996

These times really do feel like those once-in-a-century redefinitions of work and labor, similar to how we got Child Labor Laws and 40-hour work weeks from the labor movement early last century. Intrinsically, more people are realizing that the former social contract was long ago fed into a shredder, and that the lack of a formal contract will have consequences. Technology broke down the 40-hour work week by enabling more work to be done both outside the office and after traditional working hours, drastically increasing productivity and profit while wages stagnated for decades in the face of skyrocketing costs. Now we’re racing ahead towards a breaking point between Capital cheering shit like 996 and AI job-replacement, while more humans can’t afford rent, or food, let alone education or healthcare on their burrito taxi wages.

Something will eventually have to give, if we aren’t proactive in addressing the crises before us. Last time, it took two World Wars, the military bombing miners, law enforcement assassinating union organizers, and companies stockpiling chemical weapons and machine guns before the political class finally realized things must change or all hell would break loose; I only hope we come to our senses far, far sooner this time around.

It also took Russia going to shit to an extent that got everybody else scared—and that Russia still hasn’t really recovered from, because repeatedly cutting the elite out of your society (however unfairly it’s gotten there) really fucks that society up.

To educate people you just need the internet (communication infrastructure). We can also house and feed everyone if we wanted to. The concept of work has been overblown to the point where it’s everything. I can’t even say war will solve it because war puts everyone to work, which is no different than the status quo.

Things are not in place for people to spiritually feel what is actually a good life and world.

It may take a generation of people, who think technology and science will allow them to have many lifetimes over and over, to meet their timely end. We will only reevaluate as we see the most well endowed generation (everyone alive today) return to dust in a timely manner, that there was no magical human power that could have saved any of us, and we ought to have just focused on a better world that we’re proud of leaving behind.

Living life like it’s a roguelike with infinite levels makes it the most unfulfilling thing ever. The world our generation will leave behind is our product, and a quality product is everything, so much so that you’d be proud to leave it in someone’s hand at the end (in fact, you’d want to). The women’s movement that left us a type of America with those fixes (labors rights, human rights) was such a thing to leave behind, they should fear nothing in death.

The same elite is still running Russia today.

What?

When America was strongest, we had a large and increasing middle class, and the top marginal tax rate was above 70% - it was in the 90s.

We don’t need “the elite” - they don’t actually “create jobs”, and the “engine of the economy” is just a convenient vehicle for the rich (and private equity) to ruin the middle class further - it was never about “efficient markets”.

If anything what we’ve seen over the last 40 years is that we need better systems.

I have absolutely zero faith that the current political ruling class will “come to their senses”.

All you have to do is observe their current behavior and you will come to the same conclusion.

When billionaires show you who they are, believe them the first time.

They have not lived through a depression and neither have they lived through any major world wars. They will be curious to see how bad it can get and they believe they will remain untouched from it.

There is some benefit from having a pool of people with enough funds to take investment risks that the rank and file can't. They can outmaneuver any planned economy. The problem in the US is that those people have engineered themselves a disproportionate wealth disparity that doesn't generate a collective benefit.

> When America was strongest, we had a large and increasing middle class, and the top marginal tax rate was above 70% - it was in the 90s.

I think you got this wrong. According to my sources the highest marginal income tax rate was 39.6%.

It was during the 50s, 60s, and 70s that it never dipped below 70%.

Source: https://bradfordtaxinstitute.com/Free_Resources/Federal-Inco...

The other thing is that different dimensions of the economy and other societal aspect have different lagging effects so you cannot simply assume causation or correlation between things during the same time frame.

We probably need to rethink how companies are structured - there are (many) companies with revenues greater than most countries but are (in theory) dictatorships with no official ability to change course if the one guy who owns the shares does not want to.

Who is the ‘demos’ in a company? Who gets a vote ? Will voting really slow things down?

Neither have they lived through any serious social upheaval.

Theres a whole swath of positive regulatory structure that would both improve the company and its employees, but capitalism is stuck in the delusion that self interest is the only yardstick we need to concern ourselves with.

Why? Because being poor isnt a structural problem, but a moral or ethical or laziness.

Its fascinating watching business culture basically align with prosperity gospel in that if you can grift it, it _must_ be good/just/right.

The current billionaires seem yo know they're headed to apocalypse since theyre building evil lairs. They know history.

