They dont let you die on the street anymore. They put you in a camp and force you to work now.
Well it was bound to happen eventually
Removed by mod
Isn’t it now in ultimate form ? Die on street exploited.
Slavery, but with extra steps
Awe it hasn’t been since hexbear shit the bed since I’ve been lazily accused of being ai. Shit the bed that’s a funny saying I wonder where it’s from.
Such an odd take.
I make a middle class income in Canada. That means, compared to all but a handful of humans who have ever lived I can:
Eat a wider and much more interesting array of foods.
Travel distances that would boggle their minds.
If I were part of the population that needs glasses, holy jesus would I be lucky to be alive now vs even a couple generations ago.
Read any book, watch any film, listen to any song as opposed to hoping Bill from the next village over was ready to tell us a story again.
Hell, I watched a documentary about how we sent a telescope into space to look back at the origins of the universe. Just amazing stuff!
Go skiing and if I hurt myself, probably not live with a painful injury forever after.
Die comfortably in my bed.
Play Slay the Spire.
Work fewer, less gruelling hours than just a couple generations ago. (Seriously, read about any major engineering project a hundred years ago, they’re mostly paved with the bones of immigrant labourers.)
Edit: formatting.
Not to say your outlook is wrong, because it’s true that much has improved over time, but I’d say the meme is touching on a core issue that highlights the increasing unsustainability of modern capitalism.
Because resources today are not nearly as scarce as they once were, and because quality of life has risen, economic systems have needed to engineer greater degrees of artificial scarcity in order to motivate people to continue working and producing value for the owner class.
This introduces strategies like planned obsolescence of essential goods, widespread conversion of residences into rental units, and costs of living rising higher than wages. There must always be a resource drain to continue justifying the need for labor.
Automation is the other factor that has impacted the longevity of this model. It has long been accepted that, as automation continues to render human labor obsolete, it would be possible to leverage automation to provide a baseline quality of life for all regardless of ability to work.
However, because the owner class is motivated to continue consolidating wealth, it is in their interest to keep the flow of wealth going monodirectionally, whereby laborers who still have value to contribute are locked in, while those who lack value are left to dwindle and die at the margins.
So what we’re observing in today’s reality is not that optimistic post-scarcity redistribution of wealth that was originally envisioned, but instead shrinking populations throughout most of the first world due to artificial scarcity. If it’s too expensive to start a family, you don’t; if it’s too expensive to live, you die. The end goal of late capitalism is to leave only the owner class and their motivated wage slaves, thereby achieving a sort of neo-feudalism.
Shrinking populations seem more to be from two positive things:
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A drastic reduction in teenage pregnancies.
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As living standards improve, gigantic families are less essential for survival (they used to be cheap labour to worm the land, provide family care etc.)
But in general, sure, there are absolutely bad incentives under capitalism. We’ve known this for a long time and when we could talk rationally as adults, we could deal with them, hence anti-trust and anti-collusion laws, which are required to stop the inevitable desire for monopolistic price rewards.
Just like we changed those laws, we can change others to temper capitalism. Unfortunately, when we cede the “hey, why don’t we fix things?” Space to folks whose answer is an economic model that has literally never worked, well, then we’re left with the libertarians and other conservatives vs the centrist progressives while our Leftie flank is mia.
Honestly, if I were one of the digital overlords who run our social media and I wanted to maintain the our current ruthless capitalism, I can think of nothing more useful than encouraging as much communist nonsense from the Left as I possibly could.
Just like we changed those laws, we can change others to temper capitalism.
Guys we just have to do better laws to fix the system that lets rich people control what the laws are.
Unfortunately, when we cede the “hey, why don’t we fix things?” Space to folks whose answer is an economic model that has literally never worked,
Feudalism is not a perfect system but it’s the only one that has ever worked, so says the aristocracy!
Guys we just have to do better laws to fix the system that lets rich people control what the laws are.
Lile we do for anti trust laws, collusion, labour safety, employment standards etc.
Feudalism is not a perfect system but it’s the only one that has ever worked
There had been alternative, better economic models by this time. Though, I suppose it is fitting that your hypothetical only works if you don’t know all that much.
Lile we do for anti trust laws, collusion, labour safety, employment standards etc.
The ones currently either not functioning or actively getting dismantled?
There had been alternative, better economic models by this time. Though, I suppose it is fitting that your hypothetical only works if you don’t know all that much.
There are alternative better economic models today.
Yes, its of course going to be harder to build systems of power outside of the capitalist nation state system, as any working model is going to be seen as a threat and attacked.
The ones currently either not functioning or actively getting dismantled?
Are you conflating America with how all capitalism must function? Or how do you see anti trust not functioning in say, the EU?
There are alternative better economic models today.
Theoretical ones. Surely you understand the difference between theory and practice?
Your earlier argument was silly because during feudalism, there were and had been alternative models that produced a similar or better standard of living.
So far, in practice, every application of non capitalism has been a dumpster fire or yielded living standards that are significantly lower than ours.
Man, smug right wingers are so not worth arguing with.
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Technological advancement doesn’t magically make capitalism good.
It’s not a coincidence technology exploded shortly after we had significant economic innovations, including joint stock companies and patent protection.
There’s an old Soviet joke to demonstrate the difference and the wonders of technology under communism:
What’s as big as a house, burns 20 liters of fuel every hour, puts out a shitload of smoke and noise, and cuts an apple into 3 pieces?
A Soviet machine made to cut apples into 4 pieces.
“Die comfortably in my bed” - you’re going to have some hard lessons pal.
It’s not a guarantee, nothing in life is. But compared to almost any other time and place in human history? My odds are pretty good, especially as we have legal assisted suicide.
