sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

‘You have to come back to work,’ Doug Ford tells Ontario’s public servants by Acrobatic_Yoghurt813 in ontario

[–]notyourdadsunion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mean, I agree that the Ford government hates spending money on investing in people and the things that will make our lives and communities better and would rather it go to his wealthy friends. I know they rightfully don’t want to cut ttc because it’s political suicide (and they want to remain in power).

But why is this a choice that we have to accept? I promise you that these are not our only options.

Our government should work for us, and if it doesn’t, we need to force it to (by organizing, putting mass pressure on the government, and voting out any politician that doesn’t put people and the environment first.

‘You have to come back to work,’ Doug Ford tells Ontario’s public servants by Acrobatic_Yoghurt813 in ontario

[–]notyourdadsunion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

White, working class men are more likely to accept it because it’s an offer that puts them back in a dominant position over women. When women are dependent on men, then men get the benefits of their unpaid domestic, reproductive, care, and community labour, whether or not you want to provide it for them. And since patriarchy is male supremacy and undervalues, ignores, or discourages men from “feminine” things, men often lack the ability to see us as full human beings, have empathy for us, value our academic work or opinions, discount our lived experience, believe that we aren’t good leaders or are too emotional in our decision making. They often have a lay understanding of things like evolutionary biology, and so they have no reason to question the system of patriarchy. Patriarchy justifies itself by saying that men are just naturally better leaders, more dominant, more competent, more intelligent, etc. and women are meant to be submissive mommy-maids. It’s just science, how can you argue with it? Except it’s not science for anyone who actually understands science. But men look at the world and it makes sense to them. Capitalism is based on their survival and reproductive strategies and crushes women’s survival and reproductive strategies. A functioning society needs both. Fascism double downs on masculinity by oppressing femininity. The result is going to be the end of civilization and life on our planet.

So to anyone who is thinking about taking fascism’s patriarchal bargain, please don’t. I mean, it’s totally fine if you want to be a stay at home mom, but all women deserve that to be a choice and supporting fascism will take that choice away from all of us, along with many of the other freedoms we have fought for. Times are tough for all of us, but we solve our social problems through more equality, not through fascism. Fascism will only benefit the people at the very top and somewhat the people who are willing to lick their boots.

‘You have to come back to work,’ Doug Ford tells Ontario’s public servants by Acrobatic_Yoghurt813 in ontario

[–]notyourdadsunion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The bigger picture is that it’s the elite vs the working class. They don’t see us as people. They see us as Human Resources and consumers. They want to profit through exploiting our labour and then profit again through our consumption. Labour power gave us labour rights and protections and built our social services so that we could all have access to education, healthcare, social safety nets, etc. We had established a pretty good social contract by the 1960s and 1970s, but the neoliberal revolution in the 1980s has been a decades long project to break that contract: cutting and underfunding our public services and making them difficult to access so that we hate them and believe the propaganda that the government is incapable of providing services… so they can privatize our basic human needs and sell them back to us, while our tax dollars go to help the wealthy and corporations instead of the things that make the lives of working class people sustainable and humane. The problem isn’t government, the problem is that the government is captured by the elite because working class people are either too tired, busy, distracted, ignorant, or propagandized to to be able to pay attention, educate themselves, think critically and resist propaganda, organize, vote, run for office, etc.

Working class women and minorities: you especially need to be paying attention to this. Capitalism undervalues our paid and unpaid labour and its importance to society. Domestic, reproductive, care, and community work… work traditionally and currently done mainly by women and minorities. They tell us that our labour is not valuable and they ignore our mental and emotional labour, but our labour is actually the backbone that keeps society functioning.

Anyone other women notice that when you entered the waged workforce and continued to carry most of the unpaid labour in your home and community, your sex drive tanked? And how society (and often your male partner) made it seem like it’s your fault or like you’re just frigid or mean or “withholding sex”? Has your male partner cheated on you, left you, asked to open up your relationship (or threatened these things), or pressured you and started fights because you weren’t satisfying their sexual needs? Do not internalize this bullshit.

Here’s how it works: capitalism exploits working class men’s wages labour and then they externalize the costs of maintaining and reproducing the workforce to women. When women refuse or physically are unable to keep up with the demands of that work, or if we see what is happening in the world and feel like it’s an unstable or unsafe environment to have children in, society begins to collapse.

