When was the last occurrence of shoving out aligarchies that turned out well?
I was just in Spain earlier this year and I asked Spaniards the same question. They gave me this answer. To quote one young woman “Everyone I know has a job. They’re being paid under the table, so they get counted as unemployed. I’m unemployed, but I have to work in the morning.” This sentiment was universal, it seemed.
Not just Spain, that sentiment is widespread across Europe. CNBC reported on this a few months ago that research showed in the UK the black market accounted for about 10% of GDP.
Ah…official employment figures!
In many countries (and not just Southern Europe) this is an exercise in creative accounting intended to make politicians look good. With so much hidden employment and hidden under-employment, it is difficult to know what the situation really is and make comparisons.
It’s a libertarian paradise!
According to a recent Master’s thesis at the Universidad de Barcelona, Franco is still dead.
You only need small swings to take power, so if there is 25% unemployed and you get them on side it would normally account for 12.5% swing as most elections are 50/50 outcomes.
Depends on where you live and what you believe. I think when the US shoved out the British oligarchy, it turned out very well indeed. (Granted, the Brits were an aristocracy, but all an aristocracy is, is the end-game of oligarchy.)
Boo-hoo-hoo. If they’re hurting for it, they can import some cheap from the MENA.
Most of the “really-really-really” unemployed people are older ones, but there’s a word, chapuza, which reflects the job status both of many of our employed young and of many of our unemployed.
Translating RAE’s entry:
- work of small dimension or importance
- work performed carelessly
- (Mexico) action and effect of conning
To which I’ll add:
4. person who performs small jobs
Many of the over-the-table jobs of young people are “trash contracts”, excuse me, “practice contracts” (a) where the salary is below minimum wage and you’re supposed to be getting trained, but in reality you’re expected to work 100% for 70% pay. They’re a legal chapuza. Many times you’ll be better off economically (better salary, better hours or both) if you get an under-the-table job.
And many officially-unemployed people perform chapuzas: they get hired to do things such as help someone paint a room, or move house from a shared flat to another (get a delivery van, half of its volume won’t be needed), or to clean houses for a grand total of 4h/wk. In reality, if these jobs’ income is low enough, it isn’t even required to have a contract or to report the income, but people have no idea where the legal limits are, and the government sure doesn’t try to make them clear. Among other things, because many of the people whose job is supposed to involve making things like these clear don’t even understand that most people did not graduate from their majors and don’t understand 99% of what they say - and really, how much meaning can you infer from the articles alone?
What’s the problem with hiring a chapuzas? That the client doesn’t have the legal protections that in theory you have if you hire a legally-established person or company. But again, many people have no idea what those protections are.
A few years ago, the biggest insurance company in the country started offering a service where they work as a “purchasing group” (and it’s for no extra charge, even): if you need a small job done (it can be something as silly as “my blinds are stuck” or as big as “I need the whole flat painted”), they provide a verified person or team to do it and the customer only pays for parts or materials. This has proved so popular that other insurance companies are starting to offer it, and from what I understand the two reasons people love this service are that you can get someone to come for things an independent tradesman wouldn’t be arsed to, and that “you’re protected”. In theory, you should also be protected when you call a legal tradesman - but people trust this insurance company. Trust the government? That’s a joke.
(a) in Spain you’re supposed to have a written contract for any job at or above 20h/wk; usually they’re just 1 page long as they boil down to “company X hires person Y to work hours ABC in job UIO for salary FGH, with any other conditions as per current legislation”
With due respect to the suffering people are undergoing in those countries, I wonder if there’s not more unrest because things aren’t (yet) actually that bad. Yes, the numbers are bad, but I’ve talked to people who’ve traveled recently in Greece and Italy and said that things seem pretty much as orderly and prosperous as ever. It’s not like the Great Depression in the US or post-WWI in Germany where people were freezing on the streets. Aside from the underground jobs people have mentioned, there’s also the social safety net, and probably more family support. Given the low birth rates in those countries, there must be more grandparents/aunts/uncles to pitch in to support the unemployed young people.
I concur that that one worked out rather well for the (white) inhabitants. That was over 200 years ago, though, and a vast majority of examples since didn’t end well. Doesn’t necessarily describe a good track record.
Because the owners of capital still need the owners of labor. We have something to trade, namely our work.
When the owners of capital are the owners of labor, there will be no further use for us. What would be the robot owners’ motivation for giving anything away to anyone? We wouldn’t be able to pay for or trade for it. We would have nothing to offer. You expect an elite minority of capitalists would out of the kindness of their hearts support a teeming throng of worthless consumers with nothing to offer?
Oh, we have something to offer, all right. We can save the owners when the robots turn on them.
Or not, who knows.
Owners of labor would still have plenty to offer: any service that couldn’t yet be duplicated by a machine. Just because robots can till a field doesn’t mean they can satisfy all human needs.
And, they’d have something else they could offer: refraining from stealing from and murdering the robot owners whom they greatly outnumber. A service they’d provide for a nominal stipend, in the form of taxation and redistribution run by the government, in a situation not all that different from our current welfare schemes.
In neither case is the kindness of anyone’s heart involved.
I’m pretty sure the tangent that started this whole thing was about robots replacing all, or most, human labor, making it unnecessary for people to work.
In that case, yes, the robot owners would indeed have no incentive to allow anyone else to live, except for the threat of violence (until the robots can be programmed to fight, at least).
If my labor is worth nothing to the robot owners, if there is literally nothing I can do that a robot can’t do better and cheaper, then I won’t trade with the robot owners. I’ll trade with the vast numbers of non-robot-owners. They can still labor and produce things, irrespective of whether robot-labor also exists. And since their output is also worthless to the robot-owners, it seems no one will trade with the robot-owners. The result could be characterized as a series of autarkies (the robot owners), and then a larger open economy (everyone else).
Which gets back to the fact that most farms are owned by large coporations and wealthy individuals nowadays. You can get along without geegaws, but food is a different matter. The billions will not be able to survive if the one percent are not willing to sell them food or farmland for little or nothing.
The obvious thing to do is find some value in human beings other than their labor, or to reward the one percent for establishing a truly effective social safety net. I think this will happen, in some places sooner than others. I am not optimistic about America being a “sooner” place.
America isn’t so densely populated as to prevent new farms from being laid in, and high food prices would lead people to do just that. Other nations that are densely populated and less arable would have a harder time.
Food can also be imported from non-robot nations.
I think you overstate the problem; what sense is there in production when it can’t be traded for anything?
What would the 99 percent use as money to buy this land? Perhaps federal government land could be used, national parks and such, but a lot of them are out west and don’t have a lot of farm potential.
In exchange for what, exactly?
What sense is there in preserving a human life not your own or a loved ones, or the quality of life, or the civilized behavior of a culture? None, from a libertarian point of view. I mean, individuals are free to care about such things, but it’s hardly a necessity, is it?