What does it say inside that big red circle?
I wonder how many outraged posters have ever tried to be their own boss. I gladly trade 50% of my potential income for uninterrupted family time, PTO, marketing, customer service, support, accounting, tax declaration, and all the other crap that I had to do myself as a freelancer.
Some people like doing those other tasks and the owner/boss doesn’t do them but pays others to (while still taking the biggest chunk of the proceeds).
There are other forms of organization than capitalistic corporations with a parasite at the top. Cooperatives, collectives, and other organizations like that even exist today and are successfully functioning. The parasite serves no vital function and can be cut out to the benefit of everybody else.
In the company I work for the CEO does quite a lot of work, in the previous company the owners were there when I came in the morning and still there when I left home, writing code like me but also meeting customers, doing acquisition, finding out why the cleaning company didn’t send anyone that week, etc.
If being “a boss” is so easy, I don’t understand why don’t everyone here just go freelance, hire people and start browsing for Ferraris.
You are describing other workers who own part of the company. Just because you call them “boss” does not make them the same as all “bosses”, and it certainly doesn’t make them the same as those taking the bulk of market profits in general.
So we consider CEOs and owners not bosses?
Just to clarify: this was a startup and all 3 were the only co-owners, +5 employees .
It depends on the person and situation.
The part of the strata they occupy is the petite bourgeoisie. Within this group there are people who work their asses off and compensate themselves accordingly, while giving a fair share to the workers under them. There are also people who squeeze their workers for every penny, giving the bare minimum to survive while doing nothing of note themselves except rent seeking.
I have worked for business like what you are describing. My bosses ate and slept their jobs. They took a greater share. They also compensated us well and gave us a part of the profits when things were good.
When people are complaining about “bosses” and what they do, they are not complaining about those people. They are complaining about the much larger set of bosses (by market share) that absolutely do not do those things.
Do you think Zuckerberg is like your boss? Musk? Trump? The family that runs Walmart does not put in as much labor as their entire employee base.
Even in the lower strata, most bosses are not like the people you describe, and to come here and defend “bosses” with your outlier examples (by market share), is disingenuous.
How does that boot taste?
The early 20th century labor movement negotiated with the 1% to get a ceasefire in the class war. Here we are now.
What have we learned about negotiating with capitalists?
That they are often reasonable and quick to adjust to market conditions to maintain the quality of life of employees because they care deeply!?!?! Is it that?!
Narrator: it was not that
The first therapeutic insulin was developed by University of Toronto. However, they did not have the money or means to mass produce it and thus the patent was sold to pharmaceuticals. Cuba and USSR are also pretty impressive with their biotechnology but unable to scale up their ideas.
I always see this narrative of “ceasefire with socialists” but the end of the day, you still need money. Even China abandoned pure socialism/communism and instead went to state capitalism. But at least China tax and rein their billionaires unlike the rest of the spineless world.
I think the problem is that with the rise of the middle class in the mid-20th to 21st century, everyone had become NIMBYs and complacent, after having been spoiled by the post-war economic boom and globalisation. Much of the world have gotten private property and benefitted from deregulation and thus unwilling to give a helping hand. Instead, the ladder is kicked down. The 19th and early 20th century still had a large amount of working class who are brave to mobilise against wealth inequality. However, that demographic shrunk and both the left and centre-left had to cater to the now larger and wealthier, but admittedly, pretty selfish professional, managerial middle class. In other words, uplifting the society has, paradoxically, created an unequal society because many have now gotten a piece of the pie but unwilling to give even a small piece to the remaining few left behind.
Edit: clarity
The first therapeutic insulin was developed by University of Toronto. However, they did not have the money or means to mass produce it and thus the patent was sold to pharmaceuticals. Cuba and USSR are also pretty impressive with their biotechnology but unable to scale up their ideas.
The insulin example proves you need resources and manufacturing capacity, not capitalism.
Banting and the others gave the patent to the University of Toronto for $1 each because they didn’t want insulin monopolized. Production was then scaled through a mix of public institutions and private manufacturers.
The original patent expired, but drug companies built new patents around insulin analogues, formulations, and delivery devices, while the market became heavily concentrated.
So “you still need money” misses the point. Of course large-scale production needs funding, factories, workers, and logistics. The actual political question is who controls those resources, who owns the patents, and who gets the benefits.
You have a point about the patent. However, since you mentioned about production, my own point that “you still need money” still stands, because operating cost is still the major sticking point in running any businesses.
Sure, “you still need money”… nobody is arguing that factories run for free.
Your claim that Cuba and the USSR were “unable to scale” is incorrect. Cuba built a state-funded biotech sector that handles research, manufacturing, and exports, while the USSR also operated major vaccine, pharmaceutical, and biotech production programs.
Cuba has faced decades of embargo-related restrictions on equipment, reagents, finance, and advanced technology, including in biotech and pharmaceuticals. The USSR also faced Western export controls on advanced technology and equipment during the Cold War.
Yes, you need money, but you don’t need capitalists.
“Well, but I own the machines.”
“How did you get the machines?”
“Sold products and bought them.”
“Wait, you sold products before buying the machine? How did you make those products? That seems like circular reasoning.”
“Actually, you’re right, I initially took out a loan to buy the machine in the hopes I could sell enough products to pay off the loan.”
“That seems like it was a risk.”
“It was. But, I spent a lot of time analyzing the market, coming up with estimates of how much people would buy, how much someone who could operate the machine would cost in wages, all that sort of thing.”
“That seems like a lot of work.”
“It was a fair amount of work.”
“Who paid you to do that work?”
