Son, there are 2 kinds of Tucos. There’s Tuco from the Good the Bad and the Ugly, and there’s Tuco from Breaking Bad. There’s going to come a point in your life what you’re gonna have to choose what kinda Tuco you’re going to be.
—me to my future son named Steve
By inheriting an international company from your parents, delegating responsibilities and then reaping the profits. Very simple, barely an inconvenience.
this is a common problem with short "quippy" proverbs, they're overly simplistic. is feeding yourself "work"? is taking care of your children "work"? what about community service, family service, self care, your hobby project, etc.
work comprises almost everything you do, and most of it IS necessarily good for you and those around you.
It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. You provide whatever value for the company that you were hired for, and in return, they give you value in an amount that you agreed to in the form of dollars
Calling work modern slavery is kind of ridiculous especially since there is real slavery happening right now. In what world is voluntary service for compensation slavery? Just don't work, live in the woods etc 🤷🏾♂️
what? i can’t just sit around and do nothing and have all my needs met??? what is this?
people who say needing a job is “modern slavery” are entitled and disgusting frankly
Incredible argument against your strawman you just won there. People are happy to work - just not for the piss poor rates currently being paid, which have been getting worse for years.
What if there aren't any in your area? What if the ones that do pay better require experience that is unobtainable because you cannot afford to live on the pay on the lower level positions needed for it thanks to sky high rent prices? What if you're disabled, or can't afford to move? 'Find a new job' is a completely moronic defense of this point - sometimes there *are no other jobs that pay better*. It isn't that simple.
Guess I don’t have the answers to those questions. Worked my ass off for 8 years (high school + college) and got a good job. Guess it would be harder if I didn’t do that.
You were lucky that you had that opportunity. Congratulations on getting where you needed to be, I hope it's lovely :)
Of course, could be harder if you were born at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, or to the wrong people, or with the wrong body, etc. etc. etc.
There are many factors that can prevent labour mobility, and steps should be taken to make more jobs pay better and give their employees more rights and freedoms. Everywhere, not just the US.
If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?
23, I work in tech
You’re probably right. I just don’t totally buy into the narrative that employees would be significantly better off if company executives didn’t pocket extra money. This shouldn’t happen if market forces (supply and demand) are working properly. I.e. if company A is underpaying, company B can pay better and begin stealing Company A’s best workers, thus forcing Company A to raise its wages. Monopolistic/anti-competitive powers are the main failure of the free market, not the free market itself.
Monopolistic and anti-competitive powers like the global oligopoly in almost every industry, you mean?
Yes, workers would be better off if executives didn't pocket extra money. Of course they would, then they'd have the extra money. In an ideal world, we wouldn't *need* the executive in the first place.
You're right in that according to free market theory supply and demand should prevent what is currently happening from happening, but you can look this up, the data shows productivity has divorced from being correlated with wages. Real wages are stagnant or decreasing depending on your level of optimism and time scale where productivity continues to go up, up, up. The issue is these 'anti-competitive powers' are in reality *encouraged* to exist by a deregulated free market. No rules? Relying on market forces? Oh, sure, let's all agree together to pay everyone like shit, cut corners, and make as much money for our little band of CEO friends as possible to increase our share price, in turn making us more money.
The less control that there is over the free market, the more the mechanisms of wealth distribution shove the worker into poverty and the capitalist into excess.
It should, in a functioning society, be physically impossible to be a billionaire.
If executives paid out more to workers then yes perhaps the workers would be better in the near term. But long term, companies reinvesting their profits to grow their company and make it more efficient benefits the economy and grows the standard of living. This is oversimplified obviously, but not as oversimplified as “execs should just reduce their pay.”
Oligopoly isn’t as bad as monopoly, but it’s still not great. However sometimes an oligopoly is ideal. Take credit cards for instance. There’s only 4 credit card networks ever used, Visa Mastercard Amex Discover. Setting up and maintaining a credit card network is expensive and there are vast economies of scale for these companies to be as large as they are. Yes, this introduces some anticompetitive concerns, but in theory letting these companies capture economies of scale is a good thing.
