it's not work (which could be accomplishing something good) itself that i don't like, it's the fact that's it's a necessity and involves someone else dictating what i do.
@itsadeadmansparty This is Korea, there are no such things has human rights in working environment. If you walk into store as angry customer, the store clerk can take bat and hit you with it! :( If they can do that to a customer, imagine what they can do to an employee.
@EasternMerchant Wait are you sure in Korea they can hit you with a bat? I mean really? Dont you guys have guns in your country? Sounds like you need the help of the Yukuza or local mob, Dont worry my country is just as bad, The problem is you thought you were receiving democracy when you separated from the north, actually both systems are the same, one is more economically third world then the south so its even harder there, but honestly this democracy lie has gone too far
@itsadeadmansparty :( unfortunately they can. Guns are regulated, and not allowed to be shown in public view. Thanks for your concern friend :) As for Mobs, our former president exiled them to an island. But it seems new mobs are sprouting up here and there. Just because Korea seems developed looks can be deceiving. Yes we have been lied to. I am so happy you understand our dilemma. South Korea is ruthlessly capitalistic! Money is before human. :(
@blackwayfarers yes unfortunately it is this way, but thankyou for your understanding. That's why I am saving up my money so that maybe and hopefully in the next 30 years I maybe able to save up enough money to run away and hide in the mountains and isolate myself from the rat race of slave trafficking that goes on in Seoul Korea.
@blackwayfarers but, I do consider myself fortunate that I made it through mandatory 3 year Korean Military conscription since many people have committed suicide during this time of their lives.
The only ways to escape wage slavery is to inherit money, to be born with some huge talent OR to lie, cheat and steal your way to the top. Mild-mannered, honest people with moderate talents will be slaves for all of their lives.
The concept of wage slavery is easy to understand because once employment has become essential to survival as the only available means of livelihood, the employer is placed in a position of almost total power over the lives, and status of fellow human beings. The efforts of employees to offset this total power by organizing unions has lost ground because most employees are readily replaceable. Today, the employer reigns supreme, and a job has become the single greatest necessity for survival.
If I were financially secure, I would not choose to work. Especially stacking shelves or on an assembly line, checkout clerk or other horrible jobs. I guess then I would "work" doing something enjoyable - for free. Like a passtime.
I'll add that I work 40 hours a week, and just barely make enough to cover rent and food. Let alone money for health care, etc... I probably can save $100 a month. Thanks to bailouts from our central bank to their other banker friends, that $100 is worthless.
if i become an entrepreneur, i can either get my own wage slaves or be crushed by a rival that does. the problem with the opinion expressed at 1:27 is the blind acceptance of the american dream...the delusion that we get ahead in society by working hard, as opposed to the reality of getting rich by having others work hard for you.
the ron paul guy talked about wage slavery as a teenage naivete. most ppl wud choose to work but most , the vast majority, wud choose other work and not what it is we do. so many of the work force have their souls crushed, they are sad and bored cuz there abilities are greater then the drab requirements of their jobs. its most definately wage slavery, thats why beer, pharmasuticals ,and television are so needed. to ease pain.
lol, Ron Paul t-shirt guy was right-on...although, he didn't seem to recognize "involuntary" wage slaves do exist.
It's not wage systems nor private ownership in itself that's problematic (in fact, in proper condition, their virtures are unparalleled)...the problem is that there's unequal opportunitiy to participate in this system.
The solution is to remedy the inequality, not devolve to some shitty system that lacks understanding of (or purposefully ignores) basic virtues of capitalism.
Money has no value. Why would you trade your valuable time, skills, talents & effort for devalued paper whose value is controlled by someone who's only goal is profit? All these notions of prices, wages, value, markets, profit, supply & demand, regulation etc, are outdated & irrelevant in a post industrial, post SCARCITY society. See "Awakening part 1-4" on YT for more. Then Google "Zeitgeist Addendum" & "Peter Joseph Where are we going?" for a more complete picture of where the future lies.
Making shoes at their leisure? Nope. They struggled quite hard before wages. Now, we see people with hardly any skills at all with MASSIVE amounts of free time and even when working, the work rarely compares to the brutal physical labor and hours required of days gone by. There is never perfection. This is true. So there are bad situations both now and in the past. Finally, life is a challenge... not a benefits package... as is the case for every critter on this earth.
Actually, you COULD go out into the woods, hunt some deer, eat some wild fruit, set up a tent, shelter, start a campfire etc and therefore live without a wage. "Work or starve" is a false dictotomy.
I don't get it. You spend 9 and half minutes talking about how everyone is a slave...and then your "solution" or alternative is that people should basically just all be independent contractors.
What if I don't want to be an independent contractor? What if I'd rather just go somewhere, clock in, and get paid exactly a certain amount for the time that I'm there? What's wrong with that?
im self employed and lose about 75% of my earnings thru taxation, enough said really.
capitolist socialist democrat communist theyre all the same, just systems to further enslave the working man thru overzealous taxation.
the new slavemasters are the banks, they flexed their power with the recent global depression and showed us all what they can do. and ,sorry to be crass, but our governments shit themselves and proved this with the bail outs
@bricksalegend Well for starters, it's not about 'materialism' per se. Like before, the place we want to build a house on wasn't under any government monitoring, rich land owner, or economic clap traps. Focus on the present civilization.
1835: President Andrew Jackson shutdown the central bank that preceded the Federal Reserve. In fact Jacksons entire political platform essentially revolved around his commitment to shut down the central bank, stating at one point
The bold efforts the present bank has made to control the Government are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution, or the establishment of another like it. -Andrew Jackson
China and the former Soviet Union are examples of Capitalist State Regimes, NOT Socialism.
Also, a socialist market economy would function just as a capitalist market economy does: supply and demand would still govern the marketplace. Pro-Capitalists continue to spread misinformation about this very fact. PLEASE TRY NOT TO FALL FOR IT.
In France people who don't work get paid almost the same wage by the goverment as those who do. You want to not be a "wage slave" move to France, get better healthcare, but know that your new nation will never innovate, influence, or change the world. If you want to do those things then stay in america and work your ass off.
Countries in which people work hard include Germany, China, Japan. These nations have a high GDP and do well in the world. Countries in which people are lazy and do not work as hard include France, Italy, Hungary and most other European nations besides Germany that will never again rise in the world due to their laziness.
ok, yeah. The world is unfair. So what do you propose we do about it. Pay people more money for their work so that they make only work half the time and kill our already struggling economy even more, switch to communism where everything is decided for you and the buerocrats become the most powerful and corrupt people. America has suceeded for so long because we are a nation that works, and works hard.
You're missing the point. It has nothing to do with not wanting to work or being lazy. It's just like he said, you're renting yourself out to make someone else rich, hand over fist. Then you return home to your burden of debt. Not to mention, many people find themselves in debt not because they are lazy and didn't pay bills, but because they found themselves in hard times.
This isn't about "I don't want to work." It's about being exploited, not being paid what you're worth.
Free people, engaging in voluntary, unrestricted exchanges of value and ideas, can create prosperity, through peaceful, pluralistic competition. Politicos, engaging in violent domination, can only redistribute and destroy prosperity, by pitting otherwise rational people against eachother in a gigantic, dysfunctional negative-sum game.
If a number of parties create mutual value through voluntary exchange, then by what right might anyone oppose that exchange?
Interesting I looked up the word Master in a LAW DICTIONARY and it expresses that a Master is a Slave owner and the same as an employer it went on to say that an employee is a slave ...
Point 2: If you are a good worker, work on your skills, you won't have a problem.
Point 3: If you think employers are these evil people and they have an advantage... go become an employer.
Point 4: Employees always think they have the bad deal but they don't know what it's like to be on the edge of bankruptcy and standing to lose millions, all they deserve is peanuts and if they think they are worth more they are free to go out and start their own empire.
