…I’m claiming that the conditions that modern day workers in America work in are not great in comparison to societies that have strong social safety nets, decent minimum wage protections, universal healthcare, and don’t have an industrial prison complex that profits of the backs of the most incarcerated people in the world.
Do you realize that you are using the same argument to defend the industrial prison complex? Do you realize you are using the same argument to defend the modern day version of “robber barons”?
Capitalism in America today sucks. It isn’t as bad as things were back when Americans could be openly racist. But it still isn’t great. You’ve still got a virtual handful of people at the top who are making all the money. You’ve got a lot of people at the other end who are barely surviving. Then you’ve got the people at the bottom who nobody really cares about at all.
I mentioned this the other day: but you could release half of all the people incarcerated in America right now and you would still have twice as many people locked up as they do (per capita) in Australia. That just isn’t right. There is something inherently wrong here. And thanks to the 13th amendment, involuntary servitude isn’t off the table. You want slavery? That’s your slavery.
The entire thing is a rout. In America, capitalism is barely restrained. Capitalism doesn’t deserve to be worshipped. It isn’t inherently bad. But it needs to be balanced.
Here we may disagree, or we may just have a difference in definitions, but to my mind Capitalism—unfettered, undiluted Capitalism—is inherently bad. The concentration of wealth, and by extension power, is a feature not a bug.
Call me a loony leftist (@Little_Nemo), but I do not see our present degree of capitalism or our respect for private (as distinguished from personal) property as nearly so essential to a better society. On the contrary, I see them as impediments.
I hold no brief for the gender-equality wokeness of medieval societies in general, but jeez, I think your imaginings about them may be a little too luridly licentious. It’s not like there weren’t laws against treating women—even female strangers—as “rape slaves”, as you so elegantly describe it.
No “rape slavery” involved. Sheesh. I don’t know whether anybody has written a time-travel fantasy story set in the sort of medieval dystopia you describe, but such a setting would not be a historically accurate depiction of feudal societies as a whole.
I’m saying society has made substantial progress since 1776. The conditions that ordinary people live in today are overwhelmingly better than they were two hundred and fifty years ago. Being an average worker is the United States in 2020 is incomparably better than being a peasant or a serf or a slave.
This type of progress is not some historical inevitability. There was no similar overwhelming leap forward in the two hundred years between 1750 and 1550 - or in any other two hundred year period ever.
But once capitalism appeared, progress began accelerating at historically unprecedented rate and the living conditions of ordinary people began to improve. As you note, society has not reached an ideal state. But I think that means we should keep moving forward and not halt the process that is moving us forward.
Capitalism isn’t inherently moral or immoral. It’s a tool. Some people will use it for good purposes and some will use it for bad purposes. Society should regulate the use of capitalism to prevent its abuse. But it would be as foolish to try to prohibit capitalism as it would be to try to prohibit science (which is another powerful tool which can be used to produce good or bad results).
…relevant points bolded. Unfettered, undiluted Capitalism is inherently bad. And what you have in America is uncomfortably close to that.
I also own my own business, and I love the freedom of being able to be-my-own boss, and work within a system that also has universal healthcare and a decent social safety net.
I don’t think the metric here should be the “average worker.” The average black or indigenous person trapped in the school-to-prison pipeline is probably not much better off than a peasant or a serf, and depending on where they live in America, especially if they are locked up at a place like Angola Prison, they probably have it not much better than the average slave.
In much of the rest of the world once capitalist-socialist systems appeared, progress began accelerating at historically unprecedented rate and the living conditions of ordinary people began to improve. Let’s move towards that instead of effectively unfettered capitalism that America currently embraces.
Unfettered capitalism isn’t progress. For things to progress in America, capitalism needs to slow the fuck down. Yes: lets halt the process that locks up more people per capita than anywhere else in the world. Yes: let’s stop the process that health insurance ties you to an employer, where without insurance healthcare is unaffordable, that even with insurance healthcare is still unaffordable.
The problem isn’t capitalism. It’s American-style capitalism.
There’s no other kind. American-style capitalism is naked capitalism. Your Jeff Bezoses and the like aren’t bad capitalists. They’re the acme of capitalists, with all the wealth unequality and living hells for workers that entails.
Medieval peasants could always take a piss while out in the fields. Amazon warehouse workers, not so much.
Srsly. It is weird to contemplate how much the medieval concept of a devotees’ pilgrimage to a holy shrine (and not just in the Christian world) seems to overlap with attitudes that nowadays we’d associate more with holiday bus tours or even a singles cruise.
I mean, the cast of the Canterbury Tales are not a bunch of pious saintly types undertaking this trip as some kind of ascetic penance, not even the Nun or the Friar. They just “longen to goon on pilgrimages” because “priketh hem Natúre in hir corages” because it’s Spring!
The crowd that believes in healing crystals, homeopathy, and universal peace and love for everyone. Nice in principle but not reality outside of their little bubble unfortunately.
Granting people the freedom to believe things is not that looney. Religion in general is not really left-wing, though; an orthodox position would be that “religion is the opium of the people” (including crystals and Jesus Christ and what not).
Interestingly, the “healing crystals and homeopathy” part isn’t by any means exclusively “Left”. The right-wing version of it is often combined with some variant of Christianity, as in the case of this cultist:
Just to expand on the fact that ‘at-will’ employment is not a universal law of the universe; here’s the UK Employment act, particularly the section on dismissal notices. Most, but not all, people in the UK would think at-will employment a step backwards.
I’d hope that everyone would already know that it’s “not a universal law of the universe” — and I like how your link goes on to spell out that many employees will have even higher notice periods in their contracts.
Which goes to the rest of my point: even if you happen to object to me and my employer agreeing on at-will employment, I of course have no objection if someone else and their employer agree to put one of those Higher Notice Periods in a contract — just like I still want to be free to stop buying stuff from that employer if I ever do object to something that employee does, and just like I want to be free to let said employer know about my objection, and just like I’d want everyone who reaches the same conclusion to be free to relay it likewise; and just like I’d want said employer to be free to react accordingly, though within the context of the contract they, y’know, freely agreed to.
And if that’s cancel culture, then AFAICT I’m all for it.
Distrust of police unions seems to be a bipartisan position. Liberals who normally support organized labor condemn police unions as a heavily corrupt “shadow organization” in law enforcement that enables and shields criminal behavior by LEOs. Conservatives who normally support the police without question condemn police unions as just another inefficient unresponsive public-sector union bureaucracy. (And some of them are also concerned about the corruption thing.)
The police unions should cover every employment issue between officers and the department except firing for cause. Those should go to a neutral arbitrator agreed upon by the department and union.
Too loony left is banning cars, removing public parking, and removing travel lanes in the roads under the mistaken assumption that this will magically solve the problem of a lack of adequate public transportation. No car? Put your kids and 5 bags of groceries on a bicycle. In the snow.
Having a preferred specialized phrase to describe your own gender identity doesn’t mean that you are declaring that phrase to be some kind of officially recognized separate gender category.
Any more than preferring to describe your eye color as “slate blue with grayish-green specks” means that it can’t be validly described on official documents with one of the ten or so standard eye color codes for standardized color names like “blue” or “gray” or “brown”.
(When looking up official lists of eye color codes I was a little startled to find that all of them seem to include “pink” as one of the standard eye colors, but then realized that duh, many people with albinism do have eyes that appear pink. Diversity and inclusion for the win!!)
