Antiwork @lemmy.world

1y ago

Under capitalism

167 comments

Under Capitalism: Oh no, robots will take over our jobs.
Under Socialism: Yes finally, robots will take over our jobs.
- How do the robots own the means of production?
  This is just capitalism with slave labor you don't have to feel bad about.
  
  slavery is (by definition) an ownership of a person. Robots are not people nor beings with intelligence.

Every day when I get off work and I go to a local gas station, I see them throw away a bunch of prepared food that passed shelf life. This is a chain, so hundreds of locations do this every day. Tons of food per year, tossed in the trash because it sat in the heat box too long.
Imagine how many people could eat that food. It makes me upset.
- I worked at a Dunkin for a summer and they had us throwing away two large trash bags full of food every night. It had to be 50lbs of food.
  I started giving donuts to teenagers and an elderly Asian man that was always ecstatic to get a big bag of donuts and bagels. I didn't have a car to transport it to a shelter, and this was in a rich area. It was disgusting
  
  I once tried to buy a rye loaf from a local grocery store and the cashier couldn't ring it up because it was one day expired. I said it looked fine to me, but she said the system won't even let her.
  So I said okay, don't ring it up, just give it to me.
  Another guy jumped in and took it, said no, it had to be thrown away.
  They were literally not allowed to give me trash I was willing to pay for.
- May be they are avoiding getting sued. If someone gets sick. Especially junk food, which is unhealthy to begin with
  
  Italy made it illegal for supermarkets to throw away food and forces them to donate it. It's not perfect, but it's better than wasting truckloads of food every day because they didn't sell it in time.
  
  This has been long debunked. Laws have passed that protect owners from this.
  I used to work in a sandwich shop that made it's own bread fresh daily. At the end of every day the owner started donating the leftover bread and explained how it's an urban myth.
  People just don't like to share.
- I'm sad to say that you're so correct, I wish I could give you three upvotes...

There are serious ethical problems with a capitalist system, especially when it comes to the necessities of life, but there's also ample evidence that other economic systems in practice have been just as bad of not worse regarding food security, eg follow the history of the USSR from the Holodomor in the 1930s to empty grocery shelves and bread lines in the 1980s
- I view the problem as us treating a tool as a system of government. Capitalism is an incredibly powerful tool for increasing efficiency (real capitalism as in a healthy free market, not monopoly bullshit). But we should be using that tool to our benefit, not having that tool use us. We can use it as a tool without it being our basis of society. Also, capitalism is not self regulating. That's a bullshit myth created by elite monopolists. Unchecked capitalism leads to monopolies and monopolies are the antithesis of capitalism. We used to know that. We used to bust monopolies. We need to learn when and when not to use capitalism. Certain things need to be monopolies. Like transportation and the power grid. Since healthy competition cannot prosper we cannot make them capitalistic. We already need to recognize that capitalism is a tool for us to use. It's ok to break capitalism in special circumstances for the greater good, because the good of the people is more important than perpetuating capitalism. I think abolishing it leads to apathy and inefficiency, but worshipping it leads to inhumanity, and we're not even worshipping it properly because again, monopolies are not capitalism. Like all things in life it's about balance.
- I cannot comment on communism as there has not been a true communism in the world yet, but dictatorships sure have been bad.
  
  No system be it either communism or capitalism can be applied 100%
  If we compare today's capitalism it's only fair that we compare it to real world application of communism.
  As a Pole that was raised in a country freshly out of this system I can only tell you that you would have to be mentally insane to ever consider communism and expect it to work even half as well is it should on paper.
  
  You know you guys are a meme out here in the real world, right?
- Okay but like, at least understand why the shelves were empy. Behind the Bastards had a great podcast on the matter. Bad science is bad science, no matter how you trade.
  
