"They Pretend to Pay Us and We Pretend to Work"
Posted by Mad_Prog_1@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 101 comments
That was a phrase that, I believe, originated in the USSR. There was no incentive to really do more than the absolute bare minimum. Unemployment was illegal, so getting fired was essentially out of the question short of overt sabotage. At the same time getting a promotion was almost impossible unless you were really connected in the party.
Of course, in America, we would never go down such a socialist route. After all, you would be richly rewarded the harder you work, while the lazy and incompetent would suffer the wrath of our free market God.
But the funny thing is, I think we are a lot more closer to the USSR than we think, and it's going to slowly kill our companies, innovation, and society. Let me explain...
When it comes to rewards at work, there is little distinction between a high performer, an average performer, and even a fairly low performer, perhaps a percent of overall salary. Maybe a percent of salary. And it gets even worse if the high performer has to spend a lot more time at work than the other two. If a high performer in a critical field is making significantly less than a low performer who spends a few hours a week doing gig work as opposed to spending it in the office, then what incentive is there for the high performer?
At the same time, there is basically no way (beyond truly screwing up or being incredible) to prevent being laid off. Interest rates, oil prices, politics (both office and international), stock prices, and labor disputes will have a far larger impact on your employment than your tenure, education, or work ethic. For example, Boeing just announced they are going to fire 10% of the company, roughly 17,000 people. Do you really think Boeing is going to actually only fire the bottom 10% of the company exactly? Or do you think they are going to cut in the areas that save the most money, which will inevitably involve the better, but more expensive workers? Not to mention, they cannot legally terminate any of the striking union workers, even if they are among the bottom 10%.
My question is, how long until this starts to really hurt companies?
Savings_Ad6539@reddit
this is already happening at my company and a lot of others. the fact that the annual review and merit increase/bonus process is set up to pay out as little as possible and force all high performers to get subjective “average” ratings means people just don’t care and do the minimum. add to that cutting benefits, stagnant wages, low caps on promotional increases, and draconian rto policies and it’s not hard to see why high performers are fleeing to other companies.
morale is in the toilet but it’s as if senior leadership wants it that way - every single thing they roll out is done in the most tone-deaf, disrespectful way possible, they don’t even bother trying to sugar coat or use change mgmt techniques.
maybe it’s a bloodless layoff, but the problem with bloodless layoffs is that they drive out valuable employees and everyone left gets completely overworked and burned out.
it’s doctorow’s enshittification but applied to employment.
Savings_Ad6539@reddit
ludicity’s entire blog is amazing (also ed zitron’s as well) if you want great reading on corporate and especially tech culture but this in particular is good - https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/your-organization-probably-doesnt-want-to-improve-things/
i’m currently in business school and it’s a lot easier to survive with my sanity intact if i just acknowledge that business in america was never about innovation.
sodook@reddit
Yeah, youre ask8ng the people who benefit from the exploitation to stop it. And not like mustache twirling evil, just banal self unterest at evry step of the ladder. The opposite of the "bigger the pie, the bigger everyones slice" mind set they like to tout to justify the ruthless profit seeking.
Savings_Ad6539@reddit
i’m not asking for anything. i just think it’s interesting/sad to watch people run decent businesses and ideas into the ground over personal self-interest. like in no way does it make good business sense for boeing to trash its credibility the way it has, and yet. but we’re doing the same thing to everything else, including the planet.
relevantusername2020@reddit
ironically enough if the US actually had a "meritocracy" things would be much better
it almost seems like its the exact opposite a lot of places, where the best and brightest either have to "bend the knee" and go along with stupidity or they are forced out, which effectively means the best and brightest are forced into being failures because they refuse to conform
Maxfunky@reddit
To me there's no difference between this sentence and " if America had a magical wishing unicorn that would Grant everyone wishes, things would be a lot better".
Both are equally plausible scenarios.
AgitatorsAnonymous@reddit
Zitron does a podcast for Cool Zone Media, the podcast publisher that Robert Evans started for Behind the Bastards and their other ventures.
It's called Better Offline and is all about tech business culture and the enshitification of the net.
Wonderful podcast.
Savings_Ad6539@reddit
yes! love it.
Busy_Ordinary8456@reddit
My company announced a major "cost containment" measure. Hiring is frozen, no travel, no purchases, no incentive bonuses.
