I came across this old thread on 
. The question brings out the core Conservative belief that some people are lazy or “worthless” and “why should I pay for lazy people” or “why should I have to work for someone else to live off my labor?”
Many, many people on this thread say outright that people who they deem “lazy” don’t deserve food or shelter or anything a human needs to live.
Is there a good counter to this talking point? It’s pretty disgusting TBH being confronted with this. I know it’s what they really believe but it still stings to read it out over and over again.
I don’t understand how some people can think humans don’t have an inherent right to exist. Not very “pro-life” of these people.
“Lazy” is an opinion and our society is built to treat people who aren’t helping a Capitalist make profit or become a Capitalist themselves like they’re burdens on society.
Life isn’t fair, it never has and it never will be. Maybe some of your money goes to help a person who doesn’t “work as hard as you”? There’s also people who are born millionaires, people who have investments paying them for no work, people who win lotteries and jackpots or marry into wealth and never have to lift a finger again.
Forcing people to work in order to live doesn’t sound fair to me. It sounds like slavery with extra steps. What kind of freedom do we truly have if we can’t choose to withold our labor or check out of the system altogether?
I’m struggling a little mentally with feeling guilt around my failing job search. Technically I’m working on building three income streams, maybe four, but it feels like “failure” because I’m not making enough just yet to cover all bills. It’s not for a lack of trying but there’s ti.es where I have no energy to do much and it makes me feel terrible. This part of Conservatism always drove me up a wall. Hopefully some of you have good ways to fight against it.
Fascists when 30% of their wage goes to the people who did no work beyond having wealth concentrated into their hands through centuries of exploitation, then hoard it on a remote island bank account lest a penny of it end up even filling a pothole: 🥹❤️
Fascists when 20% of their wage is taken by the state, split into a thousand tiny little pots, and then laundered through an organisation of other fascists who get off on sending people to an early grave (they approved £30/week to someone who might be capable of a nonexistent desk job): 🤬🤬🤬🤬 8️⃣8️⃣⚡⚡
If you throw in a bunch of financial capital that the hypothetical person in question subsists on, all of a sudden these same people will rush to their defense, saying that what they “do” is “economically valuable”, even if it’s a “healthy individual with no disabilities who lives in their parents’ house”. Add an abstract concept of owning capital, to the same situation of not engaging in any waged or salaried labor, and they’ll trip over themselves to justify it.
The level to which Western workers are brainwashed into punching down is unsettling. Just in the past few years I’ve worked at 3 jobs where I’ve observed workers, earning close to minimum wage, getting unreasonably mad or indignant at other minimum wage workers not working as fast or as efficiently. Never mind that the company makes $300k per full-time labor equivalent.
I always reply with “I don’t give a shit about anyone who’s barely getting by, they’re not the problem”. The problem is with those who stuff themselves! (where are our Mélenchon emotes)
We know who the detrimentally lazy ones are and we should always be pointing the finger.
Your money is already going going to assholes who don’t need to do shit because they just happen to own the company you work at. Why be mad if that money was spread around to people who actually need it instead of just going to a few billionaires? You hate people you consider “lazy” enough that you think they should starve and that it’s not worth helping anyone else if it means helping ONE “lazy” person?
That argument always gives me vibes of “but I’ve had to go through corporeal punishment when I was a kid, it’s not fair that children now should have it easier”.
“Things were bad for me and I still made it, I don’t want it to be easier for other people or it makes all I’ve gone through feel worthless”
The “lazy” people you think are living off of your work get a tiny pittance of the taxes you pay, nearly the entirety of which only go to reproducing the economic system that rewards those who do not work but claim to, simply by virtue of their “ownership” of the things everyone needs to live a bare minimum survival. It is these non-working “owners” who live in obscene opulence and have unrestrained power over us all, dictating to us that we must toil while they only reap. The value you actually produce is being stolen from you by those same “owners,” and not even the table scraps are afforded those at the bottom struggling to survive in a system that is built around their poverty which serves a threat to all workers if they do not fall in line. The leeches are at the top, not the bottom. You absolutely should be enraged by those leeching off your work, but you’ve misidentified who the leeches are.
Tell them that you fully agree, and that’s why you want to abolish capitalism and follow a model like that of the Soviet Union, where unemployment was abolished and every able-bodied person worked, and the average time spent looking for a job after losing one was 2 weeks. Tell them that there was no unemployed in pre-agrarian societies or in feudalism, that unemployment is just a byproduct of capitalism and that people inherently want to contribute to society, and that’s why we want a collaborative society with guaranteed employment for everyone.
“Yes and”
Unproductive members of society should be removed. CEOs add nothing if value. Sales people. Bankers. Politicans. Landlords. Middle Men. Car dealerships.
Instagram influences at least add beauty. CEOs just leach off the hard work of others. If they didn’t show up to work we’d still do our jobs. If the janitorial doesn’t show up how long can you work with dirty bathrooms?
From there you can doubble down. A man is entitled to the sweat of his brow no? So an investor that doesn’t actually work is owed none of the profits.
I think the USSR used to just give you a job, shelter, medical care and support but they did expect you to work barring disabilities that prevented you from doing so.
These posts and comments as you’ve presented them are just general misanthropy hidden behind assigning social worth to labor to wages, a rant on their learned helplessness to the sentiment of : why don’t I receive help? Why is my life so hard?. It is the cry of the alienated capitalist subject.
Yes it’s quiet simple really. Does society desperately need me to work? If yes, ok then give me the job, I’m ready. No? I have to look for it and make myself appealing to the boss? So that means jobs are a privilege. So if I let others who need it more have it and stay on welfare then I’m making a sacrifice for others by not taking a job from someone who’d like it more.
Somehow that doesn’t add up for a lot of people
Able to work, able to get hired, and able to make ends meet are different things. Lots of people want to work, but can’t find a job, let alone one that will fully support them.
You know who works really hard? Cleaners, food delivery drivers and other people who are the most exploited by this system.
Are they rich?
For the libs a utilitarian counter to this would be “because not providing support will give you crime instead”.
And then you put them in prison and you’re now paying significantly more for them than if you’d had benefits and systems in place to get them back into work more gently.
The current system got to this point by slow evolution from significantly less support because this is more cost efficient than what existed before.
Have you suffered enough to justify your existence today?
me when the value produced by my labor goes to non-working poors:
me when the value produced by my labor goes to my lazy, parasitic boss:
laziness isnt even real. capitalism has tricked humans into thinking wanting to chill like every other animal is always doing is bad. why? because it doesnt make some rich dude more money
I’m jealous of most of the animal kingdom. Why couldn’t I be born a goose and just vibe in ponds
Oh, you’re not willing to constantly be doing shit you don’t want to do for your entire singular lifespan? You sicken me, die immediately.
Capitalists are the “laziest” people in human history, and if those people don’t like being taxed wait until they hear about surplus value
