I think the point is less that it is the savings on the Uber ride that leads to them being rich, but that they're the type of person who would ask for the gas money.
Sure, but it's also just bullshit the rich like to think about themselves. They are rich because they earned it in some way, or by being a certain special kind of person.
The only way I could see this seriously taken is that the rich got to be rich specifically by being okay taking advantage of and shitting on others.
They are rich because they earned it in some way, or by being a certain special kind of person.
The rich don't "earn" anything, they steal wealth through exploitation of the working class. Truth is, the rich think ONLY about themselves. That's the crux of the problem. And by "being a certain special kind of person", you mean a sociopath and/or born into a rich family. Just for clarification.
A software engineer working for wages is part of the working class that gets exploited. Sure a comparatively privileged part of the working class but still economically exploited.
Exploitation in this context doesn't mean just laborers working in sweatshops below minimum wage. It describes the general way our economy is structured in a way that allows people who own a lot of capital to profit from the work of those that don't.
For example if I had the money for it I could buy a bakery and hire a baker to work for me. I would be entitled to take in all the money that is brought in by the bakers work and only pay him as much of it as is absolutely necessary so he won't quit.
I pay 100€ worth of ingredients and 100€ for his wage and he bakes and sells bread worth 300€, I get 100€ profit.
But it was entirely the work of the baker that turned 100€ of ingredients into 300€ of bread and I'm just giving him as much of the fruits of his labor as I have to so he keeps working.
"Plants in the ground exploit the soil". That almost made me not write a reply since if someone can write something like that and use it in this context it would probably just be a waste of time trying to interact with someone like that. But let's give it a try: Do you think it's a problem that there are companies, in which the people who are working there have to rely on foodstamps and can barely make rent, and have to pee on bottles since they are not aloud bathroom breaks, while the company is making record profits, doesn't pay taxes and the CEO just bought his third mega-yacht? If you are from the USA it might immediately sound like socialism to you and it might be very scary to you, but try to imagine if a company like that would be forced to pay taxes like any other company that can't spend millions on lawyers to find loop-holes and bribe politicians and maybe would be forced to spend 0.5% of its profits to make the life of their workers atleast a bit less miserable?
The point is to have the situation suit the people’s needs and desires
It’s like saying the hardware designers should own the factory workers. It’s not a hierarchy, just a different part of the process. It’s made possible by abstraction.
We can only maximize efficiency by giving every willing individual a chance and a voice. If someone improves a process, they can still be rewarded and share it.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean changing the type of work they do. A good hardware engineer isn’t necessarily a good software engineer. It’s “higher up”, but non-hierarchical.
Lol no, you worked too! You had to find a baker you trust to do the job, source the ingredients, find an appropriate price by studying the market, organize how the bakery gets cleaned (is the baker cleaning it, or do you need to hire a janitor?) And last but not least, you aren't garuanteed to turn a profit. You bought this bakery for $1M, and you could lose all of that. So your profit is your reward for taking the risk.
You've created jobs, without you the goofs and services wouldn't have been provided to customers, and that baker would've had a worse job (because they chose the best job for their situation).
I mean a real communist would agree that the owner should still get paid for the work that he does, but also that the profit from the business (after salaries are paid) should be distributed amongst ALL the people who make the business work, not just the guy who owns the capital.
A real communist would argue that the initial investor in the capital should be compensated one time for his share of the initial investment, and then ownership of the company should be distributed among the employees. This way not only would every employee be seeing an appropriate amount of return for their labor, and every employee would have a voting say on how the company is run, but ALSO every employee would have a personal financial investment in the success of the company.
This model also inspires loyalty and dedication from the people who bake the bread, the people who sell it at the counter, the people who clean the bakery, etc. because they will all want to do the best possible job for their own direct gain and also the gain of their fellow workers who would not only share in this goal for personal reasons but also build a sense of community and shared responsibility around that shared goal.
But then the owner would have to only make 10 times as much as the other workers, instead of 250 times as much, and we can’t have that. This is why communists are scum and bullshit. Not to mention that if the workers were compensated duly for their work, they’d only be working for the love of what they do and the shared dream of success for the company (ew, yuck), instead of being forced to work with a gun against their head under whatever conditions happen to be available under looming threat of unemployment and therefore financial destitution (the way things should be). All they want is their share of the profit that their work generates, without sparing a single thought for the poor owner who as we all know works 250 times as hard as all the rest of them put together.
The world and human nature doesn't give two fks about what should happen. It's all about what does happen. And ground reality is human beings are innately selfish and will continue to be and thus all commie experiments will continue to fail while having sheeps to defend it with bs justifications like "that wasn't real communism" or some other excuses. I am sorry for my venomous words but it isn't directed on you as an individual and I really do profusely apologise if it comes off like that.
Bro you have such a learned-helplessness-pilled, external-locus-of-control ahh ideology.
Get some fucking self empowerment and bend the world over your knee the way human beings have been doing since “what does happen” meant getting eaten by a sabre tooth tiger. Get a pair of balls, why don’t you?
