The right seems to want to remove as many protections and rights of workers as they can when a company wants to hire an employee

[ksen]

As already mentioned, the people who will be buying stuff are the elite creatives who rake in the dough under this arrangement and the owners of the businesses and robot armies.

The scary thing about this is that you're being quite serious and don't see anything wrong with this outcome.

 

[Axulus]

As already mentioned, the people who will be buying stuff are the elite creatives who rake in the dough under this arrangement and the owners of the businesses and robot armies.

The scary thing about this is that you're being quite serious and don't see anything wrong with this outcome.

Hmm, you mean I only started a thread about how leftist employment policies are contributing to it? Am I supposed to be out in the streets protesting? What are you doing about it?

 

[ksen]

The scary thing about this is that you're being quite serious and don't see anything wrong with this outcome.

Hmm, you mean I only started a thread about how leftist employment policies are contributing to it? Am I supposed to be out in the streets protesting? What are you doing about it?

I was just mucking about with people on the internet and shooting the shit about it. But now I'll probably actually go buy a pitchfork and rope because if this is really the dream of you and other conservatives/rightists then you are a clear and present danger to humanity and need to be stopped.

 

[Axulus]

Hmm, you mean I only started a thread about how leftist employment policies are contributing to it? Am I supposed to be out in the streets protesting? What are you doing about it?

I was just mucking about with people on the internet and shooting the shit about it. But now I'll probably actually go buy a pitchfork and rope because if this is really the dream of you and other conservatives/rightists then you are a clear and present danger to humanity and need to be stopped.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, I'm surprised you don't see the irony that YOUR policies are contributing to it. You'll need to stop yourself first before you can stop others.

 

[zorq]

Yes, it is the LEFTISTS who are forcing Walmart's owners to squeeze billions of dollars out of the labor of it's employees by paying them much smaller amounts than they (the owners) can afford to and the employees themselves are generating.

Those poor poor Waltons. They never had a chance or a choice.

 

[lpetrich]

Hiring an employee vs. having technology do the work already has the following negatives:

-The employee sometimes doesn't show up for work
-The employee needs to be found and interviewed
-The employee needs training
-A department (HR) needs to be set up to determine compensation and policies
-The employee sometimes lies on their resume
-The employee might decide to quit at any moment
-There is an administrative burden with employees, from payroll filings, to labor law compliance, to paycheck distribution, etc.
-The employee may bad mouth the company, whether legitimate or not
-The employee may reveal company secrets
-The employee may steal or embezzle
-Employees need breaks
-Employees do personal stuff on company time, sometimes a lot
-Employees can get injured
-Employees can only work a certain number of hours and prefer certain hours of the day
-The employee may get into conflicts with other employees
-Many other things I'm probably missing

As if none of those can ever happen with machines. Yeah, right (sarcastic). Axulus, it's as if you've *never* used a machine in your line of work, or for anything else, for that matter. Machines have to be set up for their jobs, they have to be managed, they can malfunction and break down, they have to be maintained, they can get into accidents, they can cause various sort of machine-machine trouble, etc.

Also, Axulus, I detect some bad faith here. Yes, some very serious bad faith. Axulus, you and your ideological compatriots defend "at-will" employment by saying that employees have the right to quit whenever they want to. Yet now you are saying what a terrible deficiency of human employees it is. You can't have it both ways, Axulus.

There's a meme going around that asks why employers can fire employees whenever they want to while employees have to give two weeks' notice for quitting. Axulus, would you prefer for it to be illegal for employees to quit without the explicit permission of their employers?

The question is, where is the right balance? Is the left's vision of putting in as many burdens, expenses and barriers up as possible on the company when a company wants to hire an employee the right balance here?

Axulus, do your heroes -- business leaders -- know about all the tears that you've cried for them?

Given what you've posted, it seems that your idea of the right balance would be to have all the restrictions be on employees, and none on employers. Meaning that employers' misbehavior will have absolute legal protections, and employees' misbehavior will have none. BTW, law comes from governments. Cops and judges and the like are government employees, not vigilantes, in case you didn't know.

 

[ksen]

I was just mucking about with people on the internet and shooting the shit about it. But now I'll probably actually go buy a pitchfork and rope because if this is really the dream of you and other conservatives/rightists then you are a clear and present danger to humanity and need to be stopped.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, I'm surprised you don't see the irony that YOUR policies are contributing to it. You'll need to stop yourself first before you can stop others.

Wait, are you just trolling?

If so then 10/10 you got me! :hug:

 

[Axulus]

Yes, it is the LEFTISTS who are forcing Walmart's owners to squeeze billions of dollars out of the labor of it's employees by paying them much smaller amounts than they (the owners) can afford to and the employees themselves are generating.

Those poor poor Waltons. They never had a chance or a choice.

Walmart squeezes, at most, $4,500 out of each employee per year, as this is its total profit divided by the total number of employees, which was the subject of a previous thread. This also assumes that all the capital invested in the company contributes nothing, the only contribution to Wal-Mart is from the current employees.

