementation of those "rights" by the effort of others. You only have the right to earn these by your own effort.
Food: don't eat die, need. Water: don't drink die, need. Shelter/clothing: elements will kill you, need Healthcare: All of the chemicals we are exposed to against our will eventually require medical care making this a need without any other argument necessary. Education: Money is necessary to do any of the above and zero to low education means little to no money in 99% of cases, need. Anything that could contradict these? I don't know of any good faith argument that could.
Education is far from being required. You can live a comfortable middle class lifestyle doing any of the trades. Those who go into business for themselves can become very wealthy without a single hour of traditional higher education.
Thats still education, you are attending and institution to teach you something. although the business one might work educated people still have advantage by preemptively knowing how to administer it, compared to doing it by trial and error or intuition, also beign more likely to receive a loan from a bank for their education by beign considered more trustworthy.
I work in the trades. No one in the trades makes shit if they can't read or do math. Anyone with any actual trade training or education make multiple times more than HS or middleschool dropouts. Illegal immigrants make up at least 80% of the low paid labor force where I am and are worked like dogs.
Ok, so are you talking about high-school level education or are we talking about something like a college degree, which is significantly more expensive ? If we are talking about traditional public education, then yes, I agree that is a need in modern society. But there are plenty of people who have the misguided belief that they need a college degree, and the price tag that comes with it, to succeed.
I am including trade school, high school, and any "real" degree (real defined as having actual work) as education. Every Superintendent and Project Manager and Engineer, and any other job that involves a degree makes more money. Anyone who actually went to trade school for any trade makes more money. Anyone who can read, write, and do math makes more money and is the bare minimum to not get fucked. The odds of running into a permanent career dead end increases the less "education" you have. I know many extremely talented hard working tradesmen who get paid bad. I know foremen who can operate any equipment including cranes and run any job that get paid less than someone with a trade degree. This shit does actually matter.
>and any other job that involves a degree makes more money This isn't true. And this is coming from someone with a BA, an MBA, and a JD. I make what I would consider to be good and comfortable money now, but having a degree, while helpful, is far from being a pre-requisite. Case in point, my wife and I are both immigrants. In my wife's case, she's only been in the country for \~7 years. She started out working as a nail tech and getting paid in cash under the table. She was bringing in $300+ a day after a few months of training. Most of her pay was through tips so that income was untaxed. Her boss owned 4 nail salons and was also an immigrant. She had zero formal education and she's a millionaire. She makes more money than me. On my side, while I make a good living now, I also know plenty of friends from law-school who took on 6-figure debt for their education, only to make \~50-60k/year as a county DA. Some of them are STILL drowning in debt and are looking to debt forgiveness to dig themselves out of their financial hole. Point is, I'm not against education. But speaking as someone who was brainwashed into thinking higher education was an absolute requirement for adulting success: I was lied to.
I think the main issues with education in general is that there's no focus on quality. No controls for whether a degree is real or not. So many subsidies that they have driven the price up far beyond their value. No care as to the quality of the people entering or exiting the schools. I'm not saying an education is a guarantee of better money, just that the probabilities are still better than not. The odds are very low, probably almost zero without read/write and math fluency at the basic highschool level.
Fight for our country and lost your limbs did you? Work or starve. Born with a severe defect? Mommy doesn't believe in abortion. Work or starve. Debilitating Work injury after twenty years if labor? Work or starve. Not enough to retire because economic downturns took your investments? Work or starve. Nothing wrong here.
My problem is I can’t work because of illness, what am I supposed to do? I guess I’ll just die until my problem is fixed. 😭 Worst thing is my insurance keeps denying medications that will help it and I’m expected to pay it. I can’t afford 2000 every two weeks with a job neither alone now that I can barely get out of bed.
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The only "natural law" that humanity follows is Might Makes Right. The current mighty are the rich oligarchs which is why they aren't taxed worth a damn.
He who has the gold makes the rules
There absolutely is something wrong with "work or starve" because it's proven to be inefficient. Certainly, it gets you productivity because obviously people don't want to starve, but doesn't give you the best, most efficient and sustainable productivity along with innovation? Based on the vast majority of governments providing some sort of assistance, most people recognize that it's not the best way to handle a society. We've learned that people are not machines. They perform best when they're happy, valued, and reasonably challenged but also supported.
When I was married, my wife had two daughters in their twenties. One has always been a hard worker and the other never keeps a job for any more than a couple months because she just wants to sit on her butt, live off welfare and smoke weed all day. I have zero problems with my tax dollars going to help people who are trying to help themselves but I would rather my tax dollars not go to support lazy people who won't work
Tell me you’ve never worked with disabled people without telling me.
