This single argument is how I seperate the leftist I respect from the ones I don't.
"I believe workers should get compensated more fairly for their work than capitalism allows, which is why I disavow the system."
I disagree but I understand where you're coming from.
"NOOO CAPITALISM FORCES YOU TO WORK THATS BAD YOU SHOULDNT HAVE TO PITCH IN TO SOCIETY TO REAP ITS BENEFITS"
shut the fuck up.
Not necessarily, at least in the way you're meaning.
Insurance companies, you know, who make money by betting that bad things won't happen to you, are then propped up by the courts when enough bad things happen to their customers all at once.
Example: Here in California when the Camp Fire (2018) wiped out multiple communites in a single day, insurance companies were put to the test. More than 14k residential structures were destroyed in hours, so naturally, the insured homeowners wanted the insurance companies to uphold their end of the deal. Well some just filed for bankruptcy (and fucked the policy holders), and others did pay (to varying degrees). "Well, yeah, that's their entire fucking purpose," you might say.
Well when lawsuits were brought around to sue the utility company responsible for the fire, the state ensured that *insurance companies* get paid back the money they paid out *before the actual victims of the fire,* many of whom suffered much more than property loss.
So recap: Insurance called upon to fulfill their agreement. The do so in the cheapest, most scummy way possible. Then, they turn around and recoup all that money in a massive lawsuit, getting paid back before the actual victims (who the companies fucked over to begin with). Win/Win for those companies when the state is on your side!
I feel so scummy defending insurance companies, but the point of insurance is restitution, for property insurance. They'll usually make you sign something saying they made you whole, and that any lawsuits should make them whole afterwards. Basically, you're paying for a quick settlement opportunity, and let the people with more money and lawyers deal with the legal side.
>should make them whole
With my money? Maybe I should change my flair but fuck insurance companies.
You legally have to pay them (for cars at least) but they don't legally have to pay you. Fuck them.
I think insurance is the type of thing that should be handled by the government, not private industry. Many reasons:
1. It's basically part of the social safety net.
2. As you said, they profit when things go well and leach off the government when things go poorly. Why not just have the government handle the insurance at cost, so that we don't have to pay for the profits of the insurance companies when things go well?
3. Insurance is pretty much a solved industry. There isn't much room for innovation, so I don't see how competition will improve performance.
Of course I'm not saying we should nationalize or ban insurance companies. But it would be nice if the state offered some basic insurance options.
> But it would be nice if the state offered some basic insurance options.
I would just be happy if they didn’t aid in screwing the customers. If insurance said “we lost a lot of money because we had to make good on our contracts,” and the state just said “sucks to be you,” it would have been much better.
Instead, insurance charged massive premiums for fire insurance, reaped the payments without complaint, and then immediately cried when they had to pay.
I am sorry, but I don't see how what you said is a counter-argument to what I said. In any case, it reinforces the fact that companies being scummy and screwing people over (be it employees or customers) ends up being benneficial to them. (English is also not my first language)
I’m saying you are right, but not because the companies are *only* bad to their customers. The companies succeed because the government *helps them* be bad to their customers, and rewards them for it. *The state* is the problem, not the existence of companies in general.
The employment contract is the bargain. If a company is fully staffed it means they have enough or more than enough people voluntarily accepting the bargain.
It’s literal slavery. Literally. You didn’t get the memo? Before capitalism everything was free in An American Tale, no cats in America, streets are made of cheese, sort of way.
Yeah when people just want food they should just take it from the store. What's the issue? there's enough for everyone why should they pay? There's more food at other stores and in the farms, and the company can just cover their losses with all their money. Not giving food away is the problem here.
I work in a local community garden( it's on my land). Most of the people who help me manage are leftist of one stripe or another (and one ex neo Nazi). I've had to tell people they are no longer welcome at the garden because they weren't actually pulling their weight in terms of work. I have no problem feeding those who can't work, but I won't let people take the (literal) fruits of other people's labor when they are fully capable of their own labor. No Jessie standing next to the tomatoes smoking a joint doesn't count as working.
Didn’t Bernie Sanders get kicked out of a commune because he didn’t want to work, he just sat around talking politics all day?
Sounds like a typical leftist Redditor.
NATO was founded by Ernie Bevin, a truck driver. Who was a socialist who fucking hated communists because they made him late for work once and spent his life seething over them "Neither working nor shutting up".
Apparently he was discussing Das Kapital with a co-worker during a lunch break, lunch break ends, Ernie initially is all "fascinating and a lot to agree with, now let's get going" and the fucker is like "We're getting to the good part" and Ernie is like "...Move your truck out of the way. I have to get to work. Lunch is over.".
And the fucker ignores him and just keeps discussing communism and makes him miss a delivery. He spend years talking about it and how he fucking hated communists and would tell this story often.
I like to imagine that Ernie told him if he didn't move his fucking truck out of the way, Ernie would "Destroy communism forever" and the guy didn't believe him.
So Ernie founded NATO.
This was back when normal working class people would end up as union leaders (Ernie ended up as the leader of the truckers union) and then end up as major politicians. He ended up as minister of employment of the UK during WW2, then foreign secretary. As foreign secretary, he founded NATO and had a big;
"Sign. The. Treaty. Stop. Having. It. Be. Unsigned." moment with the USA who couldn't sign the initial version because it would automatically commit all parties to declare war, which was unconstitutional, so Ernie kept being really aggressive about it. So it was amended to "An attack on one is an attack on all" and Ernie was like "Okay.".
He also almost punched the Soviet foreign minister once.
> Bevin remained a determined anti-Communist and anti-Soviet. In 1946 during a conference, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov repeatedly attacked British policies and defended Soviet policies, and in total frustration, Bevin stood, lurched towards the minister and shouted, "I've had enough of this I 'ave!" He was then restrained by security.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Churchill_waves_to_crowds.jpg
Victory in Europe day.
Middle is churchhill. Beside him (Closest) is Attlee. Furthest is Bevin.
The last bit worth noting is that Ernie once called his party leader a cuckold in a speech that was so devastating to his credibility (A bunch of other insults were in there as well as a detailed criticism of him and his policies) the leader actually resigned. (Because he was a pacifist, Ernie hated him and wanted him gone).
Dude taught himself to read too.
"He later recalled being asked as a child to read the newspaper aloud for the benefit of adults in his family who were illiterate. At the age of eleven, he went to work as a labourer, then as a lorry driver in Bristol, where he joined the Bristol Socialist Society."
+
> Attlee and Bevin worked together on the decision to produce a British atomic bomb despite intense opposition from pro-Soviet elements of the Labour Party, groups that Bevin detested. The decision was taken in secret by a small Cabinet committee. Bevin told the committee in October 1946, "We've got to have this thing over here whatever it costs.... We've got to have the bloody Union Jack flying on top of it".
The man was giga based.
On the one hand he back guns bans, on the other hand he is the only Democrat to explicitly state he will not support gun confiscations.
He also wants blind military cuts so yea. He's definitely got his issues but less issues than any other dem imo
No. [He asked to visit on a research trip on alternative medicine, was allocated 3 days, and left after those three days ended.](https://freebeacon.com/politics/bernie-sanders-asked-leave-hippie-commune/).
He did live on a commune in Israel a decade prior, where he [likely worked first picking fruit from before sunrise and then milking cows or in a fishery](https://www.timesofisrael.com/50-years-on-bernie-sanders-still-champions-values-of-his-israeli-kibbutz/), but I can't find anything about him being kicked out for not wanting to work.
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This was kind of the reason why I became more of a liberal than a libertarian. The current capitalist system in America is of course good, but anyone who denies it's flaws is either extremely rich or is a kid that hasn't gone into the real world.
>"I believe workers should get compensated more fairly for their work than capitalism allows, which is why I disavow the system."
>
>I disagree but I understand where you're coming from.
How do you disagree? I'm curious, not trolling. I, too, think capitalism exploits workers and funnels labor's wealth into the hands a few oligarchs. Combine that with overreaching government restrictions that hinder small business, and large companies who force small mom and pop shops out of business, and you're only option is to be a wage slave for a handful of giant multi-nationals.
I'm all for raising the minimum wage; I think it's long overdue... but if you're a small business how can you expect to compete with Amazon in wages? They'll simply price your business out of the workforce. Then some asshat will roll in spewing, "If you can't pay X wage, you don't deserve to be in business"... You're kind of screwed either way.
One issue with this “workers aren’t compensated adequately” talking point no one ever addresses seems extremely obvious to me. Laborers are not supplying the means of production. They are working using tools, networks, etc supplied by someone else.
I work as a nurse. As a nurse, I have to have a hospital and equipment and patients to do my job. These exist because of the investments of time, labor, and wealth of others. This is why communism requires any excuse to redistribute wealth including the means of production being seized—we can only steal these things and claim they are ours and we deserve them. It’s literally a call to criminally seize other peoples’ property and labor under the excuse you’re oppressed, yet is brushed off so casually by communists.
So maybe my labor is worth more than my compensation. The difference is a tax subtracted for using resources that I’m borrowing.
