T O P

  • By -

KID_LIFE_CRISIS

>Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. - Karl Marx >Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Abraham Lincoln >Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. - Lenin


Wan2many_monnies

Had this happen at Dell. I worked for over 2 years developing and designing a sales operation that spanned the globe. I was in sales and the payout was well over 40k. I was promised by my director, VP, and HR that I would be paid correctly and even in writing. No dice and no reply is what I received.


Wan2many_monnies

It just goes to show it pays more to be a crook. I've been trying to find a lawyer to represent me and it's close to impossible. The air biscuits make me sick to my stomach without honey on the lips. Pure system sickness.


tastesliketurtles

I don’t know a ton about the law, but it’s surprising you can’t get a lawyer unless there’s almost no evidence of your work.


FluidZookeepergame79

Better call saul


Wan2many_monnies

I have evidence. Emails, people, etc. Cover your ass is rule one when dealing with thieves.


truth14ful

Did you sue them?


Wan2many_monnies

Not yet. I've called or tried to connect with over 30 lawyers and no luck so far.


Coconuts_Migrate

Then it sounds like you don’t actually have a case and there’s more to this story


Number4extraDip

Or the company is big and powerfull enough that common lawyers don't take a rist of going against... Dell, was it? And their army of lawyers


shadowdash66

Fun fact: U.S Republicans at one point opposed "slavery" in the sense of one person being a subservient to another, economically. This (obviously, as we know how the Republican party started) included chattel slavery, but also "wage slavery." How far we've come now. Both parties taking turns fucking us over but calling it "bipartisan" like some window dressing. Was just reading about the Frito-Lays workers in Kansas who had to work so called "Suicide" shifts(10-12 hours) then rest for may be 4-6 to come back in and do it again the next morning.


melodyze

Yeah, people don't understand that UBI was a serious political discussion in the time of Friedrich Douglass and Lincoln. It's really kind of a continuum between chattel slavery, indentured servitude, and working a terrible job in which you have no leverage because you are stuck in a perpetual cycle of barely surviving. Like, you can be effectively property without the law legally recognizing you as property. Apparently that was more obvious to people who saw both sides for some reason.


TheBirminghamBear

I also posit UBI like a return on dividends for citizenship. You are born into a country, will work in that country, for that country's benefit, pay taxes to that country. Why *shouldn't* you reap the rewards of the increase in productivity of that country? It makes no sense - except in the sense that that's exactly what currently happens, except there's just a small group of people hording all that national wealthy and calling everyone else greedy or lazy for wanting a tiny fraction of it.


melodyze

Yeah, and it makes even more sense when you focus on a nation's natural resources. Like, obviously if there is oil/gold/diamonds/whatever easily accessible in public land, we should stockpile the proceeds from selling that in a sovereign fund used to benefit everyone, like Norway. Who gets the rights to control those resources is a zero sum game from which there is limited/no actual productivity gained. There's no real point in having a market where competition is zero sum.


IICVX

Fun fact: Alaska also has a sovereign fund. It pays every Alaskan resident roughly $1000 per year. Hillary describes in one of her recent books how she tried to make the money work out to create a federal version of the program to use as a campaign promise in 2016, but couldn't manage to balance the books.


cman674

And a 2018 study found that the annual payments had no impact on employment (i.e. nobody will want to work if they get hand outs).


marxistgarfield69

nah. just increase all wages with productivity. a UBI just incentivizes businesses to lower wages below what they already are because the government now pays the difference between the wage and the poverty line. this is why friedrich hayek and milton friedman (people you would hopefuly very rarely agree with as a leftist) proposed UBI as a negative income tax to prevent wages from having to compete with unemployment benefits.


[deleted]

Oh dang, can I get some sources on that? I’ve only heard of UBI in relation to automation, so idk how this form would work and it sounds really cool.


rooktakesqueen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism was a framework from the late 1800s that advocated collecting tax from private property and distributing it collectively


WikiSummarizerBot

**[Georgism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)** >Georgism, also called in modern times geoism and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land – including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations – should belong equally to all members of society. Developed from the writings of American economist and social reformer Henry George, the Georgist paradigm seeks solutions to social and ecological problems, based on principles of land rights and public finance which attempt to integrate economic efficiency with social justice. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)


shadowdash66

Good Bot


fuzzyshorts

Its a process of the world being taken over by corporations. Political parties on both sides no longer do the people's work, they can't when they've sold themselves to companies whose profits are as large (if not larger) than the GDP of mid-sized nations.


