webadict @ webadict @lemmy.world

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You did.

I tend to disagree with this, not that it's entirely incorrect, but I think quality can't be disregarded; can the product be made safely is another factor

Meritocracy was shown to be related to the ability to generate capital because capital is economic power and allows you to concentrate more power. Quality didn't factor in because consumers buy bad products. Safety didn't factor in because consumers buy unsafe products. The best childcare workers aren't paid more than an average software developer because it's not meritocratic for workers.

Exploding sugar mills are an example and literally not the crux of my argument. The same could be said about giving your workers coal lung or mesothelioma, but it's easier to envision. You refuse to acknowledge that worker safety is not a concern unless it affects the amount of capital generated, and NONE of it is nepotism. Can you rebut that, or are you essentially ragequitting because you were wrong?

Nepotism doesn't factor in in any explanation I have given because they would only factor in getting around equal access to materials, labor, production, or markets, or possibly skirting regulations. Your argument is "No, those instances of horrible working conditions were nepotism, even though there was nothing illegal or unfair about it."

Unsafe working conditions are merely a cost-analysis in capitalism. If you make more than the costs of a decision, what is stopping capitalism from implementing those unsafe conditions if they are not illegal? Nothing. Capital-holders hold all the power and make the decisions, the workers do not, and that is the problem.

Who would work for Jeff's sugar factory if Jeff's sugar factory keeps blowing up and jim sugar factor understands the process and puts it nessisary safe gaurds

If Jeff somehow makes more money than Jim, why would Jeff ever stop? What makes you think Jim wouldn't simply start doing what Jeff does? Ideally, exploding factories would be more expensive, but that isn't always the case, so I ask again, what does capitalism do to disincentivize chasing profits at the expense of the workers or consumers or safety or the environment or the planet?

Apologies, I believe you might be confused, as I believe you proved my point succinctly: Money is the goal and the only thing a capitalist company truly cares about. You say safety matters, but you use the monetary concerns the business would incur if it failed to achieve these things because, well, the bottom line is the only thing that matters. The only way it would even be forced to do these things (besides the bottom line) is laws and oversight, since otherwise these risks are merely actuarial tables.

It doesn't really matter if your sugar mills or sweatshops or factories explode if you make a profit. It doesn't matter if your workers break their backs or inhale fumes or asbestos or coal dust or even die if you make a profit. At the end of the day, if it's just a cost of doing business, what stops capitalism from doing these things besides if you make a profit? The only thing that would stop it is the law.

The system is inherently unfair to the workers as the only choice they get to make is whether they work for a certain company or not (technically, this is untrue, as capitalism can (and historically did) use slaves, but I digress.) Many workers could (and historically did) perform work that might kill them without their knowledge because the only one allowed to make decisions under capitalism is the owner, and if an owner chooses to focus on something that is less profitable like worker safety, another capitalist can (and historically did) take that spot and undercut that company out of existence.

Thus, capitalism incentivizes the bottom line.

Consumers do not care about safety, or else we wouldn't buy oil or gasoline, and we wouldn't buy clothing made in sweatshops. Companies follow safety guidelines because of fines or other punitive measures that could affect the bottom line, and you have to admit that the bottom line is the chief concern here, and not the safety of the workers of consumers. This is a problem that capitalism is forced to deal with with government oversight because it is a failure of capitalism.

Nepotism merely makes this failure worse, but the system would be an issue even without nepotism. Businesses can perform risk assessments to determine if ignoring guidelines would make more money than the cost of restitution would incur.

Capitalism needs oversight to work fairly, but it doesn't really need oversight to do what it does best: Make those with capital more capital. The system generates profit for those with capital, and that means it makes the wealthy wealthier (and that's entirely by design.) You can argue nepotism causes the unfairness, but it doesn't, since the profits feed back to the capital owners and not the workers by definition. Oversight is the only thing that can make it even close fair.

You should define what you think is capitalism, cronyism, and meritocracy, because you seem to have an answer in your head that you don't wish to divulge.

Capitalism is the idea that those that own the means of production own the profits from them.

Meritocracy is the idea that those with skill will prevail over those without.

I will argue that capitalism IS meritocratic, but the problem is that that which capitalism holds in high merits is that which generates capital at the fastest rate. Good products do not necessarily earn more money over bad products faster. Capitalism only cares about the fastest acquisition of capital through whatever barriers are present. This means it inherently does not care about labor that doesn't generate profit (immediately).