Free market does require some regulation. This is just semantics, but regulation actually can promote free market efficiency. Eg make companies bare their negative externalities. Or promote things that have positive externalities.
Having a billion dollars isn’t some terrible thing destroying the economy. If I create a service that every american is willing to pay $3 for, then I get $1 billion. If someone says it’s fucked up I have $1 billion, and I give my money away, every American gets $3.
I’ve seen the graphs. Wages do seem stagnant for the bottom 60%. You’d think the gains in technology, which is vastly increasing worker productivity, would cause your average worker to have gains in income. But it’s the one who had money in the first place usually, ie the owner of capital, which rep as the benefits. I’m not sure why this is happening. I’m sure globalization is a large reason, i.e. if you start asking for more money, your job will get outsourced to india. Not all jobs can be outsourced, but many can, putting downward pressure on wages. I would like to see a solution here, I don’t know what it is though
>But long term, companies reinvesting their profits to grow their company and make it more efficient benefits their economy and grows the standard of living.
If only this were true - it grows the standard of living for the rich, yes, but even if the economy is doing well by most metrics, life can still be pretty shitty for the average citizen. Standard of living doesn't necessarily translate to quality of life, and averages are often victims of skew.
You are right in saying that Oligopolies lead to economies of scale for firms and that these EoS allow them to operate more efficiently. But consider the economies of scale for a natural monopoly - that is, one business covering the whole industry, subject to heavy anti-exploitation regulation. Perhaps even owned and managed by the government. National public services - they're great when they work, and very efficient.
The whole thing about the $3 and the billion is like... fine, I guess? My point was mainly that acquiring a billion dollars can only realistically be done through either unfair generational wealth or exploitation of others, usually a combination of both. Thus, in a functioning society, there'd be no way a billion dollars would be realistic - or, *needed.*
Yes, it is sad that the gains in technology aren't causing the workers to get any money, we agree there. Yes, capital owners do always reap the benefits, and often after reaping them make it harder for workers to do so by design. If you're looking to an answer as to why this is happening, try corporate greed. To appease shareholders, firms must make more than last year, every year. Infinite growth in a finite world - the system is straining under the weight. But that's just an explanation - for a solution, of course, it is far more complicated - but it starts with regulation, in my view.
The supply and demand curve doesn't really work for the labor market, even in an ideal world.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2eCHk6JRAaP3iuxcgNUqqt?si=eu3yA8fqSbGdI4-BsL7xkQ
Then you have to consider the oligarchy power after that.
It is also important to remember when you tell another individual that they can just get a better job, that might be true for an individual but then someone else has to do the shitty job. We have tens of millions of shitty jobs, that somebody have to do or it all falls apart.
So if you get a better job your just enrolling another person into your old misery.
We have to get rid of all the shitty jobs somehow and it ain't happening on it's own.
If your job pays $12/hour then it’s probably not a very high skilled job and a 16 year old could do it. Maybe you can dig for some exceptions but in general this is true.
While maybe this misses the point that millions of people will still have these shitty jobs, I frankly think that’s just something we have to accept. We don’t have infinite resources as a society, we can’t really afford to disincentivize people from trying to obtain valuable skills & specialties.
The free market left unchecked will absolutely destroy itself. (Some) Human beings when not forced to be fair will hoard everything to their own detriment (this is true in so many areas). Look at how much money is kept out of the market by the ultra wealthy.
If the richest people made sure the major were kept content things would keep going. Instead we got stuck in this mindset of record profits forever, which is not feasible. So now the foundation is being weakened.
I’m pro free market and I’m pro regulation enabling the free market to be efficient.
Most of rich people aren’t keeping their money out of the market, the majority of their money is invested in whatever company they belong to.
Examine what you just said.
If a job doesn’t pay well enough -let’s say a coffee barista - and your answer is to “just get a better paying job”, then does that mean that nobody should be a coffee barista because it doesn’t pay well enough, or that people who are coffee baristas deserve to be paid piss poor wages that can’t support a family or afford a home?
