My first job out of H.S. taught me that capitalism is inherently unjust and destructive.

[ConsAreLiars]

Not that it was a bad job, not that we workers were being abused. It wasn't in any way like the jobs that members of the US underclass like immigrant workers are forced to accept, or the kinds of working conditions these same corporations create in other countries.

It was a good job. It was a union job. Noisy, tedious, hard work, but not It provided the promise of many years of work with raises in pay commensurate with my improving skills and competence.

As a new hire I worked on several assembly lines, basically filling in wherever there was a need. Being a curious sort, I was interested in understanding how the production process worked and noticed one station where I thought the existing equipment could be modified slightly, relieving one worker of a particularly dull job. Naively, I figured that person could pitch in and help where the pace of work was more intense and the work more arduous, so I mentioned this to a more senior worker. He pointed out that the only change that would result was that one person would get fired, and everything else would remain the same.

That was my first direct knowledge of the basic contradiction within a capitalist system. From a human point of view, getting the work done more easily and efficiently seemed perfectly reasonable. From a Return on Investment standpoint, the logical thing was to reduce the share of the value produced that went to the workers as much as possible.

It was as simple as that. As humans, as workers, our natural tendency is improve the quality of our lives and the ease and effectiveness of our productive labor. As a non-human entity, the corporation is designed only to maximize the rate of exploitation. Human values are as alien to corporations as to a guillotine.

Just a note for the nit-pickers. This refers to for-profit corporations where there is no individual owner who has the power and authority to choose some other goal than maximizing profit.

[shireen]

1. we're seeing the consequences of unrestrained capitalism

maybe now people are finally realizing the need for regulation and strong unions.

[Radical Activist]

2. I've heard people argue

that employee owned and run businesses are more efficient. That a more democratic workplace where the employees help make management decisions will result in workers finding better ways of doing things than current top-down models. Your post makes me think that may be true.

[ConsAreLiars]

6. I helped start an employee owned and operated business.

We chose to incorporate as a "not for profit" because the goal was not only to provide good working conditions but to serve the community. It's in it's 35th year, has a few dozen on the payroll, has been union from the earliest days, and has kept itself at the front edge when it comes to the changing production technology in the field.

Collective decision-making was sometimes difficult, but the decisions reached benefited from a range of experiences and a common interest in serving the goals that brought us together, and I believe, are one of the reasons for the long-term success.

[madeline_con]

3. "He pointed out that ..."

Did it occur to you that the guy might have been full of crap? A lot of old guys don't want anything to change, so they discourage ideas.

[ConsAreLiars]

7. A lot of people are full of crap.

What do you think happens when an industry finds that increased mechanization reduces the number of people needed to maintain output rates? Reduced hours at the same pay? Your faith-based assertion that this was some old guy who was just resistant to change is downright silly.

[madeline_con]

9. Faith-based assertion?

:rofl:

[undergroundpanther]

12. why do stocks go up when there are disasters?

I find it easier to understand on the level of the transactions of our daily lives. Here are a few examples to illustrate the many kinds of economic activity the GNP represents and the ridiculousness of counting its every increase as good and decrease as bad,

Say that a couple gets divorced and pays a lawyer a hefty fee (GNP up, good). The kids now shuttle between his household and hers, requiring complete sets of bedroom furniture, toys, and clothes at both places (up, good). She finds cooking for herself too depressing and begins to live on junk food (GNP up, good). He starts spending his spare time fixing up the house instead of hiring someone else to do it (GNP down, bad).
A new lightbulb comes on the market that uses only half as much electricity; everyone's electric bill goes down (GNP down, bad).

A town decreases its use of salt on the winter roads (down, bad), which causes cars to last two years longer before they rust out and have to be replaced (down, bad). However, more accidents cause an increase in repair bills for cars and people (up, good).
A community's floats a $30 million bond for a trash incinerator, which doubles the cost of garbage disposal. New air quality regulations then require more expenditures for scrubbers. The community becomes embroiled in litigation about the disposal of the toxic ash from the plant (up, up, up, good, good, good).

