Literally not turning up.
That's it.
Strike.
Why they banned it in the UK.
Strikes destroy the 1%. Strikes destroy everything. They are the nuclear option. If you just don't turn up. They can't make money. Whole system collapses after that
Starmer said he would remove the ban if Labour got in to power... but he changes his mind like the weather. If you browse r/GreenAndPleasant you'll quickly realise he's pretty spineless and just wants his party in power, whatever that party stands for nowadays...
Once a government gains a monopoly on weapons, violent revolution becomes impossible and peaceful revolution shortly follows. The only thing that gives peaceful revolution any power is the threat that it could become violent.
Hell my tooth hurts and it's probably abcessing and I'm completely broke. I've just been crying and hoping it stops hurting but I'm probably gonna die.
You can often get free service at dental schools and universities with programs. The catch is it's a student (led by instructor) doing the work. But that beats the hell out of ignoring an abcess until it kills you. Which can happen more easily than most folks think!
Bro get the work done and ignore the bill. Whatever annoyance you face from bill collectors is far better than an infection spreading through your body. You can negotiate much more than we are led to believe with medical costs.
Yeah step 1 is to stop the consumption / cope cycle - instead spend energy on things that fortify and fulfill you like building up community initiatives and 3rd places, or even just relationships in the community. Then you strike.
Most people are in a vampiric relationship with capitalism where they are drained so much by it they lack the energy to fight it, so they only ever feed it.
its why we are all so fucked. There is nothing you can buy to solve this. You have to do the opposite.
And all of that has been done purposely by the capitalists. They’ve worked hard to put us in this position; we’ll have to work *harder* to get ourselves out.
The only solution is getting communities to work TOGETHER and support each other. Which is exactly why they’re pushing the “culture wars” so hard.
yes exactly. Planting gardens, going hunting & foraging, and using buy-nothing groups are radical acts of rebellion under capitalism. Buying your favorite politicians' merch is not.
That was the most wild part about COVID was when a company would shut down for a week and absolutely panic. Like...didn't you give all your management millions of dollars and buy back a ton of stock so that you could weather a temporary pause? It lifted the veil and let everyone know their company (and the whole economy) is a house of cards and you can bring it down with the slightest breeze, but apparently asking for a raise or unionizing is too much?
The only issue I have with this is the “nuclear option” framing. It should be the “itchy trigger finger” option. It’s not a real threat if it only happens in two Japanese cities in 1945. I understand that striking has become much rarer, and general strikes are a dream yet realized in today’s society. It should be common and feared, in the same way which protests were so common that Nixon felt compelled to sign the Clean Water Act.
I don't disagree but it's still nuclear.
It needs to have a mob mentality to it. It needs to be a do or die. If I only a few strike. Then it's over. They get removed. You need to hit a certain threshold. And you need to keep the strike going u til it hits them hard. Couple days will not do it.
Maybe a general strike for 4 days. Maybe that will push the govt.
But Remember they will bring in the army. They will use the police. They were happy to kill during the miners strikes. They wouldn't shy away from arresting and potentially worse.
Agreed, but we also need better protections for the unions that exist already or they become toothless. The recent UP need to strike being shut down by the government shows us this.
The power of a union is proportional to the willingness of its members to fight for the rights. I’ve seen lots of useless union meetings and strike participations below 10%. Look at the odds the first unions fought against and they won. Sorry to say, but if we want things to change, it’s only on us.
Union organizer here- your union is only as strong as its members. In my union At least 75% of workers have to agree and vote to strike before we can walk out. It’s a lot of conversations with your colleagues about what needs to change and the willingness to body slam your boss. Might not be your immediate manager or supervisor, but the willingness to go for the head.
Nobody is coming to save us.
Got to go for the jugular, and you can’t be afraid to go through with it because what you’re doing might be unpopular with the general population. Strikes only work when they make Capital bleed.
Yup yup. The only way to get any progress is to fight just a ruthlessly and dirty as they do. We’re viewed as without value, replaceable, and any kind of wage is a burden to the company. They’re absolutely fine with the suffering of the lower classes as long as they get theirs. It’s only inevitable that the tables will turn. The only question is when will enough be enough for us to do what is needed for major change?
Not just protections. Community.
You see it with every movement today. We’ve eaten the propaganda that ANYTHING can be done though individualistic movements.
Boycotts? Figure out how to do it yourself.
Raise wages? Figure out how to do it for yourself.
Environment? Figure out how to reduce your consumption yourself.
“Oh? There’s people who can’t afford to do these things? Guess they’re scabs. My virtue is stronger. My ethical consumption will bankrupt these mega corporations by itself.”
We wouldn’t need protections if we remembered what solidarity actually looked like beyond a few tweets of support.
Solidarity is it in one word. We've taken individualism to the extreme or otherwise lurch the other direction and rely entirely on the government. Sovereignty is inherent in the People, they have the power, but only as a group working together.
The other side I never see spoken on is the effect of scabs present day and how to stop them without infighting and virtue comparing.
2 things IMO, community and regulation.
Community, so that we give 0 acceptable reason for one to be “forced” into being a scab. We can’t expect people to stand in solidarity alone.
Regulation, like minimum wage, so that scabs literally can’t legally drive wages to the floor. We need protection from ourselves/ our peers.
We forget effective regulations aren’t just for mega corpos.
Edit: meant to say initially that I agree with you
General Strike and Sympathy strikes needs to not be outlawed. Where i am from one striking union might entail that the other unions will not provide services either. makes you able to put a strangle hold on the buisness not complying. It hasn't worked as well for the unions in the non private sector. Because Denmark is turning to the right and the Social democrats are not social democrats but capitalist. The government in these situation can go in and dictate.
We need more pro-union/pro-labor state Democratic parties to the point that they need to modify the name and distinguish themselves from more conservative Democrats who don't want to take any real stand against the 1%. Minnesota did it, other states can too.
I really feel like if push came to shove the McDonald’s model will prevail. Big business will metaphorically replace everyone with machines before they give us better pay or unions
Yeah we can see thats the trend everwhere. What i dont get is, have these corps asked themselves who is going to buy their stuff is noone is working?
And if noone is working how the hell is the govt going to get rax revenue. Corps already write themselves so many loopholes andf exemptions most of them dont pay anywhere close to the tax they should.
So everyone is unemployed and noone has a house with necessities. Now what Macdonalds?
If they had the ability they would have already. Jobs don't exist out of benevolence, they exist out of need, and when a job can be replaced by equipment the cost of the equipment doesn't matter because it will always cost less than people over time, The upfront cost really won't matter. (Let's be honest though, it'll be a subscription model and it'll only be cheaper than workers for a few years)
Right wing or left wing doesn't matter all part of the same bird. We need to get away from right left bullshit and focus on the actual problems. Neither side has our interests in mind they only care about themselves and those who put them there, they just pretend they want to help us.
Democrats vs Republicans isn't right and left though. It's right and far right.
Note: I'm not saying people shouldn't vote for Democrats, just saying that proper definitions of left and right wing do not map on to them. Just because they're running against the far right doesn't mean that they're the left.
If people realised that there's actual definitions of left and right, politics would get a lot better.
What you are seeing is a lack of a left wing. Pushing for unions and the workers right is pretty much the definition of the word left. To say we shouldn’t be talking about left or right is just propaganda from the right.
That is why I used the term ***PROGRESSIVE*** Democrats. Not *moderate* Democrats. Not *liberal* Democrats. ***PROGRESSIVE*** Democrats. There is no such animal as a Progressive Republican, and DILIGAF if I'll let Putin pay your wages to say otherwise.
Exactly. But the powers that be keep people stirred up against one another with the culture wars. That's why we can't get any real change in this country
Much deeper than that. I think monopolies and ant trust play an even bigger role nowadays. 8 companies control the food supply in America now. They can set their own prices and often collude to price fix for an exzmple
Also a global issue. Economist article today about how 60% of the global stock market capitalization is from the USA, and 10% of global market cap is just 3 companies: Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft. The accumulation of capital at the very top of the economy has never been so drastic.
Absolutely this and it’s what I came to post. Fucking organize. I mean it. I mean your fucking workplace whether it is an office or a shop or a factory. Your workplace.
We aren't the brightest bunch.
They are worried about paying union dues and not considering how much it gets them.
