I didn’t seem to me that the rat carried it all the way with the intention to share with the other one. It even pulls it away from the other at some point. The video gives me the impression that it was going to take his finding and the other rat appeared randomly.
Impeccable timing! I just said to be the smartest species, we sure are dumb. None of the rest of the flora and fauna are the reason for extracting most of the planet, and eying the East and West’s wars du jour, maybe the planet. 😅
There’s also the fact that throughout the history of civilization we have to spend more time working to exist as population density increases. India 70 hour average working week, European cave man 20 hour working week, one mammoth is a lot of food.
if I bust my ass for a company, I deserve an equal portion of the money the company rakes in from whatever it does.
An equal portion of money as every other employee gets. For the parasites in the excusive room, that means much less, but for the people who actually have to work in the company that means a lot more.
I’ve had to have this conversation so many times I feel like I’m losing my mind. Like I need to write a manifesto or blog post that I can reference instead of rewriting it every time.
Markets are not moral.
Market forces are like physical forces - we observe them and use that knowledge to predict the outcomes of situations. But by the same token we need to have a moral framework underpinning the way we use the knowledge, or else we will destroy the world.
Justifying low wages by saying “people are willing to take the job” is just saying “people would rather do this job than be homeless, starve, or be poor_er_.”
I, personally, am fundamentally not okay with an economy that is fully supported by workers essentially being coerced into working from fear of death or despair.
We look at the nuclear bomb and the damage it caused and say “that was bad, let’s not do that”. But we look at inflation, wealth accumulation, class warfare, rampant shameless greed, and don’t immediately see the cause/effect relationship.
Now the conversation about some work being harder, more unpleasant, more stressful, or more valuable than other work is an important one. But in my mind the important part is removing the coersion.
If people had their basic needs met and didn’t fear starvation or homeless, I bet employers would have to give their workers a better shake in order to keep things running.
We look at the nuclear bomb and the damage it caused and say “that was bad, let’s not do that”.
Most people have no idea how horrible it would actually be if WW3 happens. That’s why we need to stop the fighting in ukraine and start the peace talks.
I’m not on either side of that war. I just don’t want the world to become radioactive ashes.
But everything else you said, yes. If you want people to work, you need to pay them. If no one wants to do the job, you need to offer higher pay to make people want to work there.
This is basic supply and demand. Boomers refuse to understand this because they think younger people are entitled for wanting the American dream.
Work is often hard…but the shitter the job is, the higher the pay needs to be.
I cringe everytime money grubbing is normalized. Bloomberg is now building an AI like chatGPT to do their forecasting. They are super proud of that, but instead they should be deeply ashamed. What value are they providing? People are just lining their pockets and other people applaud these people. This is a serious culture flaw.
I’m THRILLED with the promise of technology making human labor obsolete.
Is labor the best use of your limited time?
Why should we design a society where people must labor in order to survive?
However I’m DEEPLY concerned with our blind dedication to the private ownership of everything, exclusively for the purposes of growing the wealth of the few.
I don’t believe we’re in a post-scarcity world yet, and so I don’t think we’re able to stop laboring altogether. But we’ve definitely reached the point where many have stopped laboring and are surviving on the backs of others. Their lessers.
That needs to become embarrassing instead of a point of pride. We need to start shaming people into doing their part.
I am actually a vegan activist, so I am somewhat used to shaming people. Although that is never the purpose. The purpose is to stop people from exploiting animals (killing, breeding, enslaving, using for testing and entertainment) when in today’s world 99% of it is unnecessary. It is very cruel and also is a major factor of climate change.
I digress, what I wanted to say is that this thing that you and I are talking about should have activists too. Money grubbing needs to be shamed endlessly. I just don’t know exactly how. I feel like going onto the streets with thousands of activists like I do with veganism, but I lack a clear movement, message and organization.
I honestly don’t have a systemic solution, like with veganism, which may be the crux of the problem. I just believe people need to be held accountable for what they are or are not bringing to the world.
I hate that autodelete crap. How many old projects, family photos or funny videos have been lost to this? Sure I may not have looked at it in a few years, but it doesn’t mean I won’t to in 5 more years.
Edit: yes I know this meme show when deleting is a mere “suggestion”, but I know windows had a full auto delete mode that was screwing people’s archived projects up.
Many concede as inevitable that work should be miserable.
Yet, some even still cast shame on those who emphasize the misery it causes.
Meanwhile, among those who describe work as miserable, it is common to assume the reason as being that work involves effort, rather than that work, at least the way it is generally imposed, requires the worker being subordinated.
I understand and agree but memes like this and the whole “anti-work movement” are doing irreparable damage to any progress you could hope to make in “work reform”.
You provided two different names, each representing collections of ideas and objectives that are extremely general and often nebulous or ambiguous, and you complained that someone is pursuing one to the detriment of the other.
No more is plain from the text you wrote.
I am asking you to offer further details over how you personally are understanding the particular terms, and perceiving the conflicts.
Many concede as inevitable that work should be miserable.