The answer to wage slavery is not slacking. It is being productive in a different way. People also need to realize that it is not the secure way to have a life as we think. The economic crisis is proving that.
Hopefully, we will realize this when we lose our jobs, and we will instead, sell the product of our labour and not ourselves to huge unaccountable corporations.
Are you kidding? My mom was a bust-ass worker for Lowes. If you're a good slave you get to do it all by yourself and save your overseer even MORE money. That's right, when they saw how good she worked, she got to run entire departments by herself, meaning she would be the only person in that department running it... Not being an overseer herself.
When I was in High School, I worked in a grocery store, for minimum wage, and I liked it (well, the skills and experience gained). The worst part of it was the Union, which protected the incompetant workers and did nothing for me. The Unions make it very difficult for competant workers to get raises and advance in position because things are based on "seignority", rather than ability. Unlike you people, I'd rather work hard and earn my keep, than feel I'm "entitled" to things.
KPFK, a local, listener sponsored radio station in Los Angeles...I can't think of the ladies name at the moment. She was basically introducing Michael Parenti in this clip. KPFK is part of the Pacifica network. Here in New York we have WBAI. I think there are five stations all together.
This is why I only work for myself, I started out with absolutely nothing too. You can only be a "wage slave" if you allow yourself to be one, you're the one that gives up your authority in exchange for some false security at a "real job." It's actually tougher to work for yourself a lot of times, you have to be good at whatever it is you're doing, not just good, the best. You need talent and skill, and be able to produce. It's all on you, and most people would rather be a "wage slave."
People do choose what and who they want to be in the long run.
Most people who fail in, just about everything in this system, are not unintelligent or biologically inferior. Actually, it doesn't matter as much as we think. It is careful and broad thinking that counts most.
They just have their focus elsewhere.
He needs to learn that criticizing others is not helping in his cause.
Well, going into business for yourself definitely isn't the easy way out either. I work 3-4 hours a day and do fine for myself though, the key to having money is not spending a lot of money and not wanting a bunch of stupid bs. Materialism isn't the key to happieness. I haven't worked a "real job" for 15 years, I played guitar on the road for 8, I've lived my life 100 times more than the average person lives theirs. Started out with nothing too, computers saved me from having to get a real job.
How about property....if you like exchanging money for abstract concepts. Don't we all own this? The native americans did not get private property and they suffered. Shall we keep on suffering from these abstract concepts? "When will they ever learn."
Money has no F*cking value. It is meaningless concept. An abstract nothingness. Check out the Modern Day Slavery video by Derrick Jensen here on youtube.
Money is just paper, nothing more. As bad as the wage system is, I see the root problem being the idea that one can exchange an abstract concept for tangible resources, no matter what you conceptualize the monetary system being based on.
Money is energy, most of us trade our energy in some form in exchange for money. The trick is to exchange as little energy as possible for as much money as possible. Slacking rules!
I like Alan Watts take on this. Money is just a convention. It is a symbol for wealth much like words are symbols for an idea. The problem is that people take the symbol too seriously. They mistake the symbol for reality and begin to pursue the symbol instead of reality. This is done with both money and words. And is why people pursue large bank accounts and get upset of arguments.
If you don't like your job quit and find another or create your own busniess. But understand that other people's busniess is non of your busniess so you have no say so in how to run it unless you're a manager or some shit.
Nonsense! When you look at slaves "from a historical point of view"; they didn't have rights - nor could they choose how, or where to work. In primitive times, people had to hunt and fight to sustain their lives. During the feudal period, people broke their backs everyday just to survive. Today, you have as much freedom to pursue your own happiness as you do making videos on youtube. So quit whining; find what makes you happy - find a purpose. Then chose a career that will fulfill that purpose.
Thanks for recommendation on that book "The Industrial Worker." One of my favorite books is Alexander Berkman's the ABCs of Anarchism. Have you read that one? Also, Albert Meltzers book on "Anarchism Arguments For and Against" is a good one too.
Great video Buddhagem. I agree with you completely on the concept of wage slavery. I currently work at a job that pays crap and no benefits, and I have bachelors degree. Of course people tell me I should go into commission sales to make more money and sell shit I do not care about. Or I am told go back to grad school and create more loans for myself..Great system..LOL..What can worker like myself do to stick up for my rights? Currently I work for company that I am only employee.
"The only viable way to become wealthy in this country (top 1% of earners) is to inherit the wealth or marry into it. Take a look at the 200 richest families in this country."
This is false. 8 of the 10 richest Americans are self-made, 7 came from middle class families.
What is the difference between working for a wage to survive and working in a co-operative society to survive? Co-op tribes have never shown the ability to have our current standards of living.
Forbes, Gates, Walton...that's seven of the top 10 to be sure and all of them came from money. Who else you got? Or would you like to admit you're a liar?
Our standard of living has nothing to do with capitalism. Every gain we have made has been in spite of capitalism, not because of it. Your ignorance is sad.
Your rags to riches stories exist mostly in your mind...not the real world.
Of the three people you mentioned only one is actually in the top 10, Bill Gates. I'm an not a liar, this information was easy to gather. Two, the Kochs inherited their money and Michael Dells dad was a doctor. Fact is 7 of the 10 richest came from middle class. It seems you are misinformed.
At the time of the USSRs peak was their standard of living equal to capitalist Europe of U.S.A of the time? Sadly profits create innovation and progress.
There are five Waltons, not one; I have no idea why you would bring up the Soviet Union to an anarchist. Fascism increased the standard of living for Italians and Germans. Is that an endorsement for fascism? Slaves of 1840 were better off than slaves of 1740. Is that an endorsement for slavery? Continue believing that anybody can rise to the top in our society. They play those get rich quick commercials late at night for idiots like you.
"Forbes, Gates, Walton" - How convieninet you leave out Jobs, the one who's fortune you help make bigger my using his PROPRIETARY technology to make these videos.
He didn't follow any "get rich quick" scheme, either, he worked out of his garage.
Now, he shits all over anyone else who would try and do the same thing he did. He uses his power to hyper-consumerize technology, and by using it, you're helping him.
Did you just buy a computer and start making videos or something???
Police Offences Acts 1957, Part II, Section 70, Subsections (i), (ii) and (iii) state (briefly) that any policeman may arrest without warrant any person he suspects of having no lawful means of support, and any person so arrested who fails to prove to the court that he has sufficient lawful means of support is liable to 12 months gaol. Does this mean that in Australia that it is illegal to exist outside the fiscal system? Surely this would mean forced labour, therefore enslavement?
we re all wage slaves, the evolution of man is stoped we turned into dollars, our lifes has become competition and chase for money abolish money that is the only way we are all prostitutes for the capitalist
Being an entrepreneur myself I find this insulting. Socialist have there hands out at every corner which is making it almost impossible to do business effectively. Which is why black markets flourish. I had some commie idiot say to me the rich get richer, never mind that I worked 90 hours per week for years to achieve wealth. Socialism rewards poor choices, capitalisms rewards those who earn it.
Ahhh yes the benevolent entrepreneur who's just out to do good things for people. Nice myth you've got going there. How about you stop stealing from your employees? How about you develop a sustainable business model that understands we live on a finite planet?
What is the conclusion of this video? Outlaw wages and business? I realize I am a slave to government and their monopolistic corporate allies, but what is your solution?
The conclusion is we abolish the wage system which has historically been a major aim of the labor movement. Read Norman Ware's the Industrial Worker for more context.
Awesome. It's a great book and gives the workers struggle more context. It's filled with quotes from the labor press, working class people with no influence from Marx of Bakunin talking about the need to abolish the wage system and have more democracy in the work place and the radical idea that the people who work in the factories should own them.Most of this has been conveniently swept under the rug or, as Orwell would have said, placed down the memory hole.
You are not just a wage slave. You are a wage slave in a recession.
Only way out is to find a way to make money in your own business. Unfortunately, that often means having access to capital. Fortunately, it doesn't always mean so.
