You are probably not vastly different from a millionaire, just someone with less pomp and perhaps pretentiousness than some millionaires may have.
You may even know someone who secretly holds such wealth but feels too embarrassed to make it known.
A billionaire is someone who has the social role of controlling a vast section of society, through private ownership of resources and assets that are needed by others for use.
It feels elusive how anyone could spend so much, but controlling the content of mass media has been of great service for the interests of the Kochs and the Wilkses.
Sure. Much of your observations speaks to the more conceptual differences between the millionaire and billionaire with respect to role in society. Workers generate plenty of wealth, more than enough for all to live well.
Billionaires generate no wealth, only hoard the wealth generated by workers.
Much of our perception is logarithmic, which is predictable, since patterns occur from proportion of quantities. Absolute quantities are meaningless in themselves. Even ten dollars as a quantity is meaningless except through prior experience understanding the value of a single dollar. Every value except the smallest is tenfold greater than some other value of at least some consequence.
By some measures, Musk’s decisions managing Twitter/X should earn him one million lifetimes of homelessness.
I know no one personally who would remain secure after losing billions of dollars, yet I keep hearing that owners take all the risks and workers are always protected from hardship.
This article discusses how the contemporary system of labor relations treats employees as things rather than persons thus denying their humanity, and violating rights they have because of their personhood. Instead, work should be democratically controlled by the people doing it
Ellerman, according to my understanding, has tended to approach liberal defenses of private property by attaching further abstractions and obfuscation that produce no particular further clarity above established leftist criticisms.
Mostly, Ellerman’s approach is weighty and unwieldy, by capturing or complicating constructs that leftists have identified as unnecessary, unrobust, and outright fictitious.
Most leftists have no need for recovering natural rights, nor even have need of natural rights.
Workers might simply rebel against the exploiters, because workers have no wish and no need for being exploited.
Since workers were born into a world that affirms private property, they obviously never gave it their consent.
It is just a fiction that developed its own life by the whip, blade, and gun, and also by the pen and press.
Most of the work of leftist criticisms has been simply deconstructing entrenched doctrine, to help expand consciousness, and to build capacity for liberation.
Ellerman seems to prefer instead constructing his own layer of obfuscation. It may antagonize the wage system, but it declines to deconstruct the deeper nature of moral ideals, social constructs, and legal frameworks.
It is worth becoming familiar with leftist criticisms of natural rights.
The best account for natural rights is that it provides elegant packaging for values and norms already shared. The danger emerges because whoever controls the packaging also controls what becomes elegantly packaged.
Since I have a poor memory, would someone please remind me why it is harmful for the working class to continue allowing production to fall under the consolidated control of oligarchs?
I know there must be some reason, but I seem to keep forgetting.
To some degree money is creating problems and obstructing solutions, but as long as our society is based on money, it is necessary to antagonize wealth consolidation and to support universal income.
I think the idealogy of neoliberalism has succeeded quite admirably in duping the population into believing that it shares with corporations the same interests, erasing almost all collective consciousness of class struggle.
I am asking you to consider, through substantive inquiry, how the ideal you promote is most likely to be achieved.
Historically, has the state supported the interests of the working class for becoming organized, or has it rather tended to support the interests of business?
If the state has supported the interests of workers, then would it not follow that the state already provides the organization needed for advancement of the working class, such that unions would be unnecessary?
You seem to be suggesting that workers should form unions, such that, when the working class develops enough power, it should use the power to press the state to force workers to form unions.
An essential issue seems to be of circularity.
A further quite severe doubt for me is the meaningfulness of organization among workers who have not sought organization. Unions require active participation from members who believe that being organized is valuable and who conceive of themselves as agents of their own liberation.
Enthusiastically providing your own labor increases the total supply of labor, leading to wage depression for you and every other worker.
Make business owners pay more for your labor, by making your time valuable to you, for your own life and for improving the lives of others, in family and community, about whom you genuinely care.
We are trying to educate each other about the general issues in our society, and to broaden insight. We are not preaching solutions for individuals, or making demands on anyone.
Each community has both a stated purpose and an evolved character, and each occurs within a broader context of politics and society. We discuss and contribute openly, beneath such context.
Your objection is not particularly accurate. I was explaining, against your earlier concern, that the intention is quite different from attacking individuals for how they approach their own circumstances, and from imposing over discussion any assumptions about such circumstances.
Even if certain contributions may appear superficially as personal, the deeper motive is most likely political or structural.
They get it, but to them the only good worker is one who is well controlled.
If a work week of thirty two hours would be proved equally productive as one of forty, if most in society would be caused no harm from such a reduction, then workers may begin shortly after to consider a twenty hour work week.
Then, while considered the new objective, workers also may be discovering new opportunities for self care and community care, developing new relationships with hobbies and leisure, and expanding their identities into new facets and in new directions.
After not too much time would pass, a critical mass of workers might start to feel convinced that the whole system is a house of cards, built only on threat and deception, and deserving be dismantled in favor of one that is new and different.
Millennials is just the name for the group despised by Boomers, and Boomers is just the name for the group despised by Millennials. Otherwise, either term is completely meaningless.
Build class solidarity. Erode the power of insurance companies. Demand reimbursements that cover both your operating expense and personal income. Support other workers. Support every worker. Take down the system.
I agree that doctors are unlikely to seek union formation at the current time. I have suggested supporting the working class overall, to help us develop power against the systems that are harmful to us as a class.
One Mississippi ( lemmy.ml )
70 hours/week with 1 day off must become norm: Congress MP backs Narayana Murthy ( www.hindustantimes.com )
I'm not asking to be rich. ( lemmy.world )
Gen Z is forcing a workplace reckoning that should have happened years ago ( www.businessinsider.com )
Labor Unions Are Industrial Policy ( www.thebignewsletter.com )
Get on my mindset grindset, peasants. ( sh.itjust.works )
92% of young people would sacrifice other perks for a 4-day workweek—here's what they'd give up ( www.cnbc.com )
Unions work. ( lemmy.world )
Join a union➡️
UAW preparing the US for a general strike in 2028 ( www.404media.co )
Mark your calendars