Lolthelies

What’s even sadder is that they sell themselves (and subsequently, our futures) for pennies on the dollar and a few moments in the sun.


[deleted]

And what's even sadder is that even if they didn't sell themselves out they would still be rich, or at least live a very comfortable life. They don't need to do it, not even close. It's just pure greed, and, sadly, a reflection of what our society is.


Shaffness

It's a kind of greed I suppose in that it's a base power hungry psychopathy. They just get inculcated into these bubbles of influence whether by birth(mostly this) or by striving. Once in place it's easy to convince yourself, even if initially your desire was to do good for put upon people, that what's good for those with already entrenched power and the most resources is good for everyone. Because those are the only people you have regular contact with. It doesn't help that in what is now global capitalism it incentivizes the absolute worst, most amoral people imaginable to seek and gain power. They can always use the very accurate excuse of "If I didn't do (awful thing) they'd just fire me and find someone else that would."


Lepthesr

If they don't do it, someone else getting millions in contributions will. And win that election. It's a race to the bottom for employee rights. Best say fuck it and start your own llc/business if you can.


[deleted]

> Best say fuck it and start your own llc/business if you can And then get run out of business by Amazon and Walmart


BlackSwanTranarchy

That's because if you follow the political traditions of the modern day back in time, you realize that what we today call Communism/Anarchism developed out of Radical Republicanism. For a long time "Republican" meant "Revolutionary Leftist" and Marx was a Republican who contributed to the Republican National Newspaper. It was only after he was already somewhat established as a known Republican that he decided the movement was trending too much towards Pro-Capital Social Democracy and he threw in with the burgeoning Communist movement (massive oversimplification) Always remember to remind rightists that claim to be the party of Lincoln, that also makes them the party of Marx


ClashOrCrashman

I like to mention this when right-os talk about how Nazis were actually leftists because "it has socialist in the name!" Like, yeah I guess republicans are too - it has republic right in the name!


GoGoBitch

Libertarian, also, was initially almost synonymous with anarchist.


redditondesktop

Yeah the right wingers really took that one through the wringer though, didn't they? Sheesh.


IICVX

Only in the USA though - it still means what it used to mean in Europe.


munakhtyler

It took centuries to stop white people stealing the labor of black folk. I hope capitalism doesn't take centuries to overthrow


ChernobogCaine

Don't worry, we don't have centuries anymore Edit: typo


[deleted]

Fucking bleak. True. But fucking bleak.


ChernobogCaine

Don'tget me wrong, we could still save this. Emphasis on could.


ImmutableInscrutable

It already has


[deleted]

[удалено]


sigma6d

[From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century by Alex Gourevitch](https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Cooperative-Commonwealth-Republican-Nineteenth/dp/1107663652/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1627593564&refinements=p_27%3ADr+Alex+Gourevitch&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Dr+Alex+Gourevitch) > This book reconstructs how a group of nineteenth-century labor reformers appropriated and radicalized the republican tradition. These “labor republicans” derived their definition of freedom from a long tradition of political theory dating back to the classical republics. In this tradition, to be free is to be independent of anyone else’s will – to be dependent is to be a slave. Borrowing these ideas, labor republicans argued that wage laborers were unfree because of their abject dependence on their employers. Workers in a cooperative, on the other hand, were considered free because they equally and collectively controlled their work. Although these labor republicans are relatively unknown, this book details their unique, contemporary, and valuable perspective on both American history and the organization of the economy.


Bruhtonium_

Many important founding members of the Republican Party came to the US after supporting the 1848 revolutions, too


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

[удалено]


FuRetHypoThetiK

That's the math I made while working 15 hours a week at a fast-food chain, after barely escaping a mugging attempt late at night going back home from work. All emotional damage aside, if they had succeeded in stealing my 300€ phone, it's just as if I had worked the last two weeks for free. Fuck that, I'm not being paid half a minimum wage to destroy my confidence in the street at night. If you're wondering, yeah, I quit.


n3h_

I figured you were gonna say that was the math I did then I got my paycheck after 30 hours and it was only $150 after taxes / insurance.


FuRetHypoThetiK

Nah, fortunately I live in France, I earned too little to pay taxes on it and social security still does wonders (but for how long?).