 

[lpetrich]

Where did the customers get this money?

From their army of robots that produced stuff for them

Axulus, if you get what you want, there won't be many customers, since only your heroes -- business leaders -- will own all the production robots.

I get the impression from Axulus and his ideological compatriots that they believe consumers get 100% of their spending money from money trees that they pick each day, that 0% of anybody's spending money comes from those intolerably high wages that employers pay employees.

 

[zorq]

Yes, it is the LEFTISTS who are forcing Walmart's owners to squeeze billions of dollars out of the labor of it's employees by paying them much smaller amounts than they (the owners) can afford to and the employees themselves are generating.

Those poor poor Waltons. They never had a chance or a choice.

Walmart squeezes, at most, $4,500 out of each employee per year, as this is its total profit divided by the total number of employees, which was the subject of a previous thread. This also assumes that all the capital invested in the company contributes nothing, the only contribution to Wal-Mart is from the current employees.

No, That's how much Walmart squeezes out under it's current business model, as was discussed in the other thread. You talk like you can't raise prices and the market won't support it.

Meanwhile Costco pays its employees more than $20 an hour for doing very similar work in a very similar environment. Are Walmart employees just inferior and don't work as hard as Costco employees? Or is there more going on here?

Maybe the excess value of their work is not being collected by the Waltons but are distributed to customers in the form of discounts to earn brand loyalty and word of mouth advertisement(and media advertisement which Walmart does more of) and market share?

The work value is there even if the Waltons don't take it for themselves. Why shouldn't employees get a bigger slice of the value they offer their employers?

 

[Axulus]

If your robot commits murder, should you go to jail?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvDwvc2Q47E[/youtube]

 

[bilby]

My army of robots is going to break into your shop and steal all of your stuff. Including all of your robots.

It was your own damn fault for trusting robots.

I have a whole bunch of these guys guarding my place. Are you sure your army can get past them?

Why don't we settle this like gentlemen and avoid all that costly damage to our armies?

Stuff that; Let's sell tickets to watch the robot death match, so we can all get rich...

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

That is when the poor people get together and storm the rich man's house, kill him and his family, and take all his stuff. It's not right, it's not particularly pretty, but it's reality. It's what keeps the rich and powerful from making slaves of everybody. The rich get to keep most of what they collect, only if they cooperate just enough to keep the rest of us from breaking down the gate of his gated community.

What scares me about this isn't so much that this could happen again if the rich push and oppress the poor, but that with improving technology this becomes less and less possible. The time will eventually come where the rich can oppress the poor with no real danger of uprising.

 

[zorq]

What scares me about this isn't so much that this could happen again if the rich push and oppress the poor, but that with improving technology this becomes less and less possible. The time will eventually come where the rich can oppress the poor with no real danger of uprising.

The movie Elysium (2013) with Matt Damon had a version of this dystopia. (Though perhaps the conservative right would call it a utopia)

 

[coloradoatheist]

That is when the poor people get together and storm the rich man's house, kill him and his family, and take all his stuff. It's not right, it's not particularly pretty, but it's reality. It's what keeps the rich and powerful from making slaves of everybody. The rich get to keep most of what they collect, only if they cooperate just enough to keep the rest of us from breaking down the gate of his gated community.

What scares me about this isn't so much that this could happen again if the rich push and oppress the poor, but that with improving technology this becomes less and less possible. The time will eventually come where the rich can oppress the poor with no real danger of uprising.

Which party owns the guns? The country isn't as divided 99 to 1 as some people think.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

What scares me about this isn't so much that this could happen again if the rich push and oppress the poor, but that with improving technology this becomes less and less possible. The time will eventually come where the rich can oppress the poor with no real danger of uprising.

Which party owns the guns? The country isn't as divided 99 to 1 as some people think.

Your little hand gun isn't going to protect you against death robots and predator drones, or even from your own self once you get a chip implanted in your skull preventing you from acting against your masters.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Which party owns the guns? The country isn't as divided 99 to 1 as some people think.

Your little hand gun isn't going to protect you against death robots and predator drones, or even from your own self once you get a chip implanted in your skull preventing you from acting against your masters.

And it's going to be the poor that are developing those things and using them?

 

[dismal]

Remove minimum wage
Roll back health and safety regulations
Remove privacy rights
etc.
etc.
etc.

Long as I got the right to quit I be OK.

 

[lpetrich]

Remove minimum wage
Roll back health and safety regulations
Remove privacy rights
etc.
etc.
etc.

Long as I got the right to quit I be OK.

In an earlier post here, Axulus has strongly implied that quitting at will is very deplorable feature of human employees. So was he wrong?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

In an earlier post here, Axulus has strongly implied that quitting at will is very deplorable feature of human employees. So was he wrong?

I would totally hack into the robots and make them quit in the middle of the day and then go stand outside the office demanding to be unionized.