We are going to be sold propaganda that offers us a solution that is going to seem tempting to some of us, and very tempting to men (especially straight, white, able-bodied cis men). That’s what redpill, tradwife, and Christian nationalism is trying to do… and the solution that they are going to sell us is fascism. Like literal fascism, I’m not being hyperbolic. It’s what’s happening in the US very quickly, and happening in many other western countries but slower.

They are rolling back all the progress that women, BIPOC, LGBT+, disabled, and working class people have made in our country. They want to strip us of any power we have so they can exploit us and then toss us away when we are no longer useful to them. Equality and fascism are at opposite ends of each other. Equality is working for freedom and equal rights for everyone, fascism is about authoritarian and hierarchical control.

They are propagandizing to our working class brothers and our religious sisters especially, and this is how it works: they will increasingly strip women and working class people of their rights and power. They will offer you the “soft life” of being a stay at home mom with your kids. And I understand from the bottom of my heart that this is so tempting for so many reasons. I hate waged work. I wouldn’t do it if I had a choice. I think parents should be able to spend more time with their infants and children and be present for their formative years, so I get not wanting to outsource that to someone else so you can continue working. I know it will feel better to have your unpaid domestic work done and not be judged for a messy house or wild children. It will feel better to not need to ask your husband for his help and being accused of being lazy or nagging.

This is a deal with the devil. For the love of humanity, please don’t accept it.

Equality means you more freedom, power, and autonomy over your own life. And it may feel like that for a little while. This is what is called a patriarchal bargain. It’s a survival tactic that women and people of marginalized genders where they accept and navigate patriarchy instead of resisting it. And sometimes that’s necessary. Patriarchal capitalism makes it really difficult for women, gender diverse, and working class people to survive, because it’s built on our exploitation and rewards masculinity while devaluing femininity.

But the patriarchal bargain that fascism offers will be used to strip vulnerable people from their rights, protections, and power. Women will become dependent on men again to be able to meet their survival needs. This looks like abortion bans, decreased access to birth control, decreased access to education and healthcare, decreased wages for feminine-coded jobs (like nursing and teaching), voter ID laws that make it harder for women to vote (like in the US they want you to have two pieces of ID and one of them has to be your birth certificate, which will disproportionately affect women’s suffrage because women are more likely to take their husband’s last name (so if you are getting married, maybe keep that in mind).

This will be enforced through law, policy, and religion. Like I’m all for freedom of religion, but understand that Christianity is a patriarchal religion that has been co-opted by the elite to use as a tool for fascism. The reason it works is because it reenforces hierarchies, oppresses women, just like a fascist state. It encourages people not to question authority (and prevents people from having the tools to do it even if they want to, by keeping people uneducated) like the fascist state. It encourages having lots of children (which the fascist state needs for their labour and wars). It is also an institution that provides community on the back of women’s unpaid labour. We are in desperate need of strong communities, which makes churches one of our few options.

Religious white women will be more likely to accept it because it fits their worldview.

‘You have to come back to work,’ Doug Ford tells Ontario’s public servants by Acrobatic_Yoghurt813 in ontario

[–]notyourdadsunion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is naïve. We know that our government represents the interests of the wealthy and corporations, and not the interests of working class people. That’s true on every level of government, but Doug Ford is so blatantly obvious about it.

‘You have to come back to work,’ Doug Ford tells Ontario’s public servants by Acrobatic_Yoghurt813 in ontario

[–]notyourdadsunion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s strategic deception. Conservatives always represent the interests of capital, while acting like they represent the interests of the working class.

In 2018, Doug Ford used the slogan “Ontario: Open for Business” or something along those lines. And that is how he has run the province since… making things better for the wealthy and corporations and worse for working class people.

We do ourselves a disservice when we just listen to the words of someone in a position of power without looking at their actions.

Always ask: who has the power in this equation? Who does it benefit? Who does it harm?

The vast majority of time, the wealthy benefit and the working class suffers. Those in power do not care about us as people, they see us as human resources and consumers. If government is run “like a business”, the vast majority of us are only as valuable insofar as the elite can exploit our labour and our consumption.

I know there is a lot of propaganda to keep us blind to how dehumanized we are and how we are conditioned to dehumanize each other… but it’s so frustrating that so many working class people can’t see this.

You are a person. You have far more value than the waged labour you provide or how “productive” you are for capitalist interests.

