5 ms·

Someone once described Social Security as an anti-guillotine fund, and I think the basic premise applies here, as well.

• Log_out_ 3y ago
  They yearn for socialism and this is how they express it.
  • acdha 3y ago
    Imagine finding internet humor in an online forum! Fetch the fainting couch! More seriously, while almost nobody is calling for actual guillotines there is a huge problem looming: income inequality started getting worse 40 years ago and that trend is only going to get worse as automation becomes more capable. Pair that with the demographic trends (fewer workers supporting more retired people) and climate change, and this century is shaping up to be quite volatile compared to most people’s lived experience. History has taught us that one of the greatest sparks for conflict is lack of hope; a slight increase in the taxes rich people pay will reduce that risk and it’s hardly a communist uprising to go back to the rates which balanced the budget two decades ago.
  • foofie 3y ago
    > They yearn for socialism and this is how they express it. Socialism is not the bogeyman you think it is. Some of us who were fortunate enough to benefit from living in countries in western Europe can tell you that basic rights such as 10 weeks of paid parental leave including for the father is a very nice thing to have.
    • hobotime 3y ago
      Paid leave has nothing to do with "workers owning the means of production." My employees get a ton of paid leave because I respect them, not because our business is socialist.
      • larkost 3y ago
        You are choosing that, and that is admirable. But in a democratic-socialist country (pick pretty much and country in Europe with the possible exception of Switzerland), that is not an employer being nice, but is the law so it is not up to the employer to decide if their employees get that or not.
    • wakawaka28 3y ago
      I'm sure it is very nice to have extra vacation. That might be why European salaries are lower than US salaries, and their tax rates are higher still. Behold, a socialist "utopia" where people line up 3 days to see a "free" dentist: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/people-line-outside-dentist-third-174731321.html?guccounter=1 https://ca.news.yahoo.com/people-line-outside-dentist-third-... This is probably a little worse than average but I have heard many times that socialist countries with free healthcare will let you die before seeing you, because they simply don't have resources to live up to the promise. In that case you'd be lucky to have cash to get out and see a doctor in another country.
      • elktown 3y ago
        > I'm sure it is very nice to have extra vacation. Parental leave is not vacation.
        • wakawaka28 3y ago
          [flagged]
          • elktown 3y ago
            The quality of your comments is so poor it's on a caricature level. > basic rights such as 10 weeks of paid parental leave
            • wakawaka28 3y ago
              [dead]
      • timeon 3y ago
        At the and of the day, life expectancy is lower in US than in western Europe.
        • wakawaka28 3y ago
          [dead]
    • Aloisius 3y ago
      Paid parental leave? Western Europe? Who knew the socialist revolution would be won not through class struggles ultimately culminating in a violent popular uprising by the proletariat, but rather by redefining "socialism" to mean welfare capitalism?
• username332211 3y ago
  Careful with that line of thinking. If the justification of getting more resources to consume is violence, then unarmed, poor and concentrated urban populations are going to be the victims, not the perpetrators. The workers of the world may think the chains were made to bind them, but in truth the chains bind the military and security apparatus. And this has happened before. The Roman emperor Caracalla once described his policy on taxes and welfare thus - "None should have money but I, so I can bestow it to soldiers."
  • feedforward 3y ago
    > The workers of the world may think the chains were made to bind them, but in truth the chains bind the military and security apparatus. The last quarter millenia of history stands in contradiction to this. The country with the most extensive security apparatus in 1916 was Russia, and that did not help the czar and his family in the end. Among the young in the US, socialism is now as popular as capitalism ( https://news.gallup.com/poll/268766/socialism-popular-capitalism-among-young-adults.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/268766/socialism-popular-capita... ). As Marx predicted, short sighted big business functionaries yet press ahead with removing the few scraps they toss from the table in response. It is not the working people who have to fear, but the aristocracy. Besides, the enlisted soldiers abandoning the front and marching back to St. Petersburg and Moscow is what really ignited the revolution.
    • tmaly 3y ago
      Have you read Burnham's The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World? I often wonder if what we have today is really capitalism or rather it is something much worse.
      • slowmovintarget 3y ago
        We have Oligarchy marching around in capitalist skin suits.
    • wakawaka28 3y ago
      The young are simply told that socialism is the cure for their problems, when it isn't. In fact our problems with "capitalism" are general problems with corruption and competition with other countries. Not capitalism in and of itself. Prosperity requires hard work, and capitalism encourages that push for excellence more than socialism ever could. Socialism tends to degrade into communism and authoritarianism, with lots of corruption, because the notion of giving away everything to the state goes against human nature.
• droopyEyelids 3y ago
  You are absolutely right. The only reason we have the few labor protections we do in this country is because people were driven so hard that they fought to the death to secure them. Once all the peaceful means of addressing labor disputes become illegal, what will be left to people aside from violence?
  • candiddevmike 3y ago
    In the US, violent protests == arrests == free prison labor. There's really no downside for these companies if they eschew all morals. The only way out of this is through non-violent unity and solidarity, which is conveniently at an all time low.
    • delfinom 3y ago
      Prisons are already facing staffing shortages nationwide. Not really a viable solution.
    • genocidicbunny 3y ago
      > The only way out of this is through non-violent unity and solidarity, which is conveniently at an all time low. The reason non-violent methods work is because they are implying that if you don't pay attention to the non-violent methods, the only recourse left is violence. Because realistically, if your non-violent methods are easily enough ignored, they'll be ignored. And historically, violence has been an excellent tool for change. Not always for the better, that's for sure, but to deny that mass violence, especially targeted at those deemed to be in power, doesn't change things is ignoring basically all of human history. Speak softly, but carry a big stick.