Good God, America is horrible! We are wage slaves!
That must be why Americans are trying to get away from this terrible slavery and trying to get into such socialist utopias such as North Korea and Belarus!
well dude. Yu got yurself a new subscriber and friend. GREAT fukin video!
Also checkout The Power of Choice by Druscilla French who shows how in literature, myth has had to follow rules of narrative which suppress 'poor people'
And how education is there to kill our spirit, John Taylor Gatto. He's got a great site!
I genuinely wish to understand your position. I hope that you will reply. Please address my concern that production would necessarily fall dramatically by a return to the condition where all were self-employed artisans as you describe in the last part of your video. If you believe my concern here to reflect a misunderstanding of your position, then please explain by describing how you believe that production should be organized.
It should be understood that even the largest corporation began as a small operation that expanded, for the most part, through superior efficacy. Today, however, many corporations are protected not legitimately through the market economy, but rather through force of law. These protections include regulations, licensure, oppressive taxation, subsidies, and other laws. The net effect is to secure the position of established enterprises at our expense. These are special privileges.
Those who would rail against a business enterprise because of its expansiveness or efficiency, citing that successfully competing with it in the market is virtually impossible, are motivated by nothing less than envy and hatred of those who are more efficacious than themselves and others. This is merely egalitarian socialism in disguise. The psychological roots are the same. Superior efficacy is not a special privilege, and opposing it is tantamount to opposing reality itself.
The clear implication is that some coercive means would have to be introduced to (quite arbitrarily) limit the size and efficacy of each business enterprise. Obviously, the policies put in place to achieve this objective would be determined by a majority that would no doubt find it (incorrectly) in their interest to so restrict the actions of their fellow men. This is a special privilege as well.
Really nice job of building a strawman. Corporations couldn't exist without the state. They rely on state charters and depend on a host of legal justifications to afford them corporate personhood, which gives them all the rights of a person with none of the responsibilities. Corporations were not developed because they were efficient they were developed to get around personal liability and responsibility.
Show me a "private" insurance company that is more efficient than medicare; or show me a private pension company that is more efficient than Social Security which runs uses 1% or 2% for administrative costs compared to 30% and higher in the private sector.
Finally I'd just like to point out that the high-tech sector of the economy is largely dependent upon public funding and research because "efficiency" rarely leads to advances in technology. Show me a corporation or any "private" capitalist that could ever afford to fund something like the creation and development of something like the internet or the space program or machine technology. It just doesn't happen because science isn't efficient. There are lots of dead ends.
My argument on the opportunity costs presented to the private insurance and pension markets by the social security and medicare monopolies apply here as well. We can't know if the internet, space program, or machine technology would not have developed had the resources not be diverted to these ends by government. But most importantly, we can't know what has been prevented from coming into being because the resources were so diverted.
It would be fallacious to compare social security or medicare to the state of private pension or insurance today. We cannot know how such private institutions may have developed over the decades if the markets were not forced to incur the burdensome opportunity costs of financing these competing government monopolies. But regardless, it does seem to me that these "services" have failed to deliver their intended goals, and that their solvency is questionable.
What a tortured analogy. Show me a private company that has COMPULSORY customers, and is allowed to have a negative rate of return, and ZERO reserve requirements. The calculation of a 2% administrative is not very meaningful. The IRS and other Treasury departments provide a great amount of information to SS, which is NOT accounted for in SS costs.
If the semantics presents a difficulty for you, then substitute the term "business" or even "productive human endeavor" in lieu of "corporation". The principles remain. I would likely agree with you that the legal definition of a corporation is arbitrary, and I advise that dwelling on my use of the term will likely distract you from understanding the intent of my argument.
(more on the "corporation") Pursuant to the arguments that I've presented, the "corporation" is an artificial entity that receives special privileges through force of law, and should therefore be abolished in accordance with my argument that the law should recognize no entity beyond the individual.
You're conflating two separate issues. Nobody denies the need for us to produce the goods and services we need; however, that doesn't mean that the only way we can do that is to set up hierarchical and oppressive institutions that force us to work for a master or starve. As history proves, we have other viable options of organizing society that have worked and can work based on mutual cooperation and free association.
You're conflating two separate issues. Nobody denies the need for us to produce the goods and services we need; however, that doesn't mean that the only way we can do that is to set up hierarchical and oppressive institutions that force us to work for a master or starve. As history proves, we have other viable options of organizing society that have worked and can work based on mutual cooperation and free association.
Comments and question: Workers used to sell the products of their labor as opposed to the system today where most workers sell their labor. But it seems that there remains the freedom today to pursue the former option. A worker can save his wages and/or borrow funds to acquire the tools necessary to make his product and offer it for trade. He will likely be successful provided he can offer the product at a competitive price. Do you agree?
I'd suggest you look at the matter more closely. The upward mobility that you mention is mostly a myth in this society with few exceptions, maybe a guy like Steve Jobs, but the exceptions are so rare they are statistically irrelevant. The only viable way to become wealthy in this country (top 1% of earners) is to inherit the wealth or marry into it. Take a look at the 200 richest families in this country.
One could be forgiven for believing that your complaint lies, ultimately, in the very existence of large organizations that are simply too efficient for an individual to compete against. Am I mistaken? Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the present state of affairs. I am merely asking questions to understand your position. I suppose I'm most interested to know your proposed solutions to the problems.
Well, like I said in the earlier comment, competition and upward mobility are more myth than reality; the state is designed, as Madison pointed out at the Constitutional Convention, to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority. That's the way it's designed. That was its intention. The solution is to put power back in peoples hands at the local level, in the places we work, in our communities. The Spanish Revolution of 1936 is a good example of what I'm talking about.
In general, I agree with you. Many of the problems today would be solved through a Jeffersonian interpretation of the Constitution. We need to dramatically downsize DC. The solutions lie in identifying and removing all sources of special privilege. Personally, I would first tackle the system of money and credit that encourages personal debt, causes the business cycle, and has enabled the continued expansion of the federal government. But I am wary of replacing one coercive system for another.
I emphasize that we should remove only those sources of privilege that enable some to succeed at the expense of others. However, genuine productivity must not be curtailed. If one builds an expansive business enterprise by being unequivocally superior to his competitors, then his actions must be sanctioned.
I'd really encourage you to think that through. You're asking a bit much of the current system. As I've said before, it was designed to protect "special privlege." To think that we could use such a system to remove what it was designed to protect is terribly naive. This system has certain limits and constraints imposed on it by its very structure.
A fundamental problem has been the departure from the principle of the protection of individual rights toward the protection of group privileges. Only rights should be protected by laws, and there are no group rights. Therefore, the law should recognize no entity beyond the individual. I propose that a solution can be had in establishing the rule of law, which I define as the condition where all laws are applied in their respective jurisdictions to all individuals without qualifications.
Capital is merely an artificial filter designed by the banking cartel to put power into the hands of their fellow thieves (the monarchs, the industrialists, the merchants etc). Look at "Money as Debt" to get an idea what compromises "wages"... Socialism must be based on a Commodity Economy set by guild leaders. CAPITAL HAS TO GO!
I like this video. I am developing a class to teach at my local IMC. Can I use this for a topic on organizing? The class is entitled, "Saving the World - 101" Hit me up with an email...
If you don't understand something, just say so. No need to make a fool of yourself by making such ignorant comments. Brush up on your labor history; and then ask yourself, what is the fundamental difference between renting and selling myself? Think, think, think...i promise it won't hurt.
How about you think about the contradiction of voluntary slave. Nothing force you to work for someone other then what the limitation of ressources and how much the customer is willing to pay. What poeple don't want to admit is the most cold blooded one is the customer who don't care if your business survive. They pay for what they feel to be the best. If you don't want to work, go start a farm and make your own futur. No one own anything to you.
A "wage slave" can choose to be a "slave" to himself, or some socialist collective.