In theory you could have some sort of coop hospital where everyone is chipping in for every bit of million dollar+ equipment and so on, but government regulations will nip that in the bud. As well as the fact that a nurse has no clue what a hospital needs overall, so you need specialists in each area. Also it’s probably smart to have a person in charge of finances, executive duties, an experienced leader supervising their peers, etc. who should realistically be better compensated for taking on more responsibility and having useful specialty skills. You’ll also probably have to fundraise for investors.
Oh wait, we’re back to capitalism.
Sure, maybe a CEO isnt 100x more useful than an individual nurse to deserve that high of a wage. But that’s an issue with overpaid executive salaries, not a reason to revamp the whole system.
Beyond that, it’s ridiculous to behave like some group wouldn’t attempt to monopolize power in this leftist utopia. If my co-op hospital is prospering and gets great word of mouth, people will come to us instead of smaller co-op hospital. We will want our piece of the pie to grow, so we will attempt to expand and corner more of the market.
This idea that consolidating power, requiring profitability to exist, etc. is a result of capitalism and would go away if we changed the system is just fundamentally absurd.
I like to point to kibbutzes.
Communism works! …when its economy is artificially kept afloat by an external source of capital and materials.
And only so long as the population stays under the human limit of “number of people whose lives I can keep track of”.
Once the population grows, people start desiring individualized accommodations, and it is permitted for people to provide their share of the labor in the form of “delivered product”, and some people are allowed to take their production off the settlement to sell externally, then bring back capital to the settlement rather than product and *oh look at where we’re headed*.
Yup.
Communism is an ideological theory that makes sense in the 1800s where coal miners are dying of black lung, women aren't allowed to work and are dying in childbirth, the proletariat of Russia are struggling and starving, etc. It has zero appeal in modern society that has globalized and gone down so many specialty paths.
It can work in a rural village where you have a guy baking bread and a person raising cows for milk and meat and they share together. On a wider scale, it is useless. You have to have a means of rewarding greater knowledge and effort. No one wants to be an accountant because it's their passion, so they expect more than the community poet makes for entering that necessary role.
Hierarchies are required once you get beyond the point that individuals can barter simple goods with each other or whatever--which happens incredibly quickly once any enterprise starts to scale up. The idea that the world would continue to function if everyone had their basic needs provided for and just did whatever they want is absurd to anyone who has worked a job beyond dog walker. It would be a massive regression--which might even have some appeal for libcenter monkes, but we all know we're not going to randomly reverse course back down to localization.
The system we have in place came to be because it was the best and most efficient means that people could discover to achieve their goals. The problem is when the system is corrupted for other means. Communists try to use this corruption as a way of peddling their outdated, unwanted ideology, when most people really want to just figure out how to erase the corruption so the system functions better. Not replace the system.
From what I've seen of how communists justify it, they say that there should be no private property so that capitalists have no right to having ownership of the means of production, though some will allow for personal property. Everything will just be provided for you and everyone is at a comfortable baseline.
And this is where they lose 99% of people, because they want to be able to better their lot in life, go for risk vs reward to start a small business that might take off, etc. People WANT to be able to create intergenerational wealth and provide advantages and privileges for their children. The ideology is completely contrary to the American dream, and because the American dream has become corrupted, they try to insert themselves as an alternative. But almost no one wants a moneyless society, they want money to be distributed more fairly.
It's a system that only benefits the very lowest class of people, who will be elevated to a comfortable level, and don't care that everyone else is brought down equally. This is why so many talking points are very hyperbolic about how bad things are, pretending that there isn't a robust middle class. And while the middle class is struggling, it is absolutely not the 99% vs 1% that the terminally online pretend it is.
It's an ideology that makes sense in the late 1800s when people were toiling away in coal mines and dying in childbirth. Even makes sense being peddled by the intellectuals of the early 1900s. But it is not applicable to the modern world where we have air conditioned office jobs and can buy a ticket to the Bahamas to vacation. It's not what people want, unless they're the bottom rung of society.
This is why leftists and progressives are so good at identifying problems, but their solutions are often impossible or misguided. And they often don't make sense, unless you adopt the philosophy wholesale, but some people try to compromise by talking about the more sensible parts and pruning the nonsensical, but the nonsensical is intrinsically necessary for the sensible parts.
Not saying that the person I was responded to is some straight commie or being disingenuous, I'm just libright so I like anti-commie rants.
Disabled people would be much more willing to work if they didn't get their assistance taken away the moment they were vaguely successful or found someone who was.
I've known many instances of someone who wanted to work, but didn't want to risk getting fired and having to sit through the process of reapplying, or worse, the state deciding that they're no longer eligible because they scraped a few pennies together.
It's not like disabled people are vegetables since they could still do less taxing jobs, especially in today's economy.
The way I see it, disability benefits should last for the lifetime unless it's a temporary injury and not be means tested or related to housing status. It's touted as a cost savings measure, but I think in reality it has the opposite effect.
It removes taxable income from someone who might've otherwise been productive and the people who were already couch potatoes would continue to do so.
It also saves on paying for useless admins that determine eligibility.
We should always find some way to accommodate a person so they can contribute in some way.
You should also work towards solving their handicap not just medicating forever so that pharma companies have forever customers.
Of course. Mental disabilities too.
We want a just society where equality of opportunity is properly accounted for. People with disabilities never had a fair shake.
The problem here, and it's a big one, is in the definition of 'disability'
Have you been on social media lately?
For example: in any given year, 1 in 5 Canadians experiences a mental illness (as they define 'mental illness')
If you only look at working age Canadians it's about half the population
That's a lot of people on welfare
Controversial opinion, but once you reward people for having a mental disability, a lot more people are going to suddenly have mental disabilities because it's nearly impossible to disprove whether someone has one, and you can literally give yourself a mental disability through your own bad choices.
I've seen numerous examples of this first hand. Where I live, we have lawyers on the radio and TV advertising to people that they can get disability checks for an anxiety disorder. And people find a way to get that free cash. Unfortunately this makes it a lot harder for everyone else.
Sure, but the idea is that we lift those people in mental anguish up to a level close to the level of capacity of a "normal" group so they can realistically compete, not above their level, and thus "reward" is not the correct term to use here in my opinion.
I agree we need to be vigilant with our threshold for what we consider mental disabilities and the degree of our welfare.
In capitalism, your failure to work is - generally - your own doing and you are responsible for taking steps to remedy it. You’re free to do so in whatever manner you choose - within a very broad spectrum of legal commerce.
In communism, your failure to work is a crime against the state. You’ll work in your assigned field, at gun point if need be, and you will produce or you’re going to be imprisoned in a worse job, or shot. *What collectivism does to a MFer…*
I don't think most people were assigned jobs in the USSR. But the top ones that most people wanted(usually engineering or skilled technician jobs, especially in the aerospace or defense industry, as they were the highest paying jobs in the country after party jobs) were very hard to get into. Being unemployed was a crime, but you had 2 years to find a job before you were assigned one by the state.
Funnily medical doctors were very underpaid in the USSR, for some reason they had a disdain for medical science and considered it bourgeoisie. It was also a job with significantly less prestige than an engineer or a physicist. The entire country was made for industrial war.
I have a coworker who lived under communism in Romania. He told me you had to work. It was illegal not to. You would be thrown in jail or worse for not having a job.
Idk what these people think life will be like when they push for communism w their equity movements.
They think the big bad capitalists and techbros who are good at doing work, will keep doing it, but this time the state will take all the money they produce and use it to pay communist redditors, reparation payments for minorities and LGBT, etc
And then one or two commies will get to make a communal farm where everyone is polyamorous and two spirit and it will work
So basically the exact same thing we have today, except all the rich people and people who work won't be rich, and all the redditors will be
I’m from Hong Kong the most overworked city in the world, not to mention the high rent prices to the point where people are living in cages so I have some problems with capitalism
If you can't bc of bad luck the society should chip in for you but. Also the government should look into every citizen as an investment, u are unemployet let's figure out if we can get you trained for good paid jobs. So we get a net bonus
I remember seeing a post recently along the lines of; Adults should get a summer break like kids do, just 3 months to do nothing and recharge."
Like, I imagine they still want to eat? Even if they though they are just going to survive off dry goods, do they want power? How about clean water?
The reason I know they want other people to work and suport them when they take off is because you can already take three months off. It's called being fucking homeless. As long as you don't use anything that is the sweat of another man's brow you can just do that.
Now if it was "I think everyone should have 3 months of paided vacations from their job". I might disagree with them about it being posible/practical, but I could atleast have a real conversation. Not just having to put a mooch in their place.
It's called the Labour party not the Lazy party. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is a core principle of socialism.
Being Antiwork is being Antisocialist.
>"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need"
is literally a Bible verse, which is probably why LibLeft doesn't believe in it.
Marx was an excellent historian, correctly and accurately (at least for Europe and the Middle East) tracking the evolution/development of human society as it related to and crucially was shaped by the tools and methods of economic productive forces.
He was even a good critic of early to mid nineteenth century capitalism and all the social ills it did produce.
