9. Cancel Culture and At-Will Termination | What is Politics?
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- "Cancel culture" and "political correctness" are right-wing phenomena which today are dressed up in left wing language and symbols, and which serve to reinforce relationships of power and dominance between managers and workers.
The is a huge difference between using respectful language aimed at treating each other as brothers and sisters, which is a left wing impulse born of empathy, and appealing to authority to ruin peoples’ lives, which is a right wing dominance behaviour, and we should not lump them unto the same category.
Articles quoted in this video:
Corey Robin, Chris Bertram and Alex Gourevitch 2012 - Life at Work
crookedtimber....
Amanda Hess 2013 - How Sexy Should A Worker Be? The Plight of the Babe in the American Workplace, Slate
slate.com/huma...
Yvonne Abraham 2015 - Tom Brady has more rights than most American workers, Boston Globe
www.bostonglob...
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Wow - this is true, and the frustrating thing is hearing phrases of resignation all over the place. "New normal" "This is how it is now" "The new generation doesn't think privacy is important" "The early adopters are the winners"...
yes, that’s why it’s important to keep a context of how this happens, how it’s not the same everywhere else, how it’s not necessary, never mind not legitimate!
I enjoyed how you emphasised the fact that the rich are cruel because their environment effects their perception of reality. I think a lot of people think that the problem comes from the wrong people being in power rather than the power itself warping peoples minds.
exactly - put nice good people in the position of landlords or bosses and owners, and they start to think and act in the same way. it’s worse when you’ve never had the experience of being under the boot of someone else, but it’s the incentives built into being in the position of power which degrades peoples’ morality
your praxis is just fantastic
sorry that you’re having a hard time, but glad to know this is making you feel better on some level
This has been an argument I've been making for a long time and it's nice to see a video on it.
i think jacobin published an article on this not long after this videa was release. i like to hallucinate that it was because of me - though of course it’s corey robin’s articles dating back like 10 years
Cool program. Appreciate your energy clearly describing oppressive social dynamics.
Catching up on some of your videos because I had just realized I hadn’t seen one in a while. Nice work as always!
merci!
Excellent work. Subscribed after getting about halfway through the video. Shared on Reddit.
thank you, i really appreciate that! i really need people to share this because reddit is the only way i can get anyone to see these, and most reddit subs ban self promotion so i’m really throttled in terms of getting this stuff out there!
btw, which sub was it?
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 old.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/nus0yq/the_root_of_cancel_culture_is_atwill_employment/
Good video about workplace tyranny! But the definition of cancel culture is too narrow, as it ignores cancelling (or attempts to cancel) by social networks, online or offline.
But other than that, great stuff. Listing so many appalling examples really strengthens the argument.
Btw did you get a teleprompter? Been a while since we've seen you on camera.
Hi thanks! Yes, you’re 100% right, I left out the abusive social ostracism facet and it definitely does belong there - I talked about it in another segment (I refer to that at the beginning) but I didn’t end up releasing that part. I didn’t get a teleprompter - I’ve been trying to find ways to do episodes that don’t take 3 months to put together, so I just did this off the cuff! But that ends up being almost as much work, and it makes a mess - I recorded 8hrs worth of be blabbing about stuff, and had to redo segments 5 times to get them to be coherent and most of it is unusable - so the segment where I talked about social ostracism just wasn’t good and was too rambly, so it’s not releasable... I’ll have to do it again and put it out later. I made a point of separating good things like respectful and considerate language from negative terms like Poltical Correctness, and separating things like expressing displeasure or criticism of people saying things we don’t like (or booing them) and justified social ostracism (like someone is an active unreformed abuser) from Cancel Culture which is abusive ostracism used to terrorize and bully people (vs fostering solidarity and making people more empathetic) and appeal to authority to punish people. I should get a teleprompter - I was researching ipad apps but I forget why I never ended up doing that!
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Hah! I had the same experience with my "Power to End Capitalism" video so I feel your pain. Thought it'd save me time but the editing was a nightmare and took ages. But your video turned out well; I can't tell it's an "off the cuff" video.
@@LuckyBlackCat haha, aside from the intro where you’re clearly just spilling out your guts, i wouldn’t have guessed yours wasn’t scripted either! But yeah I think I want to stick to scripts from now on unless I have some speeches and talking points memorized or something
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 that's a fair point, but why should I care about a british billionaire who wrote books defending slavery and parrots fascistic speech, for example ?
No one would agree that the phenomenon of going to authority because someone hurt your feeling.
This is so helpful, easy to follow, hilarious. Thank you!
Glad I was awake for this drop haha
good morning!
directly reflects my experience over and over this does (young Jedi) -I've been pondering how to effectively reveal the fact that so-called cancel culture is in fact a right-wing reactionary phenomenon.