Would you allow people the right to work for a wage? Or would you prevent them from doing so? It seems to me that only a state can prevent people from selling themselves at a wage, are you an "anarchist" who would use force to prevent me from renting my body?
That's like saying that by destroying the system of chattel slavery that you were "forcing" people not to sell their lives to someone. (After all, you may have a job contract that says in advance that you will work for one year. To sell the whole of your life life in advance would be called slavery and you would say it's wrong too, I'm pretty sure. But what's the difference? It's simply more time. What is truly wrong with it in principle is still present in both cases.)
The anarcho-syndicalist system has been tried in different countries in different ways, and guess what? People prefer not to be wage slaves! They prefer organisation from the bottom up, not the top down (the anarchist idea). They prefer self-governance and protection by their equals in the community rather than some high up figure like a boss or politician.
Her name is Lyn Gary. I'm not sure if that's how you spell it. Her show is "Unwelcome Guest" and it's aired on a number of community based radio stations including the Pacifica Stations. If you have trouble let me know. I have a copy of one of her shows you can check out.
what's more, if the work we did was meaningful to us, then it would not be drudgery or slavery. It would be done for the product, not for the sake of earning a wage. But most of us work jobs for the sake of money, jobs created mostly out of a constant push for us to consume more and more.
Hi again buddhagem, a question for you : Does it make a difference, according to your definition of wage slavy, to have a wage of 1$/hours or 100$/hours? Or are you a wage slave no matter how much you earn? Is it a question of degree or of form?
AnarkoFred; the higher wages received by some workers in industrialized countries do not obviate the authoritarianism of capitalist institutions--just as the improving material conditions of chattel slaves in the American south didn't obviate chattel slavery (e.g. a slave in 1850 was better off than in 1750, and at the time they were material better off than "free" wage laborers)
The stance I take is to get rid of the obvious violent coercion of the government first. I don't think you can rightly say that capitalism, an idea that may come about naturally without coercion, should be dropped along with government.
Get rid of the violence of the government, then this "wage-slave" issue might actually be a problem at the top of the list.
LOL. He is pretty funnny. His name is Franc28. You should hear him say etc. etc. It's hilarious. He's from Quebec I think, maybe that's just a funny accent? It is funny, though.
By the way, I appologize for bugging you so much about Libertarianism. However you mention that you are an Anarcho-syndicalist correct? Does Anarcho-syndicalism differ from Noam Chomsky's type of Libertarian Socilism.
You don't bug, brother. Don't let all the hyphens fool you. Anarcho-Syndicalism is simply a specific form of Libertarian Socialism. Like say Catholicism is a specific form of Christianity? Does that help? Appreciate the comments. Don't worry about bugging me. OK? Happy 2008
Great video, but don't we need exhausted workers. Otherwise the workers might have the energy and motivation to understand you. Don't we need wage slavery to keep the system in place? Let's say that the wage slaves have time to reflect; what would happen? Surely, independent thought is for masters? Anything else could interfere with profit. Wake up to yourself! You'll end capitalism and state capitalism!
it's not work (which could be accomplishing something good) itself that i don't like, it's the fact that's it's a necessity and involves someone else dictating what i do.
blackwayfarers 3 months ago
@blackwayfarers hehe try to keeping you job for ten years while working for Korean Boss!
Might be notified at the last minute to stay back for hours on end with no definite knowledge of when your shift ends.
Physical Assault because you weren't psychic enough to magically know what they expect 100% of the time.
Doing extra things that goes beyond your job description that the Boss expects WITHOUT PAY!
Never knowing if you're getting paid on time or AT ALL!
EasternMerchant 2 months ago
@EasternMerchant Have you thought to report this crazy boss to the authorities? Those are criminals you understand?
itsadeadmansparty 2 months ago
@itsadeadmansparty This is Korea, there are no such things has human rights in working environment. If you walk into store as angry customer, the store clerk can take bat and hit you with it! :( If they can do that to a customer, imagine what they can do to an employee.
EasternMerchant 2 months ago
@EasternMerchant Wait are you sure in Korea they can hit you with a bat? I mean really? Dont you guys have guns in your country? Sounds like you need the help of the Yukuza or local mob, Dont worry my country is just as bad, The problem is you thought you were receiving democracy when you separated from the north, actually both systems are the same, one is more economically third world then the south so its even harder there, but honestly this democracy lie has gone too far
itsadeadmansparty 2 months ago
@itsadeadmansparty :( unfortunately they can. Guns are regulated, and not allowed to be shown in public view. Thanks for your concern friend :) As for Mobs, our former president exiled them to an island. But it seems new mobs are sprouting up here and there. Just because Korea seems developed looks can be deceiving. Yes we have been lied to. I am so happy you understand our dilemma. South Korea is ruthlessly capitalistic! Money is before human. :(
EasternMerchant 2 months ago
@itsadeadmansparty If you don't mind my asking where are you from?
EasternMerchant 2 months ago
@EasternMerchant
eek. i am sorry if that is your situation!
blackwayfarers 2 months ago
Comment removed
EasternMerchant 2 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@blackwayfarers yes unfortunately it is this way, but thankyou for your understanding. That's why I am saving up my money so that maybe and hopefully in the next 30 years I maybe able to save up enough money to run away and hide in the mountains and isolate myself from the rat race of slave trafficking that goes on in Seoul Korea.
EasternMerchant 2 months ago
@blackwayfarers but, I do consider myself fortunate that I made it through mandatory 3 year Korean Military conscription since many people have committed suicide during this time of their lives.
EasternMerchant 2 months ago
The only ways to escape wage slavery is to inherit money, to be born with some huge talent OR to lie, cheat and steal your way to the top. Mild-mannered, honest people with moderate talents will be slaves for all of their lives.
MomoTheBellyDancer 6 months ago
The concept of wage slavery is easy to understand because once employment has become essential to survival as the only available means of livelihood, the employer is placed in a position of almost total power over the lives, and status of fellow human beings. The efforts of employees to offset this total power by organizing unions has lost ground because most employees are readily replaceable. Today, the employer reigns supreme, and a job has become the single greatest necessity for survival.
CosmicFork 7 months ago
If I were financially secure, I would not choose to work. Especially stacking shelves or on an assembly line, checkout clerk or other horrible jobs. I guess then I would "work" doing something enjoyable - for free. Like a passtime.
sid8980 8 months ago
Slavery of the mind is the worse form of oppression for the victim is unaware.
mba2ceo 9 months ago
Very good video.
I'll add that I work 40 hours a week, and just barely make enough to cover rent and food. Let alone money for health care, etc... I probably can save $100 a month. Thanks to bailouts from our central bank to their other banker friends, that $100 is worthless.
amartin7889 10 months ago
if i become an entrepreneur, i can either get my own wage slaves or be crushed by a rival that does. the problem with the opinion expressed at 1:27 is the blind acceptance of the american dream...the delusion that we get ahead in society by working hard, as opposed to the reality of getting rich by having others work hard for you.
jaybeebles 1 year ago
We are only slaves to the government...
Volomonoh 1 year ago
deoxy .org / ct / anarchy.htm
chrisrhudy02 1 year ago
the ron paul guy talked about wage slavery as a teenage naivete. most ppl wud choose to work but most , the vast majority, wud choose other work and not what it is we do. so many of the work force have their souls crushed, they are sad and bored cuz there abilities are greater then the drab requirements of their jobs. its most definately wage slavery, thats why beer, pharmasuticals ,and television are so needed. to ease pain.
adzug 1 year ago
Office Space - one of mY favourite movies.
WOGI5M 1 year ago
lol, Ron Paul t-shirt guy was right-on...although, he didn't seem to recognize "involuntary" wage slaves do exist.
It's not wage systems nor private ownership in itself that's problematic (in fact, in proper condition, their virtures are unparalleled)...the problem is that there's unequal opportunitiy to participate in this system.
