45 Pics To Show How Dystopic Our Capitalistic Society Already Is, As Shared By ‘General Strike’
Capitalism has accelerated the economic growth of human civilization. There's no doubt that. However, the unreliability of this growth as well as its quality and the fairness with which the system distributes its expanding wealth have all been criticized for many years now. Most recently, it's been done through memes.
Which is exactly what the Facebook page 'General Strike' is all about. Addressing both capitalism's theoretical structure and the way it affects people's everyday life, this fun and thought-provoking online project has proved to be relevant to over 50,000 folks who follow it. So let's take a closer look at its content.
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Listen to the Veggietales. They might be the only ones speaking sense recently.
As Richard V. Reeves, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution, pointed out, one of the main reasons why we can say that capitalism is failing is because it can not provide a decent wage to those who want a job.
"Before markets, before even money, there was work," Reeves wrote. "Our remotest ancestors, hunting and gathering, almost certainly did not see work as a separate, compartmentalized part of life in the way we do today. But we have always had to work to live. Even in the 21st century, we strive through work for the means to live, hence the campaign for a 'living wage.'"
The economist highlighted that it took two revolutions (one agricultural, one industrial) to turn 'work' into its own category but even after all of this effort, it still can't satisfy our needs.
I don't understand people being fired when they attempt unionisation! Very glad to be here in Australia where union membership is allowed and voluntary for all sectors of employment. We have them to negotiate collective bargaining agreements that determine a minimum pay rate and everyone is on the same hourly rate.
"Industrial capitalism sliced and diced human time into clearly demarcated chunks, of 'work' and 'leisure.' Work was then bundled and packaged into one of the most important inventions of the modern era: a job. From this point on, the workers' fight was for a job that delivered maximum benefits, especially in terms of wages, in return for minimum costs imposed on the worker, especially in terms of time," Reeves continued.
"For Karl Marx, the whole capitalist system was ineluctably rigged against workers. Whatever the short-run victories of the trade unions, the capitalist retained the power; the ultimate control, over workers' time. And the worker would remain forever alienated from their work. The goal was to assert sovereignty over our own time, free of the temporal control of the capitalist, able 'to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner.'"
Exactly. I've always never understood when veterans say, " I didn't put my life on the line so you could be making $15 flipping burgers." Then what did you put your life on the line for? For corporations to make billions while minimum wage workers have to work 2 jobs 60 hours a week and still stay in poverty?
That sense of being powerless is what Slovenian philosopher-scholar Slavoj Žižek also thinks the western society needs to get rid of. To illustrate his point during the Occupy Wall Street protests, Žižek recalled an old joke from Communist times.
"A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia," the scholar began the joke. "He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: 'Let's establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false.' After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: 'Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.'"
This, according to Žižek, is how we live today. "We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom."
That is so smart. Medical records cannot have erasures or any changes that cannot be read.
Not sure why you are looking down on a "burger flipper" since you seem to be incapable of feeding yourself without them.
What makes it hard to have a constructive dialogue about capitalism for its supporters is the fact that it's not entirely broken. "In terms of material conditions of life, across the broad sweep of economic history, capitalism has delivered pretty well for most workers," Reeves said.
"Wages rose, hours fell, life (mostly) got better. Global poverty halved. As an economic system, socialism fell from grace, and, by and large, and in spite of recent rhetoric on the American political left, continues to fall."
But over the last decade, the logic of markets and the workings of capitalism have been intensely questioned and challenged, both from the populist right and the socialist left. "Young Americans and supporters of the Democratic party are now more enthusiastic about socialism than capitalism (by 6% and 10% margins, respectively)," Reeves highlighted. "Leading candidates now proudly describe themselves as socialists – unthinkable just a few years ago. (Whether they are in fact socialists by any sensible definition of the term is of course another matter.)"
Yup, doctors have to wear 3 masks and yet people still complain about wearing masks as if we didn't need to and corona would not infect them if they didn't wear masks
And no regulations by US Govt. on GASOLINE price. $99 a Gallon is their DREAM!
Who else hears “Chocolate… chocolate? Chocolate?! CHOCOLAAAAAATE!!!”
According to Reeves, there are two explanations for what happened to tear the connective tissue between growth and wages: the Productivity Story and the Power Story.