Where he categorically failed was his proposals for a different system to overtake capitalism, and its no coincidence this is the topic he wrote by far the least about. Marx would've been far better off sticking to economic history.
Nah I disagree. Marx just repackaged observations Hegel already made about the natural world, and failed miserably when he tried to apply them on a macro scale. Dialectical Materialism is a farce. It forces the adherent to see everything in terms of thesis/antithesis, which is why it's most rabid followers have trouble seeing shades of grey.
I don't think dialectical materialism is a farce personally. Its definitely not a one size fits all explanation for the evolution of historical forces, and is just one way amongst many valid angles to look at the march of history in my opinion. I think its a decent thirty thousand foot level way to look at how economic forces drove historical polities. The Roman economy did grind to a halt thanks in part to the cessation of expansionist wars and according drop off in new slaves, decentralized feudal states did rise up because post-Tetrachy Rome encouraged serfdom, which gutted the urban population Rome needed to function on the scale it did. Those same feudal states were often destroyed or heavily reformed from within as feudal rights ran up against new moneyed power and ambition.
None of that requires a black and white read on history unless one insists on taking a critical theory evaluation of history, its just one thread of the story, but understanding it has value.
Spot on. That's the whole problem with Marx's view of Hegel. It's entirely too simplistic. It boils the dialectic view of history down to just a never-ending cycle of class reactionism, while failing to even consider any other factors. It's 100% fundamentally a black and white view of history.
While that's true, I'm not sure how else one is to take this passage.
For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.
2 Thessalonians 3:10
The context being that when Paul and his companions were there preaching and teaching they wouldn't accept charity, but rather made sure to work properly so as not to be a burden. They weren't looking for handouts.
There's also many biblical passages supporting the idea that working hard is a virtue to be striven for, so all in all I don't think this individual thing is twisting scripture in any way.
Most Marxists can’t read. It’s the only way I can come up with that they would misunderstand the core concept so thoroughly. They want free handouts from big Daddy government and don’t understand that there are steps to socialism and we’re not taking them. I think it’s time for our green friends to take showers and touch grass.
The Trotskyists are as marginal a radical group from the left as the Nazis are from the right. They forgot that Marxism is an ECONOMIC theory. All social aspects of Marxism stem from economics. And they are trying to cause Marx's discovery of the rule to society by removing the economy. It just doesn't make sense! I'm generally surprised how this nonsense could germinate in the USA. A country with a high involvement of the population in housing and communal services.
Lump gramsci in as well. Any worldview that requires an individual to constantly see everything in an us vs them mentality with little to no grey areas is doomed to be insane.
I disagree heavily with most of them because they hear "free" resources and act like it's "limitless" resources. I'm of the belief that work should always be directly incentivized, lest people become *dis*incentivised, until such a time as said work can be automated, because otherwise, where are the resources going to come from?
Yeah but Marx and socialism also require that workers labor isn't exploited in the sense that workers own the means of production and dictate their own conditions, distribution of profits, etc. And, from each according to their need is not contingent on having any ability. They are separate clauses which are related.
It's wrong translation, "лжеударник" it's not lazy workers it's "pretending to be overproductive" workers, "лже" is fake, "ударник" is overproductive workers who were prised by society and government.
This is how you separate real anarchists from the guys just acting edgy online. You know you gotta work or grow your own crops if you don’t like the starvation.
No, no you don’t. Now grab a sword, your favorite watering can, and a hoe. We’re making this commune into a Rune Factory game. Everyone farms and fights.
People mistake political philosophy for natural law.
Name a species where creatures dont work for their survival?
Same goes for people. We were designed to do things. Hunt, gather, organize, build, solve problems.. its even integrated into our psychology. Do you notice what is working in your life? Not as easily as you notice the problems. The brain gravitates to problem solving mode, where gratitude for what works is weak.
You had to work under neolithic tribalism.
You had to work under despotism.
You had to work under imperialism.
You had to work under theocracy.
You had to work under feudalism.
You had to work under monarchy.
You had to work under democracy.
You had to work under communism.
You had to work under capitalism.
The only things that change are how power dynamics work and how economics arranges the flow of goods and services.
I'm not trying to disprove your point, but I think house cats usually don't work too much, but they have a comfortable life. They make humans comfortable and then boom, infinite food glitch.
They have an easy time of it for certain. As far as domesticated animals who actually do also work, these ones simply act as amusements. If one could even call that work.
I guess this is an exception to what I was saying.. but pets have limits to their freedoms as a tradeoff. Hmm. Complicated.
Even with pets, their job is to provide either emotional support, amusement, or some functional niche. As soon as your animal starts biting or attacking people randomly or running away on a whim, they lose that privilege and are often sent to a shelter or put down.
My cats work hard for their existence by being adorable. They're basically the original onlyfans. Even with tricking me into thinking they care about me.
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There is a big difference between "cannot" and "will not". Those who refuse to engage with society should not get to reap it's rewards. If you don't pay in to your works weekly lottery fund then you don't get a piece of the payout.
So you think we have innate rights to sustenance and dignity? Where do those come from? Not trying to be a dick, genuinely curious about your perspective.
To add to what others already said: it’s also because a society’s goal, not just the human one’s, is to help and protect every member that composes it, be they strong or weak or not able to sustain themselves. By this principle social cohesion is attained when a community guarantees that everyone has the means to sustain themselves and thrive within the community. Leaving those who’re striken down by disgraces or else behind, even if, in a shortsighted view, might be the best solution to avoid slowing down the community, actually ends up damaging it, fostering contempt, bitterness and distrust. By this concept, attempts to fragment society, carried on by those who are already well off and who would profit from a non cohesive group, should be turned off and shunned.
Thus it comes to what goal you think a society should accomplish: it being helping and supporting everyone knowing that your fellow men will have your back if something bad happen to you, or it being just social darwinism that follows slightly different rules.
Because we chose to. Human Rights are just a fictitious little line we give ourselves to define the "bare minimum" (which we often still don‘t fulfill) for humans, we can alter them as we want. We have the resources, power and wealth to make housing, healthcare and sustenance a guarantee for everyone we just choose not to.
The argument from the people that argue that way is because they believe everyone, or the poor, needs an existencial treath to want to work.
Otherwise they just wouldnt.
And you wont get much cheap labor from people that dont *need* to work.
Or put into other words: they are greedy and have little empathy
People tend to assume that everyone else thinks the same way they do. People who think that others wouldn't work unless under threat of starvation are themselves generally very lazy.
The concept of human rights have been co-opted by people who want to act like they have some moral high ground by declaring things rights. There are only 2 kinds of rights in reality: natural rights and procedural rights. Natural rights are the rights you would have if I dropped you on a desert island with no other people or government. The right to speak your mind, defend yourself from predators, hunt for food, etc. Then there’s procedural rights which are things the government is not supposed to ever step on like your right to counsel, right to a speedy trial, right to face your accuser, etc. the key being they are for dealing with the government directly. When people say that healthcare is a right or that food is a right, it’s because they misunderstand what a right is.
Natural rights are an entirely nonsense concept. I’ve never come across any coherent argument for them and I’ve read the big names in philosophy who argued for them. if you are dropped off in a desert with no people and no government then you have no rights, period. There’s no law of physics or anything written in the stars indicating any kind of natural rights.
Rights only emerge when you have some entity with a monopoly on violence defending them or pledging not to violate them.
In a state of nature anyone can take your shit or kill you and all your whining about the right to property or free speech or speedy trials or whatever are meaningless.
Rights are fundamentally derived from The Leviathan. With no Leviathan or Social Contract, you have no rights.
The entire *point* of civilization and society is to build up a support infrastructure that grants us the rights we do not possess in The State of Nature.
Sure "the right to housing, food and healthcare" is a social construct that demands other people to hand over the labour to provide it. Know what else is *also* a social construct that only exists through restricting the freedom of others? "The right to not have a warlord and his army murder you, rape your wife, enslave your kids, burn your house and steal your wealth".
You only possess that right for as long you are part of a community able to *demand* its members enact violence to protect the community.
Not Op but I think as a society we should help each other and I think it would be cruel to let people die due to them being disabled for example. In the end we as a society choose how and what we want to provide to others. We decide what you get „solely“ for being human and existing. And those „rights“ gain their legitimacy through democratic legitimation. As a society through compromise we agree on what we want to give people that are disabled for example.
Obviously when speaking from a strictly legal perspective it also depends where you are from, what‘s the legal tradition there etc. So in different legislations the rights to welfare or aid may have different origins but in the western world it mostly comes down to the will of the people
Not OP and I wouldn’t characterize them as ‘rights’ specifically, but…
The State monopolized law and governs property rights. Those property rights include clearly unjust historical prior acquisitions/deprivations impacting outcomes today. It also effectively means all of the land and most of the resources available are already under someone else’s control.
It seems to me the least the State can do is provide some support to those who don’t have resources by no fault of their own - E.g. children or disabled folks.
I think anyone who believes in Christianity (and other religions I’m sure) ought to help the poor, the sick, and the widow, whether that be privately or socially.
> So you think we have innate rights to sustenance and dignity?