There are some jobs that suck, but they’re essential. Like maintaining sewers in big cities. It’s a miserable job, but if no one does it you’re going to have huge problems really fast.
Supply and demand. There’s a high demand for workers of all sorts, but no employers want to pay the high price for having a worker on staff.
It’s not that no one wants to work anymore, it’s that no employers want to pay people enough to live and people don’t want to be forced to work 90% of their week to still not make enough money to live.
Business owners that don’t understand that are entitled and stupid.
Everybody loves cleaning up other people’s poop. In a communist society there would be people queuing around the block to volunteer for that job instead of being an artist or a rock star. Everybody will just do things for fun and be shiny happy people.
You’re trying to argue there isn’t anything inherently nasty about cleaning up literal human shit clogs. What is even the point in engaging with you in good faith? I’d rather take the piss out of your frankly ridiculous position.
My local sewer guy takes pride in his job. Not only does he care enough to know the entire sewer layout for every lot in town, he also cares enough about it to always provide the customer with a good offer. He just wants it done right. But it doesn’t just stop there. He is also the chairman for the sewer industry in the entire country, giving advice to all the other sewer companies, municipalities and other industries.
No, he probably doesn’t particularly enjoy hosing down somebody’s fatberg, but him and his guys usually seem to have fun doing it anyway. He gets paid well be too.
If I got half the pay for having half the fun and being able to take half the pride in what I do, I’d gladly accept the job.
Well my mum’s boyfriends cousin is a sewer clearer and he says it’s terrible and smells like shit and everybody who says otherwise is lying. Who do we believe?
The suggestion was that workers (“we”) should seek to automate processes that workers prefer not to perform.
Your objection was that if such automation were possible to achieve and to implement, then they would have already done so.
Processes of production, and the utilization and development of machinery implicated in production, is determined by business owners, not by workers.
Business owners are bound by the profit motive, not by a motive to improve the experience of workers.
Any activity or objective not supported by the profit motive is simply discarded, under our current systems.
The meaningful suggestion is that workers (“we”) should seek to automate processes that workers prefer not to perform, even if business owners (“they”) have no motive for doing so.
Buddy if you “we” could do that “we” never would have been employees in the first place.
Workers already are the ones who design and build machines, but our capacities are constrained by business owners, who control the resources of society, including the enterprise that conducts research and manufacturing, and who direct the labor of workers for using the resources they control.
If you think automation is not profitable then you vastly underestimate the costs of running a business and hiring human employees.
You are attacking a straw man.
Some automation is profitable, at any particular time, but some automation may improve the experience of workers without being profitable.
Various relevant factors include the availability of technologies previously developed through public investment, the degree by which private enterprise is competitive versus monopolized, the structure of the labor pool especially in its degree of stratification, and the relative profitability of other investment opportunities, such as those more overtly framed around speculation, predation, extraction, or exploitation.
Neither are business owners, who make the decisions within enterprise, about how workers use enterprise.
If business owners decide that engineers would design machines, that factory workers would then build, and that sewer cleaners would then utilize, then the events may occur. Otherwise, not, and the determining force is the profit motive, not the will of workers.
The straw man you attacked was my alleged claim that no automation is ever profitable.
In fact, at any particular time, some automation may be profitable, and some automation may not be profitable.
We are discussing the reasons certain workers may be prevented from having better experiences through automation, even if development, manufacturing, and utilization of relevant automated systems are possible in principle, through the collective capacities of workers as a class.
You asserted the premise that the nonexistence of certain systems of automation is sufficient evidence for us to conclude the impossibility of their being caused to exist.
No, we are discussing why people choose to work cleaning sewers. Then someone suggested we could automate the jobs. Then I suggested if we could, we would have already (because profits). Then you suggested that only sewer workers could automate those kind of jobs because it wasn’t profitable for companies to do so.
I have observed that workers as a class (inclusive of engineers, factory workers, and all others) may have the capacities to provide automated systems either that improve the experience of those working to clean sewers, or that may obviate the social need of anyone to be working as such.
I also have observed that utilization of enterprise, and direction of worker capacities, is currently controlled by business owners, bound by the profit motive.
Your premise is false, that all automation always is supported by the profit motive, and my alleged premise is a straw man, that no automation ever is supported by the profit motive.
Your suggestion, that “if we could, we would have already” “automate[d] the jobs”, is false.
Its flaw is that it erases the conflict of interest between workers and owners. subsuming both beneath an imaginary monolithic “we”, who would all share the same interests.
In fact, workers and owners have mutually antagonistic interests.
Owners seek to extract the maximal possible value from workers at the minimal possible cost.
Workers seek better conditions, higher wages, and greater freedom and enjoyment in their lives.
Once or twice a month I buy myself a cheap fast food hamburger because “at least I’m not in prison”, I call it my not in prison burger
Unfortunately I’ve also started getting a frostie on the way home sometimes because fucking life drags sometimes and I just need an ice cold reminder of things that used to make me happy. Now it’s just an empty calorie bandaid.
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