The government decreases highway maintenance (down, bad). It builds more nuclear weapons (up, good). It gives a big raise to Congress (up, good). It eliminates half its paperwork (down, bad).The GNP is obviously not a measure of progress. It is a measure of monetary flow, effort, expense. Wendell Berry has called it the "fever chart of our consumption". It is indiscriminate. It lumps together joys and sorrows, triumphs and disasters, profundities and trivialities, everything that costs money and nothing that doesn't.

http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index.php?display_article=vn184gnped

[Fumesucker]

8. Older people also have a perspective that the young lack..

One of the few benefits of getting older is you gain perspective on things.

I strongly suspect the older worker was right, that is exactly the way a lot of management thinks, improve efficiency enough to eliminate the need for a certain job and the worker is going to get eliminated right along with the job.

[MercutioATC]

10. Being in a union, I can confidently state two things:

1) Yes, sometimes union officials/members see issues where none exist...or at least they dwell on possibilities that are unlikely.

2) With very few exceptions, management will fuck the worker any time it has a chance.


Some people spend a lot of time blaming labor unions for a lot of things. My experience is that labor does what it does as a reaction to management's lead.

It would be great if there was true collaboration and a worker could be moved from one point in the line that didn't need him to another that did. The problem is that management rarely does that. Some management slug, trying to justify his paycheck, presents a "cost-saving" measure that doesn't balance the operation intelligently, but simply looks for ways to cut expenses.

Eliminate the need for a worker and he won't be moved to someplace where he's needed more, he'll just be let go.

[W_HAMILTON]

4. We're a complete collapse away...

...from people viewing capitalism the same way many of us view communism, or socialism.

It's obvious that extremes in either direction are wrong, and there should be a middle-ground.

Our system has many flaws, and they are just made more obvious due to the economic downturn. Why do CEOs get paid many times more than the average worker, yet the average worker is the first one to get cut when "costs need to be controlled?" Why do CEOs run a company into the ground, then get rewarded with bonuses and other incentives? What happened to innovation to produce more sales, rather than simply cutting costs? Why are CEOs and other upper management salaries rarely cut when the company they are responsible for does poorly?

You can go on and on. This system is every bit as flawed as the others that many Americans talk down about.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. I developed my dislike for the current economic system as a temp worker

working industrial, retail, and clerical jobs for 3 years.

I experienced work rules that seemed designed merely to show the workers who was boss: having to stand on the assembly line when there was no reason, being forbidden to talk on the assembly line when the job used almost no brain cells, having to be at work by 6:00 AM or 7:00AM and getting only 20 minutes for lunch and 1 10-minute break (the bigwigs strolled in and out when they felt like it, and even the clerical workers came in at 8:30, got an hour for lunch, and left at 5:00.), being forced to clock out for breaks, being scheduled 15 minutes short of the time needed for the next level of break time (e.g. six hours was the threshold for getting 30 minutes of break time, so I'd consistently be scheduled for 5 hours, 45 minutes with only a 15-minute break), having compulsory overtime because the owners were too stingy to hire another shift, having one's word processing keystrokes monitored and being scolded for making too many mistakes, being required to look busy to the point of "sizing" the same racks of clothing over and over, even when there were no customers, and so on and so on.

I saw how the people who did the most work got paid the least.

Some people get radicalized in college. For me, the process started there, but working as a temp, the lowliest of the low, completed the process.

[undergroundpanther]

11. capitalism needs to die.

