More Worker Opression coming soon. Project 2025

[FlickerOfLight]

Found this article and decided to put it here in this thread.

Yeah...we should definitely work more.

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Not necessarily "work more", but we should be willing to put an effort into life commensurate with what we want to get OUT of life. Some people want more than others, so they should be willing to put more effort into getting it rather than simply expecting someone to just hand it to them for nothing. What I'm seeing is folks expecting to get something for nothing, and tending towards running in gangs to try to make that happen rather than putting an honest effort into it themselves.

In a late-stage capitalist tragedy, ...

I'm seeing that particular phrase - "late-stage capitalism" - more and more, and it bothers me that the MSM is trying to normalize the notion by using it. It's as if they are trying to get us all to assume that socialistic slavery is a foregone conclusion and so we all just need to "get with their program".

What happened to that woman was indeed a tragedy, but it had nothing to do with either capitalism or socialism - what it had to do with was slack-assed "workers". I can say that with confidence because I have worked in security, supervised security workers, and managed in non-security environments as well.

Specifically, since this was a Wells-Fargo office, I have provided security in that sort of environment - securing Bank of America banking centers, a Bank of America corporate facility, and done body guard work for Bank of America executives. I also supervised security at a Citicard corporate facility. So I'm not a stranger to the concept, and cannot fathom how this happened without discovery.

If any of my people had allowed a dead body to just sit there for FOUR DAYS at any of those places,I'd have taken them to the woodshed before firing them and putting the word out that they were entirely unreliable security personnel. All of my facilities were patrolled multiple times on EVERY shift, Every floor, every cubicle was checked. Multiple times. on EVERY shift. How can you call it "security" without bothering to secure the space? In securing the space, something as large as a body would definitely have been found.

on the very first shift.

She might still be alive if their security personnel weren't so slack. Had they found her ont he first shift after she collapsed, there might have still been enough life there to revive her. maybe not, maybe so, but the possibility should haunt those security folks for the rest of their days.

When I was manager at a call center, I generally closed the facility at night. Not as a security guard, but as a responsible manager. Before I left, I walked every floor, checked every cubicle, PERSONALLY before I set the alarms and exited the facility for the night. I checked hte bathrooms for stragglers, as well as the storage spaces and whatnot. I examined the entire place before I'd put my stamp of approval on it being "empty" when I left. We did have security there as well for a while, but still I made sure that the place was empty myself before I left them to it.

So, in my opinion, this situation didn't have anything to do with "capitalism" or "overworked employees", it had everything to do with slack and irresponsible security and management of the facility.

The whole damned bunch of them ought to, by rights, be fired.

For a few years, I ran security at a facility where every single employee had to iris-scan to even get in to the place, and then on top of that, had to scan a key card to open any other doors inside the facility. Security always knew who was inside,and where they were in particular inside that building. With all of that, plus multiple patrols per shift, how in the hell could this have possibly happened unless multiple people were slacking on their responsibilities?

I put that slackness down to people who are expecting something for nothing out of life. There are way too many of them. It's ok if they don't want to work. That's fine by me. To each his own. My gripe is with the people who DON'T want to work, but DO expect to get something out of life without working for it.

If they don't want to do their jobs, then fine. Get the hell out of the way and let someone work it who DOES want to do it. If they had done that, there is the possibility that this woman might still be alive today.

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I stopped training people at my job.  It's like you said, an endless line of people expecting to do the minimum and get the maximum.  

My job isn't exactly splitting the atom, but there's a lot to learn and remember.  Strong mechanical aptitude is a must.  Also the desire to learn.

We had an older guy get hired months ago, the first week or two he was great.  Paid attention, asked questions.  Then he decided to turn into a complete turd.  Paid zero attention.  He came up to me asking about a problem with his machine, I go over and look, and knew right away what happened.  I told him, and he started arguing with me about it.  I said well if you know, why are you asking me?  You come and ask me what you did wrong, I tell you what you did wrong, and you deny it.  

Turns out he was fond of his booze.  I never noticed a smell, but others were saying they did.  When the plant manager asked me about him, I told him everything I just typed, and there were many other examples of no accountability.  But of course they didn't listen to me, put him with someone else, and he lasted just long enough to collect unemployment.