I appreciate this take. Very thoughtful essay.
Wonderful! People NEED to see this.
thank you! If you have any decent social media networks, please share! most reddit subs for example don’t allow self promotion and my own social network reach is pretty limited, so I need all the help i can get!
This is a very important video and I agree!!
I’ve been binging your content and hot damn what an underrated channel keep up the good work! (P.s. I think it might be worth exporting the audio in mono, because your voice swings from right to left very often and it’s quite jarring)
thank you! and thanks for letting me know about the stereo mic issue - ive been using two mics because often one will have some issue as my setup is a shitshow, but exporting to mono is a good idea
I like this. Great work!
Nice shirt,man
shocked that no one commented on it until now!
I am watching these videos in order and in the beginning u mention that u defined cancel culture previously. Where? I thought maybe 9.1 came bfr 9 but it didnt so maybe I am missing out on something? Video 8 is idealism vs materialism and u dont define it there nor in videos 1-8.
i thought it’s in this one?
When we are taught to respect others, to be polite, and to understand that there is a moral social contract, are we really only censuring ourselves? What would it mean to not censure oneself? Since normal is only ever what the present prevailing attitudes are what does "new" normal even mean?
Heavy stuff. In case of the Borgata babes, there are two things about it to examine:
1 - An argument can be made that a closer look at the culture of the Borgata could have been a deterrent for anyone choosing whether to work there _or not work there and choose another option_ ; in other words, the "she knew what she was getting into" and "at least we're up front about it" argument which ultimately won in court....
2 - On ethical grounds, a business like that should not be allowed to exist in the first place because it makes its female employees tie not only their self-worth to their weight and appearance, _which is fragile, not always controllable, and extremely vulnerable to circumstances and age_ , but their very livelihoods. Plus they have to lie and make false relationships with men. It's mentally hazardous, and unlike other hazardous jobs like firefighting, there's no measurable greater good to justify it.
In defense of the first point: Emotionally, " _or work someplace else_ " sounds like a threat, but tons of women choose not to work there and thankfully have that option because there are other places to work. From this perspective, she shares responsibility for this business' continued way of working. But the first point can only hold up _as long as proper alternatives to working for Bogata are protected and systematically kept plentiful_ .
For the second point, we could also be talking about Onlyfans, and there are videos on UA-cam called "Why I quit Onlyfans" to go into detail about the mental health cost.
As for the sexism argument - how come the men don't have to be babes - IMO that has to be thrown out as a total non issue. The whole purpose of this business is to exploit straight men and profit from their horniness. Everyone from the bosses down knows that this is a giant mindfuck Pleasure Island made to cater to male fantasies and give them an "interesting and memorable experience". A whole different establishment would have to be made to cater to women.
sure i agree with all that except the first part - i mean yes that’s the court’s logic but it’s insane. everyone knows that theyre getting into a humiliating abusive situation when they apply for any stupid job situation, but they do it because they need to eat and they are weak and the employer has the food they need to live. that’s what courts and law books and economists and law schools all ignore.
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Yeah. Put it this way. An opt-out dictatorship is only a real opt-out if there's always somewhere to opt-out to.
For example, if you want good money (last I heard), you could teach way up north in the frozen tundra in a six-month shift. Couple of people I know did it, most don't because as you point out, they're not in conditions that force them to do it; they could work jobs that aren't way up in the frozen north.
The court made the mistake of seeing the Bogota as a take-it-or-leave-it situation the way the frozen tundra teaching job is.
So that gives us two options:
1 - Ban Bogotas
2 - Install some kind of structure to ensure that Bogota isn't the only viable job in town, just the shadiest one
@@evenmorenonsense in a worker run society, borgotas would only exist if workers were eager to actually provide that service for some reason, i.e. the wouldnt
Request! If you feel so inclined, could you one day make a video specifically about the Hegelian dialectic, whether or not it's inherently a tool of the left, and what role exactly it played in the development of marxism and especially in modern cancel culture? I feel like my understanding of all of this is still a little fuzzy, but you're the one person I trust to make it clear.
thanks for the vote of confidence! i literally know nothing about the hegelian dialectic - why is it important?
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 I know that Marx used it to develop his "dialectical materialism" which supposedly undergirds Marxism. Additionally, I've heard people on the right accuse social justice warriors of wielding the hegelian dialectic, which is implied to be "bad". I'm not sure where I stand on anything tbh. I currently believe I'm a leftist anarchist who aligns with social justice warriors on most issues (i.e., I want to destroy the cultural hierarchy that places white cisgender heterosexual males at the top and black transgender homosexual females at the bottom) but don't always agree with the tactics. The Hegelian dialectic doesn't seem inherently bad to me, although I admit I don't fully understand it, and I'm also curious if it's possible to wield that dialectic to support those at the top of a hierarchy (and if this has ever been done in history). But if you don't have the answers to these questions either, I'll try to rough it on my own lol
@@Sean-dl8ym i know it influenced marx, but that’s the extent of my knowledge on it! it doesn’t seem practical enough for me to dive into it and do an episode on it. my next big episodes are things like what is property, what is the market, what is socialism, what is capitalism, dialectic is way off the radar!
