me_irl

Healthcare plays a big part. If we had socialized medicine people would feel much more comfortable moving jobs.

You can work at any soul-crushing job you like, assuming you are willing to submit yourself to the nightmare machine of corporate hiring every time you want to change companies.

Get a job? Why don't I strap on my job helmet and squeeze down into a job cannon and fire off into Jobland, where jobs grow on jobbies

People acting like slavery was a thing of the past 🤣

Don't forget the health insurance anchor.

"Anyone can get a better job" /= "everyone can get a better job."

Slavery never went away in 'Murica

It was just re-branded

You're a slave?

I'm a person and my name is Anakin!

I had a conversation about The Phantom Menace about how Anakin and Shmi live in a multi-room dwelling by themselves, are given time off, and have enough free time and resources for Anakin to build a protocol droid and multiple pod racers (remember: it's said that he's never finished a race, so either his earlier racers broke down mid-race and had to get towed or else were wrecked).

How does this lifestyle comport with them being slaves?

Sure, they have explosive neck bolts and can be bought and sold, but their lifestyle seems rather outside of what we think of today as slavery.

My conclusion is that the Galaxy Far Far Away has a broader definition of slavery.

There's a few types of employment in the GFFA. There's self-employment and business ownership, like bounty hunting, running your own diner, playing in a band, or operating a cargo business that avoids Imperial entanglements.

There's employment within a military or paramilitary organization, like Grand Army of the Republic, the Empire, or the Jedi.

And then there's being a slave. You need to work for someone else or you die. Maybe you can or can't be literally sold. But you don't have a choice about the fact that you need employment or you will flat out die in the streets. If you aren't defining the terms of your own employment or you aren't earning rank in a military organization, then you are a slave, by the terms of the Star Wars galaxy.

The people who make this kind of argument are the same kind of people who will say that God gives you free will, even though you'll literally be eternally tortured for doing things that God doesn't want you to do. Some people have a real interesting idea of what "being forced" consists of lol

homeless are free from the soul crushing. at least. met a railroad hobo. he claimed he used to be a doctor. stress was too much.

Choice always exists but change is scary.

ehhh i have had plenty of jobs i fucking hated, the good news is you can look for a new job and enjoy an entirely fresh new hell!

When people ask why you don’t just leave your terrible relationship…

I mean I have been lucky in that most of my jobs are less soul crushing than others but work is always going to be somewhat soul crushing.

there are other jobs dude. sure, i get you don't want to take the risk of changing them, but if you have a job already, it's actually way easier to get another one, than if you are unemployed.

and not all jobs are the same. different companies have different policies and procedures and cultures. and sometimes you ahve to take paycut to get into a company that has a better quality of life or benefits.

it's funny to me. my income is lower than people expect, but i love my job because my company has great benefits and the culture is very easy going. But people typically only look at the income and refuse to look any deeper, and they wonder why they are at companies that are interested only in the bottom line... well because you are too.

Personally I don't really care anymore about people whining about their jobs. It's your life, your choice to be miserable. And these people, when presented with alternatives, always systematically deny any alternative in possible... it's almost as if they refuse to make an effort and expect things to me magically handed to them.... and no I'm not at all speaking from experience with partners and friends who were like this...

But the putting of labour-power into action—i.e., the work—is the active expression of the labourer's own life. And this life activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of life. His life-activity, therefore, is but a means of securing his own existence. He works that he may keep alive. He does not count the labour itself as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity that he has auctioned off to another. The product of his activity, therefore, is not the aim of his activity. What he produces for himself is not the silk that he weaves, not the gold that he draws up the mining shaft, not the palace that he builds. What he produces for himself is wages; and the silk, the gold, and the palace are resolved for him into a certain quantity of necessaries of life, perhaps into a cotton jacket, into copper coins, and into a basement dwelling. And the labourer who for 12 hours long, weaves, spins, bores, turns, builds, shovels, breaks stone, carries hods, and so on—is this 12 hours' weaving, spinning, boring, turning, building, shovelling, stone-breaking, regarded by him as a manifestation of life, as life? Quite the contrary. Life for him begins where this activity ceases, at the table, at the tavern, in bed. The 12 hours' work, on the other hand, has no meaning for him as weaving, spinning, boring, and so on, but only as earnings, which enable him to sit down at a table, to take his seat in the tavern, and to lie down in a bed. If the silk-worm's object in spinning were to prolong its existence as caterpillar, it would be a perfect example of a wage-worker.

Wagelabor and capital

Hot take: this also applies to military servicemen and women. Lemmy loves to shit on them, but some people make the best of the draw in life in the military. I know a young airman who was spit on and called a baby killer while he was having lunch in public (wearing fatigues). He's never been in combat, and his position in life is drastically improved from military training and benefits.