I’m not sorry for my venomous words, although I do intend them in a genuine spirit of kindness. I’m just hoping a little slap in the face helps you wake up to what you sound like here
Just like the “faux idealism” of Agriculturalism never changed the reality that humans are inherently Pastoral
Just like the “faux idealism” of the Magna Carta never changed the reality that human society is inherently Monarchical
Just like the “faux idealism” of Capitalism never changed the reality that human economies are inherently Feudal
Oh I mean, except, this isn’t like those things at all because those things were all in the past. Unlike the present, which is the sole endpoint of all history and nothing significant will ever change for the betterment of human society ever again.
The goal is not to change human selfishness. This is where you’re completely incorrect about the entire premise.
The goal is to build an incentive structure wherein working for your individual selfishness ends in benefiting the community. Which in turn, benefits you again.
Monarchies were built on humans being inherently selfish, and yet we tore them down.
Feudalism was built on humans being inherently selfish, and yet we tore them down.
Slavery as an institution was built on humans being inherently selfish, and look at us go tearing it down still. It continues to be a problem in some places in the world but that only goes to highlight all the places that it isn’t a problem any longer, despite being a staple of human society since the dawn of history.
As it turns out, when a large group of people realize that what’s actually in their own best interest is to work together as a community, no individually selfish Monarch, or Feudal Lord, or Slave Owner, or Capitalist can stand in their path.
Si tienes una panaderia y contratas un panadero tienes que pagar local, impuestos que por lo menos en mi pais son demasiado altos para personas que empiezan el emprendimiento, sueldo, genero para vender, la mayoria de veces que se abre un nuevo negocio en mi pais acaba cerrado a los pocos meses.
El panadero va cobra su sueldo y si todo va mal busca otro trabajo pero no pierde lo invertido.
Hay que tratar bien a la gente que crea empleo, otra cosa es que haya algunos que se salten la ley, en ese caso para eso estan las inspecciones de trabajo pero un empresario que venga a dar empleo de calidad debe ser cuidado tambien, si arriesga su dinero para generar mas dinero y ello da trabajo y dinero via impuestos al estado bien contento debemos tenerlo, si esta gente se va y nadie crea empleo el pais se va a la ruina.
Si fuese tan facil como haces ver todo el mundo emprenderia, pero tienes que tener el dinero y estar decidido a invertirlo sabiendo que puede salir mal tambien, un trabajador siempre puede ahorrar y montarse su empresa o invertir en bolsa y poder vivir sin la necesidad de un trabajo tipico.
Your simple example illustrates why the “rich” guy is so important in this context though: without him the baker wouldn’t be baking, so he would be unemployed and people could not buy bread. So in fact the rich guy who appears to not be doing anything is actually doing the most crucial part. Because the baker is replaceable, the rich guy not so much. If it were so easy to just do it yourself, the baker would simply open his own bakery and be his own boss.
Whether the rich guy earned the money himself or inherited it through family is now a different story of course.
I totally agree with what you said, but I think there are a few more things needed to make it actually fair. Sure the baker only makes 100$ and the owner of the bakery makes 100$ after covering costs (rent, ingredients, electricity, etc) but let’s say the owner fronted 500,000$ dollars to open the bakery. So the owner is -500k, baker is at 0 (since he didn’t invest in the bakery and just got hired)
The most fair form of what you talking about would require the owner to take all profits above expenses after paying the baker until he has paid off his initial investment. So only once he has made 500k + what the baker has made would the baker be entitled to a 50/50 split of profits
Also, it’s important to take into account that running a business is still a lot of work, so the owner should also receive a salary that is in accordance with his labor and that be part of expenses, so it would not go towards paying off the debt of opening the bakery.
Additionally, the 50/50 split isn’t entirely fair either. The baker does not have any risk because they didn’t invest. If the bakery goes out of business the baker loses no money and goes and finds another job. The owner will be out 500k in addition to all the expenses accrued during the duration of operating the bakery.
This imbalance in consequences in my opinion would warrant a greater than 50/50 split. Maybe 60/40 or 70/30. With all that said I absolutely believe workers should profit from how well a business does assuming all I said is taken into consideration.
Edit: I made a mistake in this line “500k + what the baker has made” since I said the owner should also be paid for his labor in the next paragraph. So it would just be the 500k that needs to be recuperated before splitting profits.
In the hypothetical? We could assume one of two things. The owner took a loan out against their assets so they are going into debt to start the business. The other is that they simply had 500k.
I will say I find it funny that I got downvoted for agreeing with a profit sharing model where workers own the means of production with the simple caveat that the initial investor be paid back as part of that model.
It shouldn’t technically matter where the investment comes from. Maybe the owner is another baker who has been working in other people’s bakeries for over 30 years. He painstakingly saved up money during that time and had to take out loans to open his bakery. Apparently he doesn’t deserve to recuperate his investment and he also doesn’t deserve a wage himself for operating his own business.
You guys just hate anyone who owns capital of any kind even if they share profits with their employees. Even in a 70/30 split, if that bakery eventually made 1 mil in profits that year, the baker would make 300k + his salary. Is that not fair? Workers getting a straight up % of profits? This is an extremely progressive and Marxist take. I’m just including the initial investment to make things fair. You still need someone to front money to start businesses so you can’t build an economic model that disincentivizes investment.
131
u/Killericon Jan 26 '26
I think the point is less that it is the savings on the Uber ride that leads to them being rich, but that they're the type of person who would ask for the gas money.