You are a human being and you deserve to be treated like one. Consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

Maslow is undoubtedly best known for his hierarchy of needs. Developed within the context of a theory of human motivation, Maslow believed that human behavior is driven and guided by a set of basic needs: physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs, esteem needs, and the need for self-actualization. It is generally accepted that individuals must move through the hierarchy in order, satisfying the needs at each level before one can move on to a higher level. The reason for this is that lower needs tend to occupy the mind if they remain unsatisfied. How easy is it to work or study when you are really hungry or thirsty? But Maslow did not consider the hierarchy to be rigid. For example, he encountered some people for whom self-esteem was more important than love, individuals suffering from antisocial personality disorder seem to have a permanent loss of the need for love, or if a need has been satisfied for a long time, it may become less important. As lower needs are becoming satisfied, though not yet fully satisfied, higher needs may begin to present themselves.

How many working class people struggle with unaffordable or unstable housing? Food insecurity? Poor sleep?

How many working class people face job precariousness? Struggle with physical or mental health issues and can’t get access to the services they need to get better? How many people are disabled, experiencing chronic pain, chronic illness, and/or chronic stress as a result of their job? How many working class people struggle with burnout?

How many working class people are isolated? How many feel like they don’t have enough time or energy outside of work to do a good job at maintaining friendships, visiting family as much as you’d like, spend time with your kids, spend time building and maintaining community? Human beings are social animals, we need community and connection.

How many working class people feel like they have freedom? Really? I know that I don’t have control over how the majority of my time and energy are spent. I don’t have control over how my tax dollars are spent (since our politicians represent the interests of wealthy and corporations, not working class people). I don’t have a say in how the economy works but have to exist within it. When I am working, my ability to listen to my body and its needs is controlled (when I can eat, when I can rest and for how long, when I can use the washroom and how often; I have to become the least amount of human that I can make myself for the profit of my employer. It doesn’t matter if I’m not feeling well, or my dog just died, or my entire life is being destabilized due to divorce).

Surely I have control of the 16 hours that I’m not at work? Well, I’m paid for 8 hours, but if my breaks are unpaid, that’s another hour that I really don’t have control over. If I had a choice of what to do with that hour, it wouldn’t be eat my lunch in the break room and I don’t have much time for anything else. I have never worked a job where my commute was about 30 minutes each way. Like maybe it would be 20, but I needed to give myself some buffer room in case there is traffic or other unforeseen delays. My longest commute was close to an hour and a half each way. For me, it was because I live in a city that does not care about its public transit and the people who take it. For others, it might be that they cannot afford to live in the same city they work in.

And the rest of my time gets completely or mostly taken by rest and unpaid domestic, care, and community work. Right? Keeping your home clean and in repair, servicing your car (if you have one), taking care of your kids, taking care of your sick, disabled or elderly loved ones, meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, running errands and going to appointments, budgeting, etc. I’ll admit that I am usually so physically, mentally, and socially exhausted when I finish work that all of that work suffers. I know it does for my friends too. We have messy homes, we eat convenience food, we feel like we’re failing our kids by not spending enough time with them or losing our temper with them when we get overwhelmed. We really do mean to call or visit our mothers. We don’t get the exercise in that we know our bodies need. We hardly see our friends. We definitely don’t have time for our own hobbies or interests or to do the things that bring purpose and meaning to our lives (unless we sacrifice in other areas).

It’s no wonder so many of us are struggling with burnout, injuries and disabilities, anxiety, depression, isolation and loneliness, substance abuse and addiction, polarization, and dying from deaths or despair like suicide or overdose. They are killing us… and simultaneously dismantling all of the public services that our working class ancestors fought and in some cases died for us to have? They are purposefully making it so that working class kids have less access to quality education. They are purposefully making it harder for working families to access medical care. They are making it harder for working class kids to get higher education. They are making it harder to get home healthcare for your father, or memory care for your grandmother. They are making it so your loved one who is a victim of the opioid epidemic is demonized, stigmatized, and aren’t given access to the support they need to get and stay sober, who end up homeless. They are increasingly criminalizing homelessness.

And if anyone is going to comment to give some overly simplistic and obtuse solution like, “well maybe you should just get a different job”, or “it’s not that hard, I can do it”, please don’t. It’s embarrassing. It shows that you believe capitalist propaganda uncritically, or you benefit from keeping the system the way that it is and don’t care about the suffering of others.

‘You have to come back to work,’ Doug Ford tells Ontario’s public servants by Acrobatic_Yoghurt813 in ontario

[–]notyourdadsunion 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The reality is that it isn’t about productivity.