You preceived “odds” calculation has corrupted by your natural human arrogance.
I mean, 60% of Canadians die in hospital (in a bed) and another 15% at home. Assisted suicide often takes place in the home and with the increasing acceptance etc of that, yeah, my odds are pretty decent.
Oddly, as I think on it, 3/4 of my grandparents died in their own beds, with the other in a care home (Alzheimer’s) and again, with assisted suicide I think that’d be 4/4 these days. I do have an addict uncle who died rough though?
Lol “comfortablely” in your bed you absolute obtuse excuse of a man.
A) comfortably.
B) Yes, almost any death I experience will be significantly less awful than those faced generations ago.
Learn how much it sucks to starve to death or die of the plague, you pampered child.
Excellent metric of comfort you have there, I see that you truly believe you are correct I was young and naive once good luck with your checks notes " my death won’t be as bad as ancient humans." Do you have any more acts juggling perhaps balloon animals? Maybe you can work a tiny car or the squirting flower into your act? You should volunteer for hospice it may be really eye opening.
yeah. death is never comfortable.
Compared to the deaths that awaited our ancestors, ours are fine.
The odds I will brutally starve to death, die of tuberculosis or dysentary are minimal. The odds that I’ll be heavily sedated are extremely high.
This is kind of the whole point in a nutshell. Yes, I will still die and it won’t be ideal but compared to 99.9% of all people who have ever lived, mine will be so much easier than theirs was. Similarly, yeah, we still have to wor, but compared to most of humanity, damn is our work fine (look how much lemmy slows down on non work hours!) people here sound like children complaining that they’re treated like slaves because they have to clean their room.
If you give a slave technology, does that mean they are no longer a slave?
What if instead of skiing and slay the spire I want a break? A real break? Like a year of not being forced against my will to work?
I’m trying to think of an economic model that would allow this.
Like, hunter gatherers “naw, I’m not going to be hunting or gathering this year. Please feed me.”
Every communiat regime thus far has uhhhh, been pretty opposed to that sort of idleness.
And even in the magic utopian ones people dream up, untethered by reality or human nature, I’m trying to picture a version in which the garbage truck guy somehow doesn’t prefer to taking a year off instead of hauling garbage around.
And even in the magic utopian ones people dream up, untethered by reality or human nature, I’m trying to picture a version in which the garbage truck guy somehow doesn’t prefer to taking a year off instead of hauling garbage around.
It sounds like you have an individualist approach to society and a view that money is the only true incentive to work (known as Taylorism and generally debunked by the 1930s but still in use around the world). There are always people who can see the work that needs done and are willing to do it, for the good of their community. In a society without garbage trucks, garbage will soon pile up and there will be people willing to fix that.
Hedonism, greed, and money are the values pushed upon society via capitalist propaganda but most people aren’t as inherently greedy as we’re pushed to be.
The good of the community and society can motivate a worker under a system that doesn’t treat money as its deity (or, to be even more radical, in a moneyless society). There’s also no reason why someone must be a garbage truck driver day in day out for the rest of their life like the current system encourages. We can live in a world with a more flexible approach to work, where perhaps you drive a garbage truck once a fortnight to do your bit for your community but spend the rest of your time doing something with a similar skillset like driving a bus or even something completely different to live a full and interesting life.
Your comments come across as arrogant whilst simultaneously ignorant. There are many different systems that have been theorised, trialled, quashed, debated, etc over the years that have various pros and cons that are better than the capitalist system that we currently wage slave under.
For example:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_ideologies
To each their own but I think these all rely on a very privileged upbringing, a ridiculous faith in people and a steadfast determination that every human flaw is actually secretly capitalism’s fault, despite all evidence to the contrary.
All you need of evidence of how pathetically greedy and self centered we are is to look into the window of any bar or restaurant and to notice 95% of the patrons are wearing sweatshop clothes.
Mamy folks are doing just fine, can afford to choose non evil but meh, those are other, foreign children so who cares? With humanity like that, you really expect people to sacrifice countless hours to become a neurosurgeon instead of sitting around being a poet?
It’s an entire ideology premised on hopefulness which is adorable but not something I’d ever risk human prosperity or happiness on.
A lot of human societies worked less than 40hrs a week year round.
The fact that you can’t even fathom a different system is capitalist propaganda
Which of those societies would have given you the year off you requested earlier?
Most of them before Capitalism.
Do you think it’s natural for a Great Ape to labor for 40hrs a week until they die?
Which herbivores our size labor as much as we do for so little reward?
Most of them before Capitalism.
Lol, seriously? You think hunter gatherers were just like “oh no, just take the year off and nap or whatever, we gotchya!”
Or agrarian societies would be “oh, Janet didn’t feel like planting or harvesting for a year, no worries!”
Do you have a source for this besides, I dunno, imagination?
Which herbivores our size labor as much as we do for so little reward?
Holy shit, tell me you’ve never been in the woods without telling me… You know the reason herbivores immediately hear and react to you as you walk anywhere near? Because at any given moment, they expect to be eaten. So sure, they spend most of their time eating instead of working but none of that is idle rest, it’s “I hope I don’t get torn apart because I let my guard down for a half second.” (And try taking a year off from staying alert 24/7 as a herbivore.)
Frankly, compared to almost every other animal, we hardly work. If you haven’t, I strongly recommend Planet Earth. You’ll see animals who walk thousands of miles for months because if they don’t, they will die of thirst, others that spend all day walking to a feeding ground, avoid the predators, then hope to make it home to give food to their kid before doing it all over again.
A 40 hour work week that doesn’t involve the ever present threat of death would be the envy of the animal world.
I’m glad you feel rewarded for your labor, hopefully you can snap yourself out of this grateful slave mentality some day
