this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
54 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

43808 readers
974 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

If you make your work processes more efficient, you don’t need to tell anyone right away, if at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's suffocating to be in a middle management position because you get squeezed by the higher-ups and your own team. If the higher-ups make a decision that your team dislikes or vice versa, you're going to be in the shitter with whichever party suffered every time even if you had the best intentions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They're not your friends, even if they act like that.

The management just sees you as expense factor and does not care about you except for how to get the most work done for the least amount of money. Your team leader does not care about you and only cares if their numbers look good. Your colleagues do not care about you and only see you as competition or the idiot they can give their work to.

If someone is nice to you they want something from you not because they like you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That everything I buy can be measured as totalCost/wages*0.82=hoursCost.

I love measuring things in hours.

Let's assume I make 12/hr. Is 24 cans of soda really worth more (taxes) than an hour of work? 12 bucks might not sound too bad, but over an hours wages does.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

24 cans of soda probably embodies a lot more than 1 hour total work to create for a lot of people. Planting and harvesting the coca, mining the bauxite ore and refining it into aluminum, etc etc. The main reason that much cola is available to you at that price is that the coca and aluminum probably come from somewhere where workers get paid a lot less than $12/hr.

I'm all for people being paid more, but in a just and equitable world a case of soda would probably cost more than it does now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s interesting. Comparing the time input across various income levels. Does that essentially mean the person getting paid more per hour has those being paid less working for them?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

One of the functions of colonialism (in this case colonialism via exploitation of labor and resources of the global south economically) is to transfer wealth from the colony to the empire (we call these the Imperial Core regions).

I'm going to use a really simplified example and some made up numbers to illustrate. Say a pound of coffee takes 1 hour of labor to produce. The people producing it in Ethiopia are being paid $1 an hour to produce it. A capitalist from the Imperial Core buys that pound of coffee for $2, ships it to the Core for another $1, and sells it for $5.

The capitalist makes $2 and the buyer gets a pound of coffee for $5. Now imagine if the worker in Ethiopia is being paid $12 an hour. The capitalist cannot buy a pound of coffee for anything less than $12. After $1 shipping and his $2 cut (assuming he does not inflate his cut because he's taking a percentage of the sale), the pound of coffee is now $15 to the buyer.

The buyer does not have the Ethiopian worker "working for them" in the strictest sense, but the buyer does benefit from getting their pound of coffee for 1/3 the price they would otherwise have to pay.

This is why Marxists say that the current living standards of the so-called First World are being propped up by the economic exploitation of the global south, even if the residents of the First World are not directly engaging in colonialism in the pith helmet and whips sense.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wow I was really hoping for some kind of mathematical discussion but I should have known a Marxist would show up. It’s the only song we play any more.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They simplified it so it would be comprehensible for you, you dolt. They even wrote that at the beginning. If you really wanna get into the math, just read Das Kapital. Here's a brief excerpt speaking about the price of linen

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You're right. Marxism famously doesn't involve any mathematics. This is why Marxists find volumes II and III of Das Kapital to be light, easily comprehensible, reading.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Another thing to keep in mind is that imperialism also has the effect of driving down wages in the imperial core since the capitalist can pay their workers less if the price of basic, essential commodities can be decreased by super-exploitation in the imperial periphery. This is a major reason why real wages in the US have been stagnant for a while, for example. So this would have a counterbalancing effect on how much a first-world worker would need to pay proportionally to their income for a case of soda if the process of imperialism were ended.

load more comments
view more: next β€Ί