Everybody was confused, because we thought we were already doing that, and have been since 2022.
All IT is moving not just to India (that has been happening for 20 years), it is being pushed to expensive contracting companies. The Harvard MBAs have somehow convinced the clueless C levels that it is more financially sound to hand a couple hundred million to a contract firm and get no value than it is to spend half that on internal resources who can be held accountable.
As far as I can tell, the real reason we do this is the kickbacks the senior directors and VPs get.
The board of directors only seems interested in selling as many parts of the company as possible.
For fucks sake we are hiring executives from Boeing!
BloodWorried7446@reddit
At a lot of universities this is the case. contracted out “support” with no value. The pandemic and paperless office has allowed them to convert WFH to contracted for a lot of support of work items. low level questions are being answered with AI tickets and only escalated to the supervisor if there are still outstanding items.
Either_Home_3856@reddit
i love to see your work d fall apart
SDVD-SouthCentralPA@reddit
They want a job because they have an internet bill. Ask them to move object A from point B to point C? Nah, I didn’t sign up for that.
IPA-Lagomorph@reddit
Exactly. Avoiding layoffs while disincentivizing good work is actually worse, because the best people are more likely to leave.
yesiamheman@reddit
The mass resignation is over and theyre rubbing it in our faces.
BloodWorried7446@reddit
they say “just be thankful you have a job still”.
rainydays052020@reddit
Same with my company but would like to add that high performers are always held back by their apathetic coworkers. I work on projects and so much of my own performance is limited by the incompetence of those around me so why should anyone try harder? I want to do better but it doesn’t seem like others do and I don’t blame them at all- corporate workplaces are broken.
TheCrazedTank@reddit
Same thing is happening where I work, problem is there’s a lot of new startups opening around us.
So, people are either jumping ship in droves or accepting lower positions where they just need to do the bare minimum (while probably waiting for construction on a few of those startups to finish)
At the start of the year, at the first town hall, management said something about “assessing how many people are needed to run things” after pushing to bring on and hire as many people as possible last year.
They stressed that no one was getting fired, but I think it was only me and one other guy who picked up on what’s happening.
They’re squeezing each department to see what they can get out of us and who will drop. Once they get to whatever numbers they’re looking for they’ll see if they need to hire replacements.
It’s fucking sick.
musicispurpose32@reddit
When will everyone realize these companies give 0 fucks about you? You exist there to make someone more money and you get some chump change for it. If all of your meager earnings start digging into the profit too much then they wipe you up and wash it away without thinking like spillef water. Happened to my sister. Works for 5 years for a company doing loads of others peoples work, gets promoted, then let go randomly because "your work habits are not up to par" like wtf you just promoted me for being a great worker and now I done? You didn't inform me ONCE that I wasn't being adequate? It was straight bullshit. Gone just like that. Remember, you don't matter to the company.
maxative@reddit
My old company gleefully announced that they were being inundated every day with VERY impressive CV’s. This was after telling us the business wasn’t doing great and to forget any pay rises. Five people left the following month and they all had shocked Pikachu faces.
Maxfunky@reddit
If there's only a 1% gap like you say, they would fire the worst workers. But in this case they're gonna fire people who have no work to do because half of their plants are on strike. The people who clean those plants who aren't a part of the union. Some middle management. Some support staff who work back in the office.
I_Smell_A_Rat666@reddit
There’s a book about this topic I am reading called The People’s Republic of Walmart. Every major company I’ve read about is going down the way of Walmart and Amazon. These companies are doing the USSR command economy better than the USSR did due to advances in AI and data science. Unfortunately, that comes at a price of the employees’ health and sanity.
I’m personally trying to figure out how to take advantage of the efficiencies these new technologies provide and reward the worker for them, not the capitalist. Wish me luck or DM me if you have any advice/experience with this topic.
breaducate@reddit
The employees health and sanity is suffering under capitalism, not a command economy.
You don't hate mondays, you hate capitalism.
