Comment on How to move a sofa
Broadfern@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The American lower-working class economy is predominantly favor and goodwill-based, yes. Pain in the ass sometimes but also more fun imo. Community is important to keep alive.
This is a wild concept for other cultures. Like, in Germany people will help you move. Your friends that is. Maybe a coworker or neighbour - if you even know any neighbour at all. That is all but a given here as well. But some random guy? Nah…
Oh and you absolutely have to rent a truck. I don’t know a single truck person. There is no such thing as having a truck, unless you nees it for business. Long story short: I just paid a company over >2k to move just one town over
This can absolutely also happen in a place like Germany. Yes, no one really has a truck for personal use (or rather a box truck), but you know a guy who knows a guy that has a truck for his business and doesn’t need it on the weekend, et voila. Maybe it’s not that extreme, but especially for ‘poorer’ working class people, helping out is still essential even in Germany.
When I was in Europe I saw a bunch of houses with trailers they could tow bulk items with their cars. Are those not common in Germany?
Also strongly depends on the community and your perceived level of acceptance within the community.
Anyone who’s ever been viewed as an outsider knows that it is not this simple unless you happen to fit in.
Yeah, small town community always sounds warm and fuzzy until you end up on the outside.
A while back, I knew of a family that moved into a house in the center of a town near where I grew up. A couple and two kids. The town had a big clock with a bell that rang hourly. Even in the dead of night. Right across the street from their house.
The family asked the town if they could silence the chimes between sunset and sunrise so that they and their kids could sleep. The town said no, the chimes are a local tradition.
The family then brought up state noise ordinances that the town was violating. The town still refused. So they petitioned the state, the state got involved, and made the town silence the clock at night. The locals threw a fit.
The family didn’t last long in their new house after that. But they were at least lucky enough to have the means to pack up and move somewhere else.
The less lucky are stuck. They get to spend the rest of their lives as “the problem”. I’ve known people where any utterance of their name is met with a cautionary “you shouldn’t associate with them”, even when it’s been so long that no one can tell you why.
Thank you! So many people elsewhere in this comment section don’t seem to understand this.
And yeah, it could be over something so benign as that, or even more benign. But too many people assume that if someone is being ostracized, then they must have done something to deserve it. That’s not always the case though, especially in puritanical smalltown USA.
Some of these towns, if you’re not being ostracized by most of the people there, then something must be wrong with you, because there are places where you’ll be ostracized for not supporting maga or for believing in climate change or empathy.
This is why I’m saying we shouldn’t romanticize that “smalltown vibe,” because there absolutely is a dark side to it. But people are reacting with such hostility. Clearly they haven’t lived in the kind of area I’m talking about…
That was the ancient economy, before money even existed. You gave stuff to people. Bread, pots, meat, build a cabin. They gave stuff back that you needed, roughtly about the same value, but never exactly the value. Everybody has to be a little in debt to anyone else. If you gave back exactly what it’s worth, it means you don’t want to deal with that person anymore.
Yeah, this is the gift economy. And when the only economy is the gift economy, that’s called communism.
Shh dude, don’t tell the american working class that they are doing communism, because communism is bad, you know.
hayvan@piefed.world 4 weeks ago
Not just American. It’s poor people’s economy everywhere. American working class has more in common with working class in every other nation than American wealth class. The real division in the world is class division, everything else is distraction.
mirshafie@europe.pub 4 weeks ago
This exactly. There’s an inversion when having money is more convenient than having contacts and doing small favors, and that inversion turns people into lonely cunts.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Incredibly wealthy people also run their society based on favors and unspoken fees. The difference is, one of them could, under unusual but not impossible circumstances, help a friend and a guy move a fridge and share a beer. But nobody who’s not part of the incredible-wealth society can participate in its favors. And we all pay the fees.
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I don’t see what about this that makes it a “working-class” thing? I thought it was common practice to help each other out in exchange for pizzas and beer in any part of society where people have friends? I see it primarily as an excuse to hang out while doing something together.
hayvan@piefed.world 4 weeks ago
Whenever you can afford to pay to have a problem of yours solved, it’s often the most convenient way of solving it.
Anyone who makes their living by working, either for salary or hourly rate, is working class. Let’s just be on the same page about that.
A working class person basically survives by converting their time and energy to cash. So paying cash is also paying with your labour, indirectly and often inefficiently. It’s always a matter of “is it worth it”? Hiring movers for moving your entire home may be worth it, just one piece of furniture often isn’t.
A wealth-class person gets their income from what they own. Its “passive” from their point of view, the money just appears as profit or capital gains or whatever. It’s still a limited resource, but often way more available. Any kind of favours you do or ask for at this point is purely for fun/social purposes since hiring someone to move that sofa, or even just buying and having a new one delivered is way more convenient and time-efficient, since your money is not literally your time.
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Aha! That’s where you got me! I was thinking “working class” in the more classical sense, referring to typical lower-paying jobs. I work for a living, but I’m definitely closer to what is typically considered “middle-class” in the sense that I make enough money that I feel well-off, but not enough that I could buy a new sofa just because moving the old one is too much hassle.
Obligatory “Fuck the wealth-class”. “Passive income through ownership” is a convoluted way of saying “parasitic”.
Dozzi92@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I have a friend who’s done very well with the AI boom, he works for some startup, has for the past six or seven years. He moved into an apartment like 10 years ago, he was working for a pharma company, just building their servers I’ll say, because I don’t know what the fuck he does. When he moved into the apartment, he hit me up, I rounded up another friend or two, we took care of it.
He bought (had built) a new home about six or seven months ago. He did not call me to help him move. He’s moved beyond that, because to him, he doesn’t want to be involved. You don’t call someone to help you move and then not take part. For him, it’s a no-brainer to just pay to have it done. And that’s fine, and I just kinda wanted to give an example of this divide.