Submitted 5 days ago by sanitation@lemmy.radio to workreform@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.radio/pictrs/image/3436934d-d97a-4569-9aba-a97fdb4f83a5.png
Hear me out, but nobody should become homeless or starve bcz they don’t have a job.
We always frame this in terms of “tHiNk oF aLl tHe jErBs” that will be lost, instead of, why the fuck are we letting these billionaires hoard all the wealth when we already live in a poat scarcity society.
People should not be starving when there’s plenty of food to go around.
“But if nobody has to work who will be making the food?” Is what I usually get when I say something like this and tbh I don’t have an answer for that besides me believing that people naturally want to work and lots of people would enjoy doing lots of the jobs. But I have no clear picture of how such world would work, just being naive that people would do these jobs even if they weren’t forced to do them. Like every basic need is free but to get extra stuff you’d still need to work. Then of course what do you qualify as basic need and how someone could twist it.
I hear you and completely agree. I get that response as well: “nobody would work! Society would collapse!”. I don’t think so… I do think many of the jobs people do just to survive would take a huge hit, like McDonald’s employees or Walmart greeters. But I don’t think any job would completely dissappear, just change. I’ve known people who enjoy working fast food, or greeting… I would still do what I do for a living without pay if I could. We would still grow food, and work. The focus on what stuff would be different though. And yeah, there would be people who don’t work… but that is true now as well!
People will still make food because they need to eat. Also people love to cook. None of that stops if jobs go away.
Say I’m a farmer - I work my nipple hairs off for 14 hours a day to put food on my table, and let’s say I enjoy it since it’s honest work. Why in ALL hell would I start handing my crops out to lazy assholes who’d rather just sit on ass all day and stare at the sky doing nothing?
You see similar in any major city these days - you’ll have itty bitty restaurants and takeouts have giant “help wanted” signs and you’ll have borderline a crowd of lazy assholes loitering outside asking for free food instead of getting that damn job.
And robot should make it so that we have to work less hours and get paid the same as working more hours. We should have an easier life having robots around not a harder life
What is poat and why do we have its scarcity?
Post-scarcity
The fact that people can’t stop using this shitty ass marketplace is proof we are doomed. Its NOT THAT FUCKING HARD to buy ANYWHERE ELSE . i have not used Walmart or amazon in over a decade. Never really used it before either because I knew their plan. Destroy all other businesses so there is nowhere to go, take over the entire market, then sell shit product for more while being the only employer left. Tale as old as time.
The stupidity of humans makes us deserve this honestly. Now pair this with people who won’t get off their ass to vote. To fill in a bubble on paper. 100% doomed, dont even try to fix it.
The fact that people can’t stop using this shitty ass marketplace is proof we are doomed.
“Well, I don’t shop at Amazon for ethical reasons.”
“Oh, you don’t buy any common commercial goods?”
“No no no. I just buy them ethically.”
“Where do you get your ethically sourced consumer goods?”
“Target and Walmart”
🫠
The stupidity of humans makes us deserve this honestly.
Bitch, I just need a mop to mop my floor so its not sticky. Where do I get a new mop? Point me to the place to buy a fucking mop that doesn’t involve some asshole on the internet heckling me over it.
Yeah, when I take an inventory of the businesses I frequent and follow this train of thought, it ultimately boils down into the line “No ethical consumption under capitalism” I’ve read before.
If it’s a company we’ve heard of, it inevitably has an entire collection of rich psychopaths running and owning it. Local small businesses can be better, or they can be run by hateful bigots and/or small-time psychopaths that charge twice as much.
I just try to find the reasonable balance between trying to reduce harm and not support the worst of the worst, while also participating in society.
If you can’t buy a broom without using amazon, youre gonna have a hard time with life in general.
Also in my comment I stated I don’t use Walmart. Rarely ever go to target.
And yes. All consuming is unethical, a slave made the phone or computer you are using this moment. However, that doesn’t mean we need to use amazon and keep directly enriching billionaire scum. How is that so hard ? Are people lazier or dumber than they used to be now in that they can’t search for 2 seconds to find a broom? How about a damn garage sale ???