"The productivity story goes as follows: wages reflect the productivity of the worker; the modern economy rewards skills more than in the past; and lots of people have not upskilled quickly enough," he explained. "Under the wonky label 'skills-biased technological change', this view prevailed across most of the political spectrum well into this century. Free markets could deliver fair-enough outcomes, so long as everyone got the education and training they needed. 'Lifelong learning' became the mantra of all, and the cliched answer from politicians and scholars to the deepening problem of inequality."
This planet Earth is being destroyed by Capitalist Greed and Corruption.
Brilliant, and no joke. Better pony up fast, because de price she's a going up.
There are two problems with the productivity story. First, the necessary investments in education and training were never actually made—community colleges, the most common post-secondary destination for students from families in the bottom 80% of the income distribution, are underfunded, overstretched, and largely ignored by the policy elite. Lifelong learning never made it from the think tank policy briefs and Davos panels to the real lives of real people.
"The second problem is that productivity turns out to be only part of the story – and perhaps not even the most important part," Reeves said. "It is certainly wrong to claim that there is no relationship at all between productivity growth and wage growth. But the connection has certainly become less clear over time, and harder to square with the trends in wage inequality."
Capitalism is not about creating good jobs or improving the lives of ordinary people. Simply put, capitalism is about putting more in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. It is not at all remarkable that some individuals try to take more than they need. What is remarkable is that so many people allow it to happen, and even think that is how it is supposed to be.
Welcome to our world. We no longer have cookies due to allergies, covid and the price of basic resources costing more than a bottle of coke and a bag of chips.
The power story, on the other hand, states that wages do not reflect the productivity of the worker, but their power. Lower wages are a reflection of growing powerlessness, the result of four intersecting trends. "First, unions have become almost mythical creatures, unicorns of the labor market," Reeves said. "Just one in 20 workers in the US private sector are members of a trade union, down from more than one in four in the 1950s. Sometime around 1980, US businesses declared war on unions, and won."
Second, the wage gap between similarly qualified workers in different companies has increased. "One widely cited study finds that one-third of the increase in the earnings gap from 1978 to 2013 occurred within firms, while two-thirds of the rise occurred between firms. It is the market power of one firm versus another that determines wages, rather than the power of a particular employer versus its workers. Even if workers can get organized, they cannot force a completely different employer to share more of their surplus with them. (Now that would be socialism.)"
So the question is can we rewrite these stories?
My area's rents and house prices have gone up so high. Just about every business has a help wanted sign in the window. Low wage workers can't afford to live here, and gas cost too much to drive this far. And the jobs don't pay well. Some are advertising $11 and $12 per hour like it's something to brag about. Then they want people to be part-time flexible (meaning they can have you work any schedule they choose), with no benefits.
My son just transferred to my town with a job promotion, more $, etc. Housing here has become ridiculous in the past 5yrs. People are renting because they can't afford to buy. Now my son is struggling to find a place within the county that isn't $2K above his budget
Load More Replies...The sewer is where the Ninja Turtles live. I'm sure they'd share their pizza with you!
I went back to uni and got a qualification that allows me to do a higher-salary job. It turns out there are very few of these jobs in my area. I have had to move out of the house I own and rent a room in someone else's house in order to do this job that was supposed to be my ticket to a better life. The new wage I make is still below the national average.
I drive an hour to work because that's where the jobs are. I have applied for jobs with no success and interviewed for jobs that pay significantly less that what I make in the "city." So I make a few dollars more that just gets eaten by my gas tank.
I worked for the post office and had to commute 25 miles each way to work because that was as close as I could afford. I would say that was an average commute for the office. Some people were commuting 50-100 miles a day. I could only imagine what the local fast food/retail workers were dealing with.
There are areas that are extremely dependent on tourism to survive that don't have affordable housing or adequate public transportation. This makes it nearly impossible for the service employees to live and travel to home and work safely. You try to work for a bar or restaurant without a car when the busses stop running at 11PM.
Censoring f*ck, buy not f*ckface? (The irony of me censoring them, I know..)
I used to. Thankfully by train so I could sleep or read. I didn't mind driving an hourly commute, but more than that really doesn't appeal (and we know is not good for the environment of course). However, people all too often don't have the choice.