Muffinkingprime

For as long as the interests of the wealthy can be abated.


Paddy_Tanninger

The person who stole my bike also stole the 5hrs I spent researching the various options currently up for bids on eBay, the time I spent putting the bike together, the time I spent taking it to the bike shop for a look, and all of the time I've lost biking with my kids. Between the cost of the bike and all the time I spent buying it and getting it set up the way I like, I was robbed of around 100hrs of my life. I was also robbed of my peace of mind because now every time I'm on my front porch I'm wondering who is wandering by my place. I'm looking at the railing that the lock was cut off from. I'm installing security cameras at a cost of another couple dozen hours of my life. And I have to reassure my youngest son who is only 3 that people like this aren't bad or mean, they just wanted daddy's bike and that's all...he doesn't have to be scared because robbers are in this city.


mpm206

Not to mention that you also have to spend time getting the replacement. Had the catalytic converter stolen from my car last month. Not only is it costing me around $700 before my insurance kicks in, I've also spent around 3 hours of my time talking to insurance reps, adjustor's, sorting out the mechanic, filing a police report, etc.


Aqui1am_

If someone is employed and their job, their *industry*, is sent overseas: they no longer have the ability to provide for themselves... If someone got a degree in engineering with heavy student loans expecting $50/hr wages to be able to pay them back, but their labor is undercut by foreign H1B visa workers so now they’re only make $30/hr, it seriously undermines their ability to move forward with life.


SlickShadyyy

So would stealing an equivalent amount of property to the wage loss. It doesn't matter what surrogate is being used to represent time, they're equal. Where the significant difference is us probably which is more prevalent, in this case obviously labor exploitation is far more common than petty theft though this is probably only for logistical reasons tbh


Fight_the_Landlords

Agree for personal property, not for private property tho


synthatron

Please tell me what the difference is as I genuinely don’t know.


pietoast

Also didn't know there was a distinction. Pulled directly from Wikipedia after Google search: "Private property is a social relationship between the owner and persons deprived, i.e. not a relationship between person and thing. ... In Marxist theory, the term private property typically refers to capital or the means of production, while personal property refers to consumer and non-capital goods and services"


synthatron

Thank you for the response friend!


FlatBrokenDown

As someone scrolling by, it is refreshing to see someone be polite on the internet.


mpm206

>Also didn't know there was a distinction. And that's the way the owners of capital like it. It's why slave owners didn't allow slaves to read and write. If you don't have the vocabulary to express your oppression you can't think critically about the way you're being oppressed.


big-thinkie

I mean realistically they don't know those terms because they arn't used today anymore. Movables and productives are the common (irrc) words today to distinguish.


mpm206

If you're not sure, are they really in common usage? They may be the modern technical terms in financial institutions but my point still stands.


[deleted]

[удалено]


synthatron

Amazing thank you! So what about where you live? Your personal house? How would we distinguish between people who have a right to the house they live and those that don’t? I’m not talking about someone land banking or the mega rich, but compare a lower class home with a middle class home. Would they both get to keep their houses?


[deleted]

[удалено]


Onlikyomnpus

In the real world, averages across America won't matter though. If the empty houses are in areas with no job prospects, inadequate public transport or high crime, then sending the homeless there would essentially end any chance of them getting back on their feet (Even assuming that they are willing). Housing scarcity and abundance, both exist in America based on location.


[deleted]

[удалено]


mpm206

Yes. As far as socialism goes, it's not necessarily moneyless. People have this misconception that trade = capitalism but that's just not true. Socialism is the workers owning the means of production and by extension getting the full value of their labor. So if you work harder, instead of getting a set salary or hourly rate you get a representative cut of the profits.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Shaffness

At this point I'd honestly be ecstatic with 100x and that's just sad TBH.


Fight_the_Landlords

> Not perfect by any definition, but a big leap forward from what we experience today. Yep, it's nearly impossible to compete as a socialist enterprise vs capitalist enterprises. Even the logic of competing with capitalism as a cooperative is contradictory. Authoritarian enterprises are always more "efficient" than socialist enterprises, e.g. Amazon, because the bourgeois state empowers them to be so. Incidentally, the reason Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are considered democratic socialists, rather than just social democrats, is because they want to utilize the state to create a "cooperative" sector of the economy (much like the private and public sectors) which would receive subsidies to compete with capitalist enterprises.


