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>How do you know we wouldn't be off even better with less alienation and exploitation? Depends who is the "we" here. Much of the lifestyle and perks of living
by FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>How do you know we wouldn't be off even better with less alienation and exploitation?
Depends who is the "we" here. Much of the lifestyle and perks of living in the developed west are dependent on other less fortunate people being exploited: cheap cocoa and cheap coffee grown in the poorest African nations, cheap bananas, asparagus and other fruits and vegs in your supermarket, cheap electronics made in China with mineral mined by kids in Africa, cheap clothes made in the poorest SE Asian countries, cheap semiconductors etched in Taiwan, etc.
Entire industries and supply chains we take for granted in the west as being commodities now, depend on what is basically modern slavery and environmental destruction we intentionally turn a blind eye on.
So if all those exploited people were to be be less exploited and have the prosperity to choose other careers than to work in mines, farms or sweatshops to supply the wealthy west, then those "we" would be much better off, but then the westerners "we" would be less well off as now we wouldn't be able to afford those commodities we take for granted at the new non-slavery prices.
>No, it would be cool if we were fully fledged human beings and shared some of the shitty work that needs doing more fairly, and stopped exploiting each other.
And who gets to fairly decide the global sharing of that shitty work? Because I don't know anyone who would like to scrub toilets for a living, or collect minerals form piles of scrap, mine uranium and lithium, etc. Do we draw straws? Or the more likely scenario for humanity, have a world war, and the victors get the nice comfy work and the losers the shitty work.
Yes, it would be cool if the human race would give up on the greed driven self enrichment and exploitation of others, and reach a utopic enlightenment where all the shitty work would be done by robots instead of the desperate people of the poorest countries, but we're very far away from that.
A good first step, let's start properly taxing our 1% wealth hoarding corporate elite who thrive on the human and environmental exploitation (cough Saudi Aramco, Nestle, Exxon, cough) while amassing more wealth than the 99% could spend in a lifetime, tax free in offshore heavens.
But since we can't even collectively crack down on that simple thing, I don't have any hopes we'll be able to solve the rest of humanity's issues without any major world conflict and decimation resetting the monopoly board.
- mschuster91 3y ago> So if all those exploited people were to be be less exploited and have the prosperity to choose other careers than to work in farms or sweatshops to supply the wealthy west, then those "we" would be much better off, but then the westerners "we" would be less well off as now we wouldn't be able to afford those commodities we take for granted at non-slavery prices. The key thing is: we can redistribute where all the wealth generation goes to. At the moment, the lion's share goes to a very few very rich people - obviously people can't afford good quality, fairly priced food any more. There used to be a time where one middle-class income was enough to feed a family of four, live in a decent house in the suburbs, have a car and go to vacation once or twice a year. We need these times, this wealth distribution back.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>The key thing is: we can redistribute where all the wealth generation goes to. But that goes back to the taxation issue I already mentioned. We can't redistribute wealth if we aren't taxing that wealth the top 1% hoard. Curent redistribution just means robbing the ever shrinking middle class to give to the lower class and pitting them ageist each other for votes, while the like of Bezos are laughing all the way to their islands on their platinum Yacht. >There used to be a time where one middle-class income was enough to feed a family of four, live in a decent house in the suburbs, have a car and go to vacation once or twice a year. We need these times, this wealth distribution back. Those times are not coming back unless you undo globalization to the post-WW2 boom levels when offshoring middle class work abroad was not yet a thing.
- mschuster91 3y ago> Those times are not coming back unless you undo globalization to the post-WW2 boom levels when offshoring middle class work abroad was not yet a thing. Today's middle class is doing office work instead, at often enough pretty high productivity (i.e. corporate profit per work hour) rate. There's nothing preventing the world's largest employers to pay their employees an actual living wage.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Today's middle class is doing office work instead, at often enough pretty high productivity (i.e. corporate profit per work hour) rate. Only if you work for some of the wealthiest companies in the world does your individual productivity scale that well, but unless you work somewhere like Luxembourg, the Mittlestand most likely works for averge companies. >There's nothing preventing the world's largest employers to pay their employees an actual living wage. There is: Lack of wage legislation and/or poor market competition so you're forced to accept any wage or starve.