The solution is to remedy the inequality, not devolve to some shitty system that lacks understanding of (or purposefully ignores) basic virtues of capitalism.
ElDukerino1 1 year ago
End wage slavery! Fuck capitalism! Fuck the monetary system! Fight for a resource based economy! Join The Zeitgeist Movement!
skept1c615 1 year ago
A pareto efficiency does not exist in any monetary system, therefore it cannot work for all......DONE!
There is evidence that intellect=co-cooperation. Technology is what will free us from labour, not more labour!
loppist 1 year ago
Money has no value. Why would you trade your valuable time, skills, talents & effort for devalued paper whose value is controlled by someone who's only goal is profit? All these notions of prices, wages, value, markets, profit, supply & demand, regulation etc, are outdated & irrelevant in a post industrial, post SCARCITY society. See "Awakening part 1-4" on YT for more. Then Google "Zeitgeist Addendum" & "Peter Joseph Where are we going?" for a more complete picture of where the future lies.
kingofthebrittains 1 year ago
Who is the radio host?
canaan1967 1 year ago
Making shoes at their leisure? Nope. They struggled quite hard before wages. Now, we see people with hardly any skills at all with MASSIVE amounts of free time and even when working, the work rarely compares to the brutal physical labor and hours required of days gone by. There is never perfection. This is true. So there are bad situations both now and in the past. Finally, life is a challenge... not a benefits package... as is the case for every critter on this earth.
BfSkinnerPunk 1 year ago
Actually, you COULD go out into the woods, hunt some deer, eat some wild fruit, set up a tent, shelter, start a campfire etc and therefore live without a wage. "Work or starve" is a false dictotomy.
DaveDoggOwns 1 year ago
Hey wage slave, do you own your computer? a car? I bet that room is air conditioned. Apparently someone "educated" you.
Sitting in a cubicle I think is just a little bit better than living in a mine shaft.
cjlavan 1 year ago
I don't get it. You spend 9 and half minutes talking about how everyone is a slave...and then your "solution" or alternative is that people should basically just all be independent contractors.
What if I don't want to be an independent contractor? What if I'd rather just go somewhere, clock in, and get paid exactly a certain amount for the time that I'm there? What's wrong with that?
mikerotcherson 1 year ago
im self employed and lose about 75% of my earnings thru taxation, enough said really.
capitolist socialist democrat communist theyre all the same, just systems to further enslave the working man thru overzealous taxation.
the new slavemasters are the banks, they flexed their power with the recent global depression and showed us all what they can do. and ,sorry to be crass, but our governments shit themselves and proved this with the bail outs
bricksalegend 1 year ago
Without money and property in this present civilization, we die. That's a fact.
vonspawn 2 years ago
so how did humans exist for 700'000 years before materialism?
bricksalegend 1 year ago
@bricksalegend Well for starters, it's not about 'materialism' per se. Like before, the place we want to build a house on wasn't under any government monitoring, rich land owner, or economic clap traps. Focus on the present civilization.
vonspawn 1 year ago
@vonspawn
1835: President Andrew Jackson shutdown the central bank that preceded the Federal Reserve. In fact Jacksons entire political platform essentially revolved around his commitment to shut down the central bank, stating at one point
The bold efforts the present bank has made to control the Government are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution, or the establishment of another like it. -Andrew Jackson
sledstormx 1 year ago
China and the former Soviet Union are examples of Capitalist State Regimes, NOT Socialism.
Also, a socialist market economy would function just as a capitalist market economy does: supply and demand would still govern the marketplace. Pro-Capitalists continue to spread misinformation about this very fact. PLEASE TRY NOT TO FALL FOR IT.
itrainsinoctober 2 years ago
In France people who don't work get paid almost the same wage by the goverment as those who do. You want to not be a "wage slave" move to France, get better healthcare, but know that your new nation will never innovate, influence, or change the world. If you want to do those things then stay in america and work your ass off.
jalks1 2 years ago
Countries in which people work hard include Germany, China, Japan. These nations have a high GDP and do well in the world. Countries in which people are lazy and do not work as hard include France, Italy, Hungary and most other European nations besides Germany that will never again rise in the world due to their laziness.
jalks1 2 years ago
ok, yeah. The world is unfair. So what do you propose we do about it. Pay people more money for their work so that they make only work half the time and kill our already struggling economy even more, switch to communism where everything is decided for you and the buerocrats become the most powerful and corrupt people. America has suceeded for so long because we are a nation that works, and works hard.
jalks1 2 years ago
@jalks1
You're missing the point. It has nothing to do with not wanting to work or being lazy. It's just like he said, you're renting yourself out to make someone else rich, hand over fist. Then you return home to your burden of debt. Not to mention, many people find themselves in debt not because they are lazy and didn't pay bills, but because they found themselves in hard times.
This isn't about "I don't want to work." It's about being exploited, not being paid what you're worth.
nosferotica1 1 year ago
Let the world know you know your place
got to Zazzle and add joebernert* to the end for wage slave merch
joebernert 2 years ago
Free people, engaging in voluntary, unrestricted exchanges of value and ideas, can create prosperity, through peaceful, pluralistic competition. Politicos, engaging in violent domination, can only redistribute and destroy prosperity, by pitting otherwise rational people against eachother in a gigantic, dysfunctional negative-sum game.
If a number of parties create mutual value through voluntary exchange, then by what right might anyone oppose that exchange?
PanzerDivisionBOM 2 years ago
5 stars
ChristianMarxist 2 years ago
Interesting I looked up the word Master in a LAW DICTIONARY and it expresses that a Master is a Slave owner and the same as an employer it went on to say that an employee is a slave ...
magnifysumthn 2 years ago
Whats the name if that song at the end?
pcmatt360 2 years ago
Point 1: America has social welfare.
Point 2: If you are a good worker, work on your skills, you won't have a problem.
Point 3: If you think employers are these evil people and they have an advantage... go become an employer.
Point 4: Employees always think they have the bad deal but they don't know what it's like to be on the edge of bankruptcy and standing to lose millions, all they deserve is peanuts and if they think they are worth more they are free to go out and start their own empire.
Kostanzas200 2 years ago
The answer to wage slavery is not slacking. It is being productive in a different way. People also need to realize that it is not the secure way to have a life as we think. The economic crisis is proving that.
Hopefully, we will realize this when we lose our jobs, and we will instead, sell the product of our labour and not ourselves to huge unaccountable corporations.
soccom8341576 2 years ago
@soccom8341576
Are you kidding? My mom was a bust-ass worker for Lowes. If you're a good slave you get to do it all by yourself and save your overseer even MORE money. That's right, when they saw how good she worked, she got to run entire departments by herself, meaning she would be the only person in that department running it... Not being an overseer herself.
nosferotica1 1 year ago
When I was in High School, I worked in a grocery store, for minimum wage, and I liked it (well, the skills and experience gained). The worst part of it was the Union, which protected the incompetant workers and did nothing for me. The Unions make it very difficult for competant workers to get raises and advance in position because things are based on "seignority", rather than ability. Unlike you people, I'd rather work hard and earn my keep, than feel I'm "entitled" to things.
norcofreerider604 2 years ago
sheep
redn40 2 years ago
Wearing anything that says 'Wage Slave' in nearly all the places I've worked would have been grounds for termination.
Robikus 2 years ago
What is that audio excerpt from?
KenCat1337 2 years ago
KPFK, a local, listener sponsored radio station in Los Angeles...I can't think of the ladies name at the moment. She was basically introducing Michael Parenti in this clip. KPFK is part of the Pacifica network. Here in New York we have WBAI. I think there are five stations all together.
buddhagem 2 years ago
This is why I only work for myself, I started out with absolutely nothing too. You can only be a "wage slave" if you allow yourself to be one, you're the one that gives up your authority in exchange for some false security at a "real job." It's actually tougher to work for yourself a lot of times, you have to be good at whatever it is you're doing, not just good, the best. You need talent and skill, and be able to produce. It's all on you, and most people would rather be a "wage slave."
badjesus666 3 years ago
First you say "You need talent" to be able to exist as a self employed person, then you claim "it's all on you" to be self employed.