Used is far better than new in a massive amount of cases. Americans are addicted to shiny new plastic because they’re brainwashed idiots that think they need new everything.
Don’t you know you’re supposed to make your own rope from cotton that you’ve grown, and make your own mop with wood that you harvested from your backyard?
The grocery store. A 99cent store. Local hardware store.
Point me to the place to buy a fucking mop that doesn’t involve some asshole on the internet heckling me over it.
Aliexpress.
I have only used Amazon once in the last 2 years (it was a very specific tool that was sold literally nowhere else, even eBay, and was only like $20), Walmart a handful of times, and Target only for cat sand.
If you can’t eliminate the harm you contribute to (which, fair, none of us can in America), you are responsible for minimizing it. Triage. Gotta choose between 3 shit companies? Evaluate which one is the least-shit and go that route.
And that varies for everyone. The people who have a Walmart as their only source of fresh groceries within a 30 mile radius are going to need to shop at Walmart more often than I do, and that’s fine.
The stupidity of humans makes us deserve this honestly. Now pair this with people who won’t get off their ass to vote.
They’ve been cutting education in US for past half a century. They’ve been moving income from working class to billionaire class. They’ve propagandized the blame so well that even you blame your peers or poor people instead of the rulingnclass who have planned for this longer than you’ve been alive.
I’m not blaming poor people. If anything they are smarter about what’s happening vs the upper middle class .
I was more complaining about the stupidity of upper white rich class folks listening to fox news and Joe rogan, with zero critical thought, who got us into this shit even worse.
But yes, its 100% the billionaires fault. I see no way to undo their damage unfortunately. As you said, the lack of education and brainwashing has people firmly in their wrong beliefs and they won’t change easily, if ever.
Now we wait until the collapse
You CAN educate and improve the middle and lower classes, but you CANNOT and will not dismantle the game that was planned and set up for centuries. Rules have been there written in black and white with a highlighter, but no one wants to read them.
While I completely agree with you and I try not to use either company, lot of people who live in rural America do not have a choice. My parent well used to be parents before my dad died, does not drive and doesn’t always have someone to get deliveries for her elsewhere. Even so The only place to shop in the area she lives is Walmart. There is no other place except for grocery stores. So where do you suggest those people shop other than Amazon and Walmart? Personally I live in a place where I can go to Costco and that’s where I get most of my items but for things that are unable to be bought at Costco (for example a rare size screw but I need for a mechanical part) can sometimes only be bought at Amazon.
Yeah I get the specific use cases for it. Thats fine. They’re not the issue. Its the clueless people using it when they dont need to at all
Thats great, but perfection is the enemy of good enough. I dont think one has to eliminate it entirely, there are some niche things that are only offeres through these marketplaces. But if there is an alternative place to acquire it (starting in your community), always favor it!
All it takes is a reduction of usage by everyone to send a message. Expecting people to go cold turkey is a bridge too far right now. Kudos though for being able to do that
In most places in rural America Walmart is the only place to shop at other than a grocery store. And sometimes they don’t even have a separate grocery store. People in large metropolitan areas seem to forget there’s a whole lot of America that’s rural and nothing else is available there.
Yeah even cutting back would be good.
I haven’t been able to convince a single person of this. They’ll just keep their prime and Netflix sub’s while getting fed even more ads and paying for them. They think “this is the world” and dont even know how to change.
Coworkers were talking about their $200 or more cable+subscription bills the other day. I felt pretty good that day. People waste a lot of money.
It’s saddens me that everyone has an excuse — even those who recognize the problem.
Look I’m not perfect either. I’m part of this shitty system. I fuck up and buy shit I don’t need sometimes. But at least I’m trying.
If a box with a smile shows up on my door it’s because I didn’t know three seller used Amazon / their boxes.
Yeah exactly , but we are trying. The majority dont even try.
