Not_mikey @ Not_mikey @slrpnk.net

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9

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364

Joined

1 yr. ago

Your still viewing things from a motor normative lense with statements like I need to drive to get to work and I need to park my car. This sort of thinking naturalizes things that are actually part of a system that can change if we decide to. We can collectively decide to ban cars and humanity could continue to thrive, there's nothing necessary about cars. They may be personally necessary in the current system, but the system itself isn't, and this is critiquing the system not individual decisions.

The point of critical theory like this is to look at things we take for granted or think are necessary, show that they actually aren't natural or necessary, and expose some of the problems we ignore because we think the problem is required to live.

You have to step outside the system and look at it like you don't come from car centric culture and with the knowledge that it's a choice and not necessary. From that point of view questions like why is it ok to spew toxic fumes in a populated area? Makes sense since you know the system is a societal choice, not just the way things have to be.

With that knowledge you can try and change the system. That doesn't mean never driving, because it may be necessary to live, but driving less and taking public transit when you can and advocating and supporting public transit and biking infrastructure over car infrastructure.

Did you read my full comment or just the first sentence, cause I did go on to explain why I think manufacturing in Mexico is better. Ideally cars would be manufactured in the u.s. but I'm not going to let the good be the enemy of the great.

Also along with the minimum wage as part of the USMCA there is also better union provisions for Mexico in it as well which allows the UAW to try and organize Mexican auto workers with independent unions to raise wages.

https://www.wardsauto.com/industry-news/uaw-reaching-across-border-support-mexican-auto-workers

You can't do that in China because there's only the CCP associated state run unions with little negotiation power by the workers to raise there wages.

This isn't a few thousand jobs, auto manufacturing in the u.s. employs millions and millions more work in services or industries dependent on it.

Also union auto jobs keep wages high for other unskilled labor as it puts upward pressure on employers as they compete for workers, eg. Amazon may have to increase wages to compete with a unionized auto plant that got a raise with the recent negotiation, otherwise people might choose to work there. If that auto plant goes under though, or moves over to China, then there's a surplus of workers who need a job so amazon can lower wages cause they know they're desperate, this is how the middle class collapses.

Globalization encourages a race to the bottom for wages which hurts workers. That's why free trade deals like NAFTA/USMCA will have minimum wages put on auto manufacturing, and why it's better for cars to be manufactured in Mexico then in China, where no such minimum wage exists. Chinese cars aren't cheaper because their manufacturers are more efficient, its because their workers are more exploited.

We do need to transition away from gas cars, ideally to public transit, but absent that we can encourage EV adoption with subsidies and discourage gas car purchases with taxes without destroying the middle class.

Overtimes only for hourly workers. A lot of people doing this are on salary and don't get anything extra for this schedule besides not being fired.