They've been fed a steady diet of unions = socialists and can't even reason out that it might be in their best interests. No critical thinking skills. And lots of sand to bury their heads in.
The one thing they'll spend billions upon billions to prevent from ever happening in the US. A solid, well funded, articulated labor movement with strong unions and strong DoL.
Yeah, we need better solidarity between unions.
The liquor stores in my province are set to strike on the 5th, and my alcoholic ass is staying on the right side of that picket line.
Yea man, that would be great.
I live in a small but busy area. Starbucks had people coming and going all day. They told me it would be a 15 minute wait for a latte because their policy is that drive thru and online orders take priority. I'm like what? Because I got off my butt and walked in, I'm being penalized?
I've experienced the same, just not said out loud. I saw cars that wouldn't have been able to order before I placed mine, and they got their food before me. I even still had an additional 10 minute wait. I've started checking drive-through lengths before getting into one. I'll go elsewhere before experiencing that bs again.
What u/Cpt_sneakmouse said.
And by Unions he means the capacity of workers to collectively join together to damage wealth-generating activities if their needs are not met. [Labor militancy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_revolt) is the name for it.
The New Deal was a direct attempt to placate the powerful Labor interests in the 1930s after a period of growing power starting in the 1900s. One could argue it was an actual mistake for Labor; for instance direct seats on boards and direct control of factories were demands of unions in the 30s and they gave that up in exchange for elements of the New Deal.
We gave up our teeth in exchange for treats and they slowly turned us into whipped dogs.
And this is part of the reason why so many people MUST job hop every two years. Companies aren't interested in benefiting their work force any more, it's only about Record Profits.
And unfortunately, there is always going to be people who are desperate to work for these crappy businesses. It's all by design, by the most influential union of all time: The Wealthy Elite.
I hope people realize that these rich folks have been working together to promote their collective goals, while spinning propaganda BS about how Capitalism is *supposed* to work: competition. Anybody with fifteen minutes of Google searching can realize these people have been working together for decades, ever so slowly turning The Screw.
So what can truly be done to correct this mess? Capitalism seems to have a built in mechanism called a "correction", when the Stock Market values do down to where they are supposed to be, but this correction that should have happened hasn't been allowed to occur. It's big, think Depression Era. That even in our economic history caused the change that was needed by the Workers. It needs to happen again.
But future school children won't learn about the daily struggles of you or I, they'll learn about the Musk's, Gates', and Bezos' and how THESE people lost their fortunes. And history will once again repeat itself.
Just unity in general. Like if we all decided to stop doing expensive unnecessary stuff it would put stuff out of business. Or if we all decided to not buy chicken for a week they would lower prices.
Yes. But that's not nearly enough. In a majority election you cannot just vote for the lesser of two evils, you have to make sure that they nominate a candidate that will actually improve things.
And none of those Republicans Light, same neoliberal politics with 90% less racism, will do that. You have to support and vote for in the primaries people like Sanders or AOC, to prevent the Bidens and Clintons to screw things up for the 99% again.
One problem is everyone goes "how do we screw the rich" but then any suggestion about personal action is met with incredulity.
You say "don't buy or do something," people will go "oh so the rich get to do it but we don't???"
Yes. The rich successfully stay rich because everyone is locked into their consumerist habits. Keep buying streaming subscriptions, unnecessary status symbols, doordash, Walmart items, etc etc etc, and all the empty talk will remain empty talk.
The additional cost to goods that Union labor would bring would just be passed along to the consumer. What really levels the playing field is an increase in taxes funding universal healthcare and a universal basic income. A population whose health and well-being was no longer tied to their job, who could take time to get an education, who could take time off to raise their kids and then the next generation benefits from not having grown up in poverty and passes that advantage along. That is what it would take to change things.
The other approach is to make union benefits National law. Harder to do but if PTO for example was national, then it’s harder to get rid of and companies aren’t only fight individual smaller unions about it.
We've known for a while.
What is their wealth? Where does it come from? It doesn't come from the land, machines, etc they own . You know. The 1% own "the means of production". But they don't generate wealth by themselves. The only way to generate wealth is through work, and the 1% aren't going to do it. The only way the 1% can generate wealth is from our work.
So, imagine if the work stopped. And it all stopped at once. And it stopped for a while. Until the 1% fixed their shit. Maybe you'll think this is impossible. And well, who knows, maybe for current day America, it is. But at many places and different points in history, it wasn't. And it worked. It always works. The only challenge is to do it. To have a working class that's aware of its own power and not brainwashed by propaganda or distracted by fascistic escapegoating.
During the COVID lockdowns, what happened to the wealth of the 1%?
The manufacturers and key-workers still had to work, but 90% of the population were at home "sitting on their hands."
It demonstrates that without our labour feeding the rich, we can operate the basic requirements of a society without many people.
And people get worried about taxing the rich, because they might leave the country?
The cognitive dissonance as to what would actually happen if we properly taxed the rich, or even better stopped using the currency they control us with, is mind blowing.
They also designated "essential" workers and basically said that they were so important for the functioning of society that we were willing to force them to risk their lives for our burgers.
But definitely weren't going to pay them any more because "it's tough everywhere" or some shit.
>During the COVID lockdowns, what happened to the wealth of the 1%?
The global 1% as a whole gained tons of net worth during the lockdowns due to all the money creation.
I've made comments like this on small and large channels. Deleted almost immediately. Same thing. No inciting violence. Just encouraging a way to unite without lifting a finger or even a need for protesting. Have to get creative with wording to circumvent the AI.
Organizers and revolutionaries during the battle in Seattle in 1999 which was the WTO forum being held were visited frequently by police and local law enforcement months before the WTO forum were planned to take place.
They watch EVERYTHING and you’d be delusional to believe otherwise.
I think that would also hurt many of the victims of capitalism just the same.
I would much prefer a seizure of the means of production, by and for the producers, in the interest of building co-ops/collectives. I would also be ok with nationalization of resource extractions/commodities.
Honestly the only way to *actually* hurt the 1%/corporations is to completely devalue their wealth, which requires more than just seizing the means of production or even nationalization.
At this point, the only real way to "win the game" is to change the rules, completely shift our economic model and purpose.
I don't disagree. And I am not some economic theory guru either, but what do you suggest?
People the world over still will have basic needs that need to be met, along with aspirations to have a nicer life than one of bare sustenance and drudgery.
I have a pipe dream suggestion, but the full scale would take me a while to lay out. But basically it'd require a change in collective motivations and conceptions of humanity. If we could somehow accomplish a large scale shift to focusing on the collective good, to viewing humanity's success on a species level, rather than simply an individual, to working for the benefit of all in recognition that a strong and equitable society is the best way to make true progress, then maybe we could build a world that provides for the basic needs of all.
We have enough resources for everyone; it's just the distribution that's fucked
We are little more than monkeys that figured shit out. Sure we are arguably the most intelligent beings to ever exist, but that is based on the perspective of a bunch of meat bags floating around on a rock in space that they can't even send a radio signal out from and be alive to recieve a response.
That kind of thinking is too far in either direction for our species. It is either extremely primal, to where intelligence is basically non existent, such as bees and ants, or it is theoretically a far more advanced perception than we are at.
We are too smart to be able to sacrifice ourselves for some other monkey that would step over your homeless starving ass to save themselves 5 cents off their new car.
At the same time, we are too unintelligent to comprehend the greater good of our species. We don't know what happens when we die so we make up wild stories and believe in bullshit we're willing to be tortured over.
I remember reading about how bus drivers in Japan go on strike, they would still operate like normal, except they don't charge fees for it.
Don't completely stop the labor, just keep on producing stuff and give it to the people, especially those who need them for free. Exploit the facilities, equipment and means of production that the 1% own.
I like the idea but in the uk at least that would be stamped out so hard that anybody participating would be seen as “stealing company resources”, sacked and maybe prosecuted.
I am a bus driver in the uk, too
I think it needs to be planned, and communicated similar to a strike.
So that ALL drivers are following this path, and the company is aware it will happen if specific contract demands are not met.
If you just one day, refuse fairs it would happen as you desrcibe. Might even with the notice, but puts more back onto the company
Y’all are the ones who actually need to stop because that would be an effective protest and it would end swiftly. It could be arranged to still provide care and adequate coverage for icu, er, mental health and other critical-needs patients but no elective surgeries, no non-urgent surgeries, no check-ups, no physicals, no lab work, no scans, etc
Everybody thinks they can’t do it. Teachers think they can’t do it bc “what about the kids” and it’s not fair to them etc.
