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Profit over people is a failed system
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2026
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
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Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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Likewise:
How capitalists think socialism works:
– "My lemonade is set at this price and we make a loss. My boss says I can't criticise that decision."
– "Mine too. I'm not going to improve mine."
How (market) socialism actually works:
– "We have no boss and we use the lowest price that gives all lemonade workers a fair pay."
– "Same."
How capitalists think communism works:
(Same as the socialism one)
How communism actually works:
– "We made lemonade and still have some left."
– "Give whatever is good to those modestly asking for it."
How Capitalists Think Anarchism Works:
“I refuse to do anything”
How Anarchism actually works:
“Let’s use my lemons and your sugar to make some lemonade as someone was asking for some”
How anarchism actually works:
"These suckers are socially obligated to give me free lemonade if I look like I really need it"
"Fuck you, you can't have my lemons to make lemonade for that slacker, I need my lemons"
"No one wants to provide the materials and do the dangerous work of fixing my roof for free! And now my house will collapse and I'll have nowhere to live..."
Bro has never lived anywhere but buttfuck suburbia and it shows. I'd ask how your neighbors are doing but you dont know.
Dont retaliate on broadstrokes with broadstrokes. We get lost in the bushes fighting ourselves while cunts contunue ruling the world
One of them lost a roof during some recent storms. He just moved into the neighborhood and no one had his contact info. I found his house listing on zillow, called his realtor and managed to get her to get him home in time to get his pets and documents secure before the next wave of storms hit.
My neighbors next to me are retired, they have an old dog and are struggling with health issues (all 3 of them) neighbor across the street had a falling out with his son, daughter is graduating high school this year. Other neighbor got a new job and a raise, has been working really hard on his yard and put in a nice gazebo and grill. The guys next to him are working on their drag racing VW Bug. The people on his other side are from Pakistan and are starting a food truck business.
Can you explain how/why people in urban or rural areas would behave any different?
Your first comment is exhibiting the isolationist mindset of suburnites while simultaneously marking mutual aid as anathema to your world view. Seems completely captured by capitalism to me.
Nah, they were just stating the reality. I know you'd like to keep your fantasy about an anarchist utopia intact, but in case you haven't interacted with many people lately, I'll just gently remind you that most people are not that altruistic.
They didn't say anything about their personal worldview. Maybe they think that anarchist utopia of yours would be the dream. But they know that it is a dream and nothing more. Acknowledging the prevailing mindset in society and the limitations that mindset places on collectivist social reform is not an expression of personal conviction.
The fact that society is an emergent property of humanity instead of us killing each other to extinction has already proved you wrong about humanity. Please do not add anymore shit to the conversation.
Um what. Where in the history textbook did you read this part about humanity not killing each other?
The entire course of human civilization has been about humans killing each other, sects killing each other, kingdoms and nations killing each other.
The only reason we've enjoyed relative peace for the last 80 years (and I understand how much weight that "relative" is pulling) is because of the rules-based-order that emerged as a result of human societies utilizing governments as a medium through which to engage in diplomacy. Which, in case you missed it, largely occurred due to each respective nation-state engaging due to self-interest.
So no, we're not some essentially altruistic species that only survived to procreate and evolve due to our perfect selflessness. Humans are primarily egocentric, and as individuals develop they expand their "sense of self" to larger in-groups: to their family, to their neighborhood, to their schoolmates, to their subcultures, to their geographical region, to their nation, and if they don't stop there, the enlightened cosmopolitans among us might expand our sense of identity to humanity as a whole, or to the entire planet, or to all sentient life throughout the universe. But that is far from the default state of humanity, and the relative few who reach that level of collective awareness are a very small minority indeed. And most people who stop short of reaching that level of consciousness only end up killing whoever is left outside of their personal "in-group" anyway, no matter how small or large that in-group becomes.
The altruistic few are mostly even regarded with suspicion by their peers and estranged from society, because most people simply don't trust the intentions of someone claiming to have a selfless motivation.
Resting the fate of society as a whole on the good will and inclinations of the average member of it is a terrible idea, especially when billionaire oligarchs are already being allowed to basically live anarchistically, and they show you every single day what they're deciding to do with that. I'll give you a hint, it's not altruism.
So no, you're wrong, and telling me to stop contributing to the discussion is not going to change that. Seriously, what kind of anarchist tries to win a discussion by bullying into silence anyone who shares a conflicting opinion? 👀 Hmmm...
Nice way to cut off "killing each other to extinction" so you could make your point. You had to misquote me to do this.
What part of
did you miss?
Humans didn't go extinct, not because we're altruistic, but because we're self-interested. The post-WWII peace period (again, very relative), the UN, the rules-based-order, nuclear non-proliferation; there's about four reasons why we didn't go extinct in just the last century, and every single one of those reasons only happened because of nations engaging due to self-interest.