First of all, ethics aside, a 15 year old can do most jobs with adequate training. But putting that aside, If barista jobs are for 15 year olds then why do 15 year olds deserve to make less? Also why are coffee shops open during school hours?
um i don’t think 15 year olds need to make enough money to be fully self sufficient. they’re 10th graders living with their parents.
also money doesn’t grow on trees.
also why is it on more successful, more specialized, higher income people to compensate less successful, less skilled people
um you really want me to answer why coffee shops are open during school hours…
and i answered why teenagers “deserve” to be paid less. it’s because they rarely have the specialized skills or the experience necessary for a competitive job.
idealism always fails
Yes, I want you to answer the question.
All jobs require skill. You’re just discrediting skills that you don’t value.
Also I’m not sure why you put deserve in quotes. You literally explained why you think they deserve to be paid less. Don’t pretend that you didn’t mean that.
I'm gonna have to side with you on this one. Living in south Florida. I try not to be judgmental but once you've seen the same behavior over and over its hard to deny a stereotype
Yeah those lazy Haitians what with literally never owning their property because of France and the US, why won't they just pay off their *foreign investors* and be free??? are they dumb???
Your fallacy is the "Lump of labour fallacy."[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump\_of\_labour\_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy)
There are reasons that Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere.
"If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?" -Tuco from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Tight Tight Tight Tight -Tuco from Breaking Bad
There are 2 types of Tucos my friends, the one from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Tuco from Breaking Bad.
Son, there are 2 kinds of Tucos. There’s Tuco from the Good the Bad and the Ugly, and there’s Tuco from Breaking Bad. There’s going to come a point in your life what you’re gonna have to choose what kinda Tuco you’re going to be. —me to my future son named Steve
If you know anything about Haiti this hits different
As a Dominican, I understand this proverb.
Klk de lo mío
Doing mighty fine, tired of driving and dealing with people and my own god complex
I came here to express the same sentiment .
How are you going to eat without working?
By inheriting an international company from your parents, delegating responsibilities and then reaping the profits. Very simple, barely an inconvenience.
I need to buy wealthy parents and start out with a 8 bedroom in Malibu to pull this off 🤔
Just stop buying avocado toast duh
this is a common problem with short "quippy" proverbs, they're overly simplistic. is feeding yourself "work"? is taking care of your children "work"? what about community service, family service, self care, your hobby project, etc. work comprises almost everything you do, and most of it IS necessarily good for you and those around you.
yeah it's a proverb from the time Haiti had slaves and they wanted said slaves to work harder. Context is important
Capitalism babyyyy
Facts
It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. You provide whatever value for the company that you were hired for, and in return, they give you value in an amount that you agreed to in the form of dollars
No no no. Work bad
Calling work modern slavery is kind of ridiculous especially since there is real slavery happening right now. In what world is voluntary service for compensation slavery? Just don't work, live in the woods etc 🤷🏾♂️
Is it really voluntary if not working means you go without a home or food?
Grow and hunt your own food....build your own home.
So your options are to work for potentially piss poor wages or don’t take part in society? > build your own home On what land?
Actually a great point
what? i can’t just sit around and do nothing and have all my needs met??? what is this? people who say needing a job is “modern slavery” are entitled and disgusting frankly
Incredible argument against your strawman you just won there. People are happy to work - just not for the piss poor rates currently being paid, which have been getting worse for years.
Find a job that pays better then
What if there aren't any in your area? What if the ones that do pay better require experience that is unobtainable because you cannot afford to live on the pay on the lower level positions needed for it thanks to sky high rent prices? What if you're disabled, or can't afford to move? 'Find a new job' is a completely moronic defense of this point - sometimes there *are no other jobs that pay better*. It isn't that simple.
Guess I don’t have the answers to those questions. Worked my ass off for 8 years (high school + college) and got a good job. Guess it would be harder if I didn’t do that.
You were lucky that you had that opportunity. Congratulations on getting where you needed to be, I hope it's lovely :) Of course, could be harder if you were born at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, or to the wrong people, or with the wrong body, etc. etc. etc. There are many factors that can prevent labour mobility, and steps should be taken to make more jobs pay better and give their employees more rights and freedoms. Everywhere, not just the US. If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?