So, should some people be forced into slavery, because of being unfortunate enough to have a inadequate (according to you) genetic endowment?
Also, slipping in "most people would rather be a wage slave" at the end doesn't prove anything.
Jrotten11 3 years ago
No you should go look for another shitty job instead.
badjesus666 3 years ago
People do choose what and who they want to be in the long run.
Most people who fail in, just about everything in this system, are not unintelligent or biologically inferior. Actually, it doesn't matter as much as we think. It is careful and broad thinking that counts most.
They just have their focus elsewhere.
He needs to learn that criticizing others is not helping in his cause.
soccom8341576 2 years ago
Considering that 9 out of 10 new businesses fail, it doesn't look like we have much of a choice either way.
Robikus 2 years ago
Well, going into business for yourself definitely isn't the easy way out either. I work 3-4 hours a day and do fine for myself though, the key to having money is not spending a lot of money and not wanting a bunch of stupid bs. Materialism isn't the key to happieness. I haven't worked a "real job" for 15 years, I played guitar on the road for 8, I've lived my life 100 times more than the average person lives theirs. Started out with nothing too, computers saved me from having to get a real job.
badjesus666 2 years ago
How about property....if you like exchanging money for abstract concepts. Don't we all own this? The native americans did not get private property and they suffered. Shall we keep on suffering from these abstract concepts? "When will they ever learn."
kittiest34 3 years ago
Money has no F*cking value. It is meaningless concept. An abstract nothingness. Check out the Modern Day Slavery video by Derrick Jensen here on youtube.
WeWillWinAnarchy 3 years ago 2
Yes it does. Money is valued by the workers blood, sweat, and tears. We need to work together to abolish the wage system.
kittiest34 3 years ago
Money is just paper, nothing more. As bad as the wage system is, I see the root problem being the idea that one can exchange an abstract concept for tangible resources, no matter what you conceptualize the monetary system being based on.
WeWillWinAnarchy 3 years ago
Money is energy, most of us trade our energy in some form in exchange for money. The trick is to exchange as little energy as possible for as much money as possible. Slacking rules!
badjesus666 3 years ago
Slackers UNITE!
UcanbeGOD 3 years ago
I like Alan Watts take on this. Money is just a convention. It is a symbol for wealth much like words are symbols for an idea. The problem is that people take the symbol too seriously. They mistake the symbol for reality and begin to pursue the symbol instead of reality. This is done with both money and words. And is why people pursue large bank accounts and get upset of arguments.
kohiwy 3 years ago
If you don't like your job quit and find another or create your own busniess. But understand that other people's busniess is non of your busniess so you have no say so in how to run it unless you're a manager or some shit.
Budguy68 3 years ago
Why is their business none of my business? If the actions of that business affect me, I'd say it damn well is my business.
TrojanXero 3 years ago
Try directing your boss around.
It doesn't work too well. BEsides, that's not what they hired you for.
soccom8341576 2 years ago
Nonsense! When you look at slaves "from a historical point of view"; they didn't have rights - nor could they choose how, or where to work. In primitive times, people had to hunt and fight to sustain their lives. During the feudal period, people broke their backs everyday just to survive. Today, you have as much freedom to pursue your own happiness as you do making videos on youtube. So quit whining; find what makes you happy - find a purpose. Then chose a career that will fulfill that purpose.
mnixnon 3 years ago
@mnixnon
You said it. You have the freedom to choose who you break your back for.
Capitalism succeeded Feudalism, my friend. You are a serf to your vassal.
nosferotica1 1 year ago
Comment removed
mnixnon 1 year ago
Thanks for recommendation on that book "The Industrial Worker." One of my favorite books is Alexander Berkman's the ABCs of Anarchism. Have you read that one? Also, Albert Meltzers book on "Anarchism Arguments For and Against" is a good one too.
chalk20 3 years ago
It's also a newspaper given free to all Wobblies.
kittiest34 3 years ago
Great video Buddhagem. I agree with you completely on the concept of wage slavery. I currently work at a job that pays crap and no benefits, and I have bachelors degree. Of course people tell me I should go into commission sales to make more money and sell shit I do not care about. Or I am told go back to grad school and create more loans for myself..Great system..LOL..What can worker like myself do to stick up for my rights? Currently I work for company that I am only employee.
chalk20 3 years ago
Uncomfortable fact- "Labor is a commodity"
Does "dog eat dog" ring a bell with anyone? How about "divide and conquer"? I think we're screwed...
randy95023 3 years ago
well, under such a system, that is the logical way to look at labour.
But this system is no good.
soccom8341576 2 years ago
"The only viable way to become wealthy in this country (top 1% of earners) is to inherit the wealth or marry into it. Take a look at the 200 richest families in this country."
This is false. 8 of the 10 richest Americans are self-made, 7 came from middle class families.
What is the difference between working for a wage to survive and working in a co-operative society to survive? Co-op tribes have never shown the ability to have our current standards of living.
Bigchuckers 3 years ago
Forbes, Gates, Walton...that's seven of the top 10 to be sure and all of them came from money. Who else you got? Or would you like to admit you're a liar?
Our standard of living has nothing to do with capitalism. Every gain we have made has been in spite of capitalism, not because of it. Your ignorance is sad.
Your rags to riches stories exist mostly in your mind...not the real world.
buddhagem 3 years ago
Of the three people you mentioned only one is actually in the top 10, Bill Gates. I'm an not a liar, this information was easy to gather. Two, the Kochs inherited their money and Michael Dells dad was a doctor. Fact is 7 of the 10 richest came from middle class. It seems you are misinformed.
At the time of the USSRs peak was their standard of living equal to capitalist Europe of U.S.A of the time? Sadly profits create innovation and progress.
Bigchuckers 3 years ago
There are five Waltons, not one; I have no idea why you would bring up the Soviet Union to an anarchist. Fascism increased the standard of living for Italians and Germans. Is that an endorsement for fascism? Slaves of 1840 were better off than slaves of 1740. Is that an endorsement for slavery? Continue believing that anybody can rise to the top in our society. They play those get rich quick commercials late at night for idiots like you.
buddhagem 3 years ago 2
@Bigchuckers A pareto efficiency does not exist in any monetary system, therefore it cannot work for all......DONE!
There is evidence that intellect=co-cooperation. Technology is what will free us from labour, not more labour!
loppist 1 year ago
@Bigchuckers A pareto efficiency does not exist in any monetary system, therefore it cannot work for all......DONE!
There is evidence that intellect=co-cooperation. Technology is what will free us from labour, not more labour!
loppist 1 year ago
"Forbes, Gates, Walton" - How convieninet you leave out Jobs, the one who's fortune you help make bigger my using his PROPRIETARY technology to make these videos.
He didn't follow any "get rich quick" scheme, either, he worked out of his garage.
Now, he shits all over anyone else who would try and do the same thing he did. He uses his power to hyper-consumerize technology, and by using it, you're helping him.
Did you just buy a computer and start making videos or something???
Darganot 3 years ago
Police Offences Acts 1957, Part II, Section 70, Subsections (i), (ii) and (iii) state (briefly) that any policeman may arrest without warrant any person he suspects of having no lawful means of support, and any person so arrested who fails to prove to the court that he has sufficient lawful means of support is liable to 12 months gaol. Does this mean that in Australia that it is illegal to exist outside the fiscal system? Surely this would mean forced labour, therefore enslavement?
jezipoo 3 years ago
we re all wage slaves, the evolution of man is stoped we turned into dollars, our lifes has become competition and chase for money abolish money that is the only way we are all prostitutes for the capitalist
nazibreaker 3 years ago 2
World capitalism is long past its sell by date,lets dump this dog eat dog rat race into the trash bin of history.
worldoffreeaccess 3 years ago
I would be careful using the term 'anarchist'. Unless you believe in no laws at all.
