Under capitalism the people are a natural resource to be exploited for wealth, just like minerals, wood, and arable land.
The clue is in the term "Human Resources". I can't believe people just accept the existence of this phrase.
Yeah. And "human capital" is another one that just makes my skin crawl.
FWIW, there are a bunch of folks trying to shift the practice over to "People Ops", while refering to employees as actual people, which is way better. As a bonus, this gives the formerly called HR people a more meaningful scope for their work.
That said, the name or the idea does't keep some from whitewashing or running with PeopleOps as a kind of virtue signal. Consider this article that minces all of this together while making it sound normal: https://peoplemanagingpeople.com/articles/rise-of-people-ops/
Agreed, but please remember that this is the same under fascism and communism.
The final conclusion of capitalism is one solitary person holding all money. Like some crazy real life form of monopoly.
That's because the game was specifically meant to show people what capitalism does.
Show what they know. I've been highly inefficient at it.
If you are ever stuggling in life, you can always ~~shoplift~~ surprise civil asset forfeiture items from a corporate chain store. 😉
Serfdom reinvented
Circle of ~~life~~ wageslavery
Hope I’m not thinking too abstractly here:
If you’re an individual with only their bare hands in a society that doesn’t need manual labor, not even necessarily a capitalist society, then that society would have to give you something (education) in order for you to give back to society. Once they do, you’d owe them. Maybe not dollars, maybe a moral obligation, but they’d only give you something expecting a return
“The rich get richer” through things like stock buybacks are their own issue. I just don’t get the implication this is a genuine multi-layer representation of an issue.
Once they do, you’d owe them. Maybe not dollars, maybe a moral obligation, but they’d only give you something expecting a return
I disagree that all relationships between humans must be transactional, which is what you're implying here.
That’s the thing, I don’t mean between two humans. I mean between a human, and all the rest of society, which is why I phrased it that way.
Society gives a person an education, and expects that person to do something meaningful in return. It might not be the same two people in that transaction, which is similar to how we pay taxes for benefits we might not personally see.
Society gives a person an education
Does it?
People educate each other. In a capitalist society, that may be based upon relationships between strangers that are primarily motivated by money. But even within a very capitalist society, people have other motivations, and we learn a lot of things by observing other people do a thing. They don't necessarily have to be instructing us for us to get an education from them.
Yes, our current societal structure is largely transactional relationships between strangers for money. However, even within that society there are free educational programs and people willing to teach each other various skills just because they enjoy doing it.
Well I can't speak for you, but if I have the choice between the two, I'll take the brain surgeon that went to medical school over the one who learned brain surgery from the internet and people who like to perform surgery on brains for the sheer enjoyment of it.
Credentials are just a shortcut to trust in a stranger's abilities. Broadly speaking someone who jumped through all of the societal hoops may be more trustworthy, but like all heuristics and facsimiles it fails sometimes as well. There have been well-credentialed, seemingly qualified surgeons from prestigious institutions that wound up being some combination of evil and incompetent, and landed people in the hospital or the morgue because credentialism is not foolproof.
Relatedly, credentials are really what the institutions consistently provide -- not education -- and they are a large part of the reason people attend them in the first place.
You're mainly paying for a degree, not abilities and not an education.
I like your point earlier. However, I think what you're missing is that not everything HAS to be transactional, and that humans can have value outside of what they offer society. Existential value is tragically overlooked.
If you and I are looking at a tree, you might see cubic board feet (I am picking on you here, because you selected the transactional view point earlier), while I would argue that the fact that the tree exists is enough and that if we reap benefits (beauty, oxygen, habitat value for other critters) from its continued existence, that's great! Let's plant more trees.
Again, abstract, but worth considering :)
I don't know that it's even conditional. I think we owe society something just anyway. If my neighbor's house is on fire, I should help how I can: contribute to putting out the fire (actually fighting the fire, calling someone who can), and I should help my neighbor deal with the aftermath (clothes and food and shelter and maybe assistance with paperwork, rebuilding, etc.).
So it's not transactional, but an underlying permanent obligation to other humans to at least do a baseline amount of good.
