That everything I buy can be measured as totalCost/wages*0.82=hoursCost.
I love measuring things in hours.
Let’s assume I make 12/hr. Is 24 cans of soda really worth more (taxes) than an hour of work? 12 bucks might not sound too bad, but over an hours wages does.
24 cans of soda probably embodies a lot more than 1 hour total work to create for a lot of people. Planting and harvesting the coca, mining the bauxite ore and refining it into aluminum, etc etc. The main reason that much cola is available to you at that price is that the coca and aluminum probably come from somewhere where workers get paid a lot less than $12/hr.
I’m all for people being paid more, but in a just and equitable world a case of soda would probably cost more than it does now.
That’s interesting. Comparing the time input across various income levels. Does that essentially mean the person getting paid more per hour has those being paid less working for them?
One of the functions of colonialism (in this case colonialism via exploitation of labor and resources of the global south economically) is to transfer wealth from the colony to the empire (we call these the Imperial Core regions).
I’m going to use a really simplified example and some made up numbers to illustrate. Say a pound of coffee takes 1 hour of labor to produce. The people producing it in Ethiopia are being paid $1 an hour to produce it. A capitalist from the Imperial Core buys that pound of coffee for $2, ships it to the Core for another $1, and sells it for $5.
The capitalist makes $2 and the buyer gets a pound of coffee for $5. Now imagine if the worker in Ethiopia is being paid $12 an hour. The capitalist cannot buy a pound of coffee for anything less than $12. After $1 shipping and his $2 cut (assuming he does not inflate his cut because he’s taking a percentage of the sale), the pound of coffee is now $15 to the buyer.
The buyer does not have the Ethiopian worker “working for them” in the strictest sense, but the buyer does benefit from getting their pound of coffee for 1/3 the price they would otherwise have to pay.
This is why Marxists say that the current living standards of the so-called First World are being propped up by the economic exploitation of the global south, even if the residents of the First World are not directly engaging in colonialism in the pith helmet and whips sense.
Another thing to keep in mind is that imperialism also has the effect of driving down wages in the imperial core since the capitalist can pay their workers less if the price of basic, essential commodities can be decreased by super-exploitation in the imperial periphery. This is a major reason why real wages in the US have been stagnant for a while, for example. So this would have a counterbalancing effect on how much a first-world worker would need to pay proportionally to their income for a case of soda if the process of imperialism were ended.
Wow I was really hoping for some kind of mathematical discussion but I should have known a Marxist would show up. It’s the only song we play any more.
They simplified it so it would be comprehensible for you, you dolt. They even wrote that at the beginning. If you really wanna get into the math, just read Das Kapital. Here’s a brief excerpt speaking about the price of linen
You’re right. Marxism famously doesn’t involve any mathematics. This is why Marxists find volumes II and III of Das Kapital to be light, easily comprehensible, reading.
Minimum wage, minimum effort
Your employer does not care about you. You are not important or irreplaceable
Take your time and energy and put it into your life, not their business
I have had coworkers die (not work related) and by the time you hear about it (like the next day) they have already worked out who will get the work done so the machine doesn’t have to stop
They’re not your friends, even if they act like that.
The management just sees you as expense factor and does not care about you except for how to get the most work done for the least amount of money. Your team leader does not care about you and only cares if their numbers look good. Your colleagues do not care about you and only see you as competition or the idiot they can give their work to.
If someone is nice to you they want something from you not because they like you.
It’s suffocating to be in a middle management position because you get squeezed by the higher-ups and your own team. If the higher-ups make a decision that your team dislikes or vice versa, you’re going to be in the shitter with whichever party suffered every time even if you had the best intentions.
The longer you work anywhere – and I mean ANYWHERE – the more you see the bullshit and corruption and crappy rules or policies and inequality all over.
For me it has been about the 3 year mark anywhere I’ve worked: once you get past that, you fade away from “damn I’m glad to have a job and be making money!” and towards “this is absolute bulls#!t that [boss] did [thing] and hurt the workers in the process!” or similar3 years? What nirvana corp do you work at?
Funny, that’s actually what motivated me at my last job. Things were fucked up, but not so fucked up that it was overwhelming. It was the Goldilocks zone of just fucked up enough that I think I can not only fix it, but look good if I do. It was a fun journey, all told, but there were definitely frustrations, even ones that lasted years.
the Goldilocks zone of just fucked up enough
Hahaha, I love it
Efficient workers get more work if you’re in the office. I work from home, and that allows me to work efficiently until my work is done, set up scheduled emails to go out at the time I would’ve otherwise been done, then do what I want until then.
I see your work doesn’t have invasive programs that check idle mouse and idle keyboard behaviors.
this is an old one but i can’t help thinking, what if they installed it without my knowledge, after all, my work laptop was given to me already pre prepared by our IT department.
Yeah, looking busy is way more important than being productive a lot of the time. You always need to be doing something, so you just go through the motions of doing things because otherwise you’ll get shit from your employers. Waiting in good faith for more real tasks to emerge isn’t enough, so you must invent chores.