I_Smell_A_Rat666@reddit
I’m pretty sure I hate Mondays, capitalism, and Walmart’s/Amazon’s exploitation of disenfranchised workers.
jensao@reddit
weirdly enough, I feel the chinese, south east asian, model is the closest thing that could actually rearrange society in a way that we can deal with global warming. Vietnam shut down the entire country when Covid started, the chinese created a whole electric vehicle sector overnight. They also managed to control the growth of their entire population with the single child policy. These are the sort of changes our society will demand in the future, and our system is way too individualistic and protective of lobbies for that to happen.
fratticus_maximus@reddit
I fully think an one child policy like that of China's implemented worldwide could be the best way of preserving most of our individual liberties while still slowly degrowthing to bring our consumption down to a sustainable rate. If the fertility rate is consistently lower than replacement rate, the population will shrink.....bloodlessly, not as likely by famine or disease, etc. It'll take time but it would trend the right way as opposed to our current trend of the wrong way.
Alas, even China did away with it because of the ECONOOOOOMMMMYYYY.
despot_zemu@reddit
This wasn’t accomplished without pain though. I don’t want to live through an equivalent of China’s Cultural Revolution or Vietnam’s decades of war for survival.
They have that kind of control because of the horrors they survived.
AgitatorsAnonymous@reddit
You are going to live through the equivalent anyways. You think the disagreement between the American religious fascist movement and the American left is going to end without a full blown Civil war? That isn't the path we are currently walking down.
I have what I presume to be the same group of Christian nationalist/proud boy fucks attempt to burn my property down at least 4 times a month. If they ever successfully set fire to our pride flags or light the bush under them on fire my whole ass house will burn.
The cops have caught them once and they were released because one of them is the son of a local politician and one is the youth pastor at a nearby church.
They've got my work timing down so they only visit while I am working, it's unfortunate really, but also the cost of being a vocal leftist and Feminist in a state like Iowa.
despot_zemu@reddit
While I don’t advocate violence for community standards reasons, I presume you have armed yourself appropriately?
Nicksolarfall@reddit
Sometimes pain is the only way forward. Especially in the current world.
Zestyclose-Ad-9420@reddit
its kinda sad though. its throwing democracy into the fire to allow capitalism to be subservient to national security. democracy is easier to get rid of than get back.
jensao@reddit
I get what you mean, and I dont think we need to get rid of democracy, but we should learn from the chinese experience to see how the voting/representative system can be protected from lobbyists. I believe that China is an example but I dont think they are The example to be followed. Anyways, I feel that revolutions, and any big political transformation, comes from a mentality of refusing to keep on doing what we're doing right now, without being completely sure of what we're going to change for the future. ]
The cool thing about China is that they really found a place combining two systems the Western world still believes are impossible to be combined. We're still stuck in the Capitalism or Communism, they are not.
Zestyclose-Ad-9420@reddit
the capitalism/communism has too much baggage to unpack in a satisfying way in a short casual reddit post... but, it is a false e
TrickyProfit1369@reddit
Fully agree. They can also quickly mobilize healthcare workers if shit hits the fan and build hospitals very quickly. Their system will be more mobile during collapse scenarios.
itstooblue@reddit
They built hospitals in wuhan in almost no time at all because they have factories that produce general parts for structures. They’re playing real life Lego and are now just building stuff with zero people at all sometimes, like the road they just showed off.
Agitated-Support-447@reddit
This is what capitalism does. You are describing capitalism. Stop blaming another country or system or time. Capitalism puts people in these situations of not being able to afford to live and then making it illegal to survive outside the ways that require regular income.
Fickle_Stills@reddit
I've recently read a bit about the famines in the Ukraine (holodomor) and China (great leap forward). One thing I noticed particularly about the Chinese famine is how inflexible Communism was in being able to solve an agriculture crisis. The famine was ended by reintroducing capitalism, essentially, on a small scale.
Small scale being the key term there. I fear that our giant "capitalist" monocrops have a lot of the same problems that Communist agriculture had. I'm not really educated enough on it to put out a super cogent argument on it but it was definitely a spooky feeling I got while reading the Hungry Ghosts book.
gargravarr2112@reddit
When the reward for great work is more work, while the reward for great management is a yacht with its own zip code, I think I'm starting to understand why nobody is 'invested in the company' any more...
apwiseman@reddit
Yup an article that I read put it best. "What if the reward for winning the cake-eating contest is more cake?" Nobody wants more cake, they want more pay.
Also, I think the divide with boomer upper management and executives and Gen-Z is ever-widening. Young people don't want to sacrifice for the company...working in circles with old people that communicate poorly. I've done so many marketing campaigns and website designs only to have the boss pull a 180 because he/she finally thinks of a great idea.