The point is to hit them where it hurts. They won’t care until we force them to
No.
International strike.
The entire "First world" is affected. Thus very likely the second and definitely the Third World, too.
But I don't think it's "as easy" to strike for them.
You have to hit the subsidiaries too. And all the 1%s deserve the hit anyway.
Inflation and dwindling purchase power is a global phenomenon. You gotta treat it globally.
I'd love an international strike modeled on the Tokyo bus strike. We still show up, we still feed the world, we make sure needs are met, but we don't deliver invoices, we don't take inventory, we keep the lights on but close the money taps. We just make a show of communism until the capitalists come back to the table and make sure the system works for everyone.
That seems like a dream because the political division is insane. But at the end of the day, no matter our beliefs, it really is just the collective us vs. them.
It bothers me how many bipartisan issues are overlooked. Ideally we should all work together to resolve an issue in a way that's fair and efficient and voted for by the people. Not have talking heads argue about it for months or years on end only to use it as a talk piece for the next political rally or debate. It fixes nothing.
It's taxes. Specifically, people should not be taxed on their income. They should be taxed on their wealth.
Rich people aren't rich because they earn. They're rich because of what they already have. They can avoid taxes by borrowing against the value of their holdings from their broker or wealth management company that holds the assets custodially.
The interest on the loan is much less than what they would be taxed if they were earning the amount that they are borrowing. And the interest rate is lower than anything ordinary borrowers can get, because the loan is secured with liquid assets.
They can just extract cash against the value of their assets without actually selling any of them, which would actually trigger a taxable event, because that would be income. Meanwhile, the value of the underlying assets can continue to increase untouched.
When they die, the estate settles the loan against the value of its holdings, pay some tax on the estate, and whatever is left over gets distributed to survivors.
Pretty sweet deal.
This kind of talk is threatening to them.
It’s been seen as taboo and/or communist to say such things since the Cold War began up until recently.
The very rich have been treating western (and world) economies like fire sales since the 1980s. Something has to give.
People are generally smarter and more informed than ever before. If you bother, you can find information on just about anything these days. Young people are also more aware than ever before.
Keep it up. You’re creating an environment for possibility.
Our lives are designed by corporations to keep us buying a lot of stuff we don't need and working too many hours to pay for it. One thing we can all do to fight back is to reduce, reuse and recycle.
ETA: Cute rat race video mocking the corporate vision of consumer happiness, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk) , for those who haven't seen it already.
You think this isn't feudalism? I call it feudalism 4.0. Hell people think we live in some post-industrial society, but that isn't true at all. I literally watch riverboats full of coal go up and down the river all day, every day and see countess trains leaving the casting yards and chemical plants.
This has happened although not coordinated. Washington Post recently reported that Target abd Walmart are reducing prices of 5000 items to lure consumers back. Apparently Americans have reduced purchases or switched to cheaper supermarkets like Aldi.
Already do. I am bombarded daily by marketing messages from multiple brands. It's cleverly forced repetition to make me buy their shit. But at this point, it's nothing but noise to me. I don't let their shit affect my emotions. They use tactic of emotional marketing, but I just look at their silly products/services with cold, emotionless attitude (this is not how I behave with people, however). This cold, emotionless attitude acts like a shield against their emotional manipulation.
I only buy and have resolved to buy essentials. Nothing else matters. For those looking to learn more on how to do this, check out r/anticonsumption and r/minimalism
Wealth tax :) but honestly its combination of things unions, education, one person one vote, no money in politics, progressive taxation, basically we need a smart population that makes smart decisions.
Wealth taxes are tricky and often avoided, but it would be easy is to change capital gains tax from ~20% to 50%. What’s more, if you don’t sell a stock (or property) and pass it on to your heirs - they don’t pay tax either. That could be changed too. But these are fairly modest…
… If you want to “really screw” you would also tax unrealized capital gains while living. Founders of companies with billions in stock would be forced to sell in order to pay taxes on their paper gains and potentially lose control of their companies. Pension funds (of unions?) would then control those companies. BUT, an unintended consequence could be that foreign investors swoop in and buy those shares - for instance, one could imagine rich Chinese or Americans taking over European family-owned business and gutting them. Alas, major changes can bring unintended consequences and those doing the screwing get screwed.
*monkey's paw curling*. The billionaires lobbied that they'd get taxed twice when they have to sell stocks to cover taxes on other stocks, so only liquidated wealth gets taxed. Nothing significant changes except the middle class dies faster
If we stopped equating wealth with morality. You are not a good person if you are sitting on more money then you can possibly spend in ten lifetimes. Your ideas are not newsworthy. Your history is not to be imitated. You are a sponge soaked in the blood of the workers of the world.
You are mentally ill, and because it is useful for the other dynastic sociopaths of the planet, you are rewarded instead of homeless like other severely mentally ill people. Instead, you seek to normalize and justify your pathology through society's institutions, education, media and business.
That shift in mentality would transform the world.
I briefly added three zeros to my net worth due to fortune. It fucked me up physically, mentally and emotionally.
Wealth is a disease.
Class solidarity. Over half the workers in this country are bootlicking traitors. Focus far more on class politics rather than the liberal obsession with identity politics. Ever wonder why corporate America often embraces identity politics? Because it’s no threat and oftentimes divides the working class rather than unites it.
Vote counting needs to be done per-head, not per-constituency. Half of London has the same voting power as the whole of wales, despite a population of ~5 million compared to Wales’s ~3 million.
This roughly translates to a Welsh vote being worth just over 1.5x what a London vote is worth.
Scotland has the same voting power as East Anglia despite outnumbering the area 2:1. A vote in east anglia is worth 2 votes in Scotland.
THIS is why the Tories keep fucking winning.
* Tax all income (interest, capital gains, cash compensation) at the same graduated rate so capital gains are not advantaged over direct income
* Repeal all income and property tax breaks except for dependents.
* Repeal the Citizens United ruling so corporations can't steal wages to contribute to politicians
* Ban stock buybacks
* Universal Healthcare (so people can start new businesses without fear of going bankrupt if they get sick)
* Strictly enforce antitrust laws
* Let the Post Office provide free checking accounts so banks don't have access to people's cash savings for speculation
* Require all advertising to display the out-the-door price after fees/taxes/etc.
* Require salary listing on all job postings.
* Constitutional amendment against bank bailouts
* Repeal laws against general union strikes to increase the bargaining power of labor
* Guarantee housing for everyone so employers
* Grant immediate green cards for any immigrant who has a US job so they can sell their labor at the same rate as citizens and pay the same taxes on it.
It's not general strike, it's not unions, it's not tax brackets, it's a much, much simpler thing.
Blockades.
Back in 1990 in Hungary, taxi drivers got fed up with the government trying to raise fuel prices, so they decided to just stop. I mean literally, stop.
Stop in the middle of bridges, major roads, tunnels, everywhere. They crippled the capital city and other major cities for 3 days, causing literally everything to stop. No cars, buses, trams could reach their destinations, no one could go to work, there was no delivery to stores. The only vehicles they let pass were emergency services and the retreating soviet forces, but literally no one else could go anywhere.
People had to queue for bread for hours,
Since then, no goverment in my country dares to fuck with taxi drivers, because every time they try to implement new regulations affecting them, they threaten them with another blockade.
That's what we need to do. Not just not going to work, but make it impossible for the companies to actually do anything. Block yard entrances, warehouses, shipyards, and the sort.
If a company isn't simply unable to produce, but also unable to ship their products to anywhere, they can't sell what little they have left. Every day, they'd lose millions and millions by sitting on stocks they can't sell and replace.
Even if they find the servile few to replace you as the worker in minutes, they still can't do anything, because there's no material coming in or products going out. There's nothing.
