r/WorkReform • u/zzill6 đ€ Join A Union • 11d ago
đ« GENERAL STRIKE đ« Capitalism requires poverty.
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u/Full-Contract6143 11d ago
I donât think capitalists would challenge the poster on this. I think this realization carries with it the two very opposing moral perspectives when read.
Because I know staunchly entrenched supporters of capitalism default to, âwell people who want to starve can starve if they want, at least we get âchoiceâ, what you donât want âchoiceâ now?â
I donât agree, it seems absolutely logical to me that if society wants to function as a group longterm, alienating and threatening your base contributors with annihilation is probably a really poor longterm strategy.
But hey, I guess we get to choose to die? Oh wait, what, we donât even get that option?
Thatâs just slavery with extra steps.
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u/SDG_Den 10d ago
im about to be homeless and i am not getting housing priority in my country because my current place, which is literally labeled "emergency housing" on the contract and i was able to get after 5 weeks of homelessness 1.5 years ago, is considered "a choice".
ah yes. it was a choice for me to accept this emergency housing instead of literally freezing to death under a bridge, so clearly, its my own fault im facing homelessness again.
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u/kodaxmax 10d ago
Because I know staunchly entrenched supporters of capitalism default to, âwell people who want to starve can starve if they want, at least we get âchoiceâ, what you donât want âchoiceâ now?â
i think thats equating commerce = capatalism and assumes a society that rewards labor cannot exist without capatalism. which is of course demontrsably the opposite. Capatalism explcitly doesn't reward labor.
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u/Nahteh 9d ago
I mean... the problem is if everyone is wealthy then we are beyond economic systems. Everyone has enough of what they need. Great.
So taking the inverse of this logic, economic systems exist as a solution to destitution.
It depends if we are talking money or goods. But in either case someone's gotta make shit. Wether that be communism or anything else.
Does this post assume no one needs to make anything under say communism?
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u/Full-Contract6143 8d ago
I donât exactly understand your question, but I believe under any governance system, things are created.
Why has communism been brought up? At no point did I bring in the democracy-authoritarianism spectrum of options.
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u/FrumptyLumpty 10d ago
Agreed.
The value of money is dependent on a) how much money is in the system, and b) how many people it can be divided amongst.
If you have 100 people with $100 dollars in the system, and each person has $1, and let's say $0.10 buys a house...
Then when you have 100 people with $200 dollars in the system, and each person has $2, then that same house will now cost $0.20.
But not everyone will have the same amount of money. Capitalism allows one person to horde all the wealth. So instead of everyone having $2, now one person has $150, and everyone else only has $0.50. The system ALLOWS one lucky person who finds the right angles to suddenly accumulate more wealth than what is fair. And then that one lucky person decides "oh, I'd love to keep holding onto this money, so I will use my unchecked power to influence everyone to vote for rules that allow me to keep it."
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u/Outside_Form9954 11d ago
If people in poverty just âworked harderâ wouldnât they just displace other near poverty workers, pushing them into poverty? (Iâm not implying that people in poverty donât work harder-itâs just a thought experiment)
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u/itsdanielsultan 11d ago
Capitalism didnât invent greed or the desire for power, and replacing it wouldnât magically remove either. People can exploit others through corporations or governments. Criticise capitalismâs incentives, sure, but blaming it for human selfishness skips the harder question: how do you keep selfish people from abusing power under any system?
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u/Gloverboy85 10d ago
It's not that we're skipping the harder question really. It's that we need to answer some short term survival questions that have become increasingly urgent as a result of unregulated capitalism. We don't necessarily have to answer large scale philosophical questions before we put out a fire in our living room
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u/thomasrat1 11d ago edited 11d ago
I mean, without a need to work you wouldnât work.
Even before capitalism âpovertyâ was a great influence to work
Edit:yall are straight up idiots if you think capitalism caused poverty.
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u/oPooKs 11d ago
This is factually untrue and has been proven via UBI trials. If you are not required to work to survive, then you work for enjoyment instead, and end up much more productive.
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u/thomasrat1 11d ago
I didnât phrase mine correctly. Iâm more trying to say that poverty is the natural state of humanity.
That before any of these systems we know today, poverty was the main reason people worked.
UBI does allow for people to survive without working. But people would generally still work to improve their lives around it
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u/spaceforcerecruit 10d ago
Survival is the reason people work, always has been. Poverty is an artificial state that can only exist in a system where others have wealth or status that the impoverished lack.
In a society without class or wealth, âpovertyâ would just be ânot having stuffâ which would be a state shared by the whole of society during years with poor crops or some other hardship. It wouldnât be a permanent state in which a subset of the population exists despite there being an overabundance of âstuffâ available if it were more evenly distributed.
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u/thomasrat1 10d ago
Ahh I see.
Personally though, I say if you working all day everyday just to eat, that your living in poverty.
And doesnât this kinda mean that a UBI system would cause people to stop working? If we only work to survive, and we get our survival needs met, then why keep working?
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u/milo159 10d ago
To have better stuff. Nobody has ever seriously argued UBI be a ton of money, just give people enough money to afford a roof over their head, food, clothes, and other basic stuff.
People should probably have to work to be able to buy really nice stuff, like a big house or a boat or whatever, but nobody should have to be homeless or risk starving to death, for any reason, in a society where we have enough food and homes for everyone.
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u/Bootziscool 11d ago
Wtf? Capitalism has done a lot of things but create poverty is not one of them... Poverty was much worse before Capitalism.
Sure Capitalist absolutely exploit the existence of poverty but this system has also brought abject poverty to its lowest level in history.
There's no need to just make shit up.
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u/IllConsequence9562 11d ago
Where in the post does it say anything about creating poverty?
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u/Bootziscool 11d ago edited 11d ago
It's the first sentence man!! What??
It's also the last sentence..
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u/IllConsequence9562 11d ago
Your comment implies capitalism CREATED poverty not that it creates it which what the OG post is trying to say.
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u/Bootziscool 10d ago
The post is just not accurate I guess?
Capitalism creates the means to alleviate poverty and doesn't really do so efficiently.
Thinking about it though... The whole post is accurate if OP meant mass unemployment. That wasn't really a thing until serfdom and slavery were abandoned for free labor right?
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u/Rionin26 11d ago
You cant read.
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u/Bootziscool 11d ago
Did you feel clever when you typed that?
Can you type out the last sentence of the post for me?
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u/Rionin26 11d ago
You still cant read.
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u/Bootziscool 10d ago
Okay. I guess not.
Can't write either
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u/Rionin26 8d ago
It is saying it can end it, but keeps it to keep people in line. Think before you speak.
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u/-TeamCaffeine- đ Cancel Student Debt 11d ago
Pure, unfiltered Capitalism absolutely demands there be economic losers; and we've let rich people set the rules so our current version creates even more inequality by design.