This was the fourth person in a row who sucked.  Others were a little better, but not by much.  Soon as I left them, out comes the phone, and zero attention is paid.  Attention to detail is a big part of my job.  It can definitely be boring once you've set up the machine and it's running.  I wear earbuds and play some music and I'm good to go.  I see other employees who've been there a long time watching movies on their phones, but they know what to be looking and listening for.

I told the higher ups I was done with training.  It's months of headache for no extra pay, and the quality of people they've been bringing in hasn't exactly made me feel great about working there.

This is happening everywhere from what I can see. People are giving up completely and jobs and employees are getting worse. 

I operated industrial machinery once upon a time.

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My experience is, I've worked my ass off, and am still poor. Poor people work very very hard. Most people are meant for labor positions. Same as most people are infantry in the military. It's the same concept------disposable people. 

They get paid shit, for the hardest labor under the sun.


It's not right. It's not fair. It needs to stop. 

People need to be able to earn a decent living.

That's probably true. Are you familiar with the axiom "we teach others how to treat us"? When people settle for that sort of treatment, they are teaching others that it is ok to treat them that way. It needs to stop, of course, but it will not stop until they teach others to treat them better - until they set their own value, and demand that others either recognize that value or move on to employers who will. No one needs a "union" to do that. In fact, if they settle for unionization, then they are merely changing whom they allow to set their value for them - they are still not setting their own value or demanding recognition of it. They are abdicating their responsibilities to someone else, yet another company called a "union" that usually is just looking out for itself rather than them.

I will also say that I find that situation to be more prevalent in urban areas than in rural areas. Out here in the hinterlands, we'll just tell a boss to go pound salt if he won't pay us what we are worth, and just go hunting or fishing to find our own tucker, and leave him sitting there without any employees to do the work he needs done. We don't "strike" - or we didn't, until the UMWA mucked everything up - we flat out quit, and left his ass sitting there in the dust to fail on his own.

My issue with capitalism is simply this.
Hypothetical numbers, but say the average Amazon employee made 100,000 a year, while the CEO pulled in 1 billion.

This needs to stop. And stop....it will. This will not go on forever. Nor should it.

This is America. We shouldn't be struggling like this when there's all that money. Its the 1% who actually profit. It's not fair and it should stop, and all that profit spread more evenly.

Now....yes, they are pushing for us to "minimize" so that they can have even more profit. That's why everything is being priced out. Soon they'll own it all.

And we marched our asses right into it---generation by generation.

My real beef is, I believe we are the prostitute on the beast mentioned in Revelation. But, that's another thread. If this is True, then yeah, it needs to stop so bad that it brings on the Antichrist and Armageddon.

That's my true beef here.

I personally don't have any problem with capitalism. I've seen all kinds of systems, and so far have not found one that works as well to uplift the individual. It's based upon "value" - an honest wage for honest work - and insists that both sides demand those two things. Where it fails is when one side or the other either fails to live up to their end, or else fails to demand that the other side lives up to theirs. When one side or the other simply settles for what it can get, then the system fails.

Socialism, on the other hand, is based upon the notion that everyone "owes" everyone else, which is patently false. No one owes anyone any thing. That's why it can never work. Starting out with the notion that someone else "owes" us something that they never indebted themself to us for is doomed to failure when they tell us to kiss their ass, they ain't paying what they don't owe.

Funny you should mention Amazon. My son works for them, and makes, I believe, around 60k/year. He didn't start out there, of course. I think he started out around 27 or 30k/year. Still,he has his own land surrounding a house that I would call a "mansion" - I've never lived in a place so big and fine as that - and he's not yet 30 years old. He didn't do that by just settling, allowing himself to be made a mere cog in the machine, and letting someone else just spin him. He did it by setting his own value, demanding it, and going a bit beyond to where he could set a higher value on himself, then demand THAT. Wash, rinse, repeat.

It wasn't that easy, of course. Every job one will ever work has it's challenges and aggravations. What matters is how one handles them - how we make them work for us, and refuse to let them work against us. I'd like to take credit for my son's success, but of course I cant. I didn't do it, he did, and he has already surpassed me, owning more land, and like I said, having a bigger house than I ever did, or ever will. I gave him the basic building blocks and attitudes, but everything else, all the accomplishment, is all on him.

Oddly, perhaps, he cares nary a bit what the CEO of Amazon is making. He's too busy building his own life to worry about what someone else is getting or doing. When we start envying someone else's ball, it means we have taken our eyes off of our own... and it suffers from that neglect.