It's also too early to claim humans haven't wiped ourselves out yet, because so far it's looking like nothing is going to be done to stop climate change or AI from leading to our extinction, unless the oligarch-class decides it's in their self-interest to do something to stop it; or, ideally, concerned citizens acting in self-interest finally convince their political representative (who are also, by the way, acting in self-interest) to impose and enforce regulations to put a halt to that destruction.
Humans didn't survive the past several millennia since the dawn of settled civilizations because of altruism. All along the way, civilizations have been conquering, overthrowing, dominating, colonizing, and enslaving each other. They keep the local people alive (when they do) only out of self-interest, because slaves and serfs are more valuable to them than corpses.
Now, before you misattributed evil inclinations to me, I'm not saying there's anything morally right or good or just about that. But no honest reading of history will tell you anything to the contrary.
If the natural instinct of human fucking beings was to just murder and cheat each other we would never have formed society to get into wars in the first fucking place. It takes trust and mutual aid to build society. I dont need to read your madman eugenics scrawlings about the finality of evil to disprove this. The world we live in literally would not even exist in the capacity it does if human society was built on deception instead of trust. This is factually why it is falling about now.
Yes we would have. And we did. It was all in self-interest.
That's just the expansion of in-groups due to expediency. Show me the society, in history or modern times, that reached the level of perfectly altruistic cosmopolitanism, inclusion, tolerance, multiculturalism, diversity, or whatever else you want to call it. Because that's what you seem to be claiming humanity is and has been from the start.
See, I knew you would try to attribute some weird shit like that to me. Nothing I said was in support of eugenics. In fact I outright reject them as I consider them an atrocity. But if you think eugenics hasn't featured prominently in human history, then you haven't been paying close enough attention. And denying that reality is a disservice to all of its victims in past, present, and future.
I also said nothing about "the finality of evil." I said it's not the default state of humanity. I never said it can't be our destiny. I would love to believe it is. I don't know the future, but I certainly believe it's possible. I feel less and less convinced as time goes on that it's even remotely likely, at least in the next several hundred years. But I'm certain that it's not a guarantee.
Yes it would. And I hate to break this to you, but, it is.
Yes. Finally a statement I can agree with.
I see you have nothing rational to add to the discussion.
Observing a characteristic of society is not a statement of my personal dispositions. And this is at least the third time in this short conversation that you've attempted to conflate the two.
It seems that in order to be a considered a good person in your view, someone has to believe that all humans are perfectly good and just beings and human society has never had a flaw worth mentioning. That's called "toxic positivity" and ironically enough is a tool often used by fascism.
It's the same thing as when magats deny that slavery and genocide played a prominent role in the founding of the United States. But you probably think me pointing that out is an expression of support for those atrocities, so I can't expect you to have anything rational to say in response. I don't know why I even try.
This is a lot of words for "I'm sorry I sling eugenics bullshit and think most people should die"
What a blatant fucking strawman you're constructing there. You are not a serious person, and you are not arguing in good faith. You've shown yourself multiple times throughout this conversation to be incapable of rational discussion.
Living in an anarchic society with someone like you would be god-awful, because you'd be exactly the one to go around bullying people for having the audacity to publicly disagree with you, and you would make shit up about people to accuse them of to try to get them ostracized by their peers and rejected from the herd. In short, your version of anarchy is tyranny. Only, in your fantasy, you get to be the tyrant.
You're an anarchist in name only.
I don't think you can narrow that general mindset down to suburbanites. People in all kinds of population densities form in-groups and outgroups, it doesn't matter if they are in suburbia, a big city, or out in the country. I lived in Baltimore for a year, and that was probably the most socially isolated I've ever been. The east coast of the US is just a bucket of crabs, everyone trying to climb over everyone else. The people there wouldn't even spit at you for free. My partner grew up in a very rural environment, like "outside city limits, and that city only had one traffic light of the blinking yellow variety" rural. The help they got growing up was from family. They would do odd jobs for neighbors and neighbors would do likewise, but there was always some expectation of barter or compensation for materials and services. They definitely had a concept of private property, and knew their tools, time, and expertise were valuable assets necessary to continue their desired lifestyle.
Please, contrast my experiences with yours. I'd love to hear a first-hand account from someone living in a current anarchist society.
So you're saying rural America survives off of mutual aid and community welfare while smacking anarchists with the same hand? You just blow in from Stupidville?
No, I'm saying that your reading comprehension abilities and your lofty ideals of a utopian society where no one needs property and everyone contributes as best they're able with no concern for getting value out of an exchange proportional to the effort put in, is indicative of a failed home-school education and a lack of real world experience.
How much effort went into contacting your neighbor about their roof and how much value did you get out of it?