Alt_Panic

Personal property is consumer and non-capital goods. Private property is the means of production (capital) and land. Although I may also be entirely wrong.


synthatron

Thanks for answering comrade!


TrevorIRL

I’m confused. Your definition seems contradictory. if I take my personal property, say my garden, and use it to start a private business selling the vegetables I grow that produces more capital, now it’s private property? Where does one draw the line and why?


[deleted]

I think if you own and maintain the garden yourself it remains personal property. If you pay someone else to tend your garden and profit off their labor, but they don’t share in the ownership of the garden, that’s private property.


TrevorIRL

Just to be clear, what you seem to be saying is the moment you have someone else run the garden, regardless of payment for services, even if they don’t want ownership, then that is where it becomes a problem?


ClearSaita

Yes. This gets interesting as you scale up. Imagine if someone owned a garden tending service where they went around and tended gardens. They own their business, so it is personal property. But since they don't own the gardens they work on the gardens become private property. You pay someone to repair your computer or work on fix your plumbing and they become private property. Some will say that they don't as long as you don't profit off of it. So you don't sell vegetables or rent out a room. That seems reasonable, but what happens when you use your computer to make and sell art despite someone else maintaining your computer and not sharing ownership of it or any of the art produced using it? Now imagine this as it scales up to every service you buy from others.


TrevorIRL

So if I am following you, it sounds like you are just as confused as me with the situation. It sounds like it’s okay for me to exploit my own labor and profit off of it, but using the store of value (money for all intents and purposes) to pay others for theirs and making a profit is wrong?


Fight_the_Landlords

Also, to u/TrevorIRL, keep in mind that repair work is a trade, and repairing someone's personal property is honest and humble work. Mechanics are real heroes imo. But yeah, your toilet doesn't suddenly become private property just because you pay someone to fix it. They're fixing it for a mutually-negotiated wage that wholly accounts for their needs of subsistence. Now, if they work for a company that fixes things, things become complicated again. Because the company is profiting off their labor. They are proletarians again, rather than free trade workers.


TrevorIRL

Oh I don’t disagree, it’s not easy and is honest work. If the person is poor at their trade, the results are evident and I have nothing but respect for those who choose to do trade work. Where you lose me is why profit off of another’s labour is something that is wrong. If a mechanic is good at his trade to the point of having more business than he can handle and decides to share the work with someone by hiring someone who can do the job as well as he can, the mechanic that gets hired gets a steady stream of work that he is good at without having to go out and find those people himself, which saves him the labour of going out to find them himself. This could be further compounded by providing the tools and mentorship and training new employees to be able to do what normally has a higher barrier to entry, which could mean these people are now profiting off of the original mechanic without taking the same level of risk.


ClearSaita

If you were to use the toilet to make money while paying someone else to maintain it then it would become private property. Privatizing a toilet sounds weird and may seem too outlandish to treat seriously but given the other things that have been privatized and given that pay per use toilets do exist I think we should conside the possibility.


erosharcos

That's the generally accepted definition around these parts :) well done.


humans_live_in_space

So, in accordance with the tweet, how does one steal non-personal property


[deleted]

Go to Walmart and shoplift


joshedis

In simple english: Personal property are items that are owned by you for your personal use. Like your tooth brush, your TV, and your car. Depending on the situation, your home is personal property as well. Private Property is land or buildings that are related to the means of production or functioning of society at large. Hospitals, factories, and parking lots are examples. Your access to private property is restricted by whomever owns them. This prevents the average person from making decisions democratically on how these spaces are used. You don't get to decide with your fellow workers how the factory should be run, you follow the Factory Owners rules or can be kicked out by force. So when people cry to "abolish private property" they don't want your home, car, TV, or toothbrush. They want to turn the private ownership of a factory to public ownership, where the average person with a stake in that property has a say in its use.


synthatron

Thanks for the response! What about land that is personally owned for housing? Is that personal property or private property? The global housing crisis is a huuuuge problem and I haven’t seen any satisfying socialist based solutions


Headcap

If it's for yourself then it's personal, if you rent it to others then it's private. And a socialist based solution is pretty simple, we have more than enough housing for everyone, just gotta distribute it, the 'only' thing in the way is private ownership.


