Comment by lotsofpulp
Comment by lotsofpulp 4 days ago
> Companies, be they highly profitable global conglomerates like Amazon or smaller Mom and Pop shops, have zero incentive whatsoever to retain staff. None. In fact, they have every incentive to axe as many workers as possible, as often as possible, profit be damned.
Every single individual on Earth does not like spending more money than they have to. Just because I hire a crew of landscapers for my house doesn’t mean I will retain them if I think a better offer comes around and can do the same job for half the price.
> I don’t think it’s a controversial idea to impose broad and lenient regulations on companies to prevent this sort of activity.
This is extremely inefficient and opens avenues for corruption, as well as increases costs for policing the corruption.
The far better solution is governments collecting the appropriate taxes and providing the appropriate benefits it deems are necessary for a minimum quality of life. Let businesses do business however they want, let governments provide the public services.
In fact, the US does have that in some form via unemployment insurance payroll taxes and unemployment benefits, but obviously they need to be better and consistent.
I love that you basically retread everything I said, but from a neoliberal or outright libertarian perspective of perpetuating the status quo because of “BuT tHe BuSiNeSs EfFiCiEnCy”.
And by love, I mean “am sick and tired of the same old CorpoSlop Bootlicking”.
Let me show you what I mean. You proudly kneel down and lick the boots of Capital by saying:
> Just because I hire a crew of landscapers for my house doesn’t mean I will retain them if I think a better offer comes around and can do the same job for half the price.
You are deliberately conflating business operations with consumer transactions. I see this happen in exactly two different arguments: someone deliberately trying to mislead the reader into conflating the two in an effort to confuse them into supporting Capital (because the two are not the same thing, and the speaker knows it), or by someone who doesn’t understand market transactions are fundamentally different from business operations. I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt that you’ve not done your reading and therefore are just making a misinformed argument until your very next line:
> This is extremely inefficient and opens avenues for corruption, as well as increases costs for policing the corruption.
Ahh, the old “inefficiency” chestnut, as if the sole goal in life for any organism should be optimal efficiency of capital distribution and business operations as opposed to, I dunno, a higher quality of life for the organism? Then you throw on scare tactics like “corruption” and “policing”, and I can see you’ve already started digesting the first bites of those thick laissez-faire Capitalist wellies with a bit of Randian dressing:
Proving you’re not an idiot, but just a manipulative shyster, is the next paragraph:
> The far better solution is governments collecting the appropriate taxes and providing the appropriate benefits it deems are necessary for a minimum quality of life.
Gee whiz, now where have I heard that before? Oh, right, I literally just wrote it:
> …or we break their arm outright and tax the absolute shit out of them to provide a high quality of life for every worker regardless of present employment.
This is what really grinds my gears about you lot: you storm into the comments, insult others with flowery Randian arguments about the infallibility of business and Capital as if they’re gods, and then parrot back watered-down forms of the arguments of your opponents in an effort to seem smart and/or reasonable. Forgive me if I do not tolerate your naked bullshit in the current era anymore.
> Let businesses do business however they want, let governments provide the public services.
For what it’s worth, this is where you ultimately footgunned your entire argument. You cannot simultaneously “let businesses do business however they want” while also trusting governments to provide public services, and you have centuries of evidence proving this. Letting business operate freely means they will destroy government, while handing total power to governments will destroy business. It has always been a delicate balancing act, and the modest proposals of people like myself is that, y’know, the scale seems so heavily weighted towards business right now that it risks toppling the government. Your entire counter-argument is some form of “this is fine, actually”, which it might be for you at the moment but won’t be forever, and certainly isn’t fine for the majority of your countrymen or working classes.
I am sick and tired of allowing misguided or actively manipulative chuds shout over calls for reasonableness and decency in life and defend themselves with this naive fantasy that if we just let people do what they want, everything will be sunshine and roses.
If you’re that naive, grow up and join reality. If instead you’re that manipulative, fuck off into the sea.
I refuse to entertain otherwise anymore, because the evidence is insurmountably opposed to such a perspective.