Or these older managers don't train us and then get made when we do things wrong or inefficiently. Then they wonder why younger people leave on the dot at 5 or 6pm. They aren't learning anything there and have to rush home to take some shitty online course on how to do their day job correctly. Or rush to their side-hustle cuz the first job doesn't pay enough.
Even if there was alot to do to finish the project on time, as the boss, "Why would you choose to hold a meeting 1hr before the end of the day?" So many things wrong with workplaces nowadays.
momoajay@reddit
The US is such capitalist hellhole. I am happy to be not an American. I think my home country has it right we are lazy and still getting paid with with good quality of life. Aus, NZ, Europe beats the US. Hell even Saudi Arabia lets you slack off (provided you are citizen and not slave worker)
Grand-Page-1180@reddit
I wish I had been born into a different culture or country than the U.S. We don't know how to live yet (if we ever do.) But that's what happens when you hand the keys to the largest economy on Earth to a nation less than three centuries old.
DigitalHuk@reddit
Not trying to be a jerk but all the problems you are describing is just capitalism being capitalism. We are in no way close to being like the USSR. The bullshit jobs, the disconnect between performance and compensation, all of this comes back to capitalist pursuit of profits.
Boeing is laying off 10% and it won't be the bottom 10% performers because it will safe them more money to just shutter specific locations even if it means firing good or loyal workers. Just like they cut corners on safety and murdered a whistler blower to increase profits.
CyberDumb@reddit
I would argue that we resemble the last days of USSR in a sense that satisfying the system is totally disconnected with reality. Preserving bigger profits is more difficult than the past in the real economy. More competition and innovation is more expensive which squeeze profits have resulted to the present. Now people prefer to gamble with assets, business stocks and complex bank products. All these of course have implications to the real life(expensive houses, layoffs/ outsourcing for short term profits)etc. Collapse or world war is already happening.
Perfect-Ask-6596@reddit
Money is not the only incentive that induces labor to produce surplus value but it is a major one in our current economic system. A system in which worker-owners made decisions about what to do with surplus value would probably solve any incentive issues that might exist.
Dazzling_Razzmatazz7@reddit
Lmaooo ok cause lazy people will magically disappear in communism. Ultimately it’s human nature that someone’s gonna be working harder than someone else
Perfect-Ask-6596@reddit
What you said does not conflict with what I said. Lazy people will exist under communism. You won't be able to use the threat of homelessness or starvation to try to remedy that like you can understand capitalism. However, under communism there are no shareholders that need extra profits year over year. Combine that with our current levels of productivity with the machines we have and I think you can imagine that we are currently producing way more than what needs to be produced. So if productivity declined slightly under communism it wouldn't matter because less productivity is needed since the capital class would not be siphoning off the majority of the surplus value of labor any more
Backlotter@reddit
Indeed, we are producing much more than we can possibly consume under capitalism. In fact, we are producing ourselves to death with climate change, resource extraction, overfishing, overtaxing the land, microplastic contamination, I could go on and on.
And the worst part? Despite all this production, we still have people living on the streets and children going to bed hungry.
Literally, what's the point? Capitalism is a death cult.
CyberDumb@reddit
This was always the case with capitalism. Since the capitalists pay us X for products that are sold X+Y where Y profit and taxes, the people have only X to give so a percentage of the goods produced can't be sold. This creates the cyclical crises of production.
Zestyclose-Ad-9420@reddit
howd you find this subreddit?
boognish30@reddit
Lmaooo ok I deep throat propaganda and lick boots, let me weigh in an adult conversation.
rainydays052020@reddit
So many desk jobs today don’t generate 40 hours of actual work but you’re required to be available or sit there, waiting. more flexibility would definitely make for happier employees but it’ll never happen.
Perfect-Ask-6596@reddit
Yea, Bullshit Jobs is a great read
FluffyLobster2385@reddit
Surplus values is such a funny word. It's kind of a euphemism really. People forget that labor is a product that is bought and sold on the market and employers do everything possible to buy your labor for as cheap as possible including things like importing workers from other countries here on visa or just exporting jobs overseas.