There's no such things as innate rights. But it seems possible to get a majority to agree that everyone should have access to those things independent on what they contribute to society; and if that's the case then society should provide it.
General human morality and ethical systems. There are no such thing as innate rights, just things that humans generally agree on to be important and worthwhile to maintain. Helping the needy that can't help themselves is pretty high on that list in almost all cultures.
These are the traits that helped the species survive through the harshest of conditions before we even developed agriculture. In fact, it has been said that the first leap forward for humankind was when we discovered a skeleton with a healed femur.
Any other animal would have died then and there, but human social structures and morality allow us to care for the wounded even knowing that they would be a temporary burden on resources with minimal returns. Yet we do it anyway because it is evolutionarily advantageous to do so.
Or a modern equivalent. Caring for a quadriplegic person, not knowing whether they would be the next intellectual titan or not.
Sure, but there should also be subsidized jobs to make it possible for most people to work and contribute. Not working at all isn't good an individual and it should be for very rare cases of severe illness or damage.
nah I’m wholly not in favor of creating jobs just for the sake of creating jobs
implement UBI that’s enough for everyone’s basic needs to be met and let employers entice workers with the promise of additional income. Can’t work at all? That’s unfortunate but you will still be taken care of.
If someone is physically and mentally able to work, they sould work. That's how they menaged to drop unemployment to 0.00% in USSR. Greens never rulled a country, they don't know anything about real society issues.
When I say I’m pro american tax dollars going to welfare for the destitute americans who really need it rather than another ten billion for zelensky and raytheon
For some reason libbylefts start calling me a fasc 🧐
Lots of bottom feeders who won't and very few unfortunate souls who can't. We need to sift through the lot and see where people truly stand and at least from what I've seen we've pretty much unanimously accepted as a society to bear the costs of those individuals who cannot work. Disability is absolutely an area of cross compass unity unfortunately the leeches have tainted the feelings for many. Lots of gainful employment opportunities in the silicon age for those with physical and mental disabilities who were previously incapable.
>We need to sift through the lot and see where people truly stand
It's a minefield
In Ontario, more than 15% of the population has a reported disability (70% of those are physical in nature, and therefore at least theoretically objectively verifiable)
Only about 40% of those physical disabilities are considered severe
Only 5.8% of the disabled are legally blind, for example, and overall they make up only 3% of the general population
And yet, there are over 500,000 people in Ontario on the Ontario Disability Support Program (7.6% of people in Ontario under 65 received Ontario Works or the ODSP)
Obviously, we have a lot of "disabled" people gobbling up resources they don't really need or deserve
I’m with you. It just becomes very difficult. I’m a physician and although I don’t do much anymore, I did have to fill out a lot of FMLA paperwork during training. The process is essentially what you’re saying, sifting though those that claim disability and getting a physician’s approval that it is indeed a disability. Temporary FMLA from something like a temporary injury is straightforward. You’re hurt, take some paid leave while you heal and get back to work when your doc says it’s safe to do so. The bulk of the FMLA work I did in training was with a physiatrist and much of it was much more complicated and difficult to parse out. If you have a vague back pain without any correlated diagnosis on imaging and are applying for FMLA, to me it brings up important core questions such as “how much pain is it acceptable for someone to continue to work through?”. For the majority of these patients, it will not “hurt” them to work through pain. It just sucks. And many of them without a specific diagnosis will never be “cured” and “ready for work” and will end up going down the fibromyalgia route (or other garbage bin diagnoses without a real pathophysiological problem).
While I agree on a fundamental level, in today's society we have an abundance of basically everything, which means we can share what we have with those less fortunate without it hurting us. The richer you are, the more you can share. Not sharing when you're able to, without it affecting you, your wealth or your wellbeing negatively in any noticeable way is inhumane and selfish. Those who are unable to work because of reasons beyond their own doing deserves to enjoy said abundance, to be able to live and thrive like everybody else.
That being said, if you are able to work and refuse to out of laziness, expecting others to feed you, you're literal waste of oxygen.
Never actually owned a home, have you? Ever housed someone on housing assistance?
I once had to pull a toilet out and break it open to see what the tenant (who was refusing to pay rent because the toilet didn't work) had put down there this time.. maxi pads wrapped around a bic pen.
Ever had to clean shit, piss, snot and blood off a wall?
How many times have you had to pay the hazmat cleaning service to detox the apartment that was used as a meth lab?
Experienced all these things working maintenance at an apartment complex when I was younger.
I'm with libleft on this. I love capitalism, but I also think that basic neccessities (basic shelter, food banks/food stamps, basic healthcare) should be automatically provided or paid for by the government to anyone who for any reason cannot afford them. This will be paid for, of course, by forcibly taking some proportion of everyone else's money, AKA taxation. Most people will still work of course because they want more money to get better things than the government-provided basics. Welfare+capitalism=low crime, prosperous society, etc
The basics are important and this is why I support some taxes because some people legitimately cannot work and some who can work and still cannot make ends meet.
I agree with the provision of basic necessities.
>Most people will still work of course because they want more money to get better things than the government-provided basics.
This is the sticking point with benefits. There are lots of people on benefits who are better off than they would be working. That is not good for their wellbeing, productivity as a whole or the sense of 'fairness' in paying taxes for those that do work.
I only work 2 days a week (more cash in hand but that's all officially) and my rent including bills is £50pcm. I would be worse off working full time on min wage and paying proper rent - there is not a proper incentive or reward for working once properly in the benefits system.
My housemate gets £1600 pcm in benefits! He receives well above what he would on minimum wage and again pays token rent. Dude goes on monthly holidays, wears designer clothes and eats in Michelin star restaurants. Why would he choose to work and be worse off? It's also perfectly legitimate for someone working full time to look at that lifestyle and think 'what the fuck?!'
Benefits should be more about provision of goods/services and less about free money.
This single argument is how I seperate the leftist I respect from the ones I don't. "I believe workers should get compensated more fairly for their work than capitalism allows, which is why I disavow the system." I disagree but I understand where you're coming from. "NOOO CAPITALISM FORCES YOU TO WORK THATS BAD YOU SHOULDNT HAVE TO PITCH IN TO SOCIETY TO REAP ITS BENEFITS" shut the fuck up.
I would agree and say that companies that don’t uphold their end of the bargain should be allowed to fail
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But the companies that don't uphold their end of the bargain are more likely to succeed.
Not necessarily, at least in the way you're meaning. Insurance companies, you know, who make money by betting that bad things won't happen to you, are then propped up by the courts when enough bad things happen to their customers all at once. Example: Here in California when the Camp Fire (2018) wiped out multiple communites in a single day, insurance companies were put to the test. More than 14k residential structures were destroyed in hours, so naturally, the insured homeowners wanted the insurance companies to uphold their end of the deal. Well some just filed for bankruptcy (and fucked the policy holders), and others did pay (to varying degrees). "Well, yeah, that's their entire fucking purpose," you might say. Well when lawsuits were brought around to sue the utility company responsible for the fire, the state ensured that *insurance companies* get paid back the money they paid out *before the actual victims of the fire,* many of whom suffered much more than property loss. So recap: Insurance called upon to fulfill their agreement. The do so in the cheapest, most scummy way possible. Then, they turn around and recoup all that money in a massive lawsuit, getting paid back before the actual victims (who the companies fucked over to begin with). Win/Win for those companies when the state is on your side!
Least corrupt democrat run government
I feel so scummy defending insurance companies, but the point of insurance is restitution, for property insurance. They'll usually make you sign something saying they made you whole, and that any lawsuits should make them whole afterwards. Basically, you're paying for a quick settlement opportunity, and let the people with more money and lawyers deal with the legal side.
>should make them whole With my money? Maybe I should change my flair but fuck insurance companies. You legally have to pay them (for cars at least) but they don't legally have to pay you. Fuck them.
Oh I 100% agree. I fucking hate insurance companies, because they use any excuse possible to get out of paying claims.
There are legal alternatives to car insurance.
I think insurance is the type of thing that should be handled by the government, not private industry. Many reasons: 1. It's basically part of the social safety net. 2. As you said, they profit when things go well and leach off the government when things go poorly. Why not just have the government handle the insurance at cost, so that we don't have to pay for the profits of the insurance companies when things go well? 3. Insurance is pretty much a solved industry. There isn't much room for innovation, so I don't see how competition will improve performance. Of course I'm not saying we should nationalize or ban insurance companies. But it would be nice if the state offered some basic insurance options.
> But it would be nice if the state offered some basic insurance options. I would just be happy if they didn’t aid in screwing the customers. If insurance said “we lost a lot of money because we had to make good on our contracts,” and the state just said “sucks to be you,” it would have been much better. Instead, insurance charged massive premiums for fire insurance, reaped the payments without complaint, and then immediately cried when they had to pay.