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
Over-accumulation of wealth by an individual should be seen as an indicator that the system is broken.
The thing that’s unacceptable is not that manual labor gets replaced by robots. That’s a good thing.
The thing that’s unacceptable is that Jeff Bezos can amass such wealth and that you don’t get a basic income and housing without needing to work for it.
It’s unacceptable that people like Jeff Bezos exist.
If you do actually believe that, then why not do something about it?
This type of comment just comes off as ball fondling the billionaires and makes you look pathetic.
What part exactly? The ones calling to put words into action?
Why don’t you do something about it?
I don’t much care about Amazon, or billionaires.
Unless you know the OP personally, I think you’re conjuring issues about them to complain about.
NATIONALIZE AMAZON
Use it to fund UBI and other social causes.
waow (basedbasedbasedbasedbased)
Just some back of the envelope math. With $290 billion, he could give each of those 600,000 people $10k a year for the next 48 years and still have $2 billion left over. And that is without considering interest or investment in the meantime.
As bad as these Sociopathic Oligarchs are now, imagine when they start reaching Trillionaire status, and can start competing with entire nations. They will manufacture their own armies of Slaughterbots, and demand anything they want.
It is inevitable. Unless we end them.
Pure capitalism has an implied responsibility after one becomes overwhelmingly successful, they would be inclined to reinvest the excess into society. Donations to schools, social programs, not-for-profits, and so on. And higher wages for the workers who made you immensely successful, better benefits, higher quality of life overall to incentivize people wanting to work for you, and if all successful companies did this, trickle-down economics would be real.
In unregulated corrupted capitalism, however, that excess instead is used to lobby government to make even more successful, shaping laws to shield companies from labor rights, destroy unions, surpress minimum wage, dodge taxes, and deflect hidden production costs like environmental pollution or outsourced slave labor. They use their economic leverage to remove legal responsibilities they have participating in society, while at the same time leaning on society’s resources like roads, police, emergency services, and infrastructure more than any individual ever could. Imagine how successful Bezos would be if taxpayers didn’t provide roads for his deliveries.
It’s all a big game of monopoly to them and at the end of the game, one guy has all the money and everyone else is bankrupt, in poverty, jail, or just trying to collect $200 a week to not starve. And then new generations are born into the game wherever their parents were at on the board, with no game reset. People wonder why the birth rate is dropping.
At the end of the game though our pieces all go into the same box.
The problem isn’t Amazon, which employer millions of people and provides services that people obviously love. In fact, many cottage businesses have found success on Amazon, as well as many authors being able to publish their books with the permission of the publishing industry, and much more. Why should we get rid of all that? None of that is the problem.
The problem is profit. If Amazon employees made double or triple their salaries, treated them respectfully, and had great benefits, nobody would complain about them. They’d probably be lauded as a great company.
What’s causing it is Bezos’ untreated OCD, which manifests as uncontrolled compulsive financial hoarding. He sucks so much profit out of the business, that it severely hurts the employees, and the company’s corporate image. If he could figure out how to live below his means, he’d find out that he really doesn’t need enough money for a million lifetimes, he could share that money with his employees, make his customers more comfortable buying from Amazon, and they’d make even more money than they were.
Or America could do what they do with uncontrolled hoarders whose collections start to have a negative affect on those around them - we get them mental help, and give all those cats to new families. That’s what we should do with Bezos. Comfine him a mental hospital until his mania for profit subsides, and give all his neglected money to people who will appreciate it. Or nationalize Amazon, and run it as a government held non-profit, with the proceeds going to fund social programs.
In fact, many cottage businesses have found success on Amazon
Amazon Let Its Drivers’ Urine Be Sold as an Energy Drink
Love my cottage businesses.
What’s causing it is Bezos’ untreated OCD, which manifests as uncontrolled compulsive financial hoarding.
I think there’s an element of truth to this. But trying to medicalize what is, at the end of the day, just economic autocracy presumes that there’s a person who could do Bezos’s job (such that it ever even existed) “ethically”.