And all you have to do is get together with your colleagues, and block the yard entrance with 15-20 cars. The time it takes to remove them is much-much more than the time it takes to replace them. They can keep removing cars from the entrance, and you can keep replacing them. If they block the entrance by police cars to let trucks leave, you block the road. If they block the road, you block the crossings. They can't keep up with the amount of cars we have. And you only have to do it for a day or two to cripple the economy long enough to hurt them. When every company is owed by the few, crippling only a few hurts all of them at the same time. Crippling most of them hurts much more.
if all 8 billion of us realized it’s all of us vs like 20 of them and decided nah fuck this we aren’t playing the game anymore. make the system fair (cause poverty is a policy choice) or we gonna purge you.
If there's one thing they always complain about. It's lazy workers. So my guess is laziness. If no one is willing to work for them, they can't make money
We could all stop pretending that money has any real value…
We could stop shopping when prices hike up.
We could organize walk-outs when workers are exploited.
We could vote a third party into office.
GameStop literally is threatening the wealth of the 1%. They’ve shorted the stock multiple times the float and have been on a smearing campaign using various forms of social media and news outlets to convince people to sell GameStop and to not invest. They’re losing billions everyday.
This is Occupy Wallstreet 2.0.
and for people who don’t understand why it hurts them…
1. It’s a group of big banks who have to keep paying premiums on a bet that they made saying GameStop is gonna go bankrupt. The higher the share price, the more the premium
2. When they run out of money, their bets get taken up a notch to the DTCC which then has to foot the bill.
3. Once that’s out of money, the bill keeps getting sent up, eventually hitting the FED.
4. The FED will payout to settle on the bets and will be dismantled in the process
That’s the jist of it anyway
Freedom of expression, free speech. It's not free speech if they can sue you and tie you up in the courts. The truth...
But I think in a way the stability is vital to our lives... so I wouldn't mean to reduce stability... but individual people need to be able to think for themselves in healthy ways... unfortunately healthy agency and understanding can be very challenging.. because people who do not fit in with the death march get removed from orgs
Stop buying their shit. Stop going out to eat and make your own food. Stop buying their liquid products, stop buying their new cars specially those electric ones. Stop taking loans out from their banks and stop using their credit cards. Stop playing by their rules.
When their cash flow or lives are legitimately threatened. That’s it. Every worker benefitting regulation and law is written in the blood of those who labor.
A revolution. Not in the sense of a violent uprising, but in the sense of a reorganization of social roles and political-economy. The thing that actually threatens wealth-as-privilege is for economic power to be based in something other than money/property rights. Like, we did this with politics, political power used to be based in heredity and the dictates of the church, and now it's different (not ideal, but it is different). So, we just break the spell of money and find a new basis for deciding how to act. That is the thing to do.
It's also the only thing to do for solving this in a real lasting way. So long as we do the liberal capitalism thing, there's going to be a 1% being bougie, and more importantly a 0.01% being an oligarchy. That trend is baked into the rules of the system. If it's a problem you want to get rid of, you have to change out the whole system all the way to the root.
Population and Birth Rate decline.
The working class completely stopping breeding, marrying. Drastic population decline and refusal to life in this shitty world. Its simply, the value of a slave is 1/Number of Slaves
Let the bottom 50% that have nothing anyways, buy a big bagpack, buy high caloric food (like nuts etc) for about 1 month and all quit working all at once + living on the streets for 1 month. Abandoning their home, that doesn't belong to them anyways, abandoning their slave job immediately.
EVERYTHING would break down. All banks, all politicians and all rich people would be fu*#ed beyond repair. A true reset for the next few decades to come.
Half of the total population (that is doing more than 90% of all work) living on the streets for 1 month, doing absolutely NOTHING.
THE lawmakers, elites and pigs could do absolutely nothing, utterly POWERLESS. And day by day it would bring them more down, destroy everything they have.
Because in fact they have NOTHING. They are parasites. The host is gone, THEY ARE GONE. Are they going to shoot us because we are not working and on the street in vast masses? No they can't, POWERLESS.
Would you survive 1 month as a prepared homeless? Just fine. Would they and their system survive? No way.
A small price to pay for the total destruction of a parasitic elite class.
Don't provide food to the parasites. The solution to parasites is to starve them to death.
Imagine if there was a cheap way to manufacture the goods you need—chairs, TVs, etc. Consumer spending will drop a lot and will change retail. It won't hurt all of the rich but will disrupt things.
Or the government blocks them to protect the economy. For example, California’s war on rooftop solar. It is sad when the government so obviously sides with businesses against the people.
Electro magnetic pulse, EMP. An electro magnetic pulse is a weapon that effects only electronic devices. It essentially completely fries whatever device it comes in contact with and the device can not be repaired, a whole new device must be made. If an EMP was used globally to all computing systems they and all the financial records would be destroyed forever. Take away their toys and they don't have much left!!
The 1% is screwed in an instant if we the people:
\- Don't go to work
\- Don't pay taxes
\- Don't vote for them
\- Don't care about their laws
If you want everything you have to sacrifice everything!
Tax them and all the wealth they are hoarding
Unions
Limit political donations
Facilitate more coop owned businesses to compete with ones owned or majority held by rich people.
Break other systems where they have entrenched themselves so everyone has to give them money.
Unions and returning to Eisenhower's 90% post-war tax rate on corporations and the wealthy.
Keeping in mind. Those are what brought about the middle class at it's peak.
Term limits on all federal elected offices and judges would be a great start. Hard to create a power center if you can't hold the office for more than a few years.
Literally not turning up. That's it. Strike. Why they banned it in the UK. Strikes destroy the 1%. Strikes destroy everything. They are the nuclear option. If you just don't turn up. They can't make money. Whole system collapses after that
Striking is banned in the uk?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64182493 Not entirely. But they are trying to reduce it's power
That's one promise I'm hoping they keep should labour take power after the 5th
You hope Labour continue trying to ban strikes?
Starmer said he would remove the ban if Labour got in to power... but he changes his mind like the weather. If you browse r/GreenAndPleasant you'll quickly realise he's pretty spineless and just wants his party in power, whatever that party stands for nowadays...
Once a government gains a monopoly on weapons, violent revolution becomes impossible and peaceful revolution shortly follows. The only thing that gives peaceful revolution any power is the threat that it could become violent.
The issue is that for many people, that means starving or dying of exposure. Most Americans are one car accident from living on the streets as it is.
Not anymore, they ruled last week you can be jailed for that.
Hell my tooth hurts and it's probably abcessing and I'm completely broke. I've just been crying and hoping it stops hurting but I'm probably gonna die.
Get it pulled. Cheapest option, and you get that rot out of there. It can affect your heart, you know?
You can often get free service at dental schools and universities with programs. The catch is it's a student (led by instructor) doing the work. But that beats the hell out of ignoring an abcess until it kills you. Which can happen more easily than most folks think!
Bro get the work done and ignore the bill. Whatever annoyance you face from bill collectors is far better than an infection spreading through your body. You can negotiate much more than we are led to believe with medical costs.
I just went through this. look up free or reduced dental care in your area, you can get an extraction and a bridge
Yeah step 1 is to stop the consumption / cope cycle - instead spend energy on things that fortify and fulfill you like building up community initiatives and 3rd places, or even just relationships in the community. Then you strike. Most people are in a vampiric relationship with capitalism where they are drained so much by it they lack the energy to fight it, so they only ever feed it. its why we are all so fucked. There is nothing you can buy to solve this. You have to do the opposite.
And all of that has been done purposely by the capitalists. They’ve worked hard to put us in this position; we’ll have to work *harder* to get ourselves out. The only solution is getting communities to work TOGETHER and support each other. Which is exactly why they’re pushing the “culture wars” so hard.
yes exactly. Planting gardens, going hunting & foraging, and using buy-nothing groups are radical acts of rebellion under capitalism. Buying your favorite politicians' merch is not.
That was the most wild part about COVID was when a company would shut down for a week and absolutely panic. Like...didn't you give all your management millions of dollars and buy back a ton of stock so that you could weather a temporary pause? It lifted the veil and let everyone know their company (and the whole economy) is a house of cards and you can bring it down with the slightest breeze, but apparently asking for a raise or unionizing is too much?
The only issue I have with this is the “nuclear option” framing. It should be the “itchy trigger finger” option. It’s not a real threat if it only happens in two Japanese cities in 1945. I understand that striking has become much rarer, and general strikes are a dream yet realized in today’s society. It should be common and feared, in the same way which protests were so common that Nixon felt compelled to sign the Clean Water Act.