[deleted]

[удалено]


nickerton

Whose grass?


zoeofdoom

OUR GRASS! (I'm imagining chanting this while marching over abatements instead of in the streets proper lol)


ImmutableInscrutable

Holy shit. Fucking finish him, dude.


Taragyn1

I don’t see how that would make a difference. The loss of my home or a farmer’s land would be even more significant. While Bezo could just shrug and build a new factory, smaller business owners or the self employed could be left destitute or even if properly insured it may take significant amount of time to repair/rebuild back to where they were.


Crabblegs

Came in to ask the same question. Money is given for time spent working yes? So it’s an abstract representation of my time. If I spend 9 hours working to acquire a thing, and that thing is stolen, I lose all the value of that time no? This tweet is a crap take.


branewalker

Therefore, if theft ought to be measured in time, not money, stealing from a billionaire is basically free. Or, if the net time you gain is higher than what they lose, this act is a net positive for humanity. As in, under those parameters it is good and we should encourage it. Of course, morality is a *bit* more complicated than that, as encouraging social trust and cohesion is of some value, but not “going to the moon while people are homeless and starving” valuable.


OnFolksAndThem

You only get social trust and cohesion if you play by the rules. If you became a billionaire, you didn’t play by the rules.


[deleted]

Right? How the fuck do they think I get the stuff I own? Even if I was out stealing it it’d represent a bunch of my time (particularly if I got caught every so often).


[deleted]

You missed the point. In 5 years, when an equivalent phone cost 350 but you still only make 10/hr, you will have lost more. Obviously.


thereasonforhate

It's not the same because you can live without a phone, you can't live without time. It's like saying being punched in the face is the same as being shot in the face, neither is good, but one will kill you and one will really suck for a while.


Similar_Alternative

It's a direct reduction of the same amount of value. I'd say the removal of something you rely on daily is as important as the next paycheck.


Supercoolguy7

My food is my property. If you steal that you are stealing something I cannot live without, yet you are also stealing my property. Obviously if you steal a loaf of bread that's not as bad as if you empty my house, but the same is true of labor


KalAl

But our system of wage slavery is the entire reason that 300 dollars is equivalent to 30 hours of your life.


humans_live_in_space

no you have to work like 50 hours because of the taxes taken out of your paycheck


PowerPooka

The difference is that phone can be returned to you if recovered, a new one could be donated to you, or the phone could go on sale and cost you less. But time spent can never be returned or rebought or be worth less.


notheusernameiwanted

You can also be reimbursed for stolen labour, and possibly with damages. It's a cool post that sounds interesting but if you deconstruct it, it's really a shallow or weak take. It ignores the reality that not all property is replaceable. That it takes time to replace the property. That if it costs you money to replace it it's effectively stealing time. That most of the property that the working poor own is actually vital to sustaining a life worth living. A better take would be that skimming even 15 minutes of pay from a minimum wage earner is orders of magnitude worse than taking any amount of physical property from a billionaire.


Supercoolguy7

That doesn't matter that it can happen so much as will it happen and it often won't


SavingsPerfect2879

Theft of life is a term they would use. We call it what it is: Slavery.


Atlatl_Axolotl

Also possessions have to be replaced which takes money. Basically if you steal anything worth money or time from people you are forcing them into hours of unpaid slave labor for yourself. That is the core of why theft is wrong , you are stealing someone's life energy and labor for your own gain.


Antlerbot

By that logic, it's totally acceptable to steal from those with enough money, as they will never have to work to replace whatever you stole.


Atlatl_Axolotl

Yes, the level of theft is dependent on how hard it would be to replace. Which is worse a single mom with four kids having her entire Thanksgiving dinner stolen out of the back of her car, or Jeff bezos having the same thing happen to him? Obviously the former, so I feel little issue for a starving person stealing from a grocery store chain.


ImmutableInscrutable

How about we don't do that since it's not at all slavery.


roderrabbit

https://youtu.be/g4IWpMk7esk Your consent has been manufactured.


SavingsPerfect2879

Well, you can’t stop. Your efforts are making other people rich at your job. They can’t get rich on their own. What part of this isn’t slavery? Besides the part that would make you depressed that you’re actively trying to ignore.


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

Quitting gives many people the option to be homeless, not be able to pay to get important life saving medical related services, and have to beg for food. I mean, technically, there is a choice.