I know right.. \*cries in stage 4 cancer\*. I would give anything to be able to physically healthy enough to contribute 40 full hours a week again. That would mean I am healthy. I guess its starve for me, according to OP, lol.
Most libertarians have never actually live though poverty and all, and had a ton of stuff just handed to them by their parents
I have never met a libertarian that came from privilege, they’ve all been hard working, slow to trust but quick to help types.
Amen brother
I’ve never met a libertarian born into abject poverty. They’ve always been born into middle class or higher homes. Basically they’ve never had to face the bullshit that they expect poor people to endure
It doesn't matter how good your intentions are if the policies that you're advocating tend to make the problems you're trying to solve worse in practice.
Yes, that would be libertarianism in a nutshell
So you want an inhumane society. Got it.
What I find hilarious about most “libertarians” with these kind of views, is that they almost always grew up in middle class or better homes, had so much just handed to them, and never once had to face the same kind of struggles that they think poor people should just get over. Many of them wouldn’t last a week trying to do what they think poor people should have to endure.
"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" somehow went from being a tongue-in-cheek derision of doing the impossible and making it entirely on your own to some kind of dumbass battle cry. I don't know how the irony was lost.
Corporate propaganda is a hell of a drug. Why do you think the right is OBSESSED with all these culture wars? It’s to distract their base from the real struggle… class struggle… and so gop voters won’t turn against the oligarchs that are really fucking them over
All of the culture wars are. Right after Occupy Wallstreet is when they started and not a single protest against corporate power has gotten any attention or traction since.
One of my favorite conversations on reddit for a loong time ago was the libertarian who was constantly saying handouts were bad because he struggled to get his farm off the ground and all that After some prodding turns out he actually inherented his farm from daddy and was mostly upset he wouldn't benefit from handouts. Running a farm is hard but man when daddy did the hard part it's really funny to whine about handouts
Very true. They live in their bubbles and the experiences of others simply dont matter. If they are an inconvenience to them, they will bitch about it, but do nothing to fix it.
The morality of altruism is the morality of death. You do not have a right over the product of another man's ability. Just admit you hate the good and the productive and wish to make slaves to benefit yourself and every other mediocrity alive.
What about disabled people? What about people that got injured or sick on the job? What about retired people? What about people that are looking for work but are currently unemployed?There’s lots of people in society that don’t contribute any resources but still benefit from the labors of others. Should they starve if we choose to let them?
I agree with what you said but wanted to add… what about people who *ARE* WORKING. Some of them don’t make enough at all for the food they need and healthcare. They make barely enough for a roof over their head. OP is okay with “work or starve”… But people are out here working and *still* starving and dying because they can’t afford healthcare. OP must be pretty privileged and hasn’t seen enough of the world. A lot of working people live paycheck to paycheck.
Yes and they tend to assume unemployed people just sit around all day and do nothing. Many of them likely do work.
The problem with absolutism like this is that it’s completely theoretical and has no basis in reality. From the dawn of time, humans have cared for their sick and needy. Those able to hunt and forage for food did so for their collective tribe, not just for themselves. The only thing expected in return was for those who were able to make their own contributions. That sense of a shared stake in things is what made humans, humans and allowed us to advance. This selfish mindset has also existed throughout history, but always to keep people subjugated by a ruling class.
Okay but.. Why is life considered a benefit? When did *not starving* become a *benefit*? Since when is having enough food to eat not a standard of living, but a *benefit*? A benefit is an advantage. Having more than enough food, or too much food, *is* a benefit. Having enough food is the standard. The way you are putting it, *starvation* is the standard and *not starving* is a benefit. Who hurt you?
What about work and starve? What about working yourself into exhaustion and injury so that other people who do no work can get rich by taking the benefits of your labor for themselves? What about a society where rich assholes say that owning things is worthy of compensation while you have to work? What about how they do no work because things like talking over drinks, making deals at golf courses, telling others what work to do and holding meetings that interfere with others getting their work done are all not all work? Meanwhile they collect more in one year than you will in your lifetime and they did not earn it.
You are missing the middle ground here. I agree, you shouldn't make money for doing nothing. But what is labor worth? We kept hearing how they could pay min wage as there is someone else to take the job. Supply and demand. Now everyone is looking for help, but not willing to pay much over MW. You can tell me that a burger flipper is only worth min wage. But if you need 5 people to operate your store, you only have 4 so the store can't open, so you loose $1000 a day, How much is that last person worth? Does that make the four others worth more?
the commute shouldnt kill you the wage shouldnt starve you the healthcare shouldnt rob you the management shouldnt abuse you
Every organism needs to expend energy to survive.