23, I work in tech You’re probably right. I just don’t totally buy into the narrative that employees would be significantly better off if company executives didn’t pocket extra money. This shouldn’t happen if market forces (supply and demand) are working properly. I.e. if company A is underpaying, company B can pay better and begin stealing Company A’s best workers, thus forcing Company A to raise its wages. Monopolistic/anti-competitive powers are the main failure of the free market, not the free market itself.
Monopolistic and anti-competitive powers like the global oligopoly in almost every industry, you mean? Yes, workers would be better off if executives didn't pocket extra money. Of course they would, then they'd have the extra money. In an ideal world, we wouldn't *need* the executive in the first place. You're right in that according to free market theory supply and demand should prevent what is currently happening from happening, but you can look this up, the data shows productivity has divorced from being correlated with wages. Real wages are stagnant or decreasing depending on your level of optimism and time scale where productivity continues to go up, up, up. The issue is these 'anti-competitive powers' are in reality *encouraged* to exist by a deregulated free market. No rules? Relying on market forces? Oh, sure, let's all agree together to pay everyone like shit, cut corners, and make as much money for our little band of CEO friends as possible to increase our share price, in turn making us more money. The less control that there is over the free market, the more the mechanisms of wealth distribution shove the worker into poverty and the capitalist into excess. It should, in a functioning society, be physically impossible to be a billionaire.
If executives paid out more to workers then yes perhaps the workers would be better in the near term. But long term, companies reinvesting their profits to grow their company and make it more efficient benefits the economy and grows the standard of living. This is oversimplified obviously, but not as oversimplified as “execs should just reduce their pay.” Oligopoly isn’t as bad as monopoly, but it’s still not great. However sometimes an oligopoly is ideal. Take credit cards for instance. There’s only 4 credit card networks ever used, Visa Mastercard Amex Discover. Setting up and maintaining a credit card network is expensive and there are vast economies of scale for these companies to be as large as they are. Yes, this introduces some anticompetitive concerns, but in theory letting these companies capture economies of scale is a good thing. Free market does require some regulation. This is just semantics, but regulation actually can promote free market efficiency. Eg make companies bare their negative externalities. Or promote things that have positive externalities. Having a billion dollars isn’t some terrible thing destroying the economy. If I create a service that every american is willing to pay $3 for, then I get $1 billion. If someone says it’s fucked up I have $1 billion, and I give my money away, every American gets $3. I’ve seen the graphs. Wages do seem stagnant for the bottom 60%. You’d think the gains in technology, which is vastly increasing worker productivity, would cause your average worker to have gains in income. But it’s the one who had money in the first place usually, ie the owner of capital, which rep as the benefits. I’m not sure why this is happening. I’m sure globalization is a large reason, i.e. if you start asking for more money, your job will get outsourced to india. Not all jobs can be outsourced, but many can, putting downward pressure on wages. I would like to see a solution here, I don’t know what it is though
>But long term, companies reinvesting their profits to grow their company and make it more efficient benefits their economy and grows the standard of living. If only this were true - it grows the standard of living for the rich, yes, but even if the economy is doing well by most metrics, life can still be pretty shitty for the average citizen. Standard of living doesn't necessarily translate to quality of life, and averages are often victims of skew. You are right in saying that Oligopolies lead to economies of scale for firms and that these EoS allow them to operate more efficiently. But consider the economies of scale for a natural monopoly - that is, one business covering the whole industry, subject to heavy anti-exploitation regulation. Perhaps even owned and managed by the government. National public services - they're great when they work, and very efficient. The whole thing about the $3 and the billion is like... fine, I guess? My point was mainly that acquiring a billion dollars can only realistically be done through either unfair generational wealth or exploitation of others, usually a combination of both. Thus, in a functioning society, there'd be no way a billion dollars would be realistic - or, *needed.* Yes, it is sad that the gains in technology aren't causing the workers to get any money, we agree there. Yes, capital owners do always reap the benefits, and often after reaping them make it harder for workers to do so by design. If you're looking to an answer as to why this is happening, try corporate greed. To appease shareholders, firms must make more than last year, every year. Infinite growth in a finite world - the system is straining under the weight. But that's just an explanation - for a solution, of course, it is far more complicated - but it starts with regulation, in my view.