Perfect-Ask-6596@reddit
It's a euphemism for stolen labor
IndomitablePotato@reddit
I've been in a big corp (~80k employees) for many years. Ridiculous salary increase team budgets, bell curve performance reviews, HR constantly trying to scam every penny out of employees... I moved to a startup where their HR culture revolves about caring for employees, and I'm not coming back to big corp. It's not perfect, sometimes bumpy but I recommend it every single time. Find a company where you're not just a cog in the machine.
flavius_lacivious@reddit
I think what is influencing this more than anything is the view of labor as purely an expense and a liability toward growth.
Business used to view labor as part of the profit equation of revenue less labor cost equaled profit per worker. Oversimplified, I know.
If you were a high productivity worker, the company kept you because you earned them the most profit and kept ancillary costs down. High performers retained knowledge, could train new workers, set the tone for the culture and were viewed as an asset. Layoffs were targeted to the “useless eaters” of the organization.
Now businesses don’t view the primary objective of earning profit as providing a service or producing a good at a lower cost. Profit itself is the product and the investors are the customer. Everything else is merely a problem.
This is why companies make stupid short-term decisions because the value is NOT in the health and longevity of the company, but in short-term quarterly earnings. Nothing else matters.
So this new approach means that everyone can be sacrificed for the benefit of the shareholders. This is because those at the top are compensated mostly in stocks and bonuses tied to earnings.
In short, if laying off the entire sales team, engineering staff, and support personnel will post record profits in the second quarter (when bonuses are calculated), companies will gleefully fire 20,000 employees. They don’t care if those workers are keeping the company alive for the next year because that is not the focus. Next year’s performance has no value.
tbombs23@reddit
But what about the shareholders!?!?
takesthebiscuit@reddit
When inflation was at 10% and my pay went up by 2.5% i simply cut back my working hours
Since I wfh no one noticed
Before I was 8-5 with an hour lunch.
Now I’m 8-4 with an hour (+ish!) lunch
I feel that’s fair enough
renter-pond@reddit
No pay raises at my company this year. So I started working on my side project the last hour of my work day. Feels good to take my time back.
Snl1738@reddit
Similar thing with me. No point in putting in extra time when I'm already making below average salary at my job. Why bother
mvort@reddit
My favorite phrase as of late, "Act your wage"
BeardedGlass@reddit
Here in Japan, there's a trend of working "sho-ene".
"Sho-ene" (省エネ) originally means saving energy, like electricity, but people are now using it to describe doing the bare minimum at work. I guess it's the same as "quiet quitting," where people stick to just their job duties without going above and beyond.
RoosterCogburnz@reddit
I was helping manage a sales team with another person. We sat down with our director, and he told us he was capped at a 2.5% raise. He then asked us if anyone deserved more of a raise. He could do that, but at the expense of another person's raise. A 2.5% raise is already worthless, and the team is tight, and they talk. Undoubtedly, they would figure it out. I fought to get everyone the same raise since we are a team with one goal. I changed positions in the company shortly after and got out of mgmt. I took a pay cut of 2% this year, but have a less stressful job, and my hours are not as demanding. Corporate culture sucks.
Fit-War-1561@reddit
My brother in Curtis look up Hypernormilisation
Taqueria_Style@reddit
Oh no not the companies.
Anyways.
I'm a lot more concerned with what happens to those Boeing workers, and similar. The companies can ram it right up their ass.
Turbohair@reddit
There have to be shared and negotiated incentives for communities/social organizations to thrive.
What we have now is expropriation. A small cadre of people have access to the full extent of human capabilities...
Everyone else is treated as a resource.
DonBoy30@reddit
The last corporate job I had, everyone above me and below me only put in the exact effort that kept the guy above him off his back. There were no bonuses, there were no raises based on performance reviews, and no stock shares. You got raises on a step plan, and then you are capped until they do yearly COL adjustments or you get promoted to the next level.
It was the most disorganized company I’ve ever worked for and they were worth billions. It was a company with a thick book on policy and procedures, but weirdly there were very little or no policies about just not working. It was also a very cold and unforgiving company if by chance you did break a policy that was enforced for whatever reason. So, quite literally, by simply not working, you can never get fired, because you have to actually work hard to accidentally break one of their million safety policies.
Corporate America is an absolute joke
VendettaKarma@reddit
lol that’s my team
poisonivy47@reddit
The not-so-secret secret of work in the US is that your only reward for being competent and working hard is... more work.
