"Erm akshurally they just need to lift themselves by their bootstraps, workers are so lazy and entitled" ☝️🤓
Workers start a worker owned cooperative that undercuts the old boss.
"NOT LIKE THAT!"
dusting off my old copy of La Terra Trema
Have you seen how expensive bootstraps are these days?
They can’t because their boots are too caked in horse shit!
Take it further. After you're arrested and put in prison, you get leased out to the farm to work
Felt a bit heavy handed in writing, but once I got to the asshole "sell a cow and buy a bull" I laughed because I've actually seen that idiotic meme before. Gets a pass from me!
As a meme? I remember this being taught in middle school social studies.
For more details on how animal husbandry led to the notion of lending money with interest, see David Graeber's "Debt: The First 5,000 Years"
I exclusively drink bull milk
That's what my Dom calls it, too
Feudalism
Year One
Your lord owns two hundred cows. You're required to milk them sun-up to sun-down 2-3 days a week. The lord gets the milk. You're not paid for your labour. You don't own any land of your own, in fact, you don't own anything. You're allowed to live on your lord's property, and not allowed to leave it. You're considered to be "tied to the land". On the days when you're not required to milk the cows you're allowed to work a small plot of land which you can use to feed yourself. Your lord gets a cut of anything you grow for yourself too. If your lord's eldest daughter gets married, you're required to pay your lord a customary fee. Since you don't own anything, you'll likely have to contribute some of your harvest which you were planning to use to feed yourself and your family. If your own daughter marries someone from outside the estate, you're required to pay the lord a fine. If your lord chooses, you can be sold to another lord, and then you'll move to their land and milk their cows instead.
Year Two
See Year One.
Year Two Hundred
See Year One.
If I call this socialism I'll probably get yelled at by a nerd
Year 1:
A farmer owns two cows. You offer your services to milk them. You are now co-owners of cow-milkers incorporated. You each milk one cow. This gives you more than enough milk for yourself, and you sell the rest of the milk to pay for maintenance of the cow and are still left with a little cash left over to purchase what you want. Much of your left over cash goes to a community fund.
Year 2:
Your cow business is going well. You and the farmer agree that you could probably handle more cows. You opt to purchase a bull. This is a large purchase so you petition the community to allow you to dip into its funds and purchase a bull. You do so and soon you have five or six cows, still enough for you and the farmer to handle but honestly, it's a pretty full day's work. You employ a third person for the business. They become a co-owner and are afforded an equal share of the revenue. This share of profits is still larger for all three of you, you can even reduce the price of milk, in a similar manner the beer producers are reducing the price of their products because the community agrees for them to buy a bigger still and the vegetable sellers are reducing the price of their products because they were afforded larger fields. Now you're selling stuff for cheaper but so is everyone else so it feels like you've got even more spending power to buy luxuries on top of the public good you support!
Year 3:
Here's the kicker: you and the other two people think you can keep expanding. You dip into the communal fund to purchase new automatic cow milkers that were developed by the egghead academics that were funded by part of that community fund you keep contributing to. The same community fund that's stopped you from being severely sick at multiple points in your life and has been used to provide housing for everyone in your village.
And suddenly.
You're making more milk than you ever dreamed of! Sure you've got to clean the machines once a day, but you're milking a hundred cows! And maybe you add, hell, five new people onto the company! That just gives you more free time, you can sell the milk for dirt cheap and still make more money than you ever were. Sure, you've got to divide the work up now. Shipping 100 cows worth of milk a day to the market ain't easy but you're going gangbusters.
Not to mention! The vegetable farmer and the beer producer automated their own stock, so they're selling beer for carrots for milk for pennies on the dollar they cost last year, and they're only getting richer! Those egghead's keep inventing new gizmos and the world has its basic needs met while everyone is able to work less and less. Not only are the basics dirt cheap but the luxuries are too.
Do you not see how we are currently slipping towards feudalism? No one owns anything anymore, we pay half our money to land-lords, the rest to stay alive
Everything old is new again!
More than one thing can be bad.
The whole "more cows and computerized milking raised prices of milk" reeks of anti-industrial Luddite garbage.
You should read about who the luddites actually were. They were not opposed to technology, but to poor wages, low quality goods, and workers being replaced. Capitalists destroyed their reputation with propoganda.
What actually raises the price of milk is the farmer uses his profits to buy up other local dairy farms consolidating their position in the market. They then sign exclusivity deals with both grocers and further milk processors (who are also consolidating) to prevent competing in the market, driving their competitors to either sell for cheap or go out of business. https://theconversation.com/americas-dairy-farms-are-disappearing-down-95-since-the-1970s-milk-price-rules-are-one-reason-why-237439#:~:text=Across%20the%20country%2C%20the%20dairy,per%20farm%20%E2%80%93%20has%20been%20rising.
Because "farm Inc" has a massive horde of wealth, they can stamp out competition by either buying them out, cutting them out, or driving them out of business with prices a small farmer can't handle. After that, they get to set and raise prices at will with the now smaller pool of big name "farm Inc".
This literally happens every time a market is poorly regulated and businesses allowed to grow too big. It's the natural end state of capitalism.
Be careful where you step on this issue.
Pretty sure tankies are banned in the rules here.
Whats your opinion on NATO?
Not all leftists are tankies. This is a pretty standard take on the failures of capitalism.
Calling all leftists tankies is a pretty standard shit lib take
It seems like a sizable portion of .world users have a thing for making up issues and claiming tankies are the cause of these imaginary issues, then getting together for a circle jerk about how great they are for recognizing these tankie problems.
They're just like the American MAGA idiots - stupid people loudly getting upset about things.
Most Liberals (and by extension .world users) get pissed at leftists because deep down they would rather see Trump win (hell they would rather see the US become fully Fascist) then watch the the US stop oppressing the global south. Thats why I think its accurate to call them Blue Maga and Facsism Lite™, because despite how much they insist on it they are not left wing. They despise left wing ideology/policy and share nothing in common with leftist other then pretending to like a small portion of the same things. I think this quote summaries it very well
"Those who have bent their knees before liberalism, who have substituted liberalism for socialism, are prepared to reduce Marxism to a simple theory of the class struggle." -Lenin
Hard agree. I'm not from The States but lived there for a number of years. People there who call themselves left are usually closer to center or center right and seem to engage in extreme pearl clutching when exposed to anything even vaguely left of center.
I think part of the issue is decades of propaganda and government brain washing coupled with a deep seated ignorance of actual leftist politics. They know practically nothing about progressive policies and feel no need to learn as they believe they already know all there is to know.
In my opinion Liberalism is always center right, actual centrism is ideologies like Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism. Thats why personally I dont like them, im a hard leftist and I dont feel any need to find a middle ground with capitalists (I view all reformist "leftists" like that).
No Tankies are leftist, period.
That's not how subgroups work....
Tankies are right wingers with "communist" aesthetics
Tankie is not synonymous with socialist/communist.
Edit: and neither is criticizing capitalism
Disagreeing with imperialism makes you a tankie now? What in the absolute liberal brainrot what do you mean?
Unfortunately they're too fargone. You should save your time and energy.
Is this a verification can test?
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