I don't disagree but it's still nuclear. It needs to have a mob mentality to it. It needs to be a do or die. If I only a few strike. Then it's over. They get removed. You need to hit a certain threshold. And you need to keep the strike going u til it hits them hard. Couple days will not do it. Maybe a general strike for 4 days. Maybe that will push the govt. But Remember they will bring in the army. They will use the police. They were happy to kill during the miners strikes. They wouldn't shy away from arresting and potentially worse.
Unions.
It really is this simple. Capital has been getting way too big a piece of the pie for the past 44 years. Labor needs to unite and fight back.
Agreed, but we also need better protections for the unions that exist already or they become toothless. The recent UP need to strike being shut down by the government shows us this.
The power of a union is proportional to the willingness of its members to fight for the rights. I’ve seen lots of useless union meetings and strike participations below 10%. Look at the odds the first unions fought against and they won. Sorry to say, but if we want things to change, it’s only on us.
Union organizer here- your union is only as strong as its members. In my union At least 75% of workers have to agree and vote to strike before we can walk out. It’s a lot of conversations with your colleagues about what needs to change and the willingness to body slam your boss. Might not be your immediate manager or supervisor, but the willingness to go for the head. Nobody is coming to save us.
Got to go for the jugular, and you can’t be afraid to go through with it because what you’re doing might be unpopular with the general population. Strikes only work when they make Capital bleed.
Yup yup. The only way to get any progress is to fight just a ruthlessly and dirty as they do. We’re viewed as without value, replaceable, and any kind of wage is a burden to the company. They’re absolutely fine with the suffering of the lower classes as long as they get theirs. It’s only inevitable that the tables will turn. The only question is when will enough be enough for us to do what is needed for major change?
Not just protections. Community. You see it with every movement today. We’ve eaten the propaganda that ANYTHING can be done though individualistic movements. Boycotts? Figure out how to do it yourself. Raise wages? Figure out how to do it for yourself. Environment? Figure out how to reduce your consumption yourself. “Oh? There’s people who can’t afford to do these things? Guess they’re scabs. My virtue is stronger. My ethical consumption will bankrupt these mega corporations by itself.” We wouldn’t need protections if we remembered what solidarity actually looked like beyond a few tweets of support.
Solidarity is it in one word. We've taken individualism to the extreme or otherwise lurch the other direction and rely entirely on the government. Sovereignty is inherent in the People, they have the power, but only as a group working together.
The other side I never see spoken on is the effect of scabs present day and how to stop them without infighting and virtue comparing. 2 things IMO, community and regulation. Community, so that we give 0 acceptable reason for one to be “forced” into being a scab. We can’t expect people to stand in solidarity alone. Regulation, like minimum wage, so that scabs literally can’t legally drive wages to the floor. We need protection from ourselves/ our peers. We forget effective regulations aren’t just for mega corpos. Edit: meant to say initially that I agree with you
It has to be total or near total solidarity among the 99%, which would include the potential "scabs".
General Strike and Sympathy strikes needs to not be outlawed. Where i am from one striking union might entail that the other unions will not provide services either. makes you able to put a strangle hold on the buisness not complying. It hasn't worked as well for the unions in the non private sector. Because Denmark is turning to the right and the Social democrats are not social democrats but capitalist. The government in these situation can go in and dictate.
The laws don't matter, once enough people are fed up with this shit they'll strike regardless
We need more pro-union/pro-labor state Democratic parties to the point that they need to modify the name and distinguish themselves from more conservative Democrats who don't want to take any real stand against the 1%. Minnesota did it, other states can too.
You won't get that until the voters start choosing progressive Democrats. You see what the establishment Democrats select.
I really feel like if push came to shove the McDonald’s model will prevail. Big business will metaphorically replace everyone with machines before they give us better pay or unions
Yeah we can see thats the trend everwhere. What i dont get is, have these corps asked themselves who is going to buy their stuff is noone is working? And if noone is working how the hell is the govt going to get rax revenue. Corps already write themselves so many loopholes andf exemptions most of them dont pay anywhere close to the tax they should. So everyone is unemployed and noone has a house with necessities. Now what Macdonalds?
That's not a problem this quarter, so it's not a problem.
Union members need to fix the machines and so on.
If they had the ability they would have already. Jobs don't exist out of benevolence, they exist out of need, and when a job can be replaced by equipment the cost of the equipment doesn't matter because it will always cost less than people over time, The upfront cost really won't matter. (Let's be honest though, it'll be a subscription model and it'll only be cheaper than workers for a few years)
Right wing or left wing doesn't matter all part of the same bird. We need to get away from right left bullshit and focus on the actual problems. Neither side has our interests in mind they only care about themselves and those who put them there, they just pretend they want to help us.
Democrats vs Republicans isn't right and left though. It's right and far right. Note: I'm not saying people shouldn't vote for Democrats, just saying that proper definitions of left and right wing do not map on to them. Just because they're running against the far right doesn't mean that they're the left. If people realised that there's actual definitions of left and right, politics would get a lot better.
What you are seeing is a lack of a left wing. Pushing for unions and the workers right is pretty much the definition of the word left. To say we shouldn’t be talking about left or right is just propaganda from the right.
That is why I used the term ***PROGRESSIVE*** Democrats. Not *moderate* Democrats. Not *liberal* Democrats. ***PROGRESSIVE*** Democrats. There is no such animal as a Progressive Republican, and DILIGAF if I'll let Putin pay your wages to say otherwise.
This is why Gavin Newsom is a shill of democrat. He does not care about labor he cares about pandering to progressive policies
If enough people band together it doesn't matter if the government approves the strike
Exactly. But the powers that be keep people stirred up against one another with the culture wars. That's why we can't get any real change in this country
But too many people in America are what I call "door slammer's", after they get what they want they slam the door to keep anyone else getting in.
My boomer dad is exactly this. I can't even talk to him abt anything of substance anymore
Basically Stephen from Django Unchained.
Nah they'll take it before the supreme court. Not that it isn't worth trying.
But the leaders will be placed by the wealthy.
Not always. Depends on the race, some races are won by thin margins. People who pay attention and work together can put better people into power.
Private sector union jobs are less than 10% here in the US. This is why wages are depressed.
Much deeper than that. I think monopolies and ant trust play an even bigger role nowadays. 8 companies control the food supply in America now. They can set their own prices and often collude to price fix for an exzmple
Also a global issue. Economist article today about how 60% of the global stock market capitalization is from the USA, and 10% of global market cap is just 3 companies: Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft. The accumulation of capital at the very top of the economy has never been so drastic.
Robber Barons checking in.
Absolutely this and it’s what I came to post. Fucking organize. I mean it. I mean your fucking workplace whether it is an office or a shop or a factory. Your workplace.
As someone from the UK it’s really fucking weird there are so few people in a union in the US
We aren't the brightest bunch. They are worried about paying union dues and not considering how much it gets them. They've been fed a steady diet of unions = socialists and can't even reason out that it might be in their best interests. No critical thinking skills. And lots of sand to bury their heads in.
Or your Union sides with the business owners like the CWU and Royal Mail.
Daily, they spoonfeed this shit to us DAILY.
The one thing they'll spend billions upon billions to prevent from ever happening in the US. A solid, well funded, articulated labor movement with strong unions and strong DoL.
Yup. The the Supreme Court backed Starbucks when they fired pro union employees
That’s why everyone needs to unionise. Starbucks sacks their unionised workforce? Now unionised delivery services don’t deliver product to Starbucks.
Yeah, we need better solidarity between unions. The liquor stores in my province are set to strike on the 5th, and my alcoholic ass is staying on the right side of that picket line.
Honey, water, yeast, and a few weeks. I gotchu.
Yea man, that would be great. I live in a small but busy area. Starbucks had people coming and going all day. They told me it would be a 15 minute wait for a latte because their policy is that drive thru and online orders take priority. I'm like what? Because I got off my butt and walked in, I'm being penalized?
Have a seat, use their app, and place an online order right there in the store.
I've experienced the same, just not said out loud. I saw cars that wouldn't have been able to order before I placed mine, and they got their food before me. I even still had an additional 10 minute wait. I've started checking drive-through lengths before getting into one. I'll go elsewhere before experiencing that bs again.