Go for the term libertarian otherwise. People freak out far less. =P
Silvsilvchan 4 years ago
I'd suggest you check out DannyOKC 's videos on anarchism. Libertarian Socialist is also fine.
buddhagem 3 years ago
Being an entrepreneur myself I find this insulting. Socialist have there hands out at every corner which is making it almost impossible to do business effectively. Which is why black markets flourish. I had some commie idiot say to me the rich get richer, never mind that I worked 90 hours per week for years to achieve wealth. Socialism rewards poor choices, capitalisms rewards those who earn it.
moviedude111 4 years ago
Ahhh yes the benevolent entrepreneur who's just out to do good things for people. Nice myth you've got going there. How about you stop stealing from your employees? How about you develop a sustainable business model that understands we live on a finite planet?
buddhagem 3 years ago
I have been importing and trading goods from China. The people there love to work.
Here is a concept for you, get some balls, some funds and get to work and enjoy the fruits of your labors.
moviedude111 3 years ago
What is the conclusion of this video? Outlaw wages and business? I realize I am a slave to government and their monopolistic corporate allies, but what is your solution?
AzraelsJudgement 4 years ago
The conclusion is we abolish the wage system which has historically been a major aim of the labor movement. Read Norman Ware's the Industrial Worker for more context.
buddhagem 3 years ago
I will look into this
AzraelsJudgement 3 years ago
Awesome. It's a great book and gives the workers struggle more context. It's filled with quotes from the labor press, working class people with no influence from Marx of Bakunin talking about the need to abolish the wage system and have more democracy in the work place and the radical idea that the people who work in the factories should own them.Most of this has been conveniently swept under the rug or, as Orwell would have said, placed down the memory hole.
buddhagem 3 years ago
I just study and although I lean towards free markets I look into everything.
AzraelsJudgement 3 years ago
You are not just a wage slave. You are a wage slave in a recession.
Only way out is to find a way to make money in your own business. Unfortunately, that often means having access to capital. Fortunately, it doesn't always mean so.
paleoroundtable 4 years ago
Good God, America is horrible! We are wage slaves!
That must be why Americans are trying to get away from this terrible slavery and trying to get into such socialist utopias such as North Korea and Belarus!
slavophile1 4 years ago
why did you send me this? i made a response video to it. lol.
ProprietorOfSelf 4 years ago
Slav was being facetious, you guys are on the same side of the argument.
Phana24JeffG 4 years ago
well dude. Yu got yurself a new subscriber and friend. GREAT fukin video!
Also checkout The Power of Choice by Druscilla French who shows how in literature, myth has had to follow rules of narrative which suppress 'poor people'
And how education is there to kill our spirit, John Taylor Gatto. He's got a great site!
zezt 4 years ago 2
I genuinely wish to understand your position. I hope that you will reply. Please address my concern that production would necessarily fall dramatically by a return to the condition where all were self-employed artisans as you describe in the last part of your video. If you believe my concern here to reflect a misunderstanding of your position, then please explain by describing how you believe that production should be organized.
mariasman100 4 years ago
It should be understood that even the largest corporation began as a small operation that expanded, for the most part, through superior efficacy. Today, however, many corporations are protected not legitimately through the market economy, but rather through force of law. These protections include regulations, licensure, oppressive taxation, subsidies, and other laws. The net effect is to secure the position of established enterprises at our expense. These are special privileges.
mariasman100 4 years ago 2
Those who would rail against a business enterprise because of its expansiveness or efficiency, citing that successfully competing with it in the market is virtually impossible, are motivated by nothing less than envy and hatred of those who are more efficacious than themselves and others. This is merely egalitarian socialism in disguise. The psychological roots are the same. Superior efficacy is not a special privilege, and opposing it is tantamount to opposing reality itself.
mariasman100 4 years ago
The clear implication is that some coercive means would have to be introduced to (quite arbitrarily) limit the size and efficacy of each business enterprise. Obviously, the policies put in place to achieve this objective would be determined by a majority that would no doubt find it (incorrectly) in their interest to so restrict the actions of their fellow men. This is a special privilege as well.
mariasman100 4 years ago
Really nice job of building a strawman. Corporations couldn't exist without the state. They rely on state charters and depend on a host of legal justifications to afford them corporate personhood, which gives them all the rights of a person with none of the responsibilities. Corporations were not developed because they were efficient they were developed to get around personal liability and responsibility.
buddhagem 4 years ago
Show me a "private" insurance company that is more efficient than medicare; or show me a private pension company that is more efficient than Social Security which runs uses 1% or 2% for administrative costs compared to 30% and higher in the private sector.
buddhagem 4 years ago
Finally I'd just like to point out that the high-tech sector of the economy is largely dependent upon public funding and research because "efficiency" rarely leads to advances in technology. Show me a corporation or any "private" capitalist that could ever afford to fund something like the creation and development of something like the internet or the space program or machine technology. It just doesn't happen because science isn't efficient. There are lots of dead ends.
buddhagem 4 years ago
My argument on the opportunity costs presented to the private insurance and pension markets by the social security and medicare monopolies apply here as well. We can't know if the internet, space program, or machine technology would not have developed had the resources not be diverted to these ends by government. But most importantly, we can't know what has been prevented from coming into being because the resources were so diverted.
mariasman100 4 years ago
It would be fallacious to compare social security or medicare to the state of private pension or insurance today. We cannot know how such private institutions may have developed over the decades if the markets were not forced to incur the burdensome opportunity costs of financing these competing government monopolies. But regardless, it does seem to me that these "services" have failed to deliver their intended goals, and that their solvency is questionable.
mariasman100 4 years ago
What a tortured analogy. Show me a private company that has COMPULSORY customers, and is allowed to have a negative rate of return, and ZERO reserve requirements. The calculation of a 2% administrative is not very meaningful. The IRS and other Treasury departments provide a great amount of information to SS, which is NOT accounted for in SS costs.
Phana24JeffG 4 years ago
If the semantics presents a difficulty for you, then substitute the term "business" or even "productive human endeavor" in lieu of "corporation". The principles remain. I would likely agree with you that the legal definition of a corporation is arbitrary, and I advise that dwelling on my use of the term will likely distract you from understanding the intent of my argument.
mariasman100 4 years ago
(more on the "corporation") Pursuant to the arguments that I've presented, the "corporation" is an artificial entity that receives special privileges through force of law, and should therefore be abolished in accordance with my argument that the law should recognize no entity beyond the individual.
mariasman100 4 years ago
You're conflating two separate issues. Nobody denies the need for us to produce the goods and services we need; however, that doesn't mean that the only way we can do that is to set up hierarchical and oppressive institutions that force us to work for a master or starve. As history proves, we have other viable options of organizing society that have worked and can work based on mutual cooperation and free association.
buddhagem 4 years ago
You're conflating two separate issues. Nobody denies the need for us to produce the goods and services we need; however, that doesn't mean that the only way we can do that is to set up hierarchical and oppressive institutions that force us to work for a master or starve. As history proves, we have other viable options of organizing society that have worked and can work based on mutual cooperation and free association.
buddhagem 4 years ago
Comments and question: Workers used to sell the products of their labor as opposed to the system today where most workers sell their labor. But it seems that there remains the freedom today to pursue the former option. A worker can save his wages and/or borrow funds to acquire the tools necessary to make his product and offer it for trade. He will likely be successful provided he can offer the product at a competitive price. Do you agree?
mariasman100 4 years ago
I'd suggest you look at the matter more closely. The upward mobility that you mention is mostly a myth in this society with few exceptions, maybe a guy like Steve Jobs, but the exceptions are so rare they are statistically irrelevant. The only viable way to become wealthy in this country (top 1% of earners) is to inherit the wealth or marry into it. Take a look at the 200 richest families in this country.