The problem is: power is an addiction and like all addictions, some can manage to cope without and others will a absolutely follow a destructive pattern of behavior

That's a novel take on diversity, but I think your window is too small. The US was full of similar anti-immigrant sentiment a century ago, directed at southern and eastern European new arrivals. Today no one is calling for Poles and Italians to be deported. The "melting pot" can work, if no one is actively trying to kick it over.

They probably won’t, either.

The 'tax the rich' crowd loves to quote the top marginal rates from 50 years ago; but did anyone ever really pay those rates?

Tax shelters were common in those days with the rich paying accountants and tax attorneys to find ways of avoiding those astronomical rates.

Considering our success so far, it’s obvious it’s succeeding. You’d have to ignore your eyes and ears to think a multiracial secular democratic country can succeed.

What’s amazing is that racists seem to be trying to screw it up on purpose, then to claim it doesn’t work. “Starve the beast” but for social cohesion. They’re always surprised when they get bitten by the monster they created.

The rich never had “noblesse oblige” - we used to shoot at the factory owner when they didn’t pay us.

I’m not sure what to do with such a limited understanding of history and such an obvious blind spot as this, but then I remember: you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

That used to be “industrial policy” - it doesn’t need to be individuals at all. In fact it shouldn’t be - they’re concerned with returns, not jobs and certainly not with any technology that requires a longer timespan to complete.

The Biden administration had excellent industrial policy. Trump had the government steal a 10% share of Intel.

Watching people realize he’s just a criminal loser has been heartening.

Some people tried to evade the system - that’s why we have helicopters. We can just grab them and bring them to court, no problem.

I don’t think “some people didn’t abide the rules” is reason not to make sensible laws.

Can you elaborate on this?

>companies stockpiling chemical weapons and machine guns

I recognize the historical references in the other clauses of this sentence, but I wasn't aware of companies stockpiling chemical weapons for use against workers. I'm not doubting - just curious to learn more about the dark history here.

Thanks!

Yeah, sure, helicopters is all you need to catch millions of sophisticated tax evaders using semi-legal loopholes developed and implemented by professional accountants and lawyers.

Read about Laffer Curve for a start.

> here are (many) companies with revenues greater than most countries

IS that true? What do you define as the revenue of a country? Tax revenues? That is just the government. GDP/GNP/GNI? That comparison for that should be profit, and only a handful of really big companies (Saudi Aramco, Apple, that sort of size) have a profit as large as the GDP of mid-size middle income countries (e.g. Sri Lanka) or small rich countries (e.g. Luxembourg). There is a long tail of small or poor countries so most countries by number, but most people live in a country with a GDP that is an order of magnitude or two greater than any company's profit.

As long as the companies in question aren't monopolies on violence, it's a complete non-issue. So with that in mind, why would any sane person want to impose such an inefficient mechanism to allocate resources and make decisions within a company or corporation?

The only good thing about democracy in the context of a state, after all, is that every other alternative is worse. But that is strictly because of the fundamentally violent nature of the concept of a state, which does not apply to companies or corporations.

On the contrary, most of that elite has been rotting in the ground for nigh on a century. The elite I’m speaking of is the one that existed pre-1917 (with some offshoots and cultural descendants surviving until the 1960s). They weren’t saints by any means (in ways that sometimes rhyme quite well with slavers in the US, including the chronology), and I’m no monarchist, but it’s telling what part of e.g. meaningful science, or even good secondary education can trace its ancestry to people with pre-October-Revolution education (spoiler: all of it).

(To be clear, a university professor in pre-Socialist Russia is very well off compared to most, and except for the for a lucky few the October Revolution treated them accordingly.)

Violence is not always physical. The likes of Meta have subjected the world to unfathomable violence, but we give them a pass because we can't see the scars with our eyes.

Why would GDP be the proxy for a country's profit? If I pay someone to build a house and another person to tear that house down, both activities contribute to GDP while producing nothing of tangible value.

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The guy who whispers in the king’s ear also has an effective monopoly on violence.

What we’ve learned over the last half century is that extreme wealth disparities lead to extreme power disparities. Coercion doesn’t just emanate from the state.

> To educate people you just need the internet (communication infrastructure).

This is laughably reductive. Certainly the Internet can help people get educated and pop some comfort bubbles, but it's not automatic. Many (most?) humans need personal attention from others to learn. Even fewer place a value on what they're taught, much less learning itself. A significant number of people must have supervision and some proding to become functioning, literate, and informed adults.