@@Sean-dl8ym maybe if i do an in depth episode on marx i’ll want to look into it, so if you find a good source on it eventually, do let me know, but that’s still far off. sounds like you mostly want to know to win internet arguments!
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 what the hell is this random attack? I want to know because I can't act before I understand. But ok, sorry to bother.
Democracy at work!!!
Here's how a right wing person would probably object. They'd say that it's important for employers to be able to fire people easily, because otherwise they'd be a lot more reluctant to hire someone and that leaves young people in a precarious position where they can't find an entry-level job to start their career. They'd probably say that it's your responsibility to make yourself more attractive to employers by learning the right skills in order to have more bargaining power when signing a contract.
They'd view cancel culture as a consequence of there being too much unnecessary bureaucracy at the workplace and people who are part of that bureaucracy hiring based on ideology they've been brainwashed by the universities into instead of merit.
The way I typically see it is that people on the right think that if you don't regulate things much, they'd eventually end up balancing themselves out.
well the main right wing arguments are that you have the right to decide what happens with your property, so it’s your salary and you can give it or not give it to whoever you want and the government has no business forcing you to work with someone you don’t want, and it’s tyranny to interfere with any of that…
the bureacracy argument doesn’t make sense because businesses that enforce that stuff are doing it of their own volition, not government regulation
Hey, mate! Is there a transcript to this video like for all other ones? Can't find it on your website
hey! no, not this one, this one i mostly improvised - usually the episdoes are scriped and I post my scripts after the recording, but this one would have taken too much time to transcribe because there is no script … maybe in the future if i have time or can hire help!
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 check your mail, my friend)
Interesting that you completely omit the fact that the CNT-FAI participated in the Frente Popular and formed a cornerstone of the Republican side in the civil war.
what on earth does that have to do with anything, and why would it be important or interesting for me to mention that in the context of this video??
11:50 I was curious about the word and looked it up. It's based on the Latin adjuvare meaning assistant or supporter
Can I get an “Amen, brother!”?
So good!!!
0:32 Thank you. Really, truly, thank you. I've been laughing non stop for 3 minutes.
when you stop jerking yourself off, you can check out the video on what right and left mean, and how we know what they mean (esp ep 5)
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 oh, I'm currently watching all your videos. 4 down, none left me impressed.
@@masscreationbroadcasts like that should bother me…
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 I know you have no introspection. 😉
@masscreationbroadcasts says the retarded human shaped turn who crawled out of his mom’s ass after 9 months of constipation, and she regretted it ever since.
Great video!
I don't think that's just people with power that think that contracts, or supposed voluntary contracts, are supreme. There's a lot of people out there that think the same and they aren't the ones benefiting from these contracts, but they are gladly the enforcers and legitimizers.
im not sure what i said that you’re referring to, but my point is that the standard theory of contracts is that it’s voluntary on both sides, whereas in reality it’s only mutually voluntary isofar as (and to the extent that) both parties have equal bargaining power
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 The comment is about the later part in the video about why employers like contracts. And the interpretation of the judge that the waitresses entered the contract of their own free will.
My point, is that there are a lot of people that while not being a party to the contract or benefit of it, will identify with the position of the employer even if they are themselves working class.
I think that term means something different than others might, and that it gets used in different ways than is intended in this video, but all the points about the employer employee relationship was spot on.
I just have no idea what that has to do with today's conception of the term, tho, as it has been co-opted so hard by the fascists (conservatives in the US) and the moderate right (liberals in the US)
in the follow up video i broadened the definition to include general social ostracism by your peers or saying or thinking the wrong thing
I can understand where you coming from. However I find it hard ti believe that any company wants ro hire while diversity departments and have employees spend work hours in expensive sensitivity training classes. If what you say that the companies so goal is the bottom line this doesn't add up. Plus if an employer does fire a person for a racist or otherwise undesirable comment or action a counter lawsuit is almost bound to follow. I cant see any company wanting this.
companies do all of this stuff to avoid lawsuits. companies dont do things that dont advance profits because if they do, the directors will be fired and replaced and even sued by shareholders. if they have policies and workers violate them and they get fired there isn’t much ground for countersuits, employers have enormous power.
So basically, we need a UBI to even out power relations as UBI removes the terror of being fired, losing access to the means of survival. We also need some socialism. Market socialism, setting up businesses under worker control, will help. If nothing else, at least we will have businesses under worker control. Best case scenario, we enter the revolution knowing how to run the means of production.
