The way they made people work for wages started at the barrel of a gun. "We take your (public) land, now you work in a factory or starve". All the rest you think are due to Capitalism, is in fact the victories of the working class struggles, which they've been trying to dismantle for the past century. If anything the system resets itself to its original form.
"We take your (public) land, now you work in a factory or starve".
Where can I read more about this?
The GP is talking about the dismantling of the Commons in England during the Industrial Revolution.
Anyway, it's not that simple. English even got the term "tragedy of the Commons" to refer to what was happening before the dismantling. Those people still were plainly stolen, yes, but the value what was taken wasn't that clear. Also, people were escaping the Commons into factory jobs way before they were taken.
Fairly certain wages existed before guns.
But "end of a pointy stick" lacks gravitas.
Wages existed in feudalism, but we don't call any system which has money and wages capitalism. For that we need that wage slavery is the primary mode of production.
Not at all. This person is only describing life/work in some of the post-WII developed world. Historically, this is the anomaly, not the norm.
For a large part of recorded history, the formula was that land/resource holders offered anyone the cheapest, lousiest, and worst acceptable conditions in exchange for work. The conditions of the resource holders also actually sucked, and when leveraging economies of scale, offers of relative physical and economic security (sure, you'll be kinda poor, but you don't have to travel to another town to sell grain to survive because the Lord will always buy it from you at a "fair" rate.) were typically the value add that made it worth it to consider share-cropping under nobility as opposed to simply going it alone.
I'm not sure why Reddit and Lemmy seem so hell-bent on this fantasy version of history where farming is a joy denied us by the wealthy, but its hilariously misguided. Considering where things are headed, it sounds like for many it will end up being a dangerously wrong fantasy that others can take advantage of easily, and people that post things like this will learn the lesson first hand.
I think it's just an American thing. We've heavily romanticized the post war agricultural lifestyle and fall back on it as a historical default similar to the "American dream" of the same era
why use carrot when stick work
'I got a powerful need to eat'
No, the way they got people to work was by enslaving them; then by "it's not slavery, you just can't leave without my permission" serfdom; then by forcing rural families to migrate to cities because mr landowner bought everything (or killed the owners), so that the factories could pay poverty level salaries; then, when workers got too riled up, by outsourcing work to wherever people were desperate enough to accept 10% of the pay.
How is that not true anymore? Here in the UK home ownership is increasingly a dream for the younger people so guess what - you're 100% reliant on work/pay to make rent on a home and to have stability for your family
When I was a child to my early twenties, we had holidays, we did a lot of cycling, we went skiing…all of this achieved on a low level bank and car factory employee wages.
I couldn’t afford to do that for my partner and step children. The comment above yours paints it as being pain and less pain. You’re on the right lines but you’re misinterpreting it.
This is not a shitpost. Politics need to stop leaking into shitposting and meme subs.
Anything goes
The mods disagree on this one
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content. Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
I'm just waiting for my sweet neighborhood reaper to take me home at this point.
Don't give up! Positive changes are possible, and even You can perform big actions to make a huge positive difference in the world. Any one of us can be a Luigi with the right opportunity <3
Thank you, I appreciate it 🙏 and Luigi is awesome.
I mean, sure plenty of folks don't earn enough to do those things, but plenty do. You work simply because you're not getting anything (or not getting enough) for free.
Yeah, what if only, I dunno, less than 10% of the world population is actually earning enough to not have to worry about cost of living, owning a home and caring for their families? No biggie!!
/s
More than 60% of adults the world over own a home though, and that's ignoring the numerous countries where it's simply the done thing to rent, so the overwhelming majority own a home. Nearly everyone has money worries, whether you're earning a pittance or a good wage. Most people might be 1 or 2 paychecks from being broke or homeless, but the majority of people manage within their means to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their families, even if it is tough.
Land taxes were invented to stop people relaxing
Probably because the people who relaxed would soon be murdered by a more organized group with better nutrition, numbers, or weapons.