Maybe an hour of time between checking around the house to make sure no one was home, checking with my other neighbors to see if they had his contact info, calling the non-emergency police line, checking the country records for property info, digging up my neighbor's linkedin profile, calling the corporate office (getting stuck on hold) then thinking to check the Zillow listing and call the agent that last sold the house.
What was it worth to me? I didn't have to spend the rest of my day wondering if he was going to come home from a day of work and find that his house needed major repairs that could have been mitigated if only he'd known a few hours earlier. He was able to get a crew out there the same day to get the tree out of his roof and get some temporary coverage up to weather then next few days of storms.
So despite your earlier claim that expecting people to help others without getting something out of it themselves was "indicative of a failed home-school education and a lack of real world experience" you have a story where you spent an hour of your time and effort to help your neighbour without getting anything out of it yourself.
Did you do all that for your neighbour because of your failed home-school education? Or your lack of real world experience?
Bytemeister's anecdote related an example of his personal altruism. Which, I assure you, makes him the rare exception rather than the rule. Most people would not care or go out of their way to do that much or even think about it at all.
That does not contradict his statement that you cannot base a society entirely off of the expectation that everyone will always be that caring and altruistic to the point where we can all rely on and expect the altruism of others to always be able to meet our personal needs.
Bytemeister can simultaneously be altruistic himself, while acknowledging that the average member of society is not altruistic enough to make a system like that work for any length of time.
I don't even think it was that altruistic. I have a saw, and a ladder. I could have risked myself to try to remove the tree and fix up the roof... Not to mention the potential lawsuits from screwing it up, since I'm not trained in tree removal or roof repairs, or getting arrested for trespass for messing around in a house I don't own.
I put in an amount of effort to satisfy my own concerns about how devasted I would be if my house was destroyed and no one even lifted a finger to let me know about it before I got home.
That's because you have empathy. Which makes you an exception, not the norm.
Some empathy is normal, but I don't think my level of empathy is, and I'm certain that there isn't enough for an anarchist society to exist at a scale larger than a few thousand people.
I think would rather enjoy living in an equitable society where everyone helps everyone else, and there is no property, but as soon as your society needs to have modern amenities (water, sanitation, electricity, roads, etc) setup or repaired, you're going to involve a chain of people so large to support that infrastructure that your society will extend beyond it's stable size.
Empathy among one's in-group is certainly normal. Even hitler loved his dog. But empathy for one's out-group is a rare exception. And it's not altruism unless it encompasses one's out-group.
I think your vision of a potential society seems nice. And that it would only be possible to establish and maintain to assure perpetuity if there is some formalized system of governance to define precisely how aid is rendered, how needs are met, and what the mutual rights and obligations of each member entail.
Using someone unnecessarily peppering insults into all their responses to people who disagree them as a "rare example of someone who cares" is an odd choice.
They don't care enough to be civil with people they disagree with and even they can be altruistic. How much more altruistic can we expect all the people who don't insult everyone who disagrees with them to be?
I didn't see him peppering his comments with insults. Do you think disagreement and criticism is the same thing as an insult? Besides, the person he was mainly arguing with was being unnecessarily hostile right from the start. If anything, he was the one peppering insults. I don't blame Bytemeister for getting exasperated with that.
Do you... do you believe those people are the norm? If so, I'd love to live in your country because it sounds quite pleasant.
"I didn't happen"
"But if it did, they deserved it."
You might want to pick a lane before you reply so you don't undermine our own point.
Do you think this is "Criticism and disagreement"?:
They are. Don't get distracted by the fact that you'll see 1 or 2 people in a thread being rude to each other and everyone else. Just because they are loud and posting replies to everybody doesn't make them the majority of people.
You're being so disingenuous right now. I need to remind myself more often to stop feeding the trolls.
And yes, if someone is arguing in bad faith with a combination of strawman, red herring, and sealion arguments, then it's perfectly valid to address their comprehension and the success or failure of their education
This is an "every accusation is a confession" situation isn't it? Can't even call an obvious insult an insult but will accuse others of arguing in bad faith.
Be gone, troll
If you read a little slower, and tried a little harder, you might understand what I actually wrote. I'm gonna go ahead and lay it out here, since you seem to be struggling...