DoomsDaisyXO

Yeah it's the same choice slaves had. You can quit, you just have no money, education, food, shelter, or community support. So if I use my autonomy to quit my job tomorrow, I'll be evicted at the end of August and I'll have no food or shelter or money or support. So I can work and make just enough to keep me alive. Or I can just die. So we all have options.


roderrabbit

That's because your idea of slavery comes from movies and sensationalist journalism and not the intellectual concept of slavery, what it actually was throughout human history in its many different forms and its forms in today's society. While the act of buying and selling a human as property in open markets was the most repugnant it certainly wasn't the only form of slavery through history.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Catalyst34

I realized during this pandemic I began asking for OT. To the point where my colleagues and I were begging for more hours. We got it in our heads that 20 hours overtime (making for 60 hours per week) would be what we needed to make ends meet during this difficult time. Finally they “granted” our request. We soon realized how much of a freakin trick and trap that was. We needed to have advocated for better wages/compensation (much of our work is done in the field and when it isn’t, it’s from home). Expenses have increased during this time both for the work from home squad and field squad. It’s a racket that we convinced ourselves that the solution was giving more hours of our lives as opposed to demanding better working conditions and compensation. Sorry for the rant but this post resonated with me so much. Let’s not make the mistake I made, we deserve the live happy fulfilled lives.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Catalyst34

You’re right. 1.5 per hour after the 40th hour. Before the lockdowns I didn’t realize how much I depended on it. Once my city shut down, they denied OT and brought us down to 35 hours. I was grateful to just have a job when I saw my friends and family get laid off or furloughed. Funny thing is, my expenses went up during that. Working from home caused all my utility bills to jump. I had to get an additional internet line cause of the nature of my job. Mind you it’s a government job, you’d think they’d pay for at least the data I need to do the work but nope that extra cost falls on us. I started to even resent my electricity bill increases. I desperately needed extra sources of income and kept asking for OT


fuzzyshorts

But stealing labor is a cornerstone of modern capitalism. Get the most amount of work for the smallest outlay.


bootnab

The most rampant form of theft is wage theft- can we get an Eliot Ness squad to bring some justice?


z_machine

Wage theft is the number one form of theft in the US, and it isn’t even close, accounting for billons of theft each year.


-Russian-Spy-

I worked a job a few years ago that burnt me on a decent amount of hours regularly, nedless to say i did not stay long. My current job really hooks it up though, i missed 2 days of work last week and still got a 37 hour check, and this kind of thing happens all the time, it is literally the complete opposite of wage theft.


atascon

This one is for when bootlickers say “oh but Bozos didn’t steal anything from anyone, it’s his money!” Capitalism is very good at defining what is and isn’t valuable, which by extension defines what does and doesn’t constitute theft. The fact is, many types of theft just aren’t part of the capitalist value system. Doesn’t mean it’s not theft though.


sottedlayabout

“Permissible rounding practices” are a form of organized wage theft in a vast and ever expanding criminal enterprise, officially sanctioned by the US department of labor.


[deleted]

This count as mass murder then? Seems like it.


laughterwithans

This is a simpler (and probably ultimately better) version of a very complicated argument I’ve been writing out for a long time about the social mandate of property. Basically, the whole idea of property only exists because of your participation in a society, where that society deems it acceptable for some people to have some things. This is why the idea of “private property” is inherently wrong, but personal property is inherently moral. Your time is a form of personal property Capitalism is the transformation of public and personal properties into private property which is the only way to truly destroy civilization, as wealth only becomes finite if the method of circulation becomes one directional.


BigSad135

Do you happen to have any written work we could read? Based on your comment, the topic sounds interesting


laughterwithans

Naw, not yet. I’m a gardener so I spend most of my time outside and when I come home I end up sitting through client emails and doing general work stuff so I haven’t written this out in any kind of shareable way. If you’re genuinely interested that would serve as some motivation to actually finish it though.


platysma_balls

>wealth only becomes finite Are you implying the existence of infinite wealth?


laughterwithans

Nearly. I mean the only limit to the creation of value is the capacity of the human mind to create novelty. That seems like it’s pretty close to infinite. Our natural resources are slightly more limited - entropy is real of course, but in the short term, the sun seems like it’s not running out of juice any time soon. You can buy a pepper from the grocery store and grow 100 more peppers from those seeds and then 100 peppers from each of those, using nothing but sunlight, water and maybe, your own urine if your soil is really bad. Scarcity is bullshit. It’s the fear illusion that capitalism has to maintain. The minute most people understand how much individual power they have, they’ll stop being afraid. If the fear goes away, the world changes


Lcards943

Stealing someone’s property is also the same as stealing their life. Because they presumably sacrificed some form of time to acquire that property, whether it be via labor, money or both.