But what about status? Cancel culture involves a change in status
What about the fact that everything is Woke because wokeness is supported by the people who care?
What about the role of law?
well there are different levels to approach this - my main critique in this episode is of at will employment. so one basic thing to do is just get rid of at will employement. most countries and Montana require that if you’ve been working at a place longer than a certain time (which I am it’s 2 years) the boss can only fire you for work related performance reasons. so if you get fired for anything else you can sue him and get your job back or significant damages etc. the other more comprehensive approach is what you’re alluding to - get rid of ownership dictatorship economy and replace most enterprises with co-ops. i don’t really understand your questions about status or people who care etc? for the question of law i’d say replace at will employment with termination for cause (which I described above)
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Basically, wokeness has Cardinal utility (how badly people want things) on its side. The people who care are the people who are most likely to be politically engaged. Therefore, things are woke because the people who want wokeness care a lot more (and are therefore more engaged) than the people who don't want wokeness
@@manishdyall4779 well there’s a tipping point in terms of cardinal utility when people start to react, but i think it’s important when thinking about this to recognize that the people who are most invested in that kind of discourse are in two general categories 1. people who have a history of being discriminated against and being abused in various ways and are very militant about protecting themselves and their communities and 2. upper middle class and wealthy people from elite universities, who are piggybacking on ideas and theories that come out of oppressed peoples’ struggles and who transform that discourse into control and dominance tools. these two different groups might use the same language, but one group is using it for positive egalitarian (i.e. left wing) purposes and the other is using left wing language for hierarchical dominance (i.e. right wing) purposes. if you look in my videos there’s the one after this called “Cancel Culture is Your Manager” where I start to talk about this. I’ll be doing more episodes on it in the future
Mr Professor Dr Bitton, I’m about to cancel you. Nice video. Fight the power.
aren’t you supposed to be working right now?
While it's bad for work places to use their power like this, I think it's within their right to do and it shouldn't be taken from them. I can tell a homeless person to get out of my house even if he has nowhere to go and I live in a mansion alone with many rooms, and I've never been homeless, ever. Immoral? Maybe. Within my property rights? Definitely.
To combat corporations abusing their power, we could pressure corporations in ways that don't inhibit their freedom directly. For example, make certain data mandatory to be clearly and readily available to the public like wages, history with safety, rate of hiring and firing depending on position, etc. Also, they may not discriminate against people in labor unions. Businesses should have something similar to criminal history and have something added to their record when they make descisions that our government can't make or control due to constitution. This information will be publicly available and they'll have some type of large plaque announcing their "constitutional rating", similar to sanitation ratings.
"Cancel culture" is good when aimed it the right things. Isn't a business getting boycotted or sit ins, etc examples of cancel culture? Canceling someone is just exercising your "bargaining power" as organized citizens.
OK so one of the basic premises underlie my that my politics is that it’s not legitimate for one person to own property that other people depend on to live, because that creates dependent classes of people, who can and are bossed around all day by the people who own property.
Ownership of property that other people depend on is the ultimate cause of dominance hierarchy.
The régime of unlimited property rights that we live under where one person can theoretically own all of the property is illegitimate in my eyes.
That means that one person or groups of owners who own a business that other people who work there depend on to live - is not a legitimate form of ownership. Employment in that sense is like a much less (usually) onerous form of a relationship similar to slavery or serfdom.
You can own your own home, but if you start owning other peoples’ homes I see that as illegitimate and creates a relationship that ideally shouldn’t exist.
Corporations shouldn’t exist or if they’re absolutely necessary in order to raise enough capital to undertake certain tasks, they should be extremely limited and their ownership should devolve to the employees and consumers and community over time.
What makes “cancel culture” cancel culture to me (and by definition a bad thing) is that it’s a form of dominance relationship and therefore a form of abuse. If it’s used to protect people from abuse (i.e. punishing Bill Cosby for being a proven, and even self admitted life long serial rapist) then it’s not cancel culture, it’s self defence.
@@WHATISPOLITICS69
1) "It’s not legitimate for one person to own property that other people depend on to live, because that creates dependent classes of people, who can and are bossed around all day by the people who own property."
Any difference between people creates a power imbalance. If I know how to make weapons, and you have a farm, you will probably make more money than me because more people need food than needing weapons, and people will tend to side with you because you have a material they depend on, so you have this advantage over me. But I could manufacture a weapon and kill you for your supplies. That's an advantage I have over you.
As a society everyone is dependent on each other, it's just that the level of dependancy may change in various situations. A business owner is dependent on their customers, so they're at their mercy. If the customers decide to directly compete with it, boycott said business, or even violently try to destroy its property, this will hurt the owner a lot. A citizen is dependent on the business if they work for them or wish to be their customer. In a catastrophe, money becomes useless and they're just people in suits surrounded by walls, large sheets of glass, and Roombas.