I don't get to talk to him as often any more, which many would take as a sad thing. However, I choose to see it as a positive - my job here is done, I've taught him everything I can, and he's got it from here on out. That means I can die in peace when my time comes, secure in the knowledge that I don't have to fight through the pain of dying just in case I get that panicky midnight "what do I do? What do I DO?" phone call. He's got it, nothing more for me to supply.

Now, don't get me wrong - I think most modern CEOs are making ridiculous money and perks, but I also see that money is theirs, not mine to worry over, and I also see that it is what the market will bear. So long as people continue to give them ridiculous amounts of money for their crap, they will continue to gather ridiculous amounts of money from those people. If folks want to make a change, then stop shopping there or buying whatever product they're selling - or, demand a more reasonable price, or else go elsewhere. We MAKE these oligarchs, and then sit back and complain about it. A better choice is to not make them in the first place. We didn't just "stumble" in to this situation, we MADE it.

Socialism will not fix that. It will only create new oligarchs (as it always has), only give us NEW Masters to complain about. Socialism is just a different form of capitalism, one where different people suck the value out of you, with the added bonus that they can mow MAKE you give up that value to them, whether you want to or not. You can no longer "just go fishing" when they screw you over. You no longer have the freedom to exercise that option under socialism. The next "Five Year Plan" requires that you work for The Man whether you want to or not.

It's just another form of capitalism, with the added dimension of feudalism and slavery. Ask a Russian some time how wonderful their socialist worker's paradise was, and how well that wealth got redistributed down to them... and why, if it was so great, they finally abandoned it as unworkable. It might be an eye-opener.

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I'm good with capitalism, as long as it hasn't been monopolized. 

And that's what's happened.

There were supposed to be laws preventing these things.

The problem is, things are so bad that our government isn't actually lead by the president. It's lead Blackrock, Vanguard, and Morgan. Johnson & Johnson has more influence and control than the damn president. These companies make the rules. 

We've allowed it to happen.

We should un-allow it. 
We shouldn't struggle to keep food on the table after working 40+ hours, while these bosses are living 100times better than their employees. 

This, my friends, is modern day slavery. Imo

This isn't much different from the old coal miners days, and how those employees, and their families, were treated and lived. 

We still have slave mentality here in the west. It's just glammed up a bit, so it doesn't look like slavery.

I wonder.... how many homes and families are living paycheck to paycheck. Knowing that the loss of one weeks pay could bring their lives crashing down.

We as Americans should take care of the people better. We have let this happen because we keep saying, "It's okay. Go back to work."

I'm just tired of it. I'd take from those "TPTB" and I would spread it out amongst the people. I don't covet what they have for myself. I covet it for all of us who slave away for peanuts.

Added explanation: I'm not a commie. I'm not a socialist. I'm not anything that can be put into one of their boxes. I am an individual who is part of a collective. 

I care about the collective.

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Bally02 brought this to my attention. I want to place it here, as I example of what I mean.

Not much has changed...

https://www.britannica.com/event/Eureka-Stockade
Eureka Stockade, rebellion (December 3, 1854) in which gold prospectors in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia—who sought various reforms, notably the abolition of mining licenses—clashed with government forces. It was named for the rebels’ hastily constructed fortification in the Eureka goldfield. The Eureka Stockade was the most-celebrated rebellion in Australian history.
The rebellion was the culmination of long-standing grievances on the part of the miners, or “diggers,” over exorbitant prospecting-license fees, brutal police procedures for collecting those fees, lack of the vote, and lack of representation in the Legislative Council. While Charles J. La Trobe, the lieutenant governor of Victoria who had introduced the license fee in 1851, pressed the Legislative Council for reform on these issues, the diggers underwent increased harassment by the police and responded with greater militancy. The murder of a digger named James Scobie in October 1854 and the acquittal of his alleged killers by a government board of inquiry further inflamed the situation. Demonstrations and clashes with the police followed. On November 11 the diggers formed the Ballarat Reform League to petition the new lieutenant governor Charles Hotham for redress of their grievances. Although Hotham’s response was promising, the arrival of troop reinforcements on November 28 led to further clashes.

(This is the longest post I've ever seen lol)

We are still having relatively the same issues almost 200 years later. Yet, we keep letting it happen.