Throughout the history of capitalism, the issue of worker mistreatment has never been eradicated. Businesses seek to maximize profits, and to do that, they resort to tactics of overworking employees, not giving them fair pay, nurturing abusive corporate cultures, giving certain people preferential treatment, expecting unpaid overtime, enforcing unreasonable quotas – the list goes on.
In simple terms, the profit of a business is the net result of their expenses (including goods and services, and tax – if they pay it – plus employee salary) and their income, including investment and revenue (revenue is powered in large part by employees working). The more of those costs they can reduce while increasing their revenue, the larger their profits. So, they have every incentive, therefore, to increase employee workload while decreasing (or keeping down) employee salaries. Put a psychopath in charge and what have you got? – an organization you can be certain will screw over its workers.
For-profit businesses are almost perfectly designed for psychopathic individuals to control. There’s one thing, however, that gets in their way: labor unions. The purpose of a union is to secure decent working conditions, benefits, and pay for their members. Unions are all about worker advocacy and supporting workers.
Every time there are strikes, there’s a conspicuous absence of questions about why we need unions in the first place. The fact that we even need unions to counterbalance life-ruining corporate greed is unacceptable. It’s demonstrative of the fact that nations obviously aren’t doing enough to ensure the wellbeing of ordinary people. People have to take matters into their own hands just to secure acceptable working conditions – which should be the State’s job.
In negotiating or striking for better wages, unions increase the cost of labor. So companies just compensate for that cost by firing people or increasing costs for consumers.
Unions are a response to a larger problem – the rich assholes running the show, who don’t have to work under strict conditions or be afraid for their jobs. The callousness of these people, and their calculated business stratagems, are screwing people over, and until we find and implement a solution for the psychopaths (i.e., kick them all out and hold them accountable!), this problem will continue.
The super rich demand everything and are accountable to no one. How much longer will we let them get away with it? Their corporate culture is intellectual poison. Their employment practices are life-ruining. And at no point does anyone stop to think about how absurd it is that so many people overwork and suffer for their benefit. They are scum, yet they hold the highest positions.
The Veil of Ignorance
Imagine it’s up to you to decide what rules and principles society should follow, but while formulating this society you have no idea what position you will have within it. You don’t know what your economic status will be, your ethnicity, your social status – it’s all a mystery. You might end up at the top, but equally, you might end up at the bottom. What kind of society do you design? Is it fair to everyone? Does it allow for excessive wealth? Does it permit inheritance? What kind of values should it have?
Value Argument
Some people think the super rich provide benefits to society, and therefore, they should be allowed to keep their absurd wealth and do everything they can to squeeze more out of the working class. But no societal benefits are worth condemning billions of people to poverty. And what benefits do they provide? Is it the economy designed specifically for serving their interests? Is it their piss-poor management decisions that are based on greed? Is it their self-serving philanthropy? Is it their promotion of harmful family values? Is it their cronyism and nepotism?
The super rich could be replaced any day by people who actually have empathy and care about the people who make their businesses work. (As for private investors, they can just vanish. Landlords, too. They’re just parasites who use their capital ownership as leverage to earn passive income. Remember, plenty of middle-class fuckwits condemn the poor for being lazy – how about they turn their gaze to the super rich? There’s no work required for being rich. And unlike the poor, these people don’t have the excuse of disenfranchisement.)
Pressure
Are you tired at work? Do you feel uptight and constrained? Do you not get enough sleep? Does your boss always want you on top form? There’s so much pressure. Capitalism creates so many problems for you that it expects you to try and fix by spending money. Soon, you feel like you’re on a treadmill – always moving yet never getting anywhere. Life starts to feel pointless. It’s just a cycle of effort. You have to have some release, so you go out drinking at night – but not just once. You must keep doing it. Maybe you take drugs. Have risky sex. You become addicted to the feeling of relief from the pressure. None of the pressure is going away, but you cherish the momentary feeling that it’s somewhere else.
If that story sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone. In fact, many people are set up to go through this. Why? Because when you work, it makes the rich money, and when you release, it often makes the rich money too. They don’t want you spending your money wisely. They want you to be working for them at all times, not just during work hours.
See, it’s easy for people to brush off the greed and psychopathy of the super rich because they don’t know what it really costs. The number of lives that have been ruined by the super rich is staggering. They don’t want to answer for their crimes, and that’s why they promote the narrative that they shouldn’t have to – a narrative which is swallowed by every gullible and slightly privileged idiot on the planet. It’s high time that the people who pay for the greed of the super rich got some say in the matter. If you believe that the exploitation of capitalism has gone too far, then join the cause.