Society invests in the education of its people, and the return is a general benefit to society from its people being more educated. It is not necessary for every single individual to give something tangible and obvious back in order for society to benefit from an educated populace. If you apply the criterion that every individual must give something back, it always turns into a requirement that they give back something tangible, usually money or labour, and the next step is to abolish education in philosophy, the arts, and possibly the more theoretical or exploratory parts of science. The result of this is an impoverished society, not an enriched one.
For it to be a good deal for society to pay for education there only needs to be on balance a benefit to society. That leaves room for the arts and all kinds of human curiosity and creativity that doesn't yield an immediate tangible benefit. We contribute together, not individually, and some contributions are very indirect. Still, societies benefit from the arts, philosophy, and people with curiosity. And this system can tolerate some people not contributing anything much at all. The investment is in quality of life for the society as a whole.
Do you also believe you have a debt to your parents that needs to be repaid?
Legally, no. Morally? Probably. I try to take care of my parents, and make their lives easier where I can, when I can, to try to at least somewhat alleviate how I've made their lives harder at earlier stages in life.
Do you keep balance of what they did for you, vs what you've done for them? Refuse to help them if they go "into debt" with you?
My parents will never make up for forcing me to exist on earth. I pay a terrible price each day so they could have their precious dopamine hit.
Next time smoke, inject, injest, or boof methamphetamines and leave me the fuck out of it.
Like exasperation said, I feel I owe it to them to make considerate Christmas gifts, call often to socialize with them even if some days I'd rather be playing video games, etc.
And, some people probably don't feel that obligation because their parents didn't respect them or help them grow up well.
A good, free education is to the benefit of society.
You do not incur a debt for the 12 years of school you're already mandated to receive, because that education makes society better. You become a better, more productive adult as a result of it.
But now we find that that education is not enough. Most people are not graduating high school with the necessary skills and knowledge to become that fully functioning adult. So, it is too society's benefit to extend that education.
This should not be transactional. We the people provide the education, and we the people benefit.
Otoh, there's always work digging ditches or nursing. Most people would prefer nursing in that scenario. Extend this metaphor to whatever job we're short of and make that education free until we're not short of it anymore.
I mean that's the problem, whichever country you want to do this in, the world has started automating its hole-digging. Not sure why you're using nursing as an example, since that's a very specialized field that needs a lot of student loans to get into. Traveling nurses are in high demand.
That's exactly why I bring up nursing. It's expensive to learn and society needs a lot more nurses.
Once they do, you’d owe them. Maybe not dollars, maybe a moral obligation, but they’d only give you something expecting a return
Most advanced countries will give you all of your formal education for free or with a heavily subsidized cost.
It usually don't create an obligation, or some kind of moral one. Managers have this joke (that for some reason they never think about) where they are deciding of they'll train their employees, and one asks "what if we train them and they leave?", so the other respond "what if we don't train them and they don't?". State payed education is just that, but at a society level, and for everything the society expects from people instead of just work.
expecting a return
It's called taxes. In many normal places, some people qualify (based on secondary education grades or other things like military service) to receive free higher education (basically sponsored by the government) that is paid off later over the years by taxes or contributions to the GDP.
Ah no, educated citizens is to the advantage of the society. Not in working power but in not falling back to a totalist system with low living standards.
Fuck that, I never asked to be born. Send the bill to my parents.
Slavery by any other name
Unless you live in a country with free education. Or borrow from a credit union. Or work as a contractor. Other that that, very Spot On.
They don't even borrow their money to you, they were granted the right to print that money.
Not a meme
The circle of life?
That sounds like of like the circular water cycle, which means... ... the economy is therefore a liquid and trickle-down economics does in fact work.
Don't forget they raise the cost every year to match what it's gonna cost to keep you on the whole wheel in case you get ahead
Life of Haiti
*oligarchs
All of us serve the same masters
Sounds like every record deal when you put it that way.
I really wish e,players had to give a valid justification for requiring a degree. So, any jobs require one for no damn reason other than elitism.
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