America could do what they do with uncontrolled hoarders whose collections start to have a negative affect on those around them - we get them mental help
This sounds like you’re talking about Trust Busting.
It’s not that hard. All an “Ethical” CEO would have to do is reduce the profits to 25%, and invest the rest into employee pay and benefits. Then market the shit out of that.
That CEO would be an American Hero, and his company would boom, lifting the share price, and keeping the stockholders happy.
But he wouldn’t have multiple yachts, including one he has to sell, because it was “too big.”
The problem isn’t Amazon, which employer millions of people and provides services that people obviously love.
That’s the thing; Amazon didn’t pull out its success out of nowhere; the consumer made it what it became. Want to have a version of Amazon with healthcare and job security? Then build it yourself. That won’t work because of the customer wanting the cheapest stuff possible? Here’s the crux of the problem. There won’t be corporate reform without consumer reform.
You missed my point. The solution isn’t to let them continue to be bad, until someone goes into competition and beat them with a more moral business model. The moral model can’t succeed when they are competing with someone who is exploiting and manipulating the system.
The solution is to create a business environment where the moral business succeeds, while the immoral business struggles, and eventually decides to follow the rules in order to succeed, or close.
The problem is Amazon. Hope that helps. Throw Bezos in a woodchipper.
Or if you’re willing to take the bitter medicine and view a broader reality, capitalism is the problem and inherently depends on destroying the planet on which we rely on to survive. Bezos is just a particularly severe symptom of the disease of capitalism.
“Unacceptable!”
… Except the malleable masses, addled on rage-bait, rightwing ‘news’ and bot-driven social media not only accept it but mindlessly endorse and defend it.
What are you doing to ensure nobody can be a billionaire?
Any recommendations?
Stop giving rich ppl more rich. In as much as you can? Idk I’m asking the same question.
It starts at home. Step one is to stop participating. Reduce or eliminate spend and/or engagment with the things that are enriching these people. Doesnt have to be perfect. Cancel your prime membership. Prioritize purchases at the businesses in your community. Only buy from Amazon when you have no other choice. Get rid of facebook. Etc etc.
The fact of the matter is that the way the world is structured right now, its impossible to be 100% perfect about this. You dont have to be perfect, just do the best you can.
If everyone did this (they wont), it would affect the stock price, and that is where billionares derive their power. Even a small downward trend is enough. But your life will change in a positive way if you do this as an added bonus. In some ways life has become tooo conveniant.
290B$ with poor investment performance yields 8%, which means he makes 23B$ for simply existing.
The kings of old wish
It works so much better when you use all the zeroes. Makes it easier to compare.
This is why you need to know metric. 630 10^6/600 10^3 ≈ 10^3
Go demand fucking better wages if you think it makes a difference to a worker.
What?
I get it, but 500M$/600K workers is ~840$/worker. One time
There is a reason his wealth has skyrocketed by billions and billions of dollars over the past decade. He doesn’t pay his workers fair wages. Being a billionaire is unethical… billionaires are the single biggest threat to humanity at the moment.
Or perhaps it’s ALL the lazy morons using his shitty marketplace to get toilet paper delivered…bet workers themselves buy shit off Amazon.
If you don’t think $840 could change someone’s life
You are richer than anyone I know.
That would be fantastic for 600,000 workers, an entire week without worrying about rent.
So… what’s the downside?
Also he spends like a billion a year on developing his space program
MET gala like last years MET was so obvious it was a distraction from billionaire caused problems, because they make RICH people do outlandish things. most platforms are saying “ooh look at rich people showing off how rich they are”
Been boycotting Amazon since 2004.
Still waiting for everybody else to catch up.
Surely they’ll see it soon…
Gonna be honest, people are still on the “pointing out the hypocracy” stage and need to move on to: yes, that’s the point, what are we going to do about it?
“Oh hur hur this makes no sense” Bezos is ecstatic that you just now realized.