In America, it's easier for a customer to not work at a condemned business and not buy from them than it is for the business to just say "Eh, someone else will buy it.". You can't replace that loss of revenue, only try to advertise to a larger swathe of potential customers. This is especially true when this person starts a campaign against your business, and businesses associated with you. Especially as we urbanize and start thinking the same more. And in my opinion, American policies busting trusts and establishing human rights for laborers all businesses must follow is doing a good job in keeping our dependency on businesses low. The more competition a business has, the less bargaining power they have.
Also, landlords. You think people shouldn't rent out homes or sell them? How do we get housing? The government? We still have to pay for land and to build on it. And what about other stuff that encompasses us all like the power grid and water supply? We are extremely dependent on that yet it's controlled by huge corperations and the government. Who should control it then?
2) "Ownership of property that other people depend on is the ultimate cause of dominance hierarchy."
I assume you mean disproportionate ownership of things is the cause of hiarchy, and are not saying we should just stop owning stuff. It's human nature to have a sense of ownership. This is why we are soo sensitive to inequality and respond so negative to bullying. We think we own ourselves and the stuff we have and when someone transgresses this boundary, we feel the need to act. Now, we get satisfied by everyone being equal, but we also don't get dissatisfied when we have more than others. In fact, that makes us feel even more secure. How could we not disproportionately own stuff? Some people like having more, and some, less. Some people work harder than others. Some people have unique skills. Some people may capitalize on certain opportunities the fastest and get more bang for their buck. Etc. Is the very existence of businessesand specialization illegitimate?
3) "Employment in that sense is like a much less(usually) onerous form of a relationship similar to slavery or serfdom."
It's literally not slavery by definition, and it's not serfdom because you can leave their rule or change your position in the hiarchy they engineered. It's an exchange of labor or effort for resources, capital, or just money. It's a trade. A lot of the times it isn't a fair trade, but it is one you can opt out of none the less, even with environmental pressures. How should people get money other than working or making a business?(which is work as well) Or should money not exist???
4) "If they’re(corperations) absolutely necessary in order to raise enough capital to undertake certain tasks, they should be extremely limited and their ownership should devolve to the employees and consumers and community over time."
How would that work? And if you choose who gets it, is that jot yet another hiarchy established? We're working toward limiting businesses, but like any legislation, it's not perfect. How about we give it to our kids? Is that not fair enough? How about friends? Employees? That already happens. Unless you think after a CEO dies, his stock dividends should all go to taxes. But then that's still a hiarchy.
My whole argument, cut and dry:
Due to human nature(or nature of the entire universe tbh), scarcity, the intricacies of growing communities, and in turn, economy: perfect egalitarianism or even close to that is not possible. However, "cancel culture"(collective activism), forms of socialism, and other legislative "safe guards" can aid in making this ecosystem less brutal, and destructive for us. However, as we expand even more, and materials become scarcer, the stability of this structure becomes ever more fragile.
@@purpp-esque1711 I can’t promise to keep this going because it’s becoming a big time commitment but:
Every person is different from every other person in all sorts of ways including ability. But these differences between people don’t all by themselves produce a big enough power imbalance to make some people dependent on others.
If you look at immediate return hunter gatherer societies, which is probably the type of society that most humans were for most of the first 250k years of our existence, you’ll see extreme egalitarianism, with no positions of fixed authority and including male female egalitarianism and enfornced economic egalitarianism when it comes to key resources, all without a centralized authority of any kind.
If one person makes more money than another for whatever reason, there are all sorts of mechanisms to make sure that this doesn’t result in meaningful power imbalances. Economic inequality and property rights become a problem when they allows some people to own resources that other people depend on, and when they allow some people to have disproportionate access to power (i.e. by being able to hire lobbyists 7 days a week to soak government’s brains in your point of view, while you and I can only vote once every few years and maybe write and incoherent email to a representative or sign a petition here and there).
You can redistribute money beyond a certain point, or just burn it - or “pre-distribute” in various ways to ensure no one gets to the point of disproportionate influence. In our society it’s the opposite, the state defends people having massive amounts of property without them having to hire private police and armies to defend it for them.
People are dependent on eachother, but a landlord and a business owner will generally have much more power over their employees and tenants than the other way around, except in rare circumstances.
Boycotting is incredible complicated to organize, and not anything close to every employee and consumer having a vote and being a co-owner of the company - i.e. democracy. People should have a say in the decisions that affect them in proportion to how much those decisions affect them.
There is zero need for corporations to own water supplies. Where I live there are no corporations involved in water delivery. It’s all government. GOvernment can be democratic or authoritarian. The more democratic it is, the more it reflects the principles I’m talking about.