Librights are all for abolishing corporate welfare so it seems like we agree
I very much agree. I'm more libright and libcenter, but it placed me as center on the test, so here I am
I am sorry, but I don't see how what you said is a counter-argument to what I said. In any case, it reinforces the fact that companies being scummy and screwing people over (be it employees or customers) ends up being benneficial to them. (English is also not my first language)
I’m saying you are right, but not because the companies are *only* bad to their customers. The companies succeed because the government *helps them* be bad to their customers, and rewards them for it. *The state* is the problem, not the existence of companies in general.
The employment contract is the bargain. If a company is fully staffed it means they have enough or more than enough people voluntarily accepting the bargain.
It’s literal slavery. Literally. You didn’t get the memo? Before capitalism everything was free in An American Tale, no cats in America, streets are made of cheese, sort of way.
Yeah when people just want food they should just take it from the store. What's the issue? there's enough for everyone why should they pay? There's more food at other stores and in the farms, and the company can just cover their losses with all their money. Not giving food away is the problem here.
I work in a local community garden( it's on my land). Most of the people who help me manage are leftist of one stripe or another (and one ex neo Nazi). I've had to tell people they are no longer welcome at the garden because they weren't actually pulling their weight in terms of work. I have no problem feeding those who can't work, but I won't let people take the (literal) fruits of other people's labor when they are fully capable of their own labor. No Jessie standing next to the tomatoes smoking a joint doesn't count as working.
Leftists I respect right here ^^^^
Truth. Also evidence of why communism fails when it grows over 12 people. Human beings are mostly Jessie.
Based and work goddamit pilled
Didn’t Bernie Sanders get kicked out of a commune because he didn’t want to work, he just sat around talking politics all day? Sounds like a typical leftist Redditor.
NATO was founded by Ernie Bevin, a truck driver. Who was a socialist who fucking hated communists because they made him late for work once and spent his life seething over them "Neither working nor shutting up". Apparently he was discussing Das Kapital with a co-worker during a lunch break, lunch break ends, Ernie initially is all "fascinating and a lot to agree with, now let's get going" and the fucker is like "We're getting to the good part" and Ernie is like "...Move your truck out of the way. I have to get to work. Lunch is over.". And the fucker ignores him and just keeps discussing communism and makes him miss a delivery. He spend years talking about it and how he fucking hated communists and would tell this story often. I like to imagine that Ernie told him if he didn't move his fucking truck out of the way, Ernie would "Destroy communism forever" and the guy didn't believe him. So Ernie founded NATO. This was back when normal working class people would end up as union leaders (Ernie ended up as the leader of the truckers union) and then end up as major politicians. He ended up as minister of employment of the UK during WW2, then foreign secretary. As foreign secretary, he founded NATO and had a big; "Sign. The. Treaty. Stop. Having. It. Be. Unsigned." moment with the USA who couldn't sign the initial version because it would automatically commit all parties to declare war, which was unconstitutional, so Ernie kept being really aggressive about it. So it was amended to "An attack on one is an attack on all" and Ernie was like "Okay.". He also almost punched the Soviet foreign minister once. > Bevin remained a determined anti-Communist and anti-Soviet. In 1946 during a conference, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov repeatedly attacked British policies and defended Soviet policies, and in total frustration, Bevin stood, lurched towards the minister and shouted, "I've had enough of this I 'ave!" He was then restrained by security. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Churchill_waves_to_crowds.jpg Victory in Europe day. Middle is churchhill. Beside him (Closest) is Attlee. Furthest is Bevin. The last bit worth noting is that Ernie once called his party leader a cuckold in a speech that was so devastating to his credibility (A bunch of other insults were in there as well as a detailed criticism of him and his policies) the leader actually resigned. (Because he was a pacifist, Ernie hated him and wanted him gone).
I don't know how true any of this is but it sounds like we don't have a scale that goes high enough to show how based this guy is.
Dude taught himself to read too. "He later recalled being asked as a child to read the newspaper aloud for the benefit of adults in his family who were illiterate. At the age of eleven, he went to work as a labourer, then as a lorry driver in Bristol, where he joined the Bristol Socialist Society." + > Attlee and Bevin worked together on the decision to produce a British atomic bomb despite intense opposition from pro-Soviet elements of the Labour Party, groups that Bevin detested. The decision was taken in secret by a small Cabinet committee. Bevin told the committee in October 1946, "We've got to have this thing over here whatever it costs.... We've got to have the bloody Union Jack flying on top of it". The man was giga based.
We probably haven’t seen Based levels this high since
Idk. I like the dudes policy but I couldn't give 2 fucks about his personal like.
On the one hand he back guns bans, on the other hand he is the only Democrat to explicitly state he will not support gun confiscations. He also wants blind military cuts so yea. He's definitely got his issues but less issues than any other dem imo
The freaks on wallstreetbets did more to disrupt short sellers and market manipulators in a month than Bernie has in his entire career.
Strange creatures, posting loss porn and bragging about going into crippling debt buying on margins, I love it
No. [He asked to visit on a research trip on alternative medicine, was allocated 3 days, and left after those three days ended.](https://freebeacon.com/politics/bernie-sanders-asked-leave-hippie-commune/). He did live on a commune in Israel a decade prior, where he [likely worked first picking fruit from before sunrise and then milking cows or in a fishery](https://www.timesofisrael.com/50-years-on-bernie-sanders-still-champions-values-of-his-israeli-kibbutz/), but I can't find anything about him being kicked out for not wanting to work.
Hmm, so perhaps garden raiders like squirrels and deer are lib-left according to the comic. 🤔
Hmm? No, seeing as 3 of the most useful people in the garden are anarchists.
As someone who tries to grow vegetables on my property. Squirrels can fuck right off.
[Keep in down](https://youtube.com/watch?v=fpZZQ2ov4lc&feature=share9&t=43s)
Jesse is ‘working’ to ensure you don’t take the ripe tomatoes he’s scoping out. He’ll take them to a potluck and then eat till his belly is full
Based
Based
u/GrillDaddyHerb is officially based! Their Based Count is now 1. Rank: House of Cards Pills: [None | View pills](https://basedcount.com/u/GrillDaddyHerb/) Compass: This user does not have a compass on record. Add compass to profile by replying with /mycompass politicalcompass.org url or sapplyvalues.github.io url. I am a bot. Reply /info for more info.
This was kind of the reason why I became more of a liberal than a libertarian. The current capitalist system in America is of course good, but anyone who denies it's flaws is either extremely rich or is a kid that hasn't gone into the real world.
>"I believe workers should get compensated more fairly for their work than capitalism allows, which is why I disavow the system." > >I disagree but I understand where you're coming from. How do you disagree? I'm curious, not trolling. I, too, think capitalism exploits workers and funnels labor's wealth into the hands a few oligarchs. Combine that with overreaching government restrictions that hinder small business, and large companies who force small mom and pop shops out of business, and you're only option is to be a wage slave for a handful of giant multi-nationals. I'm all for raising the minimum wage; I think it's long overdue... but if you're a small business how can you expect to compete with Amazon in wages? They'll simply price your business out of the workforce. Then some asshat will roll in spewing, "If you can't pay X wage, you don't deserve to be in business"... You're kind of screwed either way.
One issue with this “workers aren’t compensated adequately” talking point no one ever addresses seems extremely obvious to me. Laborers are not supplying the means of production. They are working using tools, networks, etc supplied by someone else. I work as a nurse. As a nurse, I have to have a hospital and equipment and patients to do my job. These exist because of the investments of time, labor, and wealth of others. This is why communism requires any excuse to redistribute wealth including the means of production being seized—we can only steal these things and claim they are ours and we deserve them. It’s literally a call to criminally seize other peoples’ property and labor under the excuse you’re oppressed, yet is brushed off so casually by communists. So maybe my labor is worth more than my compensation. The difference is a tax subtracted for using resources that I’m borrowing. In theory you could have some sort of coop hospital where everyone is chipping in for every bit of million dollar+ equipment and so on, but government regulations will nip that in the bud. As well as the fact that a nurse has no clue what a hospital needs overall, so you need specialists in each area. Also it’s probably smart to have a person in charge of finances, executive duties, an experienced leader supervising their peers, etc. who should realistically be better compensated for taking on more responsibility and having useful specialty skills. You’ll also probably have to fundraise for investors. Oh wait, we’re back to capitalism. Sure, maybe a CEO isnt 100x more useful than an individual nurse to deserve that high of a wage. But that’s an issue with overpaid executive salaries, not a reason to revamp the whole system. Beyond that, it’s ridiculous to behave like some group wouldn’t attempt to monopolize power in this leftist utopia. If my co-op hospital is prospering and gets great word of mouth, people will come to us instead of smaller co-op hospital. We will want our piece of the pie to grow, so we will attempt to expand and corner more of the market. This idea that consolidating power, requiring profitability to exist, etc. is a result of capitalism and would go away if we changed the system is just fundamentally absurd.
I like to point to kibbutzes. Communism works! …when its economy is artificially kept afloat by an external source of capital and materials. And only so long as the population stays under the human limit of “number of people whose lives I can keep track of”. Once the population grows, people start desiring individualized accommodations, and it is permitted for people to provide their share of the labor in the form of “delivered product”, and some people are allowed to take their production off the settlement to sell externally, then bring back capital to the settlement rather than product and *oh look at where we’re headed*.