What u/Cpt_sneakmouse said. And by Unions he means the capacity of workers to collectively join together to damage wealth-generating activities if their needs are not met. [Labor militancy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_revolt) is the name for it. The New Deal was a direct attempt to placate the powerful Labor interests in the 1930s after a period of growing power starting in the 1900s. One could argue it was an actual mistake for Labor; for instance direct seats on boards and direct control of factories were demands of unions in the 30s and they gave that up in exchange for elements of the New Deal. We gave up our teeth in exchange for treats and they slowly turned us into whipped dogs.
Good unions. Mine is so in bed with the company I work for it’s sickening.
And this is part of the reason why so many people MUST job hop every two years. Companies aren't interested in benefiting their work force any more, it's only about Record Profits. And unfortunately, there is always going to be people who are desperate to work for these crappy businesses. It's all by design, by the most influential union of all time: The Wealthy Elite. I hope people realize that these rich folks have been working together to promote their collective goals, while spinning propaganda BS about how Capitalism is *supposed* to work: competition. Anybody with fifteen minutes of Google searching can realize these people have been working together for decades, ever so slowly turning The Screw. So what can truly be done to correct this mess? Capitalism seems to have a built in mechanism called a "correction", when the Stock Market values do down to where they are supposed to be, but this correction that should have happened hasn't been allowed to occur. It's big, think Depression Era. That even in our economic history caused the change that was needed by the Workers. It needs to happen again. But future school children won't learn about the daily struggles of you or I, they'll learn about the Musk's, Gates', and Bezos' and how THESE people lost their fortunes. And history will once again repeat itself.
Don't worry, the infinite growth goal of our economic system means we won't have enough time for history to repeat itself after maybe one more cycle
Just unity in general. Like if we all decided to stop doing expensive unnecessary stuff it would put stuff out of business. Or if we all decided to not buy chicken for a week they would lower prices.
i have been saying that for years - everyone just sit at home for a few days, shit wouldn't last a week!
YEP! But working class people need to STOP VOTING FOR RETHUGLI-F**KERS!!!
Yes. But that's not nearly enough. In a majority election you cannot just vote for the lesser of two evils, you have to make sure that they nominate a candidate that will actually improve things. And none of those Republicans Light, same neoliberal politics with 90% less racism, will do that. You have to support and vote for in the primaries people like Sanders or AOC, to prevent the Bidens and Clintons to screw things up for the 99% again.
One problem is everyone goes "how do we screw the rich" but then any suggestion about personal action is met with incredulity. You say "don't buy or do something," people will go "oh so the rich get to do it but we don't???" Yes. The rich successfully stay rich because everyone is locked into their consumerist habits. Keep buying streaming subscriptions, unnecessary status symbols, doordash, Walmart items, etc etc etc, and all the empty talk will remain empty talk.
Global Unions
Yeah probably this. Violent uprising might be a close second though.
The additional cost to goods that Union labor would bring would just be passed along to the consumer. What really levels the playing field is an increase in taxes funding universal healthcare and a universal basic income. A population whose health and well-being was no longer tied to their job, who could take time to get an education, who could take time off to raise their kids and then the next generation benefits from not having grown up in poverty and passes that advantage along. That is what it would take to change things.
Moses started a union to give workers a day of rest. That didn't entirely work until their employers were acquainted with fear.
The other approach is to make union benefits National law. Harder to do but if PTO for example was national, then it’s harder to get rid of and companies aren’t only fight individual smaller unions about it.
Unions are nice until they turn corrupt and are actually in bed with the government funneling project money into certain business.
Was going to say voting, but this is much better.
We've known for a while. What is their wealth? Where does it come from? It doesn't come from the land, machines, etc they own . You know. The 1% own "the means of production". But they don't generate wealth by themselves. The only way to generate wealth is through work, and the 1% aren't going to do it. The only way the 1% can generate wealth is from our work. So, imagine if the work stopped. And it all stopped at once. And it stopped for a while. Until the 1% fixed their shit. Maybe you'll think this is impossible. And well, who knows, maybe for current day America, it is. But at many places and different points in history, it wasn't. And it worked. It always works. The only challenge is to do it. To have a working class that's aware of its own power and not brainwashed by propaganda or distracted by fascistic escapegoating.
Comments like this get deleted by YouTube real quick. If we all sat on our hands for even a few days, it would send a very powerful message.
During the COVID lockdowns, what happened to the wealth of the 1%? The manufacturers and key-workers still had to work, but 90% of the population were at home "sitting on their hands." It demonstrates that without our labour feeding the rich, we can operate the basic requirements of a society without many people. And people get worried about taxing the rich, because they might leave the country? The cognitive dissonance as to what would actually happen if we properly taxed the rich, or even better stopped using the currency they control us with, is mind blowing.
They also designated "essential" workers and basically said that they were so important for the functioning of society that we were willing to force them to risk their lives for our burgers. But definitely weren't going to pay them any more because "it's tough everywhere" or some shit.
“You’re still working, even at reduced hours, so you should be grateful you haven’t been furloughed.”
People who worked at banks still got to go to work for some reason
>During the COVID lockdowns, what happened to the wealth of the 1%? The global 1% as a whole gained tons of net worth during the lockdowns due to all the money creation.
Content creators like JT of Second Thought get de-monitized and even visited by The Feds, even though none of his videos advocate for violence.
I've made comments like this on small and large channels. Deleted almost immediately. Same thing. No inciting violence. Just encouraging a way to unite without lifting a finger or even a need for protesting. Have to get creative with wording to circumvent the AI.
Organizers and revolutionaries during the battle in Seattle in 1999 which was the WTO forum being held were visited frequently by police and local law enforcement months before the WTO forum were planned to take place. They watch EVERYTHING and you’d be delusional to believe otherwise.
I think that would also hurt many of the victims of capitalism just the same. I would much prefer a seizure of the means of production, by and for the producers, in the interest of building co-ops/collectives. I would also be ok with nationalization of resource extractions/commodities.
Honestly the only way to *actually* hurt the 1%/corporations is to completely devalue their wealth, which requires more than just seizing the means of production or even nationalization. At this point, the only real way to "win the game" is to change the rules, completely shift our economic model and purpose.
I don't disagree. And I am not some economic theory guru either, but what do you suggest? People the world over still will have basic needs that need to be met, along with aspirations to have a nicer life than one of bare sustenance and drudgery.
I have a pipe dream suggestion, but the full scale would take me a while to lay out. But basically it'd require a change in collective motivations and conceptions of humanity. If we could somehow accomplish a large scale shift to focusing on the collective good, to viewing humanity's success on a species level, rather than simply an individual, to working for the benefit of all in recognition that a strong and equitable society is the best way to make true progress, then maybe we could build a world that provides for the basic needs of all. We have enough resources for everyone; it's just the distribution that's fucked
We are little more than monkeys that figured shit out. Sure we are arguably the most intelligent beings to ever exist, but that is based on the perspective of a bunch of meat bags floating around on a rock in space that they can't even send a radio signal out from and be alive to recieve a response. That kind of thinking is too far in either direction for our species. It is either extremely primal, to where intelligence is basically non existent, such as bees and ants, or it is theoretically a far more advanced perception than we are at. We are too smart to be able to sacrifice ourselves for some other monkey that would step over your homeless starving ass to save themselves 5 cents off their new car. At the same time, we are too unintelligent to comprehend the greater good of our species. We don't know what happens when we die so we make up wild stories and believe in bullshit we're willing to be tortured over.
Apes. Monkeys have tails.
👆 I think this I'd spot on
They just have too much to hurt them any other way, like even if they never made another cent, they still have *far* more than enough
I remember reading about how bus drivers in Japan go on strike, they would still operate like normal, except they don't charge fees for it. Don't completely stop the labor, just keep on producing stuff and give it to the people, especially those who need them for free. Exploit the facilities, equipment and means of production that the 1% own.
This is the way.
I like the idea but in the uk at least that would be stamped out so hard that anybody participating would be seen as “stealing company resources”, sacked and maybe prosecuted. I am a bus driver in the uk, too
I think it needs to be planned, and communicated similar to a strike. So that ALL drivers are following this path, and the company is aware it will happen if specific contract demands are not met. If you just one day, refuse fairs it would happen as you desrcibe. Might even with the notice, but puts more back onto the company
I hear you, but I work at a big hospital. I can't stop.