  What Lysenko did and the magnitude of it was enabled by and is inextricable from the Soviet systems of government and economy:
  Lysenko's success at encouraging farmers to return to working their lands impressed Stalin, who also approved of Lysenko's peasant background, as Stalin claimed to stand with the proletariat. By the late 1920s, the USSR's leaders had given their support to Lysenko. This support was a consequence, in part, of policies put in place by the Communist Party to rapidly promote members of the proletariat into leadership positions in agriculture, science and industry. Party officials were looking for promising candidates with backgrounds similar to Lysenko's: born of a peasant family, without formal academic training or affiliations to the academic community. Due to close partnership between Stalin and Lysenko, Lysenko acquired an influence over genetics in the Soviet Union during the early and mid twentieth century. Lysenko eventually became the director of Genetics for the Academy of Sciences in 1940, which gave him even more control over genetics. He remained in the position for more than two decades, throughout the reigns of Stalin and Nikita Khruschchev, until he was relieved of his duties in 1965.
- Yeah, the problems are just different. A mixed form would be ideal, where basic needs would be handled socially and the rest may compete in a capitalist way. The difficulty is where to draw the line exactly.
  
  Food.
  Shelter.
  Education.
  Healthcare.
  I miss anything?
- Crown corporations/co-ops/worker owned companies for essential needs, capitalism for all non essentials.
  Tada!

"There's an egg shortage!"
> High egg prices send profits at largest US producer soaring more than 700%
- Ew an amp link
- Are you the least bit aware of what caused the egg shortage? There was a super virulent strain of avian influenza (bird flu) that has the potential to infect wild birds and to jump to mammals. You know, like people. The same thing triggered the pandemic in 1918 that killed anywhere from 1% - 5% of the world population.
  So to avoid that happening again, they had to destroy (slaughter) millions and millions of egg laying hens, which yes, caused a shortage of eggs relative to normal.
  https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=105576
  There are real issues that need to be addressed with capitalism and workers rights. This isn't one of them and you hurt the real arguments by not educating yourself.
  
  I think the "send profits soaring...700 percent" was the point there.

It's already non profitable to feed people, that's why it's said that hunger is a problem of logistics and not problem of production capacity.
- it’s already non profitable to feed people
  what a goofy thing to lie about. every restaurant and grocer in the world is just losing profits daily?
  lol......Nope.
  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/business/food-prices-profits.html
  https://time.com/6269366/food-company-profits-make-groceries-expensive/
  https://www.vox.com/money/23641875/food-grocery-inflation-prices-billionaires
  Between 2021 and 2022, the food and beverage industry recorded more than $155 billion in profits, according to Forbes. Nestlé, the world's largest food company, increased its gross profits last year by almost 3 percent to $46 billion.
  https://civileats.com/2023/05/22/food-prices-are-still-high-what-role-do-corporate-profits-play/
  logistics are certainly part of it, but not the crux. we produce way more food in the US than we consume, then we have laws against giving it away. https://time.com/4463449/food-waste-laws/
  It's a complex problem, but profit is not the issue. Plenty of parties are making WILD profits.
  
  That's just the point though. Food is only made profitable by pricing it high enough that half the world can't afford it (by which I mean the global south)
  
  You put in all that effort into misunderstanding something.

Food production is one of the very few things the US government has been handling well. We give out tens of billions in subsidies to farmers every year to artificially inflate the food supply and have a nationwide SNAP program to help low income families afford food. As a result, we produce far more food than we actually need and far more than we would in a free market, allowing the US to be a major exporter of food globally and ensuring we have enough redundancy built into our food supply that the US will be the last country to starve in a famine
- Then why are there food deserts in the US?
  
  Ultimately more of a city design and distribution issue rather than production. Notjustifying just contextualizing.
  
  I don't think a food desert means what you think it means...
  Are you trying to say that we should rate food production of the US based on how many grocery stores we have in residential areas?
  In the end a food desert really just means you have to drive a little farther to get to the store.
  
  Because the USA is huge and has areas that are more remote? Providing abundance to areas by certain priorities such as population still allows food deserts to exist.
  I mean I guess I could be wrong but are we really going to talk about the food distribution system like we know about it?
- Remember that time they had too much milk and were like "Lets make cheese!" And then they had too much cheese so they put it in a cave and slowly gave it away for decades.
  