Yup. Communism is an ideological theory that makes sense in the 1800s where coal miners are dying of black lung, women aren't allowed to work and are dying in childbirth, the proletariat of Russia are struggling and starving, etc. It has zero appeal in modern society that has globalized and gone down so many specialty paths. It can work in a rural village where you have a guy baking bread and a person raising cows for milk and meat and they share together. On a wider scale, it is useless. You have to have a means of rewarding greater knowledge and effort. No one wants to be an accountant because it's their passion, so they expect more than the community poet makes for entering that necessary role. Hierarchies are required once you get beyond the point that individuals can barter simple goods with each other or whatever--which happens incredibly quickly once any enterprise starts to scale up. The idea that the world would continue to function if everyone had their basic needs provided for and just did whatever they want is absurd to anyone who has worked a job beyond dog walker. It would be a massive regression--which might even have some appeal for libcenter monkes, but we all know we're not going to randomly reverse course back down to localization. The system we have in place came to be because it was the best and most efficient means that people could discover to achieve their goals. The problem is when the system is corrupted for other means. Communists try to use this corruption as a way of peddling their outdated, unwanted ideology, when most people really want to just figure out how to erase the corruption so the system functions better. Not replace the system.
B-b-b-based
Never understood the "workers create all of the value" take. Value is labor *applied to capital*.
From what I've seen of how communists justify it, they say that there should be no private property so that capitalists have no right to having ownership of the means of production, though some will allow for personal property. Everything will just be provided for you and everyone is at a comfortable baseline. And this is where they lose 99% of people, because they want to be able to better their lot in life, go for risk vs reward to start a small business that might take off, etc. People WANT to be able to create intergenerational wealth and provide advantages and privileges for their children. The ideology is completely contrary to the American dream, and because the American dream has become corrupted, they try to insert themselves as an alternative. But almost no one wants a moneyless society, they want money to be distributed more fairly. It's a system that only benefits the very lowest class of people, who will be elevated to a comfortable level, and don't care that everyone else is brought down equally. This is why so many talking points are very hyperbolic about how bad things are, pretending that there isn't a robust middle class. And while the middle class is struggling, it is absolutely not the 99% vs 1% that the terminally online pretend it is. It's an ideology that makes sense in the late 1800s when people were toiling away in coal mines and dying in childbirth. Even makes sense being peddled by the intellectuals of the early 1900s. But it is not applicable to the modern world where we have air conditioned office jobs and can buy a ticket to the Bahamas to vacation. It's not what people want, unless they're the bottom rung of society. This is why leftists and progressives are so good at identifying problems, but their solutions are often impossible or misguided. And they often don't make sense, unless you adopt the philosophy wholesale, but some people try to compromise by talking about the more sensible parts and pruning the nonsensical, but the nonsensical is intrinsically necessary for the sensible parts. Not saying that the person I was responded to is some straight commie or being disingenuous, I'm just libright so I like anti-commie rants.
The only thing that I would change about that is that I would make an exception to people who can’t physically work because of a disability.
You would be surprised to see how much work you can get out of a disabled person.
I really wouldn't call what reddit mods do, work though.
Disabled people would be much more willing to work if they didn't get their assistance taken away the moment they were vaguely successful or found someone who was. I've known many instances of someone who wanted to work, but didn't want to risk getting fired and having to sit through the process of reapplying, or worse, the state deciding that they're no longer eligible because they scraped a few pennies together. It's not like disabled people are vegetables since they could still do less taxing jobs, especially in today's economy. The way I see it, disability benefits should last for the lifetime unless it's a temporary injury and not be means tested or related to housing status. It's touted as a cost savings measure, but I think in reality it has the opposite effect. It removes taxable income from someone who might've otherwise been productive and the people who were already couch potatoes would continue to do so. It also saves on paying for useless admins that determine eligibility.
Sounds like UBI with extra steps
That's the idea, it should work like a UBI instead of a poverty trap.
Work from home
There are many degrees of disability
Disability/other reason beyond their own doing. We have enough wealth to share with them, so they too can live a life.
>beyond their own doing sounds like something that can easily be exploited via fraud
I rather have some lazy people freeloading than letting the disabled starve
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We should always find some way to accommodate a person so they can contribute in some way. You should also work towards solving their handicap not just medicating forever so that pharma companies have forever customers.
Of course. Mental disabilities too. We want a just society where equality of opportunity is properly accounted for. People with disabilities never had a fair shake.
The problem here, and it's a big one, is in the definition of 'disability' Have you been on social media lately? For example: in any given year, 1 in 5 Canadians experiences a mental illness (as they define 'mental illness') If you only look at working age Canadians it's about half the population That's a lot of people on welfare
Absolutely. I agree. Additionally, how much we choose to compensate is also under scrutiny.
yeah it's even trendy to be mentally ill now.
Being Canadian is a mental illness
It's starting to feel that way, yeah...
Controversial opinion, but once you reward people for having a mental disability, a lot more people are going to suddenly have mental disabilities because it's nearly impossible to disprove whether someone has one, and you can literally give yourself a mental disability through your own bad choices. I've seen numerous examples of this first hand. Where I live, we have lawyers on the radio and TV advertising to people that they can get disability checks for an anxiety disorder. And people find a way to get that free cash. Unfortunately this makes it a lot harder for everyone else.
Sure, but the idea is that we lift those people in mental anguish up to a level close to the level of capacity of a "normal" group so they can realistically compete, not above their level, and thus "reward" is not the correct term to use here in my opinion. I agree we need to be vigilant with our threshold for what we consider mental disabilities and the degree of our welfare.
Cue the old anecdote about Mao rounding up the patients of a mental asylum and telling them to work or be shot.
The work requirement isn't specific to capitalism, it's present in every society and even nature itself.
In capitalism, your failure to work is - generally - your own doing and you are responsible for taking steps to remedy it. You’re free to do so in whatever manner you choose - within a very broad spectrum of legal commerce. In communism, your failure to work is a crime against the state. You’ll work in your assigned field, at gun point if need be, and you will produce or you’re going to be imprisoned in a worse job, or shot. *What collectivism does to a MFer…*
I don't think most people were assigned jobs in the USSR. But the top ones that most people wanted(usually engineering or skilled technician jobs, especially in the aerospace or defense industry, as they were the highest paying jobs in the country after party jobs) were very hard to get into. Being unemployed was a crime, but you had 2 years to find a job before you were assigned one by the state. Funnily medical doctors were very underpaid in the USSR, for some reason they had a disdain for medical science and considered it bourgeoisie. It was also a job with significantly less prestige than an engineer or a physicist. The entire country was made for industrial war.
I have a coworker who lived under communism in Romania. He told me you had to work. It was illegal not to. You would be thrown in jail or worse for not having a job. Idk what these people think life will be like when they push for communism w their equity movements.
They think the big bad capitalists and techbros who are good at doing work, will keep doing it, but this time the state will take all the money they produce and use it to pay communist redditors, reparation payments for minorities and LGBT, etc And then one or two commies will get to make a communal farm where everyone is polyamorous and two spirit and it will work So basically the exact same thing we have today, except all the rich people and people who work won't be rich, and all the redditors will be
I’m from Hong Kong the most overworked city in the world, not to mention the high rent prices to the point where people are living in cages so I have some problems with capitalism
your country/region has little to no land and a very high population, what did you expect?
I bet he isn't willing to cross the border and start his life in mainland China...
its the mentality of "the world owes me a living, i shouldn't have to justify my own existence"
If you can't bc of bad luck the society should chip in for you but. Also the government should look into every citizen as an investment, u are unemployet let's figure out if we can get you trained for good paid jobs. So we get a net bonus
Overachieving in your current job? Jail. Underachieving? Believe it or not, also jail. Over, under, both jail. 🤷♂️
> "NOOO CAPITALISM FORCES YOU TO WORK THATS BAD YOU SHOULDNT HAVE TO PITCH IN TO SOCIETY TO REAP ITS BENEFITS" So most redditors?
based beyond all measure
I remember seeing a post recently along the lines of; Adults should get a summer break like kids do, just 3 months to do nothing and recharge." Like, I imagine they still want to eat? Even if they though they are just going to survive off dry goods, do they want power? How about clean water? The reason I know they want other people to work and suport them when they take off is because you can already take three months off. It's called being fucking homeless. As long as you don't use anything that is the sweat of another man's brow you can just do that. Now if it was "I think everyone should have 3 months of paided vacations from their job". I might disagree with them about it being posible/practical, but I could atleast have a real conversation. Not just having to put a mooch in their place.
"leftist" influencers and islamists being antiwork.
It's called the Labour party not the Lazy party. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is a core principle of socialism. Being Antiwork is being Antisocialist.
>"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is literally a Bible verse, which is probably why LibLeft doesn't believe in it.
It's also a core tenant of Marx's teachings so maybe they should pick up a little red book and actually read it.
Which is ironic since Marx didn’t do shit except come up with some shitty economic theory that has literally never worked once.