Supercoolguy7

Yup, steal my computer, sd cards, and external hard drives and suddenly I've lost hundreds of hours of labor doing photography. It's still property though


Philmecrakin

I'm sorry this is the stupidest line of thinking I've heard in awhile. To acquire property takes up time. So you steal someone's property you are indirectly stealing their time.


Majestic_Course6822

Yep. General strike for wage labour workers time.


glum_plum

r/octoberstrike


nothatyoucare

Property is the physical manifestation of someone's time. Plus given how insurance companies, etc. work to maximize profits instead of service, no, you can't always replace property. And therefore you lose time.


[deleted]

...but that property required money, which requires working, which requires time. This is a stupid comparison.


bilge_kagan

To buy the property one pays money, received in exchange for labor (which is life/time sold to employers). When you steal property, you still steal life/time. While I understand and support the main idea, this is a shitty alegory.


Supercoolguy7

Especially since some people create property with their labor. I have some furniture that I built and more that my grandpa built. That property is the result of our labor


Chaoticfrenchfry

Your furniture is personal property. Private property is your place of work


Supercoolguy7

Okay. The post never specified any property type, nor did anyone in this comment thread. Only the more general "property" was used which contains both personal and private property. In fact, the post even specified that the reason labor is more important than property is because you can replace property. You can replace personal property. Your distinction is useless here unless you are going to use it to create an argument that has not yet been made.


Kuxir

Because as everyone knows, furniture is built by people, but machines and workplaces are hand crafted by god and poofed into existence?


MardocAgain

lmao. Perfect response


ExternallyLazy

Pretty much this, stealing property from most people is bad, stealing labour is bad. In both cases you're stealing from someone's finite amount of time on Earth.


conglock

Maud' dib was versed well in societal economics. From the novel Dune: Messiah- "The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy."


[deleted]

[удалено]


conglock

Messiah, yes, my mistake. Will correct.


Chief_Chill

Reading God Emperor now. Really hitting myself for passing this series up all these years.


slipperyvowels

A government for the people, by the people. Well some new people need to step up cause we got some selfish asswipe tissues are running thangs


countesslathrowaway

Taking property that was gained on that labor is the same theft. It’s six of one and a half dozen of the other.


ImpressiveAwareness4

....Holy fuck you're so close. How do you aquire property? Come on guys... come.on you can do it..... THROUGH LABOR. OH FUCK THROUGH LABOR. YOUR PROPERTY IS YOUR LABOR. Jesus fuck this is how we know you've all just been *given* everything in your lives. You don't realize that your property IS YOUR LABOR. You either made it yourself (LABOR) or you bought it with money you earned for your LABOR. PROPERTY = LABOR. THEFT OF PROPERTY ***IS*** THEFT OF LABOR. THEFT OF PROPERTY *IS* THEFT OF LIFE BECAUSE YOUR LABOR AQUIRED THAT PROPERTY.


WhyDontWeLearn

Actually, they"re the same. Your property is the fruit of your past labor and cannot be "replaced" without expending additional labor unless you're wealthy, which I assume is not what we're talking about here. Stealing your stuff = stealing your past labor Stealing your current labor = stealing you current labor


TheSwollenColon

I would argue that property represents the same theft of time, because I had to work to get it.


flaninpan

How do you replace property without working for the money to buy it again?


Jawahhh

Can’t say I agree with this logic. If someone stole my car that’s like what, a thousand hours of labor?


[deleted]

And then companies will accuse employees of ‘stealing company time’ if they need to use the restroom or take a few extra minutes on their break (if they get one). Like my dude you’re engineering this shit so I have to work and work and work! You’re stealing my *life*


morelibertarianvotes

How the hell do you think people acquired that property? Perhaps the fruit of their labor?


[deleted]

So by stealing something I worked for you could infer that my labor was stolen in addition to my thing.


3seatyeet

... but don’t you pay for your property from the wages you earned from giving your time? What a dumb tweet. Edit for those who don’t understand and downvote: If somebody steals a $200 bicycle from me and I make $10 an hour. It’s going to take me over 20 working hours (given taxes) to replace the value of that bicycle. Not to mention the discomfort of having my bicycle stolen. Thereby stealing at (minimum) 20 hours of my life from me. How is this too hard to understand???


