People in this thread: BUT WHAT ABOUT LIFE EXPECTANCY?!?!
Bro you really want to argue life expectancy in favour of the ideology that argues whether curing a patient is makes business sense?
Your long life expectancy is thanks to science, which has existed for a far greater percentage of human history. To argue it’s because of capitalism is dumb as hell.
We’re also literally watching it nosedive in the west and skyrocket in china but unfortunately the west is full of morons such as the one in this very thread who think that “everyone starved in medieval times” and that capitalism somehow liberated us from it
hey wait, let’s ask John Steinbeck how capitalism ACTUALLY TREATS AFFECTS FOOD SECURITY
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
huh
Motherfucker, people were already commenting on how ACTUAL labor relations for LITERAL SERFS weren’t ACTUALLY as bad as wage labor (a form of slavery if you’re not too brainwashed to realize what it means to have to work for a wage TO SURVIVE) in the motherfuckong 1800s
This isn’t the own you think it is, it’s just an admission of your vast and all encompassing ignorance
Let me tl;dr that for you: literal fucking peasants would give up a quarter of their crop, and this was seen as barbarous. The wage laborer GIVES UP THE ENTIRETY OF THE PRODUCT OF HIS LABOR. In exchange, he recieves A FRACTION OF ITS VALUE IN WAGE. The relative exploitation here is obscene, and yet people like you, ignorant, think it’s some sort of voluntary contract that benefits us all.
But the wage laborer only “chooses” to work because they’ll starve in the streets otherwise. The employer only has the privilege of benefiting from their work by owning the means by which they can do profitable work. They EXPLOIT THE WORKERS’ SURVIVAL NEEDS and in doing so reap shares of profit from their labor that would make the cruelest medieval lord envious.
And now, you dumb motherfuckers sit here, reading all this, and think, oh, so you want to return to feudalism? like that in any way makes sense
How about ending the exploitation of labor entirely? That’s what socialism seeks to do. But you dumb motherfuckers are out here acting like your fucking landlords do you any favors (while somehow pretending to yourselves they’re any different from the evil feudal lords capitalism supposedly saved you from)