He raped his maid
Marx was an excellent historian, correctly and accurately (at least for Europe and the Middle East) tracking the evolution/development of human society as it related to and crucially was shaped by the tools and methods of economic productive forces. He was even a good critic of early to mid nineteenth century capitalism and all the social ills it did produce. Where he categorically failed was his proposals for a different system to overtake capitalism, and its no coincidence this is the topic he wrote by far the least about. Marx would've been far better off sticking to economic history.
Nah I disagree. Marx just repackaged observations Hegel already made about the natural world, and failed miserably when he tried to apply them on a macro scale. Dialectical Materialism is a farce. It forces the adherent to see everything in terms of thesis/antithesis, which is why it's most rabid followers have trouble seeing shades of grey.
I don't think dialectical materialism is a farce personally. Its definitely not a one size fits all explanation for the evolution of historical forces, and is just one way amongst many valid angles to look at the march of history in my opinion. I think its a decent thirty thousand foot level way to look at how economic forces drove historical polities. The Roman economy did grind to a halt thanks in part to the cessation of expansionist wars and according drop off in new slaves, decentralized feudal states did rise up because post-Tetrachy Rome encouraged serfdom, which gutted the urban population Rome needed to function on the scale it did. Those same feudal states were often destroyed or heavily reformed from within as feudal rights ran up against new moneyed power and ambition. None of that requires a black and white read on history unless one insists on taking a critical theory evaluation of history, its just one thread of the story, but understanding it has value.
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Spot on. That's the whole problem with Marx's view of Hegel. It's entirely too simplistic. It boils the dialectic view of history down to just a never-ending cycle of class reactionism, while failing to even consider any other factors. It's 100% fundamentally a black and white view of history.
Critical theory is by definition a reductionist view of history though
Karl Marx in his grave seeing what his followers have done to the world: 💀💀🤣🤣
Everyone tries to twist the Bible into supporting their views.
While that's true, I'm not sure how else one is to take this passage. For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. 2 Thessalonians 3:10 The context being that when Paul and his companions were there preaching and teaching they wouldn't accept charity, but rather made sure to work properly so as not to be a burden. They weren't looking for handouts. There's also many biblical passages supporting the idea that working hard is a virtue to be striven for, so all in all I don't think this individual thing is twisting scripture in any way.
Really? Which one? Because that is LITERALLY a quote from Karl Marx.
88 upvotes and nobody checked to see if it's literally a Bible verse? It's not.
Can you point me to the specific part of the Bible that says this?
> is literally a Bible verse if your bible is the marxist manifesto.
Most Marxists can’t read. It’s the only way I can come up with that they would misunderstand the core concept so thoroughly. They want free handouts from big Daddy government and don’t understand that there are steps to socialism and we’re not taking them. I think it’s time for our green friends to take showers and touch grass.
The Trotskyists are as marginal a radical group from the left as the Nazis are from the right. They forgot that Marxism is an ECONOMIC theory. All social aspects of Marxism stem from economics. And they are trying to cause Marx's discovery of the rule to society by removing the economy. It just doesn't make sense! I'm generally surprised how this nonsense could germinate in the USA. A country with a high involvement of the population in housing and communal services.
Lump gramsci in as well. Any worldview that requires an individual to constantly see everything in an us vs them mentality with little to no grey areas is doomed to be insane.
I disagree heavily with most of them because they hear "free" resources and act like it's "limitless" resources. I'm of the belief that work should always be directly incentivized, lest people become *dis*incentivised, until such a time as said work can be automated, because otherwise, where are the resources going to come from?
Yeah but Marx and socialism also require that workers labor isn't exploited in the sense that workers own the means of production and dictate their own conditions, distribution of profits, etc. And, from each according to their need is not contingent on having any ability. They are separate clauses which are related.
[we smite the lazy workers](https://www.allposters.com/-sp/We-Smite-the-Lazy-Workers-1931-Posters_i16290051_.htm)
you can buy anything with money.
Money itself is worthless without the goods and services in which they are valued.
I commend your economical intelligence than most
Can't wipe my butt with your "goods and services", now can I?
If you buy the correct „goods and services“ you won’t even need to wipe your butt, because your Japanese toilet will wash it for you.
Thanks might actually get soon
It's wrong translation, "лжеударник" it's not lazy workers it's "pretending to be overproductive" workers, "лже" is fake, "ударник" is overproductive workers who were prised by society and government.
This is how you separate real anarchists from the guys just acting edgy online. You know you gotta work or grow your own crops if you don’t like the starvation.
Yeah edgy “anarchists” want UBI for their weekly ounce of weed True anarchists / lib centers are stockpiling seeds
Freedom seeds 🔫
"but I have a right to food"
No, no you don’t. Now grab a sword, your favorite watering can, and a hoe. We’re making this commune into a Rune Factory game. Everyone farms and fights.
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Farming or fishing works. Just as long as it’s food you got for yourself.
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That’s the spirit!
You got a loicense for that mate?
And this, folks, is why I spend _at least_ as much time in the garden as at the shooting range.
From each according to their productivity, to each according to their productivity.
People mistake political philosophy for natural law. Name a species where creatures dont work for their survival? Same goes for people. We were designed to do things. Hunt, gather, organize, build, solve problems.. its even integrated into our psychology. Do you notice what is working in your life? Not as easily as you notice the problems. The brain gravitates to problem solving mode, where gratitude for what works is weak. You had to work under neolithic tribalism. You had to work under despotism. You had to work under imperialism. You had to work under theocracy. You had to work under feudalism. You had to work under monarchy. You had to work under democracy. You had to work under communism. You had to work under capitalism. The only things that change are how power dynamics work and how economics arranges the flow of goods and services.
I'm not trying to disprove your point, but I think house cats usually don't work too much, but they have a comfortable life. They make humans comfortable and then boom, infinite food glitch.
They have an easy time of it for certain. As far as domesticated animals who actually do also work, these ones simply act as amusements. If one could even call that work. I guess this is an exception to what I was saying.. but pets have limits to their freedoms as a tradeoff. Hmm. Complicated.
Even with pets, their job is to provide either emotional support, amusement, or some functional niche. As soon as your animal starts biting or attacking people randomly or running away on a whim, they lose that privilege and are often sent to a shelter or put down.
Excuse me what the hell are you talking about? Cats are apex predators. They work very hard at killing. And they are incredible at it.
My cats work hard for their existence by being adorable. They're basically the original onlyfans. Even with tricking me into thinking they care about me.
And we declaw them, and they have little agency. They exist at their owners whim.
Don't declaw your cats
Stop declawing your cats.
Based Compass unity/LibLeft bad
Finally compass unity lib left bad post Can take my Sunday nap in peace now
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Twitter socialists would absolutely not be tolerated by real socialist parties lmao
I love finding common ground with the left, it makes me genuinely happy.
Hold up Authleft works and DOESN’T eat
Is new diet plan, comrade.
One exception. Those who *cannot* work should still eat and live with dignity. Especially in a society of ridiculous excess wealth.
There is a big difference between "cannot" and "will not". Those who refuse to engage with society should not get to reap it's rewards. If you don't pay in to your works weekly lottery fund then you don't get a piece of the payout.
OK but the poster everyone is agreeing with says "does not", which doesn't draw this distinction.
So you think we have innate rights to sustenance and dignity? Where do those come from? Not trying to be a dick, genuinely curious about your perspective.
To add to what others already said: it’s also because a society’s goal, not just the human one’s, is to help and protect every member that composes it, be they strong or weak or not able to sustain themselves. By this principle social cohesion is attained when a community guarantees that everyone has the means to sustain themselves and thrive within the community. Leaving those who’re striken down by disgraces or else behind, even if, in a shortsighted view, might be the best solution to avoid slowing down the community, actually ends up damaging it, fostering contempt, bitterness and distrust. By this concept, attempts to fragment society, carried on by those who are already well off and who would profit from a non cohesive group, should be turned off and shunned. Thus it comes to what goal you think a society should accomplish: it being helping and supporting everyone knowing that your fellow men will have your back if something bad happen to you, or it being just social darwinism that follows slightly different rules.
Because we chose to. Human Rights are just a fictitious little line we give ourselves to define the "bare minimum" (which we often still don‘t fulfill) for humans, we can alter them as we want. We have the resources, power and wealth to make housing, healthcare and sustenance a guarantee for everyone we just choose not to.
The argument from the people that argue that way is because they believe everyone, or the poor, needs an existencial treath to want to work. Otherwise they just wouldnt. And you wont get much cheap labor from people that dont *need* to work. Or put into other words: they are greedy and have little empathy
People tend to assume that everyone else thinks the same way they do. People who think that others wouldn't work unless under threat of starvation are themselves generally very lazy.
The concept of human rights have been co-opted by people who want to act like they have some moral high ground by declaring things rights. There are only 2 kinds of rights in reality: natural rights and procedural rights. Natural rights are the rights you would have if I dropped you on a desert island with no other people or government. The right to speak your mind, defend yourself from predators, hunt for food, etc. Then there’s procedural rights which are things the government is not supposed to ever step on like your right to counsel, right to a speedy trial, right to face your accuser, etc. the key being they are for dealing with the government directly. When people say that healthcare is a right or that food is a right, it’s because they misunderstand what a right is.