In capitalism the owner of property is a dictator over that property, and if you depend on that property you are subject to the authoritarian rule of the owner in order to use it. Your only power to refuse is if you have other alternatives.
There are all kinds of way to provide housing that don’t involve private tyrants owning the place where other people live. The whole idea is a conflict of interest, and a miserable experience as anyone who has been a low bargaining power tenant in their lifetime can tell you.
You can turn housing into no equity co-ops - when a landlord dies you can have the tenants rent automatically turn into mortgage payments to pay off their stupid children so that everyone eventually owns where they live or co-owns it.
You can have government build housing and then sell it to the tenants at cost or for a small profit as a co-ops.
ownership of property isnt’ a problem. unlimited ownership is a problem. unlimited ownership enforced by the state is a problem. being allowed to amass enough money to hire lobbyists is a problem. being able to own resources that other people depend on is a problem.
I didn’t say employment was slavery - i said the employer employee relationship is a dominance/dependence relationship LIKE slavery and serfdom, but less onerous, which is true. THis is a classic socialist tenet since the 19th century. Employee literally means human tool - a tool that the owner uses for his own benefit and then pays as little as possible to get the use he needs from you.
People can trade and buy and sell without having employee employer relationships. You have coops for larger enterprises, and contractors for smaller ones etc.
who inherits corporations is the same as everything else: people who are affected by decisions should be the ones who get to make those decisions in proprotion to how much they’re affected by them. aka democracy.
You start with that principle and the rest flows from that.
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Don't worry, I understand. Perhaps you could make a video about my argument and that would help people understand your POV better?
1) "But these differences between people don’t all by themselves produce a big enough power imbalance to make some people dependent on others."
People being the same could literally cause a power imbalance in of itself. When many people can preform the same skill, it becomes less valuable in the market as opposed to other skills due to lack of scarcity. For example, the ability to read. Reading was a valuable skill and people who could read were moved up in the economic hiarchy because people needed others to be able to read, write, and edit books for them. For example, prophet Mohammed couldn't read and had many scribes who used to be former slaves or his wives. People in the embryonic United States who owned slaves literally had to advise against teaching slaves to read because they becomes more problematic to control after they develop that skill. But today, reading is seen as bare minimum to get a shitty job because it's a common skill. Now, you just don't need to read, but need to be good at microsoft word, data entry, convincing writing, etc. And differences in people mixed certain environments can cause significant power imbalance. For example, eccentric people are avoided when trying to get a job due to unpredictability, however, on the internet, people value a unique personality above all.(no data available to support this)
2) "Immediate return hunter gatherers were egalitarian"(parsed words)
You remember what you said in one of your videos? Something about how certain pressures make people make certain decisions so they're not really decisions in the first place really, but adaptations? The small populations is one of those things. As populations increase, egalitarianism becomes harder and harder. I Googled the biggest hunter gatherer population and the Chumash popped up. The Chumash have around 20 people per square mile.(for comparison, America today has 91 and Egypt has 208) This tribe also follows a class system and had specialized labor. The middle class was the largest. What's the largest pure egalitarian group you know of?
3) "If one person makes more money than another for whatever reason, there are all sorts of mechanisms to make sure that this doesn’t result in meaningful power imbalances."
Exactly. Legislation in a capitalist society can make it a more equal playing field. You could restrict rich people's lobbying somehow. For example, make companies history of lobbying obvious to the public. People can organize and make groups and parties meant to spread their message as they do today.
4) "The state defends people having massive amounts of property"
Yes....as they do with everyone's property who pay property taxes for these services. They don't do it that good, but they do it. And businesses do pay for having security and police staff. For example, oil companies hire PMC companies like Blackwater to protect their facilities. If the government didn't protect 1 class of people, wouldn't that be wrong? Yes it gives us more power, but that's just immoral. Now, your idea that involved everyone using the same Healthcare provider, that's a good equalizer.
5) "Businesses and landlords tend to have more bargaining power"
True, but with the right legislation and facilities in place, we can combat this. I have an idea. Temporary housing for tenants who'd like to attempt to boycott housing prices and conditions, and the longer their rent remains higher, the government will give higher taxes specifically to boycotted landlords to uphold these facilities if they refuse to lower their rent. They'll either give up the property or lower their rent. I call this "the squeeze". And we do away with the practice of cutting off people's gov benefits and raising their rent when it's more people living in 1 unit. That sure would help boycotting. We could make tax rates that scale a lot slower when people's rent is below a certain threshold.
6) "Boycotting is hard, and it'd be better if people could own part of a company and make decisions."