All that said, I'd agree with most of your other points.

If it were the same company, that company would have made profit twice. Or did your house change country before being torn down?

The Laffer Curve is frequently cited by the same people who refuse to see the failure of conservative-style economic policy over the last 40 years, for some reason.

It’s clear all that “don’t tax the rich, they create jobs!” Is just trash. Noise. We have 40 years of data, it doesn’t work.

But still, someone ignores all that to tell me the Laffer Curve, every time. What’s also amazing is that they don’t really understand it themselves. Wild.

gdp is a revenue like number, not a profit like number.

Huh? Violence is defined as the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. If you mean "harm", please use that word instead of wrongly using another.

violence is defined specifically as the use of physical force, and I expect the other commentator you're replying to specifically chose that word for a reason.

I think people read too much into this sort of thing. When you have so much money, spending some preparing for a 1/1000000 chance of doom makes total sense, even if you believe we're actually heading for utopia.

> Read about Laffer Curve

Your comment lost all credibility right here

> The current billionaires seem yo know they're headed to apocalypse since theyre building evil lairs.

It will be apocalypse for us, but a glorious new age of feudalism for them. Why else would they be building castles and describing ideal societies of feudal oaths.

Every single person in the country, regardless of political affiliation should know them as most dangerous domestic enemy.

You should educate yourself about corporate violence both inside and outside the US - the use of intimidation and murder for strike breaking, the role the Pinkerton agency, the original meaning of "banana republic."

It's tragic - but not accidental - there's no mention of any of this in schools or any public memory of it.

There is a big difference between tax evasion (illegal) and tax avoidance (completely legal). Many of the tax shelters and loopholes utilized by the rich when top marginal rates exceeded 50% were completely legit.

But they spent the money you paid them and it stimulated the economy! We assume value was created elsewhere. /s

Econ is a crock.

It's tragic, but it was also illegal, and that's a crucial distinction.

No, it isn't. Every single definition of violence includes forms other than just physical.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation

Perhaps. I'd say the odds are higher than I thought they were a decade ago, though.

That's a pretty broad definition. In this context it refers to physical violence only, which is the same definition you'll find in most dictionaries.

So we have 40 years of data that clearly shows that advocating for reasonable tax rates for the wealthy "doesn't work"? I world love to see the detailed analysis that proves that!

Even the most staunch conservative wants the rich to pay their "fair share" of taxes. The only legitimate debate is about what constitutes 'fair'. The flat tax advocates will at least give you a real number (10%, 15%, or even 20%). Progressives will never give you a number. Why?

Agreed; it’s an embarrassing argument.

It is closest to value added something most companies do not disclose but is closely related to profit but is NOTHING like revenue.

no, if you trade a dollar back and forth 1000 times with a friend, you are adding $1000 to the GDP.

I think its unlikely to happen, but also, that they won't live through it if it does.

If you pay someone a dollar, that is because they supplied you with something worth a dollar - i.e. a dollar's worth of value added to the economy.

Sure thing bob. No way there's nothing better to do but be a prepper.

Most children are not educated in school anywhere in the world, historically and currently. How do you want to deal with those facts, because I don’t think you can compare great learning instruction to “no education at all”.

I fully stand by that most people are not educated in school.

Another way of putting is, the number TWO is greater than ZERO, but I’d prefer if we not compare ZERO to anything.

> Most children are not educated in school anywhere in the world, historically and currently.

This is quite a bold claim. So I guess girls in Afghanistan are just as educated as those in Norway?

So you disagree with the core principle behind Laffer Curve?

Lots of totally baseless assumptions and accusations in your comment. I wonder where on Dunning-Kruger curve you are at regarding this topic.

Illegal things happen all the time. The current president has committed many crimes and suffered no punishment. Elon Musk is an illegal immigrant. Uber was completely illegal but they did it anyway. The law isn't actually the law - the real law is what gets enforced.

right, but if an item goes through 10 different factories to be assembled the price each pays from the previous gets added to GDP.

I'm talking very macro. Look, you can sit with an LLM today and go through a topic you once were educated on and see just how many gaps it fills in. So you yourself can see just how many holes there were in your own education. What do you think the case is for the average person living in the world? Do you really think they got a chance to clarify and explore their education? It's blatantly obvious that we've been giving people inadequate education for quite some time.