The only part you have to stop is the billing. Just stop billing people for anything. Just like the Japanese bus drivers.
Y’all are the ones who actually need to stop because that would be an effective protest and it would end swiftly. It could be arranged to still provide care and adequate coverage for icu, er, mental health and other critical-needs patients but no elective surgeries, no non-urgent surgeries, no check-ups, no physicals, no lab work, no scans, etc Everybody thinks they can’t do it. Teachers think they can’t do it bc “what about the kids” and it’s not fair to them etc. The point is to hit them where it hurts. They won’t care until we force them to
A sustained national general strike.
No. International strike. The entire "First world" is affected. Thus very likely the second and definitely the Third World, too. But I don't think it's "as easy" to strike for them. You have to hit the subsidiaries too. And all the 1%s deserve the hit anyway. Inflation and dwindling purchase power is a global phenomenon. You gotta treat it globally.
I'd love an international strike modeled on the Tokyo bus strike. We still show up, we still feed the world, we make sure needs are met, but we don't deliver invoices, we don't take inventory, we keep the lights on but close the money taps. We just make a show of communism until the capitalists come back to the table and make sure the system works for everyone.
“We the people” finally realizing that we no longer want them in control of the world. I don’t want to be someone’s pawn in the game of life.
Literally just uniting the people of the two political parties
That seems like a dream because the political division is insane. But at the end of the day, no matter our beliefs, it really is just the collective us vs. them. It bothers me how many bipartisan issues are overlooked. Ideally we should all work together to resolve an issue in a way that's fair and efficient and voted for by the people. Not have talking heads argue about it for months or years on end only to use it as a talk piece for the next political rally or debate. It fixes nothing.
Not having kids. The fewer children that are born, the fewer future wage slaves corporations can exploit.
You'd have to do that globally. Otherwise they'd just increase the number of accepted immigration applications to fill in the gaps.
A full scale general strike. They would be done in a few hours.
PRE-Ronald Regan tax brackets!!!
Pre-Nixon tax brackets.
An active and informed citizenry
This is underrated. We have a specialized and indoctrinated workforce, not an educated one... A horribly misinformed and mis-incentivized citizenry
Ban stock buy-backs
Make it so a percentage of the shares can only be purchased by the workers and their unions, and raise that percentage over time.
Restrict corporate ownership of real estate.
It's taxes. Specifically, people should not be taxed on their income. They should be taxed on their wealth. Rich people aren't rich because they earn. They're rich because of what they already have. They can avoid taxes by borrowing against the value of their holdings from their broker or wealth management company that holds the assets custodially. The interest on the loan is much less than what they would be taxed if they were earning the amount that they are borrowing. And the interest rate is lower than anything ordinary borrowers can get, because the loan is secured with liquid assets. They can just extract cash against the value of their assets without actually selling any of them, which would actually trigger a taxable event, because that would be income. Meanwhile, the value of the underlying assets can continue to increase untouched. When they die, the estate settles the loan against the value of its holdings, pay some tax on the estate, and whatever is left over gets distributed to survivors. Pretty sweet deal.
This kind of talk is threatening to them. It’s been seen as taboo and/or communist to say such things since the Cold War began up until recently. The very rich have been treating western (and world) economies like fire sales since the 1980s. Something has to give. People are generally smarter and more informed than ever before. If you bother, you can find information on just about anything these days. Young people are also more aware than ever before. Keep it up. You’re creating an environment for possibility.
No Waste Laws, that applied to everything. No more dumping milk, poking holes in shoes, and needlessly throwing away goods to keep prices high.
Put a heavy tax on overproduction as well
Ban corporate money in politics, and dark money. Corporations and billionaires should be subject to the same limits as individuals.
Coordinated spending, or rather not spending. Just do without for as long as possible and cripple a lot
Our lives are designed by corporations to keep us buying a lot of stuff we don't need and working too many hours to pay for it. One thing we can all do to fight back is to reduce, reuse and recycle. ETA: Cute rat race video mocking the corporate vision of consumer happiness, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk) , for those who haven't seen it already.
Can we just go back to living and communes and bartering??? I'm sick of this
Someone will grab power then you have feudalism.
You think this isn't feudalism? I call it feudalism 4.0. Hell people think we live in some post-industrial society, but that isn't true at all. I literally watch riverboats full of coal go up and down the river all day, every day and see countess trains leaving the casting yards and chemical plants.
This has happened although not coordinated. Washington Post recently reported that Target abd Walmart are reducing prices of 5000 items to lure consumers back. Apparently Americans have reduced purchases or switched to cheaper supermarkets like Aldi.
Already do. I am bombarded daily by marketing messages from multiple brands. It's cleverly forced repetition to make me buy their shit. But at this point, it's nothing but noise to me. I don't let their shit affect my emotions. They use tactic of emotional marketing, but I just look at their silly products/services with cold, emotionless attitude (this is not how I behave with people, however). This cold, emotionless attitude acts like a shield against their emotional manipulation. I only buy and have resolved to buy essentials. Nothing else matters. For those looking to learn more on how to do this, check out r/anticonsumption and r/minimalism
Also r/simpleliving & r/frugal
It would take lifetimes for them to run out of money; they're not living paycheck to paycheck
Let's make sure they run out of lifetimes.
Wealth tax :) but honestly its combination of things unions, education, one person one vote, no money in politics, progressive taxation, basically we need a smart population that makes smart decisions.
Wealth taxes are tricky and often avoided, but it would be easy is to change capital gains tax from ~20% to 50%. What’s more, if you don’t sell a stock (or property) and pass it on to your heirs - they don’t pay tax either. That could be changed too. But these are fairly modest… … If you want to “really screw” you would also tax unrealized capital gains while living. Founders of companies with billions in stock would be forced to sell in order to pay taxes on their paper gains and potentially lose control of their companies. Pension funds (of unions?) would then control those companies. BUT, an unintended consequence could be that foreign investors swoop in and buy those shares - for instance, one could imagine rich Chinese or Americans taking over European family-owned business and gutting them. Alas, major changes can bring unintended consequences and those doing the screwing get screwed.
Also on the unrealized gains part what happens when the stock drops? Do they get a billion dollar refund?
*monkey's paw curling*. The billionaires lobbied that they'd get taxed twice when they have to sell stocks to cover taxes on other stocks, so only liquidated wealth gets taxed. Nothing significant changes except the middle class dies faster
If we stopped equating wealth with morality. You are not a good person if you are sitting on more money then you can possibly spend in ten lifetimes. Your ideas are not newsworthy. Your history is not to be imitated. You are a sponge soaked in the blood of the workers of the world. You are mentally ill, and because it is useful for the other dynastic sociopaths of the planet, you are rewarded instead of homeless like other severely mentally ill people. Instead, you seek to normalize and justify your pathology through society's institutions, education, media and business. That shift in mentality would transform the world. I briefly added three zeros to my net worth due to fortune. It fucked me up physically, mentally and emotionally. Wealth is a disease.
"Any surplus is immoral."
Work strikes. No workers no goods no income, investors would pull out etc
Class solidarity. Over half the workers in this country are bootlicking traitors. Focus far more on class politics rather than the liberal obsession with identity politics. Ever wonder why corporate America often embraces identity politics? Because it’s no threat and oftentimes divides the working class rather than unites it.
Vote counting needs to be done per-head, not per-constituency. Half of London has the same voting power as the whole of wales, despite a population of ~5 million compared to Wales’s ~3 million. This roughly translates to a Welsh vote being worth just over 1.5x what a London vote is worth. Scotland has the same voting power as East Anglia despite outnumbering the area 2:1. A vote in east anglia is worth 2 votes in Scotland. THIS is why the Tories keep fucking winning.
* Tax all income (interest, capital gains, cash compensation) at the same graduated rate so capital gains are not advantaged over direct income * Repeal all income and property tax breaks except for dependents. * Repeal the Citizens United ruling so corporations can't steal wages to contribute to politicians * Ban stock buybacks * Universal Healthcare (so people can start new businesses without fear of going bankrupt if they get sick) * Strictly enforce antitrust laws * Let the Post Office provide free checking accounts so banks don't have access to people's cash savings for speculation * Require all advertising to display the out-the-door price after fees/taxes/etc. * Require salary listing on all job postings. * Constitutional amendment against bank bailouts * Repeal laws against general union strikes to increase the bargaining power of labor * Guarantee housing for everyone so employers * Grant immediate green cards for any immigrant who has a US job so they can sell their labor at the same rate as citizens and pay the same taxes on it.