Load More Replies...How on earth can anyone think that food, water, shelter, healthcare, and education are privileges and not human rights? People really think those things are not human rights. Those in power really have some people so brainwashed that they are against their own human rights and have been convinced that they don't deserve to have those basic things. It's just sad the state of this country and so many peoples mindset on existing in this world. It's like people want us homeless, starving, unhealthy, uneducated, and to live the most uncomfortable existence. And it shouldn't be like that and doesn't have to be like this.
Read Lenin and Trotsky. Just saying. You might learn something unexpected...
It's heartbreaking how many people are convinced that this way of living is normal and ok. It's like they refuse to believe what's really happening. It's easier to fool a man than to convince a man he has been fooled rings true with to many people.
Note: this post originally had 128 images. It’s been shortened to the top 45 images based on user votes.
One fun fact at Walmart I worked there and I had to provide my own pens for costumers to use. Customers gave me dirty look when I asked for my pen back not knowing the pen they were using came out of my minimum wage pay check.
If us Brits can learn ANYTHING from Johnson’s actions, it’s that crime DOES pay
Most of these are in the context of the US. Frankly, I don't know how to fix that sh!t. You have a large populace of idiots, willingly being exploited and voting for the weasels you have in your government. Fixing this would mean educating a large population properly, not that bearded white dude drivel and fanatical patriotism c**p. All that require funding and reform to your for-profit education system. I don't see the how the weasels would agree with this.
I am tempted to quit my good job because more keeps getting piled on. I needed the job after COVID hit and I lost my last one it was a huge windfall for me. But I've worked a almost year I've had 6 one day holidays, 3 sick days that i used for emergencies, and still two months to go before I get access to my unknown amount of vacation that I desperately need but fear taking because my work will pile up if i do.
Take your vacation time, its better to have a desk full of stuff to go back to then to burn yourself out for people who dont care if you get burned out.
Load More Replies...I appreciated those that focused less on the financial aspects and a bit on the social/mental health/physical health parts. Too many places claim to care and then place limits or statutes that burden people. It's unjust. May it be stressful for small business owners too? Yes. But they're also reaping most of the benefit. As for the bigger a company and the higher your rank the less you are concerned until it effects "your customers" (profit).
Oops wrong section...i meant both sad and angry.
Load More Replies...I recently calculated the hourly wage after tax, for all I do around my home. I'm due about $100K US a year. So, yeah, I'd say we're really stupid about how we value activities/professions. Housewives don't get retirement benefits, despite having worked all their lives at home!
One fun fact at Walmart I worked there and I had to provide my own pens for costumers to use. Customers gave me dirty look when I asked for my pen back not knowing the pen they were using came out of my minimum wage pay check.
If us Brits can learn ANYTHING from Johnson’s actions, it’s that crime DOES pay
Most of these are in the context of the US. Frankly, I don't know how to fix that sh!t. You have a large populace of idiots, willingly being exploited and voting for the weasels you have in your government. Fixing this would mean educating a large population properly, not that bearded white dude drivel and fanatical patriotism c**p. All that require funding and reform to your for-profit education system. I don't see the how the weasels would agree with this.
I am tempted to quit my good job because more keeps getting piled on. I needed the job after COVID hit and I lost my last one it was a huge windfall for me. But I've worked a almost year I've had 6 one day holidays, 3 sick days that i used for emergencies, and still two months to go before I get access to my unknown amount of vacation that I desperately need but fear taking because my work will pile up if i do.
Take your vacation time, its better to have a desk full of stuff to go back to then to burn yourself out for people who dont care if you get burned out.
Load More Replies...I appreciated those that focused less on the financial aspects and a bit on the social/mental health/physical health parts. Too many places claim to care and then place limits or statutes that burden people. It's unjust. May it be stressful for small business owners too? Yes. But they're also reaping most of the benefit. As for the bigger a company and the higher your rank the less you are concerned until it effects "your customers" (profit).
Oops wrong section...i meant both sad and angry.
Load More Replies...I recently calculated the hourly wage after tax, for all I do around my home. I'm due about $100K US a year. So, yeah, I'd say we're really stupid about how we value activities/professions. Housewives don't get retirement benefits, despite having worked all their lives at home!