At least, that was very consistently my experience in retail.
Can confirm, not in retail but a fully remote programmer, managers are still very often concerned that “everybody has something to do” much more than “everything gets done”.
“idle hands are the devil’s work” but also “god rested on the seventh day”… uh oh my brain is short-circuiting…
Hold on dearly to any leverage you might have over your employer
Hold on to that leverage over your employer with a union
There’s no such thing as quiet quitting. I prefer acting your wage.
Explanation please? Not a native speaker here…
“Quiet quitting” is a term made up my small business tyrants in the United States to describe workers doing their job as it is described on the contract, and not going “above and beyond”. They somehow believe they’re owed more than they pay for.
HR protect the company first, the employees second.
100%. The rebranding of some HR departments as “People Officers” or “People Team” drives me bonkers. When push comes to shove, they will always protect the interests of the business before the interests of the employee. Full stop.
You are right, but to be fair. “Human Ressources” was an awful name to begin with.
Hello fellow resource, uh i mean human.
I learnt meritocracy is a joke long before I discovered that it was literally invented to be a joke.
it’s the same story of ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ too
At least meritocracy makes sense vs the physically impossible bootstraps one.
Also, i thought ghengis khan was all about meritocracy. That and marrying off his daughters and sending the kings to die.
Also, i thought ghengis khan was all about meritocracy.
No… Genghis Khan wasn’t a joke. Meritocracy is.
You can’t get sick
What job do you have where you’re not allowed to take care of your health when necessary?
I think we can all guess the country. I wish you all the best, wakkawakkawakka.
North Korea?
In communist North Korea, over a million died from COVID, 45,000 die a year from lack of health insurance, and 200,000 die annually from poverty.
At least South Korea and North America shut down for the pandemic, North Korea did not. I rest my case.
North Korea was shut down anyway, it took a long time for them to have their first covid outbreak and I think when it finally did happen they did shut down.
Also, I am glad you have come out so strongly in favor of the PRC approach, or so I must convlude.
Being so close to China, North Korea couldn’t be in a position to escape being one of the first to suffer. Kim Jong-un spent the first part of it saying it didn’t exist. What’s worse is health in North Korea is poor, so there were more casualties. Any true response was too late.
Sounds more like North America
North Korea had none of the pandemic protocols as America.
America had a larger infection rate and mortality rate than North Korea.
I know what you’re gonna say “oh they lied about their numbers”. Why would I trust the US to be honest about theirs? Why would I trust the US media in their claims about North Korea lying about its numbers?
The US had several whistleblowers like Rebekah Jones getting arrested/abused/harrased for their reporting on the state of the US obfuscating data.
The american media has been shown to lie time and again, especially when it comes to foreign matters - Most famously about Iraq. What reason do I have to trust it?
The United States has the largest prisoner population in the world and has a history of persecuting minorites and political dissidents like leaders of black lives matter. These dissidents are dissapeared at secret police blacksites where they are tortured. This prisoner population is used as slave labour, which is still legal.
Why would I trust the lies peddled by this authoritarian regime about a country whose population they relentlessly bombed until they’d murdered 20% of it.
Jesus Christ, you need help
North Korea has the world’s worst human rights, so when they made it sound like only one country had this issue, that was my guess. I’m in North America and never experienced what is described. Unless I’m wrong to have even the amount of faith required to believe there are no North Korea denialists here.
source:
North Korea has the world’s worst human rights
You understand propaganda like a fish understands water
When I say that, I’m going by every regular source that ever existed, plus satellite images, its near-impossible standards for leaving or entering, its lack of internet access (who here has seen anyone who is actually from North Korea), and the fact that the average North Korean adult is only five feet tall, with height being an indicator of health (the taller the healthier). What do you weigh against it that inspires you to posit it’s all just propaganda and hearsay? Other hearsay (as opposed to a conflict within the narrative you oppose)?
According to who?
Could it be, the United States? The most vicious and bloody empire the world has ever known?
That aside (like, wow, holy fuck)
If you could not recognize the earlier comments as an indication of western capitalism, you are rich or otherwise so privileged you cannot comprehend the struggles of the average person
An American job
I’m in America and this isn’t an issue. I don’t know anyone where this isn’t an issue, in fact there’s this thing in America called SSI designed specifically to help the chronically unhealthy without even a need to work.
it’s a means tested program it’s really difficult to get onto especially if your disabilities make it hard to correctly sort out all the paperwork
The more someone is paid, the less actual vital work they tend to do.
Being emotionally detached from really stupid leadership decisions is harder than it seems
Took me a lot of years to not think it’s my company that is being run into the ground. I should not - and nowadays could not - care any less.
my company
You mean “my responsibility”, right?
The book The Responsibility Virus helped me a lot with this. Most people are over-responsible for the choices of others, specifically ones they can’t reasonably influence, anyway.
I found out that https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ explains a lot of the dysfunctions that one finds in an office / corporate environment.