buddhagem 4 years ago
One could be forgiven for believing that your complaint lies, ultimately, in the very existence of large organizations that are simply too efficient for an individual to compete against. Am I mistaken? Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the present state of affairs. I am merely asking questions to understand your position. I suppose I'm most interested to know your proposed solutions to the problems.
mariasman100 4 years ago
Well, like I said in the earlier comment, competition and upward mobility are more myth than reality; the state is designed, as Madison pointed out at the Constitutional Convention, to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority. That's the way it's designed. That was its intention. The solution is to put power back in peoples hands at the local level, in the places we work, in our communities. The Spanish Revolution of 1936 is a good example of what I'm talking about.
buddhagem 4 years ago
In general, I agree with you. Many of the problems today would be solved through a Jeffersonian interpretation of the Constitution. We need to dramatically downsize DC. The solutions lie in identifying and removing all sources of special privilege. Personally, I would first tackle the system of money and credit that encourages personal debt, causes the business cycle, and has enabled the continued expansion of the federal government. But I am wary of replacing one coercive system for another.
mariasman100 4 years ago
I emphasize that we should remove only those sources of privilege that enable some to succeed at the expense of others. However, genuine productivity must not be curtailed. If one builds an expansive business enterprise by being unequivocally superior to his competitors, then his actions must be sanctioned.
mariasman100 4 years ago
I'd really encourage you to think that through. You're asking a bit much of the current system. As I've said before, it was designed to protect "special privlege." To think that we could use such a system to remove what it was designed to protect is terribly naive. This system has certain limits and constraints imposed on it by its very structure.
buddhagem 4 years ago
A fundamental problem has been the departure from the principle of the protection of individual rights toward the protection of group privileges. Only rights should be protected by laws, and there are no group rights. Therefore, the law should recognize no entity beyond the individual. I propose that a solution can be had in establishing the rule of law, which I define as the condition where all laws are applied in their respective jurisdictions to all individuals without qualifications.
mariasman100 4 years ago
i know you dont get it.....
*sigh*
XillduceX 4 years ago
Capital is merely an artificial filter designed by the banking cartel to put power into the hands of their fellow thieves (the monarchs, the industrialists, the merchants etc). Look at "Money as Debt" to get an idea what compromises "wages"... Socialism must be based on a Commodity Economy set by guild leaders. CAPITAL HAS TO GO!
SyndiCossack 4 years ago
I like this video. I am developing a class to teach at my local IMC. Can I use this for a topic on organizing? The class is entitled, "Saving the World - 101" Hit me up with an email...
brokendave 4 years ago
Rofl, funny, how about we are slave from nature, food should appear on our table.
neutrinoide 4 years ago
I agree, the natural laws of physics are oppresive!!
Luke12000 4 years ago
If you don't understand something, just say so. No need to make a fool of yourself by making such ignorant comments. Brush up on your labor history; and then ask yourself, what is the fundamental difference between renting and selling myself? Think, think, think...i promise it won't hurt.
buddhagem 4 years ago
How about you think about the contradiction of voluntary slave. Nothing force you to work for someone other then what the limitation of ressources and how much the customer is willing to pay. What poeple don't want to admit is the most cold blooded one is the customer who don't care if your business survive. They pay for what they feel to be the best. If you don't want to work, go start a farm and make your own futur. No one own anything to you.
neutrinoide 4 years ago
A "wage slave" can choose to be a "slave" to himself, or some socialist collective.
Would you allow people the right to work for a wage? Or would you prevent them from doing so? It seems to me that only a state can prevent people from selling themselves at a wage, are you an "anarchist" who would use force to prevent me from renting my body?
Luke12000 4 years ago
That's like saying that by destroying the system of chattel slavery that you were "forcing" people not to sell their lives to someone. (After all, you may have a job contract that says in advance that you will work for one year. To sell the whole of your life life in advance would be called slavery and you would say it's wrong too, I'm pretty sure. But what's the difference? It's simply more time. What is truly wrong with it in principle is still present in both cases.)
themonkeywrench 3 years ago
The anarcho-syndicalist system has been tried in different countries in different ways, and guess what? People prefer not to be wage slaves! They prefer organisation from the bottom up, not the top down (the anarchist idea). They prefer self-governance and protection by their equals in the community rather than some high up figure like a boss or politician.
themonkeywrench 3 years ago
who's the radio host and where can i listen her?
Terilien 4 years ago
Her name is Lyn Gary. I'm not sure if that's how you spell it. Her show is "Unwelcome Guest" and it's aired on a number of community based radio stations including the Pacifica Stations. If you have trouble let me know. I have a copy of one of her shows you can check out.
buddhagem 4 years ago
that was fantastic. it's so true.
what's more, if the work we did was meaningful to us, then it would not be drudgery or slavery. It would be done for the product, not for the sake of earning a wage. But most of us work jobs for the sake of money, jobs created mostly out of a constant push for us to consume more and more.
spiderofdoom 4 years ago
Hi again buddhagem, a question for you : Does it make a difference, according to your definition of wage slavy, to have a wage of 1$/hours or 100$/hours? Or are you a wage slave no matter how much you earn? Is it a question of degree or of form?
anarkoFred 4 years ago
AnarkoFred; the higher wages received by some workers in industrialized countries do not obviate the authoritarianism of capitalist institutions--just as the improving material conditions of chattel slaves in the American south didn't obviate chattel slavery (e.g. a slave in 1850 was better off than in 1750, and at the time they were material better off than "free" wage laborers)
mr1001nights 4 years ago
That's fine, at least that seems consequent with your (Buddhagem and you) definition of wage slavery.
anarkoFred 4 years ago
The stance I take is to get rid of the obvious violent coercion of the government first. I don't think you can rightly say that capitalism, an idea that may come about naturally without coercion, should be dropped along with government.
Get rid of the violence of the government, then this "wage-slave" issue might actually be a problem at the top of the list.
ForOrAgainstUs 4 years ago
the guy with the Ron Paul shirt was funny. . . the way he says "weeeeeeerk"
who is that guy?
citizenkong 4 years ago 3
LOL. He is pretty funnny. His name is Franc28. You should hear him say etc. etc. It's hilarious. He's from Quebec I think, maybe that's just a funny accent? It is funny, though.
buddhagem 4 years ago
Franc28
InsurgenistCujo 4 years ago
This wage system was really created by depriving working people of acess to land. This happened all over the world...
Terilien 4 years ago
I take a middle stance on this issue...
Terilien 4 years ago
Dear Buddhagem, who is your slave master? lol I mean, what is your job, who do you work for? I think you would make a great social sciences teacher.
yadsik 4 years ago
My slavemaster changes, but I work as a union carpenter. Thanks for the kind words.
buddhagem 4 years ago
By the way, I appologize for bugging you so much about Libertarianism. However you mention that you are an Anarcho-syndicalist correct? Does Anarcho-syndicalism differ from Noam Chomsky's type of Libertarian Socilism.
yadsik 4 years ago
You don't bug, brother. Don't let all the hyphens fool you. Anarcho-Syndicalism is simply a specific form of Libertarian Socialism. Like say Catholicism is a specific form of Christianity? Does that help? Appreciate the comments. Don't worry about bugging me. OK? Happy 2008
buddhagem 4 years ago
Yea sure that makes sense. Happy 2008 to you too.
yadsik 4 years ago
Great video.
petergoesonair 4 years ago
Great video, but don't we need exhausted workers. Otherwise the workers might have the energy and motivation to understand you. Don't we need wage slavery to keep the system in place? Let's say that the wage slaves have time to reflect; what would happen? Surely, independent thought is for masters? Anything else could interfere with profit. Wake up to yourself! You'll end capitalism and state capitalism!
petergoesonair 4 years ago