this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Antiwork
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A community for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.
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Date Created: June 21, 2023
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Essential Reads
Start here! These are probably the most talked-about essays on the topic.
- The Abolition of Work by Bob Black (1985) | listen
- On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (2013) | listen
- In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) | listen
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In 08 they should have let the banks fail. People claim it would devastate the economy. Bs. A rich person would have picked up the scraps for cheap and kept things going. They didn’t need our tax money and no punishment.
Oil subsidies are why we have cheap gas. I’m fine getting rid to them. Just realize your gas will cost more.
I never got the "economy would of been devastated if the banks weren't bailed out" argument made during the recession. The economy was in shambles anyway!
It’s a tough one. Assuming nobody stepped in. Yes there would be devastation but somebody would pick up the assets in a fire sale. So no, there would have been some pain but the system would have been better long term.
We can’t avoid all pain, otherwise we end up with companies who take stupid risk since they never fail.
Let them fail and someone else will grow. Otherwise we don’t have a healthy capitalism.
The government could have bought out the failed banks and nationalized them.
That would have been a horrible idea. For all intents that what they did with the bailouts. We don’t need the government to own banks.
Let them fail and others will but them up. We don’t need the tax payers assuming trillions in bad loans.
we don't have national federally owned banks available to the public, or at least any that I'm aware of.
Exactly nor should we. Nationalizing banks is a stupid idea.
Let them fail. That’s how capitalism works.
So your idea is just pray for some rich people to buy the assets and not let the bank's customers without all their money?
What if this pray for the rich saviors is not answered? Any plan b? Maybe make this buying a law?
Customers wouldn’t be without money. It’s insured.
Instead we used tax payer money to prop them up and didn’t solve the problem.
You have to let things fail.
In most western countries the Govt only guarantees up to a certain amount per depositor (in US it is $250k).
The ballad of Silicon Valley Bank is a good example of why the Govts needed to bail out their banks during GFC. Without the govt backing those banks there would have seen huge runs, and in no time at all the imaginary money banks operate on would have disappeared, meaning companies can't pay workers, people can't buy groceries etc.
Note, I am not defending the heinous behaviour of finance execs leading up to, during and post GFC - for them I'd bring back the guillotine. But rather explaining that bailouts are needed sometimes to ensure the economy keeps 'flowing'. Post GFC has seen a lot of countries bring in tighter regulations for banks with regards to how much cash on hand they must have, how much in investments/bonds and how much exposure to loans they are allowed. Unfortunately I'm not sure if US took the opportunity to propose and enforce new regulations as many other nations did.
We did. We put in many worthless regulations that really didn’t solve the problem.
I’m a connective republican. Socially more liberal but fiscally conservative.
The executives of the banks that needed bailouts should have been jailed as they took risk they shouldn’t have taken. All the banks do it because there are no consequences when they fail. Zero.
They need to punished for mishandling assets so poorly.
Nobody ever argued that the banks would of been devastated
They argued that the banks would have been devastated
Don't know why you're getting downvoted, you're correct!
the banks should have been seized and the owners should have lost it all and the government should have ran them for 5 years to stabilize the economy before selling them back off with conditions on their new owners and stronger regulations in general
They wouldn’t have had to run them. They could sell them off with restrictions. Otherwise I agree.
The regulations after 2008 are still a joke. They’re garbage. We need real regulations and consequences.
I dont care when a crime is paid millions. If they create job growth, profits, better wages, etc then they should he rewarded. They should make millions then BK the company.
Isn’t the banks failing how the Great Depression became significantly worse?
Many things caused that but it was the money run. Money is protected for most people now.
Now days with megacorps, someone would have bought them. The executives and board members were never punished and made millions. That’s the shit that has to stop and I’m a capitalist.
We need companies to fail when they fuck up
The executives and board members were never punished and made millions.
This is capitalism working exactly as intended. These aren’t bugs, they are features.
Not at all. That just shows you don’t understand capitalism. What it shows is our government failed us.
Because there was no FDIC.
An FDIC bailout would have been cheaper than TARP given the amount of money in most people's bank accounts.