Those that hold capital get to choose what merits we look for. Software developers or teachers, which can make more money? Childcare workers or lawyers, which can make more money? We pretend like the difference in these jobs and their pay is skill, but we treat various labor differently because we assign a higher capital interest to some labor, like the ability to write a contract or write a program, and a lower capital interest to other labor, like taking care of a child or teaching someone valuable skills. We pretend like physical, emotional, and reproductive labor is less skillful than intellectual labor because it doesn't make as much money for capital, but the truth is that only capital gets to choose what is high-skilled and what gets to be paid like it's high-skilled.

Thus, while capitalism is meritocratic in a sense, it is not meritocratic for workers, and will always devolve into a class-based system by design. I could argue that by choosing what is worth more money, they create their own cronyism, but that is really more of a moot point.

I like that it's the Democrats fault for whenever these issues failed, and not the Republicans who universally vote against them. Remove every Republican and I bet we start seeing these issues getting passed.

Children never show up to vote, that's why they keep losing their rights.

There is really only one major party against ranked choice voting. Every year, Democratic caucuses vote to add ranked choice voting to their platform. Democrats have managed to get Ranked Choice Voting in several cities.

Republicans do not. Republicans repeal RCV. Every RCV repeal in the US was done by Republicans.

Both parties are not the same, and if you really want a third party candidate, you're better off getting rid of every Republican you can.

My point is why mess with a place what has nothing to do with climate change, and not mess with places that absolutely do have something to do with it?

They did. They do. They probably will in the future as well.

But, it seems as though people care more about art being faux-vandalized than they do about the planet dying, so those don't make the front pages, or you would've known this.

Also, no, it looked at 9 specific studies, not "all" studies. It's conclusions are basically "We need more studies."

I looked at your study, but all it showed was that there were no statistically significant side effects for puberty blockers, so what's the problem?

No, a bad faith argument would be using one study and a handful of doctors that aren't specialists in the area that agrees with you versus the hundreds of studies and thousands of doctors that specialize in the area that don't.

I'm gonna call bullshit on "too toxic." There were literal riots over getting civil rights. There were literal murders over getting civil rights. A lot of the reason why MLK looked so good was because there were those who took extreme actions, and his nonviolent protests would sometimes be treated the same as the violent ones. But you think a stall-in would be too far? Should we use the Suffragettes instead, who also vandalized museums (worse than these guys)? Was that too toxic? What a silly argument.

Condering that the art is unharmed, and they glue themselves to the gallery waiting for the police while explaining what their goals are so that passersby film them to spread the message, I'd say that they are, frankly, pretty distinguishable from vandals, or do you know of other vandals that do that?

Well destroying the Earth does not in anyway benefit art, either, but we're still doing that one.

Is blocking traffic invalid then? Because that was also part of the civil disobedience used in the civil rights movement. Oh wait, they DID claim it invalid then, too!

“We do not need allies more devoted to order than to justice,” Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in the spring of 1964, refusing calls from moderate Black and White leaders to condemn a planned highway “stall-in” to highlight systemic racism in New York City. “I hear a lot of talk these days about our direct action talk alienating former friends,” he added. “I would rather feel they are bringing to the surface latent prejudices that are already there. If our direct action programs alienate our friends … they never were really our friends.”

It's weird that there are people in this thread that think defacing the protective barrier of a painting is too far, but advocating for harming or killing oil industry executives is not because the painting didn't do anything to cause our climate emergency. By that argument, defacing a building with grafitti can't work, blocking traffic would put more pollution in the air, blowing up a pipeline would kill innocent people and animals.

Nothing is good enough for them except the status quo. They'd rather a museum burned down in a riot than plexiglass get covered in soup because riots are okay (but once that happens, the pearls will be clutched again.)

“We do not need allies more devoted to order than to justice,” Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in the spring of 1964, refusing calls from moderate Black and White leaders to condemn a planned highway “stall-in” to highlight systemic racism in New York City. “I hear a lot of talk these days about our direct action talk alienating former friends,” he added. “I would rather feel they are bringing to the surface latent prejudices that are already there. If our direct action programs alienate our friends … they never were really our friends.”

"What's blocking traffic have to do with racism? All it does is make people mad at black people!"

History rhymes.