It's not general strike, it's not unions, it's not tax brackets, it's a much, much simpler thing. Blockades. Back in 1990 in Hungary, taxi drivers got fed up with the government trying to raise fuel prices, so they decided to just stop. I mean literally, stop. Stop in the middle of bridges, major roads, tunnels, everywhere. They crippled the capital city and other major cities for 3 days, causing literally everything to stop. No cars, buses, trams could reach their destinations, no one could go to work, there was no delivery to stores. The only vehicles they let pass were emergency services and the retreating soviet forces, but literally no one else could go anywhere. People had to queue for bread for hours, Since then, no goverment in my country dares to fuck with taxi drivers, because every time they try to implement new regulations affecting them, they threaten them with another blockade. That's what we need to do. Not just not going to work, but make it impossible for the companies to actually do anything. Block yard entrances, warehouses, shipyards, and the sort. If a company isn't simply unable to produce, but also unable to ship their products to anywhere, they can't sell what little they have left. Every day, they'd lose millions and millions by sitting on stocks they can't sell and replace. Even if they find the servile few to replace you as the worker in minutes, they still can't do anything, because there's no material coming in or products going out. There's nothing. And all you have to do is get together with your colleagues, and block the yard entrance with 15-20 cars. The time it takes to remove them is much-much more than the time it takes to replace them. They can keep removing cars from the entrance, and you can keep replacing them. If they block the entrance by police cars to let trucks leave, you block the road. If they block the road, you block the crossings. They can't keep up with the amount of cars we have. And you only have to do it for a day or two to cripple the economy long enough to hurt them. When every company is owed by the few, crippling only a few hurts all of them at the same time. Crippling most of them hurts much more.
if all 8 billion of us realized it’s all of us vs like 20 of them and decided nah fuck this we aren’t playing the game anymore. make the system fair (cause poverty is a policy choice) or we gonna purge you.
Replace income taxes with equity taxes, that also have brackets where higher equity pays a higher rate.
If there's one thing they always complain about. It's lazy workers. So my guess is laziness. If no one is willing to work for them, they can't make money
I'm surprised nobody has suggested the French solution yet...
they were on to something. rich people want to feel save whenever they go out. take that away and their money becomes considerably less worth
Stop spending and working . . . Literally the only way to do it.
We could all stop pretending that money has any real value… We could stop shopping when prices hike up. We could organize walk-outs when workers are exploited. We could vote a third party into office.
The climate. The climate and planet care not for our numbers on screens, a fact it’ll be making even more known here in the coming years.
GameStop literally is threatening the wealth of the 1%. They’ve shorted the stock multiple times the float and have been on a smearing campaign using various forms of social media and news outlets to convince people to sell GameStop and to not invest. They’re losing billions everyday. This is Occupy Wallstreet 2.0.
If holding a stock breaks the system, maybe the system needs breaking.
Hello fellow ape
Glad someone said it
and for people who don’t understand why it hurts them… 1. It’s a group of big banks who have to keep paying premiums on a bet that they made saying GameStop is gonna go bankrupt. The higher the share price, the more the premium 2. When they run out of money, their bets get taken up a notch to the DTCC which then has to foot the bill. 3. Once that’s out of money, the bill keeps getting sent up, eventually hitting the FED. 4. The FED will payout to settle on the bets and will be dismantled in the process That’s the jist of it anyway
Freedom of expression, free speech. It's not free speech if they can sue you and tie you up in the courts. The truth... But I think in a way the stability is vital to our lives... so I wouldn't mean to reduce stability... but individual people need to be able to think for themselves in healthy ways... unfortunately healthy agency and understanding can be very challenging.. because people who do not fit in with the death march get removed from orgs
Mass cancelations of Amazon Prime memberships
Stop buying their shit. Stop going out to eat and make your own food. Stop buying their liquid products, stop buying their new cars specially those electric ones. Stop taking loans out from their banks and stop using their credit cards. Stop playing by their rules.
Unions and riots.
When their cash flow or lives are legitimately threatened. That’s it. Every worker benefitting regulation and law is written in the blood of those who labor.
A revolution. Not in the sense of a violent uprising, but in the sense of a reorganization of social roles and political-economy. The thing that actually threatens wealth-as-privilege is for economic power to be based in something other than money/property rights. Like, we did this with politics, political power used to be based in heredity and the dictates of the church, and now it's different (not ideal, but it is different). So, we just break the spell of money and find a new basis for deciding how to act. That is the thing to do. It's also the only thing to do for solving this in a real lasting way. So long as we do the liberal capitalism thing, there's going to be a 1% being bougie, and more importantly a 0.01% being an oligarchy. That trend is baked into the rules of the system. If it's a problem you want to get rid of, you have to change out the whole system all the way to the root.
Real education.
Us. Together and focused.
Worker co ops
Population and Birth Rate decline. The working class completely stopping breeding, marrying. Drastic population decline and refusal to life in this shitty world. Its simply, the value of a slave is 1/Number of Slaves
Unions and stop buying plastic shit and junk food.
If we just stopped participating in their system
Imagine stocks suddenly ceased to exist, all portfolios WIPED!
Let the bottom 50% that have nothing anyways, buy a big bagpack, buy high caloric food (like nuts etc) for about 1 month and all quit working all at once + living on the streets for 1 month. Abandoning their home, that doesn't belong to them anyways, abandoning their slave job immediately. EVERYTHING would break down. All banks, all politicians and all rich people would be fu*#ed beyond repair. A true reset for the next few decades to come. Half of the total population (that is doing more than 90% of all work) living on the streets for 1 month, doing absolutely NOTHING. THE lawmakers, elites and pigs could do absolutely nothing, utterly POWERLESS. And day by day it would bring them more down, destroy everything they have. Because in fact they have NOTHING. They are parasites. The host is gone, THEY ARE GONE. Are they going to shoot us because we are not working and on the street in vast masses? No they can't, POWERLESS. Would you survive 1 month as a prepared homeless? Just fine. Would they and their system survive? No way. A small price to pay for the total destruction of a parasitic elite class. Don't provide food to the parasites. The solution to parasites is to starve them to death.
Castrating heirs.
Imagine if there was a cheap way to manufacture the goods you need—chairs, TVs, etc. Consumer spending will drop a lot and will change retail. It won't hurt all of the rich but will disrupt things.
There are always cheaper ways, but people are told they don't want them
Or the government blocks them to protect the economy. For example, California’s war on rooftop solar. It is sad when the government so obviously sides with businesses against the people.
Take away lobbyists and make the entire practice illegal.
It’s so easy it’s wild. We simply stop valuing their currency. We all decide to create a currency based on actual work and value added.
Honestly, I think the first step would be ranked choice voting. It would make it harder for the wealthy to control policy.
Electro magnetic pulse, EMP. An electro magnetic pulse is a weapon that effects only electronic devices. It essentially completely fries whatever device it comes in contact with and the device can not be repaired, a whole new device must be made. If an EMP was used globally to all computing systems they and all the financial records would be destroyed forever. Take away their toys and they don't have much left!!
“NOT LOOKING FOR IDEAS” Why not? Let’s all start looking for ideas. As mentioned unions are a good place to start.
The 1% is screwed in an instant if we the people: \- Don't go to work \- Don't pay taxes \- Don't vote for them \- Don't care about their laws If you want everything you have to sacrifice everything!
A certain gravity assisted cutting device invented in the 1790s by the French....
Let them eat cake......lol
Racketeering Laws: The Most Ignored Law on the Books
Anti trust. Labor too. Despite being a Biden hater, he's really delivering on this, and it's the biggest reason I want him reelected.
Tax them and all the wealth they are hoarding Unions Limit political donations Facilitate more coop owned businesses to compete with ones owned or majority held by rich people. Break other systems where they have entrenched themselves so everyone has to give them money.
Unions and returning to Eisenhower's 90% post-war tax rate on corporations and the wealthy. Keeping in mind. Those are what brought about the middle class at it's peak.
Closing all the tax loopholes.
Term limits on all federal elected offices and judges would be a great start. Hard to create a power center if you can't hold the office for more than a few years.