WeaknessNo4195@reddit
I have experienced this at 2 corporate jobs, there is a party and if you are not in it you won’t be promoted. So all of us that aren’t party affiliated do our work and the party members work, the hard part is not getting salty.
lowrads@reddit
High performers tend to be more subject to vocational awe, and that just weakens their bargaining position.
Usr_name-checks-out@reddit
You have partially described the hypothesis presented by Adam Curtis in his documentary **hypernormalization which analyzes the disconnect from reality and the fake world in the late stages of the USSR, with the current societal adoption of a fake reality again in response to the real world’s growing complexity.
It’s on YouTube. He has been making incredible documentary’s for decades, and they are well worth watching. Especially the four part Century of Self in my opinion.
kevinonrddt@reddit
The newest tv show of his can't be accessed in US. It seems to just for UK. Is there a way now?
skyshock21@reddit
Karl Marx theorized that capitalism will always inevitably give rise to socialism. In his theory of historical materialism, Marx argued that the contradictions within capitalist systems—particularly the exploitation of workers—would eventually lead to class struggle, resulting in a revolutionary shift toward socialism.
We’re of course seeing the early signs of this shift in the U.S. today.
kevinonrddt@reddit
The path might be clear. Who are those to blame during and at the end of the transformation? A worker who wants to be a capitalist, a capitalist, or no one? An existing capitalist just needs to keep the system lubed and running and gain the benefit. Then, blame will go to the workers that have the aspiration of capitalists.
humansomeone@reddit
We have already seen the impact of boeings greed. Susicide olanes because they outsourced so much of the part and software building. Doors opening, etc.
Has it hurt their bottom line? I'm not sure, but they are still around.
Regulation and welfare state are weaking. Is it enough to generate revolution? I'm not sure we are there yet, but the oroborus is slowly starting to eat itself.
Busy_Ordinary8456@reddit
Boeing outsourced their core competency. I work for a large company in the same industry, and they are doing this same thing.
We, like Boeing, are too big to fail and they know it.
AgitatorsAnonymous@reddit
US travel business travel and the DoD are both dependent on you guys, so yeah. You'll get bailed out even if your planes are falling out of the sky.
too_small_to_reach@reddit
The golden parachute
HCPmovetocountry@reddit
I think they're in trouble.
https://www.aol.com/finance/boeing-cut-10-workforce-halt-012645370.html
They would rather pay hundreds of millions in fines to protect negligent executives than pay their employees.
https://simpleflying.com/737-max-victims-families-object-boeing-doj-plea-agreement/
MrSnitter@reddit
Has there every been a general strike in the USA?
NyriasNeo@reddit
"When it comes to rewards at work, there is little distinction between a high performer, an average performer, and even a fairly low performer, perhaps a percent of overall salary."
How do you draw this conclusion? When I was in high tech R&D, you get stock options depending on your job performances. Sales people received commissions and bonus dependent on hitting quotas (i have seen data of that). Now I am in academia. Your research productive is measured by publications and merit pay increase depends on that. In fact, famous established professors in top schools are paid more than those in teaching schools.
The lists goes on and on. Sure, not all companies do the rewarding right, but there are plenty of evidence that not all performers are paid the same.
The only exception is probably low skilled jobs.
AgitatorsAnonymous@reddit
You are talking about the exceptions to the rule, that got the right job at the right time, with the right company and the right skill set. It doesn't describe the experience of 90% of American workers.
archons_reptile@reddit
Capitalism and the protestant work ethics - max Weber
itstooblue@reddit
American money is fake and only continues to exist because of the military forcing the world to accept it as the standard.
Behind money should be real material product but America turned that into a game of casino with the stock market and printing themselves into like 30T in debt.
Eventually no one is going to want what the Americans are selling.
The USSR was different, they used labour to turn raw materials into useful product which is much better than the service industry of America.
Remember, the one true struggle from the beginning of mankind has always been Human labour.
We’ve killed our planet not because it was the price of industrialized civilization but because people had stuff to sell you.
A lot of American work is fabricated. Just inefficient systems that waste people’s time that could be better spent at home. It’s odd that we spend more time on “work” than most other periods in history despite innovations in automation . There will always be something to sell you and if there isn’t - hell we’ll make some shit up or use the law to add endless bureaucracy, or force you to buy insurance to be able to drive the car you own.
Tbh I’d feel a lot better if more people were working on things that had material impact on society. Feels deeply wrong to move things in a spreadsheet all year, missing out time experiencing life, for something that doesn’t really matter.