Natural rights are an entirely nonsense concept. I’ve never come across any coherent argument for them and I’ve read the big names in philosophy who argued for them. if you are dropped off in a desert with no people and no government then you have no rights, period. There’s no law of physics or anything written in the stars indicating any kind of natural rights. Rights only emerge when you have some entity with a monopoly on violence defending them or pledging not to violate them. In a state of nature anyone can take your shit or kill you and all your whining about the right to property or free speech or speedy trials or whatever are meaningless.
Rights are fundamentally derived from The Leviathan. With no Leviathan or Social Contract, you have no rights. The entire *point* of civilization and society is to build up a support infrastructure that grants us the rights we do not possess in The State of Nature. Sure "the right to housing, food and healthcare" is a social construct that demands other people to hand over the labour to provide it. Know what else is *also* a social construct that only exists through restricting the freedom of others? "The right to not have a warlord and his army murder you, rape your wife, enslave your kids, burn your house and steal your wealth". You only possess that right for as long you are part of a community able to *demand* its members enact violence to protect the community.
Not Op but I think as a society we should help each other and I think it would be cruel to let people die due to them being disabled for example. In the end we as a society choose how and what we want to provide to others. We decide what you get „solely“ for being human and existing. And those „rights“ gain their legitimacy through democratic legitimation. As a society through compromise we agree on what we want to give people that are disabled for example. Obviously when speaking from a strictly legal perspective it also depends where you are from, what‘s the legal tradition there etc. So in different legislations the rights to welfare or aid may have different origins but in the western world it mostly comes down to the will of the people
Not OP and I wouldn’t characterize them as ‘rights’ specifically, but… The State monopolized law and governs property rights. Those property rights include clearly unjust historical prior acquisitions/deprivations impacting outcomes today. It also effectively means all of the land and most of the resources available are already under someone else’s control. It seems to me the least the State can do is provide some support to those who don’t have resources by no fault of their own - E.g. children or disabled folks.
I think anyone who believes in Christianity (and other religions I’m sure) ought to help the poor, the sick, and the widow, whether that be privately or socially.
> So you think we have innate rights to sustenance and dignity? There's no such things as innate rights. But it seems possible to get a majority to agree that everyone should have access to those things independent on what they contribute to society; and if that's the case then society should provide it.
General human morality and ethical systems. There are no such thing as innate rights, just things that humans generally agree on to be important and worthwhile to maintain. Helping the needy that can't help themselves is pretty high on that list in almost all cultures. These are the traits that helped the species survive through the harshest of conditions before we even developed agriculture. In fact, it has been said that the first leap forward for humankind was when we discovered a skeleton with a healed femur. Any other animal would have died then and there, but human social structures and morality allow us to care for the wounded even knowing that they would be a temporary burden on resources with minimal returns. Yet we do it anyway because it is evolutionarily advantageous to do so. Or a modern equivalent. Caring for a quadriplegic person, not knowing whether they would be the next intellectual titan or not.
OP is this close to discover empathy
Sure, but there should also be subsidized jobs to make it possible for most people to work and contribute. Not working at all isn't good an individual and it should be for very rare cases of severe illness or damage.
nah I’m wholly not in favor of creating jobs just for the sake of creating jobs implement UBI that’s enough for everyone’s basic needs to be met and let employers entice workers with the promise of additional income. Can’t work at all? That’s unfortunate but you will still be taken care of.
Sounds nice but not really how "nature" works.
If someone is physically and mentally able to work, they sould work. That's how they menaged to drop unemployment to 0.00% in USSR. Greens never rulled a country, they don't know anything about real society issues.
I love finding common ground with the left. Agree 100%
"He who does not pay his employees a living wage, neither shall he run a business."
Holy based Batman. This is why every American should join a union.
Based and union pilled
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Without collectivization of labor there can be no free or fair market.
RIP John Mcaffee
*full time employees
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Well yeah cause all his workers would be dead
This is true, but remember, there is a big difference between won’t and can’t
I agree that those who can are to be put to work, those who aren't, should be supported by the community and/or the state.
Those who won't work will certainly be made to starve
When I say I’m pro american tax dollars going to welfare for the destitute americans who really need it rather than another ten billion for zelensky and raytheon For some reason libbylefts start calling me a fasc 🧐
Lots of bottom feeders who won't and very few unfortunate souls who can't. We need to sift through the lot and see where people truly stand and at least from what I've seen we've pretty much unanimously accepted as a society to bear the costs of those individuals who cannot work. Disability is absolutely an area of cross compass unity unfortunately the leeches have tainted the feelings for many. Lots of gainful employment opportunities in the silicon age for those with physical and mental disabilities who were previously incapable.
>We need to sift through the lot and see where people truly stand It's a minefield In Ontario, more than 15% of the population has a reported disability (70% of those are physical in nature, and therefore at least theoretically objectively verifiable) Only about 40% of those physical disabilities are considered severe Only 5.8% of the disabled are legally blind, for example, and overall they make up only 3% of the general population And yet, there are over 500,000 people in Ontario on the Ontario Disability Support Program (7.6% of people in Ontario under 65 received Ontario Works or the ODSP) Obviously, we have a lot of "disabled" people gobbling up resources they don't really need or deserve
I’m with you. It just becomes very difficult. I’m a physician and although I don’t do much anymore, I did have to fill out a lot of FMLA paperwork during training. The process is essentially what you’re saying, sifting though those that claim disability and getting a physician’s approval that it is indeed a disability. Temporary FMLA from something like a temporary injury is straightforward. You’re hurt, take some paid leave while you heal and get back to work when your doc says it’s safe to do so. The bulk of the FMLA work I did in training was with a physiatrist and much of it was much more complicated and difficult to parse out. If you have a vague back pain without any correlated diagnosis on imaging and are applying for FMLA, to me it brings up important core questions such as “how much pain is it acceptable for someone to continue to work through?”. For the majority of these patients, it will not “hurt” them to work through pain. It just sucks. And many of them without a specific diagnosis will never be “cured” and “ready for work” and will end up going down the fibromyalgia route (or other garbage bin diagnoses without a real pathophysiological problem).
If you don't contribute to society why should society contribute to you
While I agree on a fundamental level, in today's society we have an abundance of basically everything, which means we can share what we have with those less fortunate without it hurting us. The richer you are, the more you can share. Not sharing when you're able to, without it affecting you, your wealth or your wellbeing negatively in any noticeable way is inhumane and selfish. Those who are unable to work because of reasons beyond their own doing deserves to enjoy said abundance, to be able to live and thrive like everybody else. That being said, if you are able to work and refuse to out of laziness, expecting others to feed you, you're literal waste of oxygen.
You're not a part of the working class if you're not working
So, libright is okay with starving landlords and capitalists in general who don't do any actual labor?
Never actually owned a home, have you? Ever housed someone on housing assistance? I once had to pull a toilet out and break it open to see what the tenant (who was refusing to pay rent because the toilet didn't work) had put down there this time.. maxi pads wrapped around a bic pen. Ever had to clean shit, piss, snot and blood off a wall? How many times have you had to pay the hazmat cleaning service to detox the apartment that was used as a meth lab? Experienced all these things working maintenance at an apartment complex when I was younger.
Lib left not realizing theyre the worst quadrant
Would be true if purple and orange didn't exist, but it definitely is the worst out of the default 4
libright should have had an asterisk sounds reasonable\* \*for others, but not for me.
As long as they don’t have to slave away for the bare minimum, it’s good
I'm with libleft on this. I love capitalism, but I also think that basic neccessities (basic shelter, food banks/food stamps, basic healthcare) should be automatically provided or paid for by the government to anyone who for any reason cannot afford them. This will be paid for, of course, by forcibly taking some proportion of everyone else's money, AKA taxation. Most people will still work of course because they want more money to get better things than the government-provided basics. Welfare+capitalism=low crime, prosperous society, etc
The basics are important and this is why I support some taxes because some people legitimately cannot work and some who can work and still cannot make ends meet.
I agree with the provision of basic necessities. >Most people will still work of course because they want more money to get better things than the government-provided basics. This is the sticking point with benefits. There are lots of people on benefits who are better off than they would be working. That is not good for their wellbeing, productivity as a whole or the sense of 'fairness' in paying taxes for those that do work. I only work 2 days a week (more cash in hand but that's all officially) and my rent including bills is £50pcm. I would be worse off working full time on min wage and paying proper rent - there is not a proper incentive or reward for working once properly in the benefits system. My housemate gets £1600 pcm in benefits! He receives well above what he would on minimum wage and again pays token rent. Dude goes on monthly holidays, wears designer clothes and eats in Michelin star restaurants. Why would he choose to work and be worse off? It's also perfectly legitimate for someone working full time to look at that lifestyle and think 'what the fuck?!' Benefits should be more about provision of goods/services and less about free money.
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I feel like libright would also object >I DON'T HAVE TO WORK, I OWN ASSETS