  Thought we just dumped it all down the drain..
  
  Cheese is a good way to stockpile milk. Milk spoils, cheese does too but much more slowly.

Labor has not conquered scarcity. Dear lord.
- It actually has. The U.S. produces enough food to feed the entire world three times over. It's a matter of distribution and no one is going to invest in that because it's not profitable. .
  
  We grow enough corn to feed the whole world and then some, but we use it to feed cows and chicken in inhumane enviroments for "better food".
  Not a vegetarian or anything, just pointing out the awful nature of the meat industry
  
  Just because there's a lot of it doesn't mean it isn't scarce

Okay, but why this image?
- Bobby's been thinking the deep thoughts ever since Hank stranded him on Mars for disrespecting propane.
- Because Bobby Hill is a based commie. Why did you think Hank was always yelling?
  
  His narrow urethra?

But why is Bobby blue
- Who is Bobby? That's Dr Arlen, the most powerful being in the universe.
- That boy aint right
- I'll tell you hwat

feeding people can be profitable though because then they can work (labor) to make more food
- It might be profitable for society, but not for an individual capitalist.

I really don't get why we don't have "meal bars" or "human food" yet. Something that covers all basic calorie and nutritional requirements, can be mass produced, and easily stored at room temperature. Like "dog food" but for humans.
The real choice should be a normal meal or a "meal bar", not a normal meal or starving.

Automation can conquer scarcity and reduce the amount of labor needed. People starve because we don't take steps to ensure our man-made economy doesnt suffer even a single dollar loss.

Thats just "under the concept of having any amount of people not be farmers"
People were paying for food long before capitalism existed.
- It's capitalism vs government programs that can feed the starving, not capitalism vs anything else. That was an era before the modern state. We're talking about with today's systems, not with systems that are no longer relevant.
  Also, self sustaining communities shared food with their own at numerous points in history. People were giving food to eachother for the common good long before Karl Marx.
  
  Capitalism n government programs coexist. They are not opposites

Good King of the hill memes are like food in Soviet Russia: not everybody gets it

Under "-isms": "-isms" must manufacture "it" to justify their existence.
'There is a man, a certain man And for the poor, you may be sure That he'll do all he can Who is this one, who's favourite son
Just by his action has the traction Magnets on the run Who likes to smoke, enjoys a joke And wouldn't get a bit upset if he were really broke
With wealth and fame He's still the same I'll bet you five you're not alive If you don't know his name'

It feels like most posts talking about "capitalism" are just talking about society as a whole.
Farmers don't work for free.
- Absolutely, and we subsidize them to help with that.
- Exactly, they get their hard earned dollars from government subsidies like a real American
- Farmers don't make any more money if people starve either. Turns out that we're not talking about the farmers.
- At least in my country (Europe), farmers receive very little money but food is getting more expensive. Is the great chains of supermarkets that profits in that difference, so it's definitely a capitalism problem.
  Even the CEO of the biggest supermarket here recognized that they had rise the prices to make more profit even when they didn't need to do it.

Except that's not really true. Western nations donate millions of tons of wheat and other food to poor nations and those hit by drought and other natural disasters.
https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/1-millionth-ton-american-wheat-relief-yemen/
- In order to do that, they first have to buy the food from the corporations that are producing the food.

Anything is done to make profit. Otherwise people wouldn't have desired a salary increase. Not selling food is not profitable, so food producers don't want people to starve, they want food to be sold. People can starve if they have no money, which should be solved by the government, or they can starve because there is no enough food in the country or region, which should be solved by the government too.

When its not profitable to feed people, we let them starve
As opposed to our hunter gatherer days, or subsistence agriculture days, where everyone just lounged around leisurely? Name one time in human history where life was not filled with hard work. You just said it yourself: our labor has conquered scarcity. Labor! I fucking hate this meme, jfc.

Fuck this stupid communist site. Ight imma head out.
- Bye!