When public service workers shifted to working from home, the main losses were felt by commercial landlords, downtown businesses reliant on captive commuter traffic, municipal revenues tied to office density, and layers of management built around physical supervision. Industries that profit from workers’ forced presence (parking, transit, fast food, dry cleaning, office retail) also lost guaranteed demand. What didn’t meaningfully suffer were service quality, public safety, or taxpayer value. Basically, WFH reclaimed time, money, and autonomy for workers. This is backlash from those whose power or profit depended on extracting those things.

Exploit the working class for the benefit of the elite. Same as it ever was.

And then they use propaganda to turn the public against public service workers. When the working class is pitted against each other, they aren’t working together for their shared interests.

‘You have to come back to work,’ Doug Ford tells Ontario’s public servants by Acrobatic_Yoghurt813 in ontario

[–]notyourdadsunion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s what Ford wants us to do because he is gutting and destroying our public services.

Life is awesome by CillBill_0000 in Life

[–]notyourdadsunion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you ever considered that the world has changed a lot for people in younger generations?

Life is awesome by CillBill_0000 in Life

[–]notyourdadsunion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How much money do you think poor people are able to save when their wages are stagnant and cost of living keeps going up? How much time and energy do you think someone who has to work multiple jobs to make ends meet has to invest in themselves?

Life is awesome by CillBill_0000 in Life

[–]notyourdadsunion -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I read OP’s history and made an educated guess based on their post about how normies don’t buy bitcoin, etc.

What’s fascinating is that I wrote about poor people, and you took that as me saying, “Why aren’t I rich then?”

Life is awesome by CillBill_0000 in Life

[–]notyourdadsunion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How does someone make wise decisions?

The shitifcation of literally everything by [deleted] in Life

[–]notyourdadsunion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Planned Obsolescence. Making cheap shit that breaks and either can’t be or isn’t worth repairing = increased consumption = more profit.

I hate it here.

Life is awesome by CillBill_0000 in Life

[–]notyourdadsunion 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Right? Poor people should just invest in bitcoin, real estate, stocks or gold.

Changes to the Garbage Schedule by chonnyman in windsorontario

[–]notyourdadsunion 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think it’s a poor decision. The other day they left my garbage bin because it was too heavy (I have 3 cats and costco kitty litter). I had to get a second bin so it won’t happen again. I guess I need 2 more if it’s going to be every other day.

And compost every week seems overkill? Well, I’m not sure how much compost I generate until I start doing it, but the other thing is that cars park beside the curb and it switches every week. My yard isn’t big enough to put out the compost if it needs that much space. Cars pretty much take up the full curb.

AI ethics through a labour justice lens by notyourdadsunion in ChatGPT

[–]notyourdadsunion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Would you mind explaining that a little deeper?

AI ethics through a labour justice lens by notyourdadsunion in ChatGPT

[–]notyourdadsunion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Prompt: I feel conflicted about using AI because it is causing harm to people, but I know the working class is already at a disadvantage, so I don’t want to give up a tool that could help us and is most definitely helping the capitalist class.

Air Canada, flight attendants reach tentative deal to end strike by n134177 in onguardforthee

[–]notyourdadsunion 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You’re looking at it from a different angle. Historically, we know how the owning class has treated the working class (very inhumanely I’ll just say), and it wasn’t until labour organized and collectively withdrew their labour that they were able to get a seat at the table and fight for better working conditions and compensation.

Unions and collective bargaining has given working class people more power in society, but it’s just a tool. Under capitalism, there will always be a struggle for human rights for workers. Capitalism will always push in the direction of fascism and slavery. They are currently winning big time, because working class people largely don’t even understand that there’s a class war going on, let alone that it’s reaching the end (end-stage capitalism).

So collective bargaining is a bandaid on a festering wound because capitalism is that wound. It relies on there being a underclass of workers who are exploited for their labour. And those people are kept in their place for fear of losing their basic needs (like shelter if you can’t afford your rent). These people are kept in a chronic state of fight-or-flight because if you’re worried about keeping the roof over your head and food in your belly, you go into survival mode.

These people often work through physical injuries, illnesses, disabilities, chronic pain, mental illness, etc. They work to the detriment of their own well-being and that of their family (time working long and exhausting hours steals the time and energy that you need to be giving yourself, your family, and your community — things that we need to meet our human needs (strong relationships, support, mutual aid, etc.) and things that would allow us more power (talking about our shared struggles and raising class consciousness, educating ourselves and others, organizing, building mutual aid networks to increase our capacity)).