Just saying, if we burn buildings with no human, there will be no human casualties, only BILLIONAIRE ASSETS getting burned… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, keep burning BILLIONAIRE ASSETS and the BILLIONAIRE became MILLIONAIRE… ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
He needs to get Luigi’d.
It’s inevitable that people like Jeff Bezos exist. It’s called capitalism. The System is working as expected.
yeah he could have given those people *checks notes* one and a half week’s pay each instead.
don’t get me wrong, dollar billionaires shouldn’t exist and bezos is definitely among the worst, but focusing on the money he spends rather than how the people still working for him are treated feels backwards.
I’m not renewing my Amazon subscription this year (a decision made last year after I forgot when I renewed). Also no longer buying from Amazon unless ABSOLUTELY no other option, costs be damned. Just yesterday I was looking at Ubiquiti products and noticed Amazon had for sale at $309 and Ubiquiti had them $99/unit. Obvious answer. Fuck greedy ass amazon.
We could always make it so corporations have a hiring limit of 5,000 employees to make sure no one corporation is ever large. Doing that now would lead to mass firings. But if we had done it all along, we’d have a more competitive market.
nO 1 wAnTs 2 wOrK nE mOaR!!!1!1!1111!!!
The best thing about Jeff Bezos is Mackenzie Scott.
Klox@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Look, I get it. Jeff Bezos will keep hoarding. That makes sense in that selfish, nihilist worldview. What I can’t understand, is why all fucking people are voting against their own fucking self interests to allow this bullshit. If people didn’t just vote against their fucking better interests we would be in a much better situation.
betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Red-staters seem perfectly fine with punching themselves in the face if it means they can stumble back and bloody the nose of the durn libburuls standing behind them.
flandish@lemmy.world 5 days ago
because voting is not issue based, in the US. it’s “sports team” based, us vs them, etc. it is nothing but distractions while capitalists keep getting richer.
humanamerican@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
If leftists didn’t refuse to vote “on principle” we would be in a much better situation.
flandish@lemmy.world 5 days ago
what principal do you mean? asking harris to say genocide is bad? asking the dem party to cut the horseshit with primaries? asking biden to leave a year before he did?
anyone who voted third party is not why trump is in office, their numbers plus harris’ would still have lost to trump. sadly.
but cut the thick shit pushing horseshit rhetoric like your reply. grow up. stop supporting genocide too.
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
If only we got more of those DNC ghouls in office they could have slowed down some of this a bit!
Couldn’t be that the “other party” just absorbs every complaint, atrocity, demand for real change and delivers none. It’s probably those annoying leftists who are messing up progress!
FWIW I vote as often as I can. It’s not hard for me to tell who is more evil and what levers are available to me at the moment.
Your take sucks and smells like a real Reddit-ass analysis of why things are going badly.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 5 days ago
It’s amazing how easy it is to “win” an argument that exists only in your imagination
I’m so fucking glad that I don’t live in 'Murica.
Bloomcole@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Yes Amazon didn’t exist before Trump and they didn’t pay the other side of your duopoly.
freebeacon.com/…/bezos-greases-way-into-dem-estab…
If americans weren’t such losers endlessly voting for one of those you would be in a much better situation.
But I see you’re another one of those campist clowns.
You’re all pathetic and a lost cause, so keep crying.
You deserve it
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
How many of the people who didn’t vote were leftists not voting on principle?
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
If only we got more of those DNC ghouls in office they could have slowed down some of this a bit!
Couldn’t be that the “other party” just absorbs every complaint, atrocity, demand for real change and delivers none. It’s probably those annoying leftists who are messing up progress!
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 days ago
thats because people are temporarily embarrased billionaires thats why.
Snailpick42@lemmus.org 4 days ago
Religion is why people vote the way they do. They vote republican because that is what there are taught. They do it for Jesus, fetuses, and more money for their overlords.
Therms45@europe.pub 5 days ago
Which part can you vote that will redistribute wealth?
Klox@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Democratic party is much closer to being taken over by a populist socialist. So DNC with emphasis that primaries need to by the real battleground.