Under communism, food isn't produced.
- Under capitalism, food is wasted, food that burned a lot of fossil fuels to produce. Capitalism is destroying the biosphere.
  
  At least you understand that you'd starve

Good, now find me an example of a famine in a capitalist system, because I can find you an example in every instance of every other system tried.
- India under the Raj. Ireland under the UK.
  
  Those were both feudalism, where the king owns all economic output and does wyat he wants with it, much like communism in practice.
- https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/global-food-crisis-10-countries-suffering-the-most-from-hunger/
  Seeing as how most countries are capitalist, googling "what countries are experiencing famine?" is a good start.
  Not seeing any communists (or socialists) on there.
  
  The literal first country on that list is DRC lol do you know the history of DRC?
  Literally every other place on the list is in the midst of a civil war except Haiti and Afghanistan. Every single one of them by the way is not currently in a state of famine.
- The Irish potato famine, the bengal famines, both under the rule of the UK, easily one of the most heavily capitalist countries at the time.
  As well as Bangladesh, Biafra famine, Burma rice crisis, 1950 Canadian famine, Darfur famine, 1904 Spanish famine, 1878 Alaskan Famine, 1867 Swedish famine, 1816 European famine, 1811 Spanish famine, or the dozens of other massive famines in India that killed millions, or the dozen or so Austrian Galicia famines, or the dozen famines in pre communist China or the famines in pre communist Russia.
  Anyone that actually believes famine is a problems that is unique to "communism" or doesn't exist in capitalism are either ignorant or just a troll.
  
  So, I just randomly selected one of your examples that you vomited to see what it was, the 1878 Alaskan famine because wow, that's a US state right, that's definitely capitalist no doubt about it, a famine in Alaska? I've never heard of that, this guy must have a point...
  It's an oral tradition of the yupik people, a hunting tribe who lost ~1000 people due to "bad hunting conditions." Capitalism? Why is it you guys always have to make arguments in bad faith? I personally think it's because youre all full of shit, but maybe you have a different reason?
  Famine isn't a problem unique to communism, I never said it was, way to move the goalposts BTW, I only claimed that you won't find a famine anywhere in the world due to capitalism. Famine is a problem almost always caused by governments interfering in the natural distribution of resources. So for example, pre communist China under an emperor. Famine is a problem solved by free markets and present wherever resource distribution is centrally controlled, for example in feudalism, inside colonies under imperialism, communism etc.
- Does the term "dust bowl" mean anything to you, or?
  
  Yep. Tell me about the dust bowl.

This argument would only make sense if you don't need food to work and that no one would buy food... Nither is a thing. Also you don't just produce food to feed people, many food products are a thing because they taste good, they are not very efficiently nutritious, so good tasting food is a thing impossible for communism as it would "waste resources"
- Tasty food exists. Checkmate, libs.
  
  Yes, tasty food exist because people make money selling it or the spices you need to make it...
- It’s not an argument. It’s what happens. When people don’t purchase all of the food that places are selling, it ends up in dumpsters rather than going to hungry people. Go to any chain restaurant place that sells baked goods and check their dumpster at night.
  
  The fact that its going to the dumbster is obviously not good, that's something that is changing, here where i live many stores gift it to "stores" that "sell" it for a symbolic price.
  Thats however absolutely not the point of the "meme" or what i said.
- "People go to elite private schools, therefore we shouldn't have public ones."
  "People live in mansions, therefore we shouldn't have housing assistance."
  "People get high paychecks, therefore we shouldn't have welfare."
  The conservative mindset, ladies and gentlemen.
- Bro eats mcdonalds 💀💀💀
- Its always the guys with anime pfps
- I'm fine with this. What say you?
  Didn't expect That response now did ya?
  
  Yes i did expect some commie to show up and say something like that.
  Wtf is meant with "what say you?"
  Yeah because you never experienced how soulless and lifeless the food of a commie country tastes. Try cooking without spices for a week. And spices are by far not the only stuff that is nonexistent in commieland.

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