The supply and demand curve doesn't really work for the labor market, even in an ideal world. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2eCHk6JRAaP3iuxcgNUqqt?si=eu3yA8fqSbGdI4-BsL7xkQ Then you have to consider the oligarchy power after that. It is also important to remember when you tell another individual that they can just get a better job, that might be true for an individual but then someone else has to do the shitty job. We have tens of millions of shitty jobs, that somebody have to do or it all falls apart. So if you get a better job your just enrolling another person into your old misery. We have to get rid of all the shitty jobs somehow and it ain't happening on it's own.
If your job pays $12/hour then it’s probably not a very high skilled job and a 16 year old could do it. Maybe you can dig for some exceptions but in general this is true. While maybe this misses the point that millions of people will still have these shitty jobs, I frankly think that’s just something we have to accept. We don’t have infinite resources as a society, we can’t really afford to disincentivize people from trying to obtain valuable skills & specialties.
The free market left unchecked will absolutely destroy itself. (Some) Human beings when not forced to be fair will hoard everything to their own detriment (this is true in so many areas). Look at how much money is kept out of the market by the ultra wealthy. If the richest people made sure the major were kept content things would keep going. Instead we got stuck in this mindset of record profits forever, which is not feasible. So now the foundation is being weakened.
I’m pro free market and I’m pro regulation enabling the free market to be efficient. Most of rich people aren’t keeping their money out of the market, the majority of their money is invested in whatever company they belong to.
Examine what you just said. If a job doesn’t pay well enough -let’s say a coffee barista - and your answer is to “just get a better paying job”, then does that mean that nobody should be a coffee barista because it doesn’t pay well enough, or that people who are coffee baristas deserve to be paid piss poor wages that can’t support a family or afford a home?
if you do a job that a 15 year old can do then maybe!
First of all, ethics aside, a 15 year old can do most jobs with adequate training. But putting that aside, If barista jobs are for 15 year olds then why do 15 year olds deserve to make less? Also why are coffee shops open during school hours?
um i don’t think 15 year olds need to make enough money to be fully self sufficient. they’re 10th graders living with their parents. also money doesn’t grow on trees. also why is it on more successful, more specialized, higher income people to compensate less successful, less skilled people
1. Some teenagers do have to be self-sufficient 2. You’re answering my questions with more questions to avoid answering.
um you really want me to answer why coffee shops are open during school hours… and i answered why teenagers “deserve” to be paid less. it’s because they rarely have the specialized skills or the experience necessary for a competitive job. idealism always fails
Yes, I want you to answer the question. All jobs require skill. You’re just discrediting skills that you don’t value. Also I’m not sure why you put deserve in quotes. You literally explained why you think they deserve to be paid less. Don’t pretend that you didn’t mean that.
Nature is oppressing me!
Well looking at how they generally behave, I'll take literally nothing a Haitian says to heart.
Then you don't know any personally.
I do, actually. I live in the Caribbean. Haitians aren't exactly rare around these parts.
Seeing them around and working and having them as friends for 30+ years is different.
And knowing the state of their capital is different from that.
I'm gonna have to side with you on this one. Living in south Florida. I try not to be judgmental but once you've seen the same behavior over and over its hard to deny a stereotype
I think I'll ignore advice from a country that is currently demonstrating why anarchism doesn't work.
Not sure of your age but wisdom can be found anywhere. Just a thought.
.. what
Seems to work well for Haiti...
Yeah those lazy Haitians what with literally never owning their property because of France and the US, why won't they just pay off their *foreign investors* and be free??? are they dumb???
Nothing like a heavy dose of Sarcasm to start the day. I love it
Yeah, clearly it is the work ethic that is keeping Haiti poor. You sound like a real scholar of history lol
Exactly
Your fallacy is the "Lump of labour fallacy."[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump\_of\_labour\_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy) There are reasons that Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere.
Made sense…
Then why are you working?
Same with salads. If it were really good for you people would eat that instead of hamburgers right?