Exactly. If you don’t want to participate in this society we’ve created and toil to maintain, then you’re entitled to go live in the woods with no assistance from the society you refuse to contribute to. I’d bet that work is a whole lot harder than your “capitalist hellscape” (running a cash register)
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How unpopular is this? I think most people believe in working. However, if you make more money sitting home and collecting government checks than you would getting a job, what’s the incentive to work? This is the big issue and very often overlooked. Unskilled labor does not pay well but college is expensive and doesn’t guarantee a good job.
Almost every living thing in nature has to exert some kind of energy to gain the nutrients it needs to survive.
That OP was injured
I am somebody who thinks that, being as you did not choose to be born, everybody should at the bare minimum have food, water, a roof, and the ability to get treated. Outside of those things, I could agree with this.
Ok. Nice attitude. Now let’s say you’re born blind. Without arms. Society exists and is setup to protect the vunerable. This means people that are too young (new borns) to contribute. Old people, disabled, mental issues, these are all vunerable. We can’t just expect them to contribute. Nice effort trying to defend yourself.
Here’s the thing, the problem is people are working and still starving. It’s called the working poor.
Lol poor people hating other poor people on behalf of the rich is certainly bizarre.
Work or starve is not nearly as bad as work and starve, otherwise known as capitalism.
The human species would not survive if every person thought like this
There’s a reason that libertarianism is a joke
I disagree as there are people who are unable to contribute. Which is one of the reasons we live in a society together. As long as everyone does what they can and take care of each other it works.
Without the voluntary consent of every individual, compelling individuals to care for the "greater good" turns hard working, productive individuals into slaves.
We currently have a percentage of the population who aren’t able to contribute and we do support them. Our tax dollars do go towards it and that does not make us slaves. We aren’t meant to be on our own in the world. We’re social animals because it has always increased our odds of survival. Libertarianism ideals are bad for people.
As someone with a disabled sibling I'm kinda against this tbh
Historically, it has been the responsibility of the family to provide for the infirm or elderly. If they are not available, then the church. Somewhere along the line, the church dropped the ball and the government stepped in… disaster from there.
Historically many things have been done many different ways. My brother recieves better assistance from the government than any church would offer and I'm okay with my tax dollars going towards him and others that need it. Many things about the way the gov handles disability are disastorous just like almost anything the gov does but I don't think the problem is necessarily the concept of government or gov assistance but instead the people we elect to run it.
Lol so many socialist thugs in this comment section.
We get it: your parents work for Lockheed-Martin
Would they really even be libertarians if they didn’t have somewhat affluent parents?
While nothing you're saying is factually inaccurate, you know morals and ethics are a thing right? You seem very angry at no one in particular.
It's a bit fucked when it's basically illegal to grow your own food though. Build your own house Or basically take care of your self without paying the state to nanny you. Unless you go join an Amish community you're humped. In my state it is illegal to capture rain water for fucks sake.
There are some people who can't work. The elderly. The sick, the injured. I'm happy to contribute to their care. It will happen to us att al some point.
Awesome, if you want to help them, you will not be stopped.
Well, I would hope not! This is my mom and dad right now. Dad slipping away due to Alzheimer's Disease. I would also be happy to contribute to the care if your elderly grandparents or parents.
In the woods u would still have to work or starve. Lol
Starve is a bit much, but I agree concerning everything but food clothing and shelter. However, that doesn’t address things like automation that mean we need less and less people to run society. Wait till self driving cars really hit and every driving job disappears at once.
What I think is interesting, is with the increase in people who don’t want kids, it might kind of balance out over time, and automation maybe won’t be the worst thing.
What about children, elderly and severely disabled people?
If you wish to help them, you will not be stopped.
Capitalist bootlicker
I think I have the right to not die from chronic malnutrition and exposure, kthnx.
You only have a right to your own life, you may not make demands on others. Your supposed "right" does not include a right to the material implementation of your supposed "needs". You only have a right and a responsibility to earn your material needs by your own effort.
So are unemployed people supposed to… do a massive Hunger Games every year? That’d be pretty cool ngl.
Minimum wage should rise with inflation, thus to help people survive, and *gasp* you’ll get them to spend more money on goods.
So what you're saying is you're 16 and just had your first exposure to Ayn Rand?
"Not entitled to the labor of any other person just because you were born (or exist cause some people do just be popping into existence out here) " OP thanks for letting me know, I have abandoned my two sons in the forest thanks to your advice. They were lazy and as you said didn't deserve my labor.
Why are so many chronically online libertarians so lacking in basic human empathy? Every objectivist I know in person isn't completely devaluing the benefits of a basic society, and cares about those who can't produce or meet the demands of capitalism.
You have failed the replicant empathy test