Don’t cope, the companies are already dead. The future is a race to hoard the remaining wealth as the rest of the world becomes independent and free from uncle sam. The stock market casino is on its last legs and they intend to turn that sinking ship in their favour.
It’s not just interest rates. If you pay attention you can see the capitalist class panicking because they bet their futures on gaining more access to Chinese consumers. They now recognize that is a losing battle and are pivoting.
Theres no patriotism just trans nationals who have exploited the world and gave some crumbs to the small folk at the imperial core. They seem keen on taking those crumbs too.
If you’re worried about companies, work and money then prevent them from forming their own cities. They’re buying and stealing farmers land in the hope to build cities they control. That includes cop city.
I know i didn’t give sources im too lazy but if you’re interested then look into more perfect union. They have videos on each of the things I’ve talked about.
AgitatorsAnonymous@reddit
Promotion in the US is explicitely linked to who you know rather than what you know or how you perform due to the fact that upward mobility comes from job hopping which requires contacts.
anotherdamnscorpio@reddit
I took a Russian history class back in college and I remember the way he described the USSR in the 80s and it always stuck with me. Basically if they weren't drunk by the time they got to work they definitely were by the time they got home.
dubzi_ART@reddit
In the amount of how our lives are controlled by giant equity firms through price manipulation I had these same thoughts recently. I’m surprised I’m reading this now, well done.
Narrow-Ad6797@reddit
Before i became self employed / started a business this was me, but i can be extremely charismatic. I was stoned every minute i worked from 16-23, did as little as humanly possible and used the work experience on my resume from one job to get another higher paying job.
I am just gonna say this: if you dont have a passion for your job / career, don't get treated and paid well AND you actually follow all the rules / work hard you're a sucker.
I worked at a grocery store where there were a few like that. Once a co-worker tried to light into me for not caring, so i said, "look, minimum wage is 7.50. You have worked your way up to 8.10 over 5 years. Minimum wage jumps up to 10.10 and now joe schmoe who just got out of rehab walks in, gets a job and you two make the same amount of money. Your opinion is invalid and this conversation has made me loose more brain cells than the joint i smoked on break."
That person still works there 15 years later. Still at an entry level position, likely getting paid less than mcdonalds' new hires.
TrickyProfit1369@reddit
Cool, what type of business are you running. I also job hopped, now I freelance but Im slowly trying to start another venture. My field of work is slowly killing me so I cant wait to do something different.
Narrow-Ad6797@reddit
Originally I was running an organic chemistry lab to make cannabis oils, and i did really well. Then legalization happened and ruined the industry, so i am currently in a food processing start up.
I also am working on day trading and have been for a year. Still not comfortable going full time with it, but for instance im up 6.67% for the past month, only making one trade per day due to not having 25k in my account to be a "pattern day trader".
sillygoosejames@reddit
Bro just discovered Marx's idea of emmiseration.
musicispurpose32@reddit
On the boeing aspect I don't think the company can afford to get rid of its best workers right now.
Busy_Ordinary8456@reddit
We are already here.
ORCoast19@reddit
I think high performers are still getting rewarded. I know I am. Perhaps folks who think they’re high performing are actually average or below average?
No_Bend_2902@reddit
Those aren't the same at all. One guarantees labor an income, while the other virtually guarantees unemployment and loss of income. The only similarity in your example is labors lack of control.
But to answer your question, it's all being gutted for maximum profits as we speak. Boeing is a perfect example of this collapse. It is well on it's way to being sold or merged with another company. Ironically, this will increase it's value as a very niche market becomes even smaller. Allowing the company to fail ever farther into success while producing worse aircraft the entire time
vanillagrass@reddit
Capitalism is a snake that is eating its own tail
krichuvisz@reddit
I really doubt it makes sense to measure the quality of an employee in such a singular way. You need different abilities and characters to form a working team. The so-called low-performer might be very important for the team spirit while the high-performer might be a narcissistic jerk. The concept of omnipresent competition is toxic.
kokopelli73@reddit
You would love the book Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti.
overcookedfantasy@reddit
Great post OP. I agree with much of what you said
Head-Kiwi-9601@reddit
Your entire premise is wrong.
Globalboy70@reddit
Care to elaborate? I certainly see merit to the argument.