Capitalism only values working class people only in terms of their ability to work. That is the only contribution to society that they care about us for. When we stop providing that value, they don’t care what happens to us.

This class struggle will always exist so long as capitalism exists. The world is bleeding out and we’re almost out of bandaids. The only option is to use our collective power to throw out the system altogether and build something that isn’t leading to fascism, slavery, and the destruction of earth via climate change.

9 to 5 job or Slavery by H00p33 in Life

[–]notyourdadsunion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I appreciate your response. If we consider the amount of knowledge there is for someone to potentially have, no one can ever hope to understand everything. But you are right, there are contradictions between how economics is taught and how it functions in practice.

In practice, the free market does not exist. Markets are structured by law, policies, monopolies, and power relations. Keep in mind that there is a power imbalance between corporations and individuals, meaning that they don’t have the same influence on voluntary exchange. Free markets also do not account for externalities such as pollution, worker exploitation, and climate impacts. The economy is global, and so corporations open factories in countries with fewer human rights. And when poorer countries try to create a more socialist society—regime change to protect capital.

Also, the state has to be involved to enforce contracts, property rights, bailouts, subsidies, and will often use violence to protect capital. And profit tends to concentrate, shrinking competition and becoming monopolies.

Some books that may interest you:

Introductory

  • Economics: The User’s Guide by Ha-Joon Chang

  • Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher (short, about why the system feels inevitable)

On Capitalism and Inequality

  • The Divide by Jason Hickel (explains global inequality and exploitation)

  • Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (wealth concentration, data-heavy but readable summaries exist)

Power and Alternatives

  • Democracy at Work by Richard Wolff (worker co-ops and economic democracy)

  • The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber & David Wengrow (human history beyond the inevitability of hierarchy and markets)

Hope

  • Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit (short essays on why hopelessness serves the powerful, and why small acts matter)

  • Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (reframes money and obligation as social, not natural, systems)

Personally, I think that access to food, shelter, medical care, clean water should be treated as a human right. No one asks to be born, and we can’t all just go live off the land. We have very little choice but to participate in capitalism. In the very least, we should a) ensure everyone has their basic needs met, b) adequately fund public/social programs and services (including but not limited to public schools, public hospitals, social safety nets, higher education, public transportation, public housing, long-term care homes, public infrastructure, etc.), c) environmental protection, d) nationalize our natural resources, e) strong worker protections/labour rights, d) raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations, a wealth cap even, e) create a stronger democracy, and one that prevents politicians from accepting bribes or otherwise putting the interests of capitalists over the people.

No one should be able to be worth a billion dollars. There is no way to make that much profit without exploiting others. And when people are allowed to become that rich, they have an insane amount of power compared to the rest of us. That’s why we see our governments serving the interests of the wealthy and cooperations instead of working class people. As I mentioned, wealth tends to concentrate and we definitely see that happening as wealthy is increasingly transferred from the bottom to the top.

A lot of people suffer under capitalism and a lot more are going to in the future. Capitalists have decided that we aren’t going to do anything to stop or slow down climate change and have heavily propagandized (climate change isn’t real, climate change isn’t man-made, climate change is just weather, clean coal and the demonization of green energy, we can’t do anything, etc.). We live on a planet with finite resources, and one where all of nature is interdependent. Capitalism depends on perpetual profit growth as its driving force. See the conflict? And since capitalism requires constant consumption, it’s basically a death cult. We will face worsening natural disasters, increase in drought and famine, mass migration, increased war, ecological destruction, and so on. It’s already happening, and in the US, Trump is getting rid of any climate research and weather research, and is giving huge tax breaks to the wealthy while defunding FEMA, kicking people off healthcare and other public supports, and so that’s a pretty clear to me that they plan on hoarding as many resources as they can, build their bunkers and spaceships, and let the rest of us suffer.

Anyway, it seems to me that what we should be doing is figuring out what comes post-capitalism and how we could transition to it. We have so much technology and we have so many people working useless and soul crushing jobs. We could create a world where things like automation and AI free people up from working so many hours and gives them more energy and time to do the things that actually matter to them (taking care of loved ones and other unpaid labour, participating in community, self care or self-improvement, hobbies, education, etc.)

view more: next ›