  • hehhehaha 3y ago
    Or you can just pass laws, as what Congress was intended for.
    • nateglims 3y ago
      Well they have no intention of doing that now.
• onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  Old people aren't usually starting revolutions. If you paid young people to go on vacations in Thailand - that'd be a an anti-guillotine fund.
  • foofie 3y ago
    > Old people aren't usually starting revolutions. Social security covers way more stuff than pention plans, at least in civilized countries. It covers stuff like unemployment benefits, medical leaves, parental leaves, etc. I think that in some countries it also covers some healthcare.
    • wakawaka28 3y ago
      The US is civilized (I assume you meant to imply it isn't) and our welfare programs are not all under one umbrella is not like that. The actual naming of the programs is irrelevant. I do wish that we had a bit more benefits, but we don't even collect enough taxes to fund the benefits we already have. The US simply wouldn't be competitive in the global economy if it did offer all the benefits many European countries do. Neither Europe nor the US are really competitive with poorer countries in the world, especially because of high expenses like health care.
      • Tostino 3y ago
        I wonder why healthcare is so expensive in the US...
        • wakawaka28 3y ago
          Everything in the US is much more expensive than in most places in the world. We have the dominant global reserve currency and also minimum standards of living that are much more expensive than elsewhere. Additionally, the supply of doctors is limited by a professional body, and there's a government-mandated insurance racket that is basically on the hook to cover a lot of stuff. So the doctors charge the market rate for their services, knowing they will probably get paid all or none. If you took out the guaranteed payors, prices would naturally go down because nobody could pay. We could try to fix prices like the socialist countries do. But this does not lead to good outcomes in any conceivable way. Price fixing creates scarcity. I think we already try to increase supply of healthcare workers by importing them. But I don't know enough about it to know if a meaningful number of them are imported. If a young person asks me for career advice, I'm saying that they should try for medicine. Not everyone can handle it I'm sure, but demographic projections suggest it has a positive outlook.
• tmaly 3y ago
  > Amazon in a filing made with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Thursday said it plans to argue that the agency's unique structure violates the company's right to a jury trial. I wonder if the founders intended that the bill of rights be extended to legal entities?
  • hobotime 3y ago
    Entities have rights because they are comprised of citizens. We don't get to label a group of citizens and then get to violate their rights because we labeled them.
    • dctoedt 3y ago
      > We don't get to label a group of citizens and then get to violate their rights because we labeled them. "We" aren't labeling the citizens, they're doing so themselves. The default mode is that people are subject to unlimited personal liability for the harms they do to others. Society has chosen to make available a privilege of doing business in a limited-liability form (corporations, LLCs, LPs), but that privilege has strings attached. Don't like the strings? Then simply do business individually or as general partners — and accept the risk of unlimited personal liability. (Also, the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial applies to suits at common law; NLRB cases arise by statute, not common law, although SCOTUS has extended the jury right to so-called equivalents of common-law cases, which seems suspect.)
  • rayiner 3y ago
    The founders certainly intended that constitutional rights would apply to people’s business activities (e.g. the contract clause). So the real question is whether the founders intended that business owners would be deprived of those rights merely because of the legal structure of their business.
    • lokar 3y ago
      Did the founders envision limited liability and the public stock corporation? Business activity was vastly different at the founding
• bradchris 3y ago
  If we had a strong executive branch right now, we’d have already threatened to launch an FTC inquiry to break up Amazon and or nationalize SpaceX in response, merited or not. The pure shock of the prospect of breaking them up would spook investors, tank their stock, put both CEOs on the defensive, and force them back in line, and everything would get resolved nicely with a face to face meeting and a handshake. Whether it’s merited or not is not the point. Purely from a governance standpoint, as a citizen I hate to see corporate interests trying and succeeding to usurp government and societal norms. Sometimes examples need to be made so others know not to make the same mistake.
  • thegrim33 3y ago
    "Whether it's merited or not" you want the might of the federal government to "threaten" businesses, acting within the law, that have interests you don't agree with?
    • bradchris 3y ago
      It’s called politicking. It happens between any group of people of any size greater than 1: what priorities to focus on, what to apply extra scrutiny to, what to leave alone for another day, etc. In our government, that’s a big part of what the president’s role is. “Bully pulpit” and all that. Presidents do it every day, for smaller and higher profile cases. At that level, it’s all negotiation. If they didn’t want (or feared the) scrutiny, corporate interests wouldn’t have started the negotiation in the first place. They know it looks bad if Biden doesn’t respond, and that he must in some way. They’re just betting that he won’t start with such a strong gambit, because corporations are no longer afraid of our government, and haven’t been for decades.
  • NickC25 3y ago
    I think there's plenty of merit when a massive, multi-trillion dollar corporation (which already has a long history of exploiting workers, exploiting laws, and buying favorable laws) tries to exploit its workers even more. I'm all for allowing corporations to have goals that aren't 100% in line with the country's best interests, but those goals do NOT and shall not ever take legal standing over the country's interests. We need to have serious repercussions for when corporations try to usurp government in a race-to-the-bottom attempt to further weaken labor laws or measures designed to protect common citizenry. Fining the board and C-Suite executives collectively a sum of 5x the company's market cap should be a start.