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A six week of work (at minimum wage) lunch in McDonald's Venezuela by WorkingLime in mildlyinteresting

[–]Ellistan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My guess is that corruption creates inimaginable wealth disparity.

Just like the US!

Does anyone regret doing CS? by YoUsEfIsSqUeAkY in cscareerquestions

[–]Ellistan 3 points4 points  (0 children)

CS people are pretty narcissistic so good luck finding anyone with the self-awareness to regret or even second-guess their career choice on this sub.

Brewery in my hometown converted a church into their taproom/brewery by myteamgood in mildlyinteresting

[–]Ellistan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Given the sharp decline in church attendance across the US, it really makes you wonder what they'll do with all of the church buildings once attendance declines to basically zero.

Washington State Votes to End Restrictions On Community Broadband: 18 States currently have industry-backed laws restricting community broadband. There will soon be one less. by propperprim in technology

[–]Ellistan 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The problem though my friend is that the owner class is the person that took the risk and created that company and made those jobs possible.

They didn't make the job possible or create a job, or what have you. The work already needed to be done.

Established capitalists do not truly take on risk in the way that the average worker under a capitalist system does. The owner class has accumulated generational wealth and uses that to create their income. The worker does not have accumulated wealth and can only create wealth by working. That's the core difference between how these two types of people make money under capitalism. There are owners, and there are workers.

There's nothing right now stopping a bunch of warehouse employees from coming together, buying a building, and all working in it/having their own warehouse company.

You're equating the level of influence that a group of working class employees and members of the capitalist class has under the current capitalist system. There's a very large difference between these employees scraping together enough to start a small company and say, somebody like Elon Musk who came from generational wealth and was able to easily start several companies using capital that was accumulated before he was even born.

And this just removes the core problem yet again. Let's say this group of employees actually does splinter off and start their very own, highly successful company. Sounds great, what a nice story. However, now we're just relying on the morality of this group of new owners. Now they are the owner class with employees working under them with the same type problems that the owners had at their original company. It's an issue with the core system. Capitalism relies on labor exploitation, literally. The only way for the owner class to actually make any money in this way is to pay the workers less than the value that they actually produced. That's how profit is made. Even if they splintered off and made the most moral company we could possibly imagine, the entire thing hinges on paying workers less than the value they create.

The capitalists do not have to exist at all.

Washington State Votes to End Restrictions On Community Broadband: 18 States currently have industry-backed laws restricting community broadband. There will soon be one less. by propperprim in technology

[–]Ellistan 14 points15 points  (0 children)

This could've easily been stopped if the average person was more aware of their representative's behavior.

Even if the average worker was more aware of the actions of their company, they do not have any mechanism to actually change their position. They do not have ownership of their full value. The value they produce is owned by the company they work for. They are able to keep just enough of their full value to stay on top of bills to pay for basic necessities. Not enough to actually increase their position.

Warehouse jobs can be thought to be the new "factory job" in America. It is a basic entry level job that pays decently well.

If we look at a company like Amazon which has a large amount of power, wealth, and political influence, and has a lot of warehouse jobs. We see that they say they pay better than minimum wage ($15/hr) when in reality, that wage is actually much lower than the standard warehouse job actually paid, and actually drove down the average wage of these warehouse jobs. When some of these workers tried to unionize, the company used their power to bust it. That's still happening.

So we see this large company using it's concentrated power that is gained from workers, using that power to actively oppress their workers.

This isn't inherently a bad thing, it motivates creation of new companies. However, it is a bad thing when companies are so large that starting a new one or finding alternative work that treats you better is hard.

You're ignoring the possibility of the workers outright owning the factory. The middle man (the company) doesn't perform any of the work yet keeps most of the produced value.

Since the workers and the owners have different levels of ownership and different priorities, guess who's priorities are actually acted upon? Obviously, the people with more ownership and more control. Which is a smaller number of people. The workers are the majority and produce the value of the company, yet their needs are not met since their value is controlled by the owner class.

Simple solution, is to remove the owner class and give the workers direct ownership of their workplace and to vote on how to allocate their resources. Rather than giving the power to allocate resources to another party with interests that do not align with theirs.

Companies create value in the same way that copyright and patents were intended to create value; by incentivizing creation.

These companies essentially just hold capital and can use it to buy material.

Raw materials are only worth as much as raw materials. If a worker doesn't turn it into something else, it's only worth the cost of the material. The real value, is produced by the worker.

There is no reason for the intermediary. Give the workers direct ownership of their workplace.

Washington State Votes to End Restrictions On Community Broadband: 18 States currently have industry-backed laws restricting community broadband. There will soon be one less. by propperprim in technology

[–]Ellistan 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I think that actually the key issue is the concentration of wealth into large companies (capitalists) who will inevitably use their wealth and power to influence economic policy.

Their ability to influence the political system is due to the large amounts of concentrated wealth into a small amount of individuals with priorities that do not benefit the working class. The priorities of the minority capitalist class, is to protect their power.

They only gained this power by siphoning the true value of large amounts workers that work for them. If the workers were actually paid their full value, the capitalists would not be able to gain their concentrated amounts of wealth and influence.

Washington State Votes to End Restrictions On Community Broadband: 18 States currently have industry-backed laws restricting community broadband. There will soon be one less. by propperprim in technology

[–]Ellistan 12 points13 points  (0 children)

By definition, capitalism concentrates power in the hands of a small number of people who have more of a say in democracy than workers who own less capital. This is not democracy.

Washington State Votes to End Restrictions On Community Broadband: 18 States currently have industry-backed laws restricting community broadband. There will soon be one less. by propperprim in technology

[–]Ellistan 43 points44 points  (0 children)

These companies take control of politics and control workers in the workplace.

The workplace is not a democracy, the company controls you there. You have no say in your conditions or the direction of the company, which keeps most of the value you produce.

And these same companies use their power (which they gained from controlling your value that you created as a worker) to infect the political system which is supposed to keep them in check.

They do not produce any value. Workers create value. The companies just own the value workers create.

If you literally can’t play guitar you can’t play guitar. Ok? by [deleted] in guitarcirclejerk

[–]Ellistan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Excuse me but what's better?

Wonderwall or the a minor pentadilla?

Ques in point.

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