The "economic dream" of a few over wealthy greedy people needs to get lost.Why? The human cost of the exploitation required of capitalism is too high.All for these few control freaks to have such lives of ease power and to never worry about anything other than getting what they want.
The rich create the needy. The rich are pigs .Pigs that should have been made into bacon long ago.No one has a "right" to be rich if others cannot get basic needs met,or live.
The cost of capitalism in sheer loneliness and the systemic withering of social skills in humanity is staggering.Even relationships too often are mere acquisitions, means to ends often economic in the exploitative sense, in nature.
someone said..Can't remember who..Capitalist incentives are built not on the "humbleness" of human beings but on their loneliness....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Loneliness is the deal," she said in a recent interview.

"Loneliness is the last great taboo.

"If we don't accept loneliness, then capitalism wins hands down. Because capitalism is all about trying to convince people that you can distract yourself, that you can make it better. And it ain't true."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-513967/Tilda-Swinton-Her-toyboy-elderly-lover-intriguing-m-nage-trois.html

http://scienceofloneliness.com/?q=authorsblog&page=1
Very good article,


Civilisation, with its social hierarchies, meant a changed relationship to the emotions

With the emergence of social hierarchies and social authority the original function of human emotions were radically changed. Individuals or institutions with social authority cannot tolerate the anger of their subordinates against them for that is tantamount to accepting the right of subordinates to challenge their authority. Authority is protected often by violence, by armed forces that must obey orders. Fear cannot be accepted as a valid reasons for running away. Sadness and despair are no longer seen as a reason for helping someone - these signs of distress are now taken as indications of weaknesses, of vulnerability, where strength is what is admired and aspired to. In the new emerging civilisations social order meant at best that the weak must be 'protected'. (The word that describes the attitude of the patriarch to women, the feudal lord to his serfs, the colonialists to subjected peoples). At worse the vulnerability of the weak is taken as evidence that they are inferiors who can be used and /or exterminated. This is nakedly evident in fascist ideology - an ideology for the overt persecution of minorities, a means of passing emotional stress 'downwards' against more vulnerable people, thus 'earthing' the social system (to use a metaphor from electricity). This works because mass distress does not challenge the power structures whose operation has caused the emotional strain.. In times of social stress showing weakness and despair is to set oneself up as a victim. People who feel despair therefore tend to hide themselves.

For these reasons the expression of despair loses its original social and interpersonal function - to evoke sympathetic feeling and, therefore, mutual aid. Only in the case of child rearing is fear, crying and distress seen as a reason for support, sympathy and comfort. (And frequently not in this case either. Children are told to grow up, to stop crying. Their fear and terror is ignored. They are prepared as early as possible for adult behaviour in which tears are a sign of weakness and to be avoided. It is not surprising, then, that as Melanie Klein reports, a phase akin to psychosis is common in childhood. Our culture ordinarily starts us off in life with a period of madness in which we disconnect from the original experience and use of our feelings, our emotions become re-programmed to match power and authority structures)

In this process despair not only loses its expressive function- (the expression of despair no longer gets us support, indeed it may get us the reverse) it may also be the case that despair may loses its function in making us give up. If our despair is due to us being forced to pursue the agendas of our masters we may not be able to give up. Permanent despair is therefore the feeling of slaves - the only alternative is to dream of liberation or to plan it, which in certain circumstances may mean almost certain death.

In contemporary society despair is often held at bay with hope - defined in dictionary as the combination of expectation and desire. Hope is illusory to the extent that expectations fail to match the real probabilities of realising our desires. This partly depends on how much power we have - or how much our desires match that which is convenient to those who have power. In my Concise Oxford Dictionary of 1964 to desire not only means to long for something. It has the more active sense of 'ask for; pray; entreat; command'. It will be noticed that the first three terms imply subordination to people or institutions who can grant (or refuse) that for which one longs. The fourth terms implies that the wish of a person with power is someone else's command.

If one's feelings are tangled in the power system despair may therefore be that which is felt when the illusion of hope is abandoned because it is realised that what one wishes for does not suit the agendas of the powerful and one does not have the power oneself to make it happen. (Where power is the availability of free energy sufficient to carry through an initiative to realise one's purposes).
http://www.citrushealth.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=392