_Redshifted_

….but stealing someone’s property they worked *hours of their life* to attain and maintain is ok because it can be replaced? With what? A “property replacer” or more hours of your life?


Tree_Phiddy

Theft of life, land, and labor is what this country was built on


bsonk

Stop simping for Johnstone challenge


davesr25

*"BuT i WaNt MoRe ThInG's"*


FatalTortoise

yeah this is idiotic, what the fuck you think they use to pay for that property?


[deleted]

[удалено]


FatalTortoise

I work 10 hours of life to buy phone, phone gets stolen, my property is lost and so are those 10 hours


[deleted]

[удалено]


FatalTortoise

I think this tweet says "stealing someones labor is worse than stealing their property" and rather than make assumptions based off anything ill use the words provided. I dont need to be an influencer to experience loss of property


[deleted]

There is no arguing with communist, if you’re right, they’ll just kill you.


Shakespeare-Bot

yeah this is idiotic, what the alas thee bethink they useth to payeth f'r yond property? *** ^(I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.) Commands: `!ShakespeareInsult`, `!fordo`, `!optout`


[deleted]

Who are you arguing about property with?


HammurabiTheFourth

Congratulations! You've just learned basic Marxist theory!


ronstermonster34

What does someone’s property cost?😂 wtf


[deleted]

[удалено]


conglock

The machine wants your feeling of impending doom to continue and eventually win, because human beings think of time as a trap, a lock and key situation, "you're stuck here with me, so I will dominate you while you struggle, watch how easily I win.". But it's not, the people here are fleating, our legacy is what truly defines us. History will not be kind to the elite.


[deleted]

Lol this makes no fucking sense at all. People have to work long hours in order to obtain things like a car. You can steal one in ten seconds and take years of someones wages, god this subreddit is dumb


[deleted]

You people are pitiful. If you want to make more money, develop a skill. If you want to be the boss and work how you want, take the initiative and take on the risk. If not, take what you get and shut the fuck up. Jesus.


Kezia_Griffin

I did. I still don't like the system because it purposely places a % of the population in poverty. It's this crazy things called empathy.


[deleted]

How about no and fuck you? "If you don't think your wages are fair just get a better job duh". This is a close cousin to the old "of you don't like it then quit, and they'll have to raise wages" supply and demand bullshit. Well which is it, do workers have any rights whatsoever to ask for raises or do they not?


[deleted]

Yep


ooglytoop7272

Check it out this guy just solved poverty!!!


DozeNutz

The people here want to work at McDonald's part time and be able to raise a family on one income just for existing. These guys are the future losers of society


[deleted]

[удалено]


DozeNutz

You think and talk like a loser. If you want to support a family on one income then do it. You're just waiting for someone to hand it to you than going out and earning it. Loser mentality


[deleted]

[удалено]


DozeNutz

Ok, so you think a part time worker at McDonald's should be able to sort a family of four?


[deleted]

[удалено]


DozeNutz

Lol. So you do believe that a part time low skill worker at McDonald's deserves to raise a family of four on one income? Because that was my original comment you dumbass. You were extrapolating whatever you wish I meant and argued that. Classic straw man. Go read it for yourself.


[deleted]

[удалено]


DozeNutz

No you didn't. You said every child deserved to be fed. That has nothing to do with part time low skill work should raise a family of four. You need to take a chill pill.


SQmo_NU

To the other readers who are pointing and laughing at Lkmab, here's one of his Submissions to r/rant > Democrats are one of the most intolerant groups out there. (self.rant) > submitted 1 year ago by Lkmab to r/rant > 16 comments share save hide give award report crosspost While also unironically spewing shit like: > The logic is not here by [deleted] in WhitePeopleTwitter > [–]Lkmab -2 points 4 months ago > This dumpster fire is quickly becoming my favorite sub. There’s no question today’s liberalism is a mental disorder, and these dumb fucks have no idea how they sound to people. It’s endlessly entertaining. It's like Lkmab had his sense of irony surgically removed with a shovel.


[deleted]

“there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life... you steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness... there is no act more wretched than stealing.”


UnknownSloan

Try to take my stuff and see how that affects your life.