For people with individual accounts worth over a quarter million? Tough titties. If you have so much cash it isn't worth your time to use multiple accounts in case of FDIC bailouts, you clearly don't need it.
Farm subsidies are a tricky one though.
Without them you end up importing all your food from Cheapistan. But then Cheapistan has a famine (or gets invaded), and then you have a problem. You can't just start up food production that quickly to avoid all your people starving.
The problem starts with the belief in simplifications that in no way reflect reality. "True capitalism" doesn't exist, can never exist, and is as undesirable as the plague. The connection with "free markets" is a feat of propaganda. This idea that socialism has no "free markets" is proof of the propaganda's success. Economies depend on markets. The capitalist idea of organisation is an anathema to free markets. While socialism is the closest one can get to a functioning "free market" system.
Getting back to farming subsidies, and subsidies in general. The issue is the distortions introduced through lobbyists and corporate machinations. The provision of subsidies is not governed by the question "what is best for the population?" Rather, it is about staying in power, serving clients, not people.
Banks, yeah I agree with that. Oil is more complicated. When oil prices go up, the price of everything goes up, sometimes dramatically.
I'm not saying oil subsidies are a good thing, just that a lot more care needs to be taken with eliminating them.
Which is why oil should be nationalized. Same with the banks. If the people have to share in the cost of failure they should get the profit for successes.
I understand that nationalizing oil companies in the US is not going to be a palatable solution for a lot of people. I'm not entirely sure it's the right solution, but I know for sure it's not a politically feasible one.
We've had decades upon decades of subsidizing the rich. It's always easy for the government to figure out how to do that, so we know they know how to give subsidies. Why don't we try subsidizing the people who need the subsidies for their basic needs? In the context of fuel, it would be relatively simple to create a federal tax credit for fuel usage (which would arguably include a version for electric vehicles and their charging).
I don't think I fucking care.
🙃
I don't really see your point. Oil companies jack the price of oil up anyway, regardless of subsidies. The subsidies seem to only allow oil companies to expand their enterprises on US citizens' tax dollars (apologies if your in a different country, just change "US" to wherever you live). We're literally funding the expansion of industries that are actively killing our planet.
From another perspective, the only reason everything rises in cost when oil prices raise is due to oil dependance. It would be a momentary hardship, but oil prices rising would be a strong incentive for individuals and businesses to become oil-independant, which would mean using greener means of transportation, lowered plastic use, etc. It's actually long-term the best thing we could be doing right now.
The issue is that the working class people who are already living paycheque to paycheque don’t wanna hear about austerity. It’s hard to give a fuck about the next generation when you can’t even afford the next month.
We need solutions that also improve the monetary stability of working class people, or else they will never be popular in election campaigns. These things are doable, but not through the current political dynamic in North America, and places in Europe like the UK.
Nationalizing Oil is also not going to be appealing to Americans. Moderate liberals and everyone right of them will parade such efforts as Communist and/or facism. Those efforts will die before they even make it to the table
I would say even eliminating oil subsidies would be an insane fight to take on at the national level.
The more realistic fights are most likely going to occur at the local level, with workplaces unionizing, pushes in cities and towns to move away from car-centric urban design, and various other efforts which whittle oil dependance away.
It's only when those local fights are widespread that we'll start seeing national changes, and those changes will more than likely revolve around how taxation is distributed than around subsidies.
It's this comment here that makes me think of how naive some people are when they say that solutions to problems mostly described by "tHe ToP 100 cOrPorAtiOnS PolLuTe thE mOst" talking point have to be addressed by government action and government action alone. Republicans at the top are so deadset on anything anti-change to where national politics are super volatile and hardly something to bet the direction of the country on.
Local level politics allow for more stable growth in change, such as how we've seen with marijuana laws.
I mean, as a progressive I still want to vote for the most progressive candidates that can represent me, which often leads to blue over red, but that doesn't mean we the citizens can't contribute local government as much as more regional or national governments.
Top-down & bottom-up ftw
Well Americans can wallow in their own self made mess. The rest of us, in other countries, can still push for oil nationalization.