Yeah. Good labor unions, and easily accessible data(for propaganda) makes boycotting easier. And we barely have anything to help us organize better. For example, the "Samsung Global Goals" app which they use to fundraise for various causes. Imagine an app that informs you of "public enemies" whenever you look for certain stores on Google maps, or when links pop up on Google of certain sites, theres an icon that informs you that there's currently a boycott on this company and when you click it, it informs you of the grievances people have with this company, the number of people actively participating in the boycott, etc. Companies would HATE this. We can require by law for these systems to be in place in search engines, websites, magazines, etc. I looked on Google Play, and there are some apps meant for a similar purpose but they have no traction.
7) "Private companies shouldn't own water supply."
I can get behind that. No argument here.
8) "The only way to refuse a service is if you have alternatives."
Yes....and we have them. And the government helps us keep having them by trust busting and stopping monopolies from forming.(however, today they're not doing so good; with ISPs in particular) And we can fight against corrupt corperations.
9) "There's other ways to provide housing."
List your ideas. And how could we implement that in the US today with what we have now? We could incentivize low income housing with tax cuts, or free services for certain land owners, etc. And the pass down co-ops, how would this work with apartments? And what if the owner wants their offspring to own it?
10) "Unlimited ownership is a problem"
Wdym? When you die, it's passed down to family or the state.(assuming you have no detectable family) Now, what I can't get around to is having to pay property taxes when I "own" land. I would like to have a choice to use public faculties or not without the government seizing my shit.
11) "Employers having power over people's jobs and hiring lobbyists is a problem."
Lobbying can definitely be limited to some degree by the government. They know lobbying firms exist and don't do anything about it. People could lobby, but that requires lots of organization. Employment, idk what exactly you want to change. Without these businesses existing, people wouldn't even have this option of employment. Explain this idea more.
12) "Small private contracters can make co-ops to make larger corperations"
I can't even imagine how this would look. I'm imagining a bunch of small bands of LLCs working for a corperation doing simple labor. If I was a contractor before, why would I even want to do this? How would the government enforce this? This would just be more tax dollars businesses would have to pay to fund these rapidly expanding bureaucracies to not do their job properly anyways.(example: lobbying firms) How would you mass produce anything without employee/employer relationships? If you force democracy on employers, how would this look? What would the employer be able to do? Can he fire them? In that case, they could just fire all the people who vote for something he doesn't like. If he can't fire anyone, he'd be forced to have employees. I can definitely see a potential, huge drop in employment when this is in effect. People will just opt for more sweatshop work outside the states and keep their dealings on the down low through shell companies. And more specialized work would be available in these countries, increasing their standard of living and they'd have to pay them more. Then we'd have a bunch of good work we could have had taken from us. And when the standard of living increases other places, they don't even need to sell to us anymore. They could just completely pack up and leave entirely and let our GDP plummet.
You need to flesh out a detailed plan of how this would work. I can't see what you're imagining.
@@purpp-esque1711
People being different can cause minor power imbalances, but not what you’re talking about. What you’re talking about presupposes that the market all by itself just magically allows people to amass infinite fortunes, without the state defending those fortunes, and it also presupposes that there’s no redistribution mechanism to prevent people from amassing wealth beyond a certain point. Those mechanisms have existed since humans emerged.
And with the example you gave - everyone can learn how to read, end of problem.
I didn’t say people need to become immediate return hunter gatherers, just that egalitarianism is not against human nature.
The largest egalitarian group? Anarchist spain, about 7 million people.
I don’t understand your point about the government not protecting on class of people, but that seems irrelevant - the point is that you prevent anyone from amassing enough wealth to hire lobbyists or to have disproportionate influence over others.
I don’t understand your solution to housing problems, but a simpler solution is landlords and tenants no longer exist.
Like I said, everything is no equity co-ops, government builds them, coop residents pay it back at cost plus some interest so that it’s actually profitable for the government to do this.
Existing landlords when they die, the tenants rent goes to buy off the property from the landlords brats in the form of a no-equity co-op. Within 50 years or so everything is co-ops.
Unlimited ownership means there concept that there is no legal or theoretical limit to how much money one person can amass. That creates enormous power imbalances that make democracy a joke. Therefore limit ownership. The max you can own is 5 million dollars, or some other amount, the end.
You can own your house and property.
“12) "Small private contracters can make co-ops to make larger corperations"
i have no idea what that means, you totally garbled what I said.
Ok, but is it completely out of the realm of possibility that those women wanted to be babes?
when you have vastly disproportionate bargaining power contracts, you need to assume that they didn’t or else everyone suffers for it. if we had a society with relatively equal bargaining power, then people wouldnt need those protections.
Don't know about cancel culture, but i can tell what politics (is? are? ...whatever )
Its easy to understand, once you accept that rich people run this World.
I'm not talking about the illuminati or any secret group. I'm talking about many groups of rich people.
