Submitted 1 day ago by Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com to workreform@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/16ccde3d-1350-471f-844a-681489bf3804.webp
cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/58914591
I remember the first time I ever saw snow in my life, I was 8 years old, my family just moved to the US, to NYC. Probably one of the most exciting moments in my entire life.
Don’t remember if there was a snow day, but kids should really be allowed to have free days to play in the snow more often.
When I was working for a 100% employee owned manufacturing company, if the town’s school closed for weather, we shut our shop down too. It was really cool and very helpful for parents.
That’s how it should be. That demonstrates why the working class must maintain control of the means of production. Contrary to popular belief, that’s not actually communism, rather it is the difference between feudalism and freedom.
When the feudal lords own the thing(s) you use to make your living, you’re not really free and disempowerment and disenfranchisement becomes endemic and cumulative. Plantation slaves and tenant farmers had an awful lot in common, they were not free, did not have any form of mobility, physical, social or otherwise. The lord owned the land and pretty close to everything in it. They controlled the job, controlled the housing, controlled the costs, controlled the compensation and ultimately controlled the tenants lives. There is some difference in the degree of control, but mostly only in degree.
Tenant employees are not much different today, except that it’s all been dressed up to look more free. Most of it’s an illusion though, and that shows when you start actually trying to exercise any freedom. If you don’t own any of the things that are earning your paychecks, you’ll be a slave to the people who do. That’s not something capitalism requires or even expects. A free labor market is part of the free market that capitalism requires to function effectively. Entrepreneurship is one of the pillars of capitalism and growth but it cannot exist if people or even small organizations cannot afford to own anything productive enough to be competitive or successful.
Like it or hate it, capitalism itself is not quite the problem. What we’re doing now is not functioning effectively because it’s not actually capitalism anymore, it’s feudalism. Whatever you want to call it, late-stage-capitalism, neo-liberalism, techno-feudalism, neo-feudalism, what is happening today is not what capitalism used to mean, and it’s not just because we just didn’t “properly understand” capitalism until now, and it’s not because this was actually an inevitable outcome.
Capitalism is just a tool, it’s one tool in a toolbox that we can use, it was never supposed to be the only tool, but even if it was the only tool, what we’re using it for now is not what it was supposed to be used for. What we understand about capitalism’s intended function is not matching what we see happening in the world because it’s been changed, it’s been corrupted. Important pieces of the framework that we used to call capitalism have been lost. On purpose. It has been stripped down from a tool to a weapon.
Capitalism is not the problem, we can get rid of it if we want, but it won’t solve the problem. The lords claiming ownership of everything are the problem, and even if we did throw it all away to switch to communism or something else, they would still be there, they would put themselves in the same places of power, and they would cause exactly the same problem, just like they did in communist Russia, maybe even some of the names and faces of the lords changed, but the problem certainly didn’t! Corruption and greed and exploitation and rent-seeking don’t care what economic system you’re using, they will find ways to corrupt, hoard, exploit and seek rent from the less fortunate, because that’s what the humans desiring those things want. And they will use any system at all to get it. The system is only at fault in that it was not protected from this kind of abuse. Any system will have to be or it will end up the same way.
I mean… They probably would be annoyed they have to call someone else in if you were to die on your way in.
Notwithstanding the cost of training!
But for lower wage…
Hmmm…
Gotta make sure we make it to working age before they trade our lives for the bottom line
Covid made wfh a thing. Even though they took it away, we at least got an easy way out of bad weather days were it’s just understood that bad weather will be wfh from now on. So at least thats something.
Schools are soft and have gone overboard with cancellations.
I’ll take that to my grave.
I agree, but I say that out of jealousy. Everyone needs more snow days. It’s like a mental health day with hot cocoa and snowmen.
It’s the truth. 2 weeks of vacation, 6 sick days (the last two are write-ups), and 6 holidays are not enough.
One, online school is now a viable option so this conversation is basically moot. Two, those policies tend to be written in, if not blood, expensive litigation and terrible optics. Minnesota used to have a very aggressive avoidance policy to school closures. Then 300 kids didn’t get home after school until 9pm-12am. . Now school gets delayed or closed much more regularly.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 50 minutes ago
This is how I knew COVID was some real shit, they actually made us work from home.
Wasn’t even allowed to do that when the wind tore down a bunch of trees onto the train lines…