I am not everyone, you are not everyone. Everyone is not me, and everyone is not you. People are individuals, and as individuals, they have different experiences in life. Those different experiences cause those individuals to behave differently. Some people do like helping others, (like I me), but not everyone does. You'll note in my story that not all my neighbors worked together to find this guy and let him know about his house, I doubt any of them did except me. I called the police about it, and they tried to help, because they are paid by my city (and by extension, me and my neighbors) to help if they can. I do not hold a social view that depends on everyone being as altruistic (if not more so) than I am. I have a personal philosophy that you should help people, and prioritize helping them based on how close they are to you. I put myself first, a little selfish, sure, but it's the old "put your mask on first, then help others" logic. You can't help others effectively if you need help yourself. After that, it's my family first, then friends, neighbors, residents of my state, countrymen, neighboring countries, continent, and then the rest of the world. However, it would be foolish of me to think that everyone has this same willingness to help, or the same logical progression of altruism for their fellow man. That is why I as an individual can help others with no expectations of direct compensation without characterizing myself as a naive fool who flunked out of homeschool, because I didn't actually state anything about the education of individuals that help others freely. Your comment is a strawman, where you build a different argument, and attack that, rather than debate what I have actually said.
Now, I'm asking you a question to make sure you are arguing in good faith. Please be sure to address it in your reply. Did you build a strawman intentionally, or did you do it accidentally?
To start with, someone arguing in good faith does not open with: "If you read a little slower, and tried a little harder, you might understand what I actually wrote. I'm gonna go ahead and lay it out here, since you seem to be struggling..."
That's a sign of someone lacking a good argument and trying to hide it behind insults. Either the person gets offended and doesn't respond, or they focus on the insult instead of the argument. Either way it's a weak attempt to get them to focus on something other than the actual argument you are making.
Secondly, speaking of Strawmen: you are insisting something cannot work unless 100% of the people are maximally altruistic, which simply isn't true. If you have 100 people, 99 are altruistic and 1 isn't, things will work out just fine. Now, what that minimum percent of autistic people needs to be is up for debate, but it does not need to be 100%. So I agree that not everybody is altruistic, but not everybody to be.
Which brings me to the third point: you going on about your own personal altruism while claiming people aren't altruistic is a bizarre choice, and if you don't see how that undermines your argument I can't help you. My guess is you do see how obviously it undermines your argument and that's why you're trying to hide it under insults. You probably also want to feel like you're very special and nicer than everyone else, but given how rude you present yourself to people who disagree with you this undermines your argument even further. Most people are not this unnecessarily rude to people who disagree with them. So if even someone like you who is below average on politeness can be altruistic, it would imply people who care enough about others to be civil during a disagreement would be at least as altruistic if not more.
You being altruistic while also being a dick implies the majority of people are altruistic; as the majority of people are not dicks, and even dicks are altruistic.
Didn't address the strawman that you created, and instead went to ad-hominem attacks.
You at least put forth some effort to make another point, but I see no reason to waste my time defending against it until we are cleary having an honest discussion on even terms.
Please address why you made a strawman in the first place, and I will address the points you made in your last reply.
I addressed your strawman claims. I both addressed your argument that "not everyone is altruistic" and expanded on why your anecdote does undermine your argument.
This is just another attempt to not defend a weak argument, which could also be achieved be just not replying. This whole attitude of "I could totally defend my argument, I just don't want to. You need to prove yourself worthy of having me defend it" is not a good look for you or your argument.
Clearly, there isn't even an attempt to rectify why you attacked me on a statement I did not make. It's a free forum where you can post and comment how you like, but I will not waste my time crafting meaningful replies for you that are either beyond your comprehension, or more likely, that you are unwilling to engage in with honesty.
Said while wasting your time posting anything but an actual argument.
No, it's a sign of someone arguing with a person who refuses to see reason (i.e., bad faith), who is no longer willing to repeat himself by restating the things he already said that were ignored and mischaracterized...
If you have a good argument, let your argument stand. When people don't have a good argument they stand on insults.
So instead of defending their argument they're insulting the people who disagree with them to try to make them go away? That is exactly what I said. If you think the counter argument is invalid to the point that you're not going to address it you could just not reply, it's even easier than trying to insult the person and making your argument look weak as a result.
Usually, yes. But that doesn't apply when the person you're arguing with is doing so in bad faith.
That's literally all that Sanctus was relying on throughout this entire thread.
No, that's what Sanctus was doing. And rational people have no obligation to try to reason with others who are being irrational and disingenuous.
The only way we can work together as a people is through the almighty dollar or Sun God worship. Anything else is ridiculous.
What makes you think people work together even with the threat/promise of those two things?
is there a reason the lemonade stand wouldn't set it to the highest price that still sells enough for their workers to be paid so the workers have to work less?
"Their" workers? The business belongs to them, not the other way around.
Tropical smoothie is a perfect example here.
They use less fruit, don’t freeze the fruit. It’s mostly ice. Then they add sugar.
It’s wayyyy cheaper, but it’s just blended sugar ice with some fruit, not a real smoothie.
But then places that make real smoothies can’t make them as cheap Because they have to deal with frozen fruit Logistics and need more fruit
It’s way better, but they can’t compete with tropical smoothie