Sometimes they have similar interests and sometimes they conflict.
THAT is what politics is : different groups of rich fucking assholes, playing their little games with each-other.
And we are usually the pawns in these games.
But we have to be divided, for the safety of the rich fucking assholes.
We outnumber them, so we have to be played against each-other, to keep us under control.
that’s it - except that’s right wing politics. politics in general means decision making in groups. left wing politics is people who want equality of decision making and equality of authority etc. right wing politics is the politics of those who want domination hierarchies of decision making (see my other videos!)
I agree generally, I don't like cancel culture, but employers need a certain amount of authority. It is not authority that is the problem it is a culture of fear created by puritanical psudo compassionate activists
fake activism is a separate issue (which i’ll cover soon) but if your boss didn’t have the right to fire you for any idiotic reason (or no reason at all) then you wouldn’t have any reason to fear a bunch of puritanical assholes. in most countries once you’ve worked at a place for a certain time, your boss can only fire you for a reason related to your job performance, not what you think or what you do on your spare time.
im drunkl
don’t drive or operate dangerous machinery!
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 the computer is a dangerous machine indeed....
although I agree that the judgement of the court case you mentioned is BS, but your loaded assumptions and prejudices about the judges made me think twice about your entire video
what assumptions?
Hierarchies are not a 'right wing phenomenon, by definition'... you lost me. It's called authoritarianism. THe forced equality of the left would require the same oppressive hierarchy to enforce its dictates as would any other system.
look at episode 5 for the history. yes, the definition of right is hierarchy of power, and left is equality of power. if someone is using a dictatorship to enforce equality (i.e. like the USSR) that’s a right wing political structure.
you have actual left wing visions of equality that don’t require enforcement by an oppressive hierarchy, and most of human history had equality enforced without oppressive hierarchies until a few thousand years ago.
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 The left right narrative thing goes back to the French national assembly, i get it.
Left for equality, right for hierarchy, etc,,, 'Leftism' has since morphed to mean basically whatever the democratic party is doing at the moment, which currently happens to be big government forcing everyone to abide to its ideologies by canceling locking up and censoring everyone it disagrees with -- with a hierarchy and a classism of its own. Forcing everyone to pay for abortions, free healthcare, free housing, welfare, etc... and on top of all that forcing people to have open borders so that anyone can just come in and sign up for all the 'free' stuff (nothing is free, it's called taxation theft)... is hierarchy, because you can't force anyone to do as you say without creating a violent police state, that will always by its wrongly claimed monopoly on the use of force set itself above the commoners. Saying 'well, the left is only in favor of more government when it serves the goal of equality, such as human rights, and believes in less government when it serves the goal of equality such as less prisons and less immigration restrictions... ' is disingenuous. You would need a big police state to enforce having LESS incarceration/open borders, if MORE incarceration/closed borders is what the common people wanted.
Your 'actual left wing visions of equality that don't require enforcement by an oppressive hierarchy' is just that -- utopic visions. Tribal pre-civilization times were alpha-male dominated hierarchies, extensions of the hierarchical family unit, just as you find in other species such as lions. I suppose you are talking about the 657 flavors of anarchism here, and i sympathize , but it will never happen. THere will never be a truly equal society. Not that we shouldn't try to be progressive, but boundaries need to be set upon what can actually be accomplished without curtailing individual freedoms.
@user-og5qp4rn8o using "alpha-male" unironically immediately tells us what kind of person you are
ADJ-u-tant
heresy!
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 tee hee
12:35 first world problems hahahhhhh
The fuck so is a bully owning me becurse i Act in a whey He dosent like and so He Bets me no. It Hase noting to do with Power struckturs Some peopel dont like you and will Chancel you dosent Meter how much Power they have
What a weird looking dude.
🐤
This channel is either dishonest or ignorant.
In a capitalistic society the workers own the means of production. In Marxist society the state owns and controls the means of production.
wow - this is the most clueless ignorant thing i’ve ever heard. in capitalism workers don’t own the means of production!! in capitalism the OWNER owns the means of production. the owner owns important property that workers depend on in order to live, so the workers must rent out their bodies and mind to the owner and the owner commands them for 40+ hours a week (much more before the labour movement forced them to reduce it).
in socialism, it’s supposed to be the workers that control the workplaces, not the owners and not the state, but if you watch my series on communism you’ll see that most of the communist countries were copies of the USSR which failed at communism and became a one party state dictatorship where the state controlled everything.
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Do you want to wager a bet. You don't even know the definitions of the words you use.
JUst google the definition.
you google the definition you illiterate drooling imbecile
@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Hey there Potty-mouth, did you at least figure out what capitalism is versus other economic models. I hope so.
I am sorry that exposing your ignorance is so painful for you. Just think of it as growing pains little buddy.