I used to sell books back in the day in a super hippie crunchy counter culture town.
One day this guy came in we lovingly described as "a little bit fried"... Heavy drug use left him just a little crispy around the edges.
But he was making an effort, he had on a suit and tie that was maybe 20 years out of date. A GoodWill find probably.
"Hey man, is there a book that can help me fix a hole in my resume?"
"Well... it kinda depends on how big a hole you're talking about and what you were doing..."
. . .
"I TOOK TEN YEARS OFF TO FOLLOW THE DEAD!!! 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘"
"You know, in any OTHER town that could work against you... in THIS town... you could put that ON your resume and have people go 'DUDE! WHAT SHOWS DID YOU SEE??!?!?'"
Eh, money itself is not the problem. There is inherently nothing wrong with trading money for labor. It’s capitalism (late-stage especially) that ruins everything. The idea you’ve got to work so hard, for so little, is mind-boggling. And the fact that a lot of people are brainwashed into believing that is a normal and okay thing to do… crazy.
Good for that guy to be able to follow his dreams. If he had the skills for the job, I’d hire him even with the gap, just because of his dedication and bravery.
I still struggle to understand what capitalism means in this context. If it is bad/ruins everything, it has to be bad in comparsion to something right?
What is that (imagined or real) alternative you so adamantly try to attribute as a worthy way of living?
If it is bad/ruins everything, it has to be bad in comparsion to something right?
Wrong. Things can be bad on their own merit. Like rape is always bad, it's not situational. Arsenic is bad for your body regardless of what you didn't put in your body. You could say it ruins it. The only thing that ruination can be compared to is your body's previously non-ruined state.
Likewise, capitalism can be bad and ruin society regardless of what other societal structure models aren't being used.
Let me put it better: What you told me that you have an issue with is inherently part of every system and will roughly look similar on the same scale in whatever system. So as far as Im concerned, you are not having an issue with capitalism.
I didn't tell you I had an issue with anything, I was pointing out the false premise you based your question on. It's hard to logically answer a question based on illogic.
I still struggle to understand what capitalism means in this context. If it is bad/ruins everything, it has to be bad in comparsion to something right?
By definition, capitalism is "The concentration or massing of capital in the hands of a few; also, the power or influence of large or combined capital". To further expand on that, at least in my terms, it also means the abuse of that power at the expense of the workers. For example, you have large corporations who bust unions because they fear losing some or all of their power against their workers; US federal minimum wage, which already does not keep up with inflation, was last raised in 2009; the expectation of working long hours (salaried workers) without being paid any sort of overtime or other compensation.
What is that (imagined or real) alternative you so adamantly try to attribute as a worthy way of living?
I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm a socialist (democratic or otherwise), but I do feel that corporations need to be reigned in a bit; especially when it comes to their ability to lobby governments and write laws that favor themselves (again, at the expense of workers). They do need to be taxed more fairly and consistently, held to higher standards with respect to punishment when breaking the law (see below).
Amazon example:
According to Macrotrends, Amazon is worth over $1.6 trillion dollars as of January 2024. They were recently fined $35 million by France for their aggressive surveillance of warehouse workers. That comes out to about 0.0021875% of their net worth. That's roughly 2 one-hundred-thousandths of their net worth. Where's the punishment? That's more like a fee for them to get away with worker abuse.
My understanding is when people talk about capitalism in this context, what they are referring to is a system like ours where there is a class of wealthy capitalists who purchase and maintain ownership of the vast majority of businesses without taking part in any of the real day-to-day work of the business.
This results in decision-making that does not look long-term, as the owners of the business do not really care if the business or the workers do well, only that their balance sheet does. It causes many of the investor-driven layoffs and shortsighted cost cutting measures, or "enshittification" as it is becoming popular to say.
The other options, instead of purely capitalist-driven business ventures, are things like co-ops or services that become public utilities. The goal of the company is not just to funnel money upwards at any cost, the people who own the work are also the ones who are doing the work. It makes for better quality products as well as better quality of life for the workers.
![Resume gap [Elder Cactus]](https://startrek.website/pictrs/image/f0312810-ae76-4d80-a2ab-78f8a031387f.jpeg){kind=link}