“Nobody paid me, I hoped to get paid once I could start selling products.”
“So, why didn’t your worker start his own business and buy his own machine instead?”
“Ah, well, that’s the part that’s a bit unfair. See, I could afford to spend the time analyzing the market because my family is rich, and I didn’t need to work gruelling 8 hour days. Also, when it came time to take out a loan to buy the machine, the bank was happy to give me the loan because of my family name.”
“Ah, and your worker?”
“Great guy, but he has a family to support and no rich parents. He couldn’t take the time to analyze the market for a new business because he has to hold down a job. And, even if he could find the time to do that, the bank probably wouldn’t give him a loan for a new business because he doesn’t have any business history, or assets to use as collateral. Also, he can’t really afford to fail.”
“Afford to fail?”
“Yes. Like I said, I have rich parents. If my business fails, my dad will rib me about it a bit. But, it’s not like I’ll be out on the street.”
“And your worker?”
“Well, he could certainly try to start a business, but if the business failed he’d be in real trouble. No rich parents, you see. Plus, I have great accountants. If my business fails, they’ll use it as an offset for my taxes. Technically, anybody can do that, but good luck figuring out how to do that with TurboTax or something.”
“So, really, it’s oversimplifying to say that you do nothing, and the worker does everything.”
“Yeah, he makes what I tell him to make, but I figure out how much to charge, where to sell it, where to buy the raw materials, basically everything about the business other than operating the machine.”
“But, operating the machine is important.”
“Of course! It’s vitally important. But, you see, I bought a machine that costs a little more but is designed to be extremely easy to use. Because just about anybody can use it, I don’t need a worker with special skills. That means I don’t have to pay too much in wages.”
“So, really, if there’s unfairness here it’s structural. You come from a rich family, so it’s easy for you to start a business. He doesn’t, so his only real option is to get a job from someone like you.”
“That’s right.”
“But, it seems like that could all be changed with a few changes to the laws. You pay a bit more in taxes, he pays a bit less, then he can save up and maybe start his own business?”
“Yeah, that might work. But, here’s the kicker. He voted for the same guy I did. The other candidate was promising tax reforms, enforcing anti-monopoly laws, etc. But, my guy got everyone scared about trans athletes and brown people crossing the border. My worker’s a good guy, but he’s super racist. As long as you’re going after the brown people, that’s what matters to him.”
A relatively fair assessment, overall I approve of the framing. But, you’re describing the petit bourgeoisie.
“Yeah, he makes what I tell him to make, but I figure out how much to charge, where to sell it, where to buy the raw materials, basically everything about the business other than operating the machine.”
If, as a business owner, you’re doing all that, then yeah you’re doing real labor and deserve recompense. But the broader critique is of the owners who don’t do any of those things. In larger businesses, those tasks tend to be handled by other wage workers.
I think the thing I find deeply unfair about the situation is let’s say this arrangement of work is 100% accurate.
The owner did the analysis, took out the loan, set up the machine that the worker works.
At some point that work ends for the owner, the analysis is complete, the loan is paid back. There capitalists work effectively ends and the workers goes on forever and the split stays the same.
There is no point where the owner goes, “well if I had billed the company for my analysis and the initial loan I’d have been paid back 10 times over, time to give more to the worker.”
They get to set up the machine because of the wealth and privilege that is indicated here and then extract forever.
When they die, they can hand that enterprise to their heir, who did nothing. Not one ounce of analysis, not one drop of risk in taking out a loan, and that heir can extract value forever.
And they will get to take $6 of every $10 forever because they had the good fortune of being able to afford the machine and take advantage of a system set up by people that own machines which unsurprisingly has a simple rule, the people that own machines get the money.
At some point that work ends for the owner
It doesn’t really. They need to keep aware of what’s happening in the market. What are their competitors doing? Is the market becoming saturated? Are there new technologies which will change things? Are fashions changing? Are laws changing?
It’s probably less work to keep things going than it is to initially open the business, but the work never ends. Most businesses don’t even last 10 years, let alone “forever”. 5 years is about the average a business lasts. That’s because the job of the owner, spotting problems before they hit the business and adapting the business to the new situation, is hard. It’s not difficult labour, like running a machine can sometimes be, but it is difficult to get it right.
When they die, they can hand that enterprise to their heir, who did nothing
Estate taxes and inheritance taxes exist. They’re far too generous most of the time, but they exist.
In general, a successful business is a good thing for everyone. The fact that it’s successful means that people think that whatever it’s selling is worth buying. They’re better off with less money and whatever the business is selling than they were with just the money. Their world is better because the business exists. In addition, a successful business that generates a profit can be taxed. Taxes from successful businesses can be used by the government to provide services for everybody.
So, we should be encouraging people to start businesses. One obvious way of encouraging it is to allow them to keep some of the profits that result. Of course, that should be offset by the taxes the business pays. The question is what level of taxation is too little vs. too much.
It’s also unfair that starting a business is easy for some people who are already rich, and difficult for everyone else. Something like UBI would start to even the playing field, allowing someone the opportunity to fail without losing everything.
Fundamentally, the problem is that the rich and powerful always ensure that the laws and the structure of society benefits the rich and powerful. But, it goes in cycles. When they get too rich and too powerful, there is often unrest that takes the power back.
Yes, the owner does important work, but that work should not give them the right to all the profits produced by the business. Taxes are not a solution to the structural inequality created by private ownership of the means of production, they are a bandaid that alleviates some of the worst consequences. The only way to resolve the structural inequality is for the means of production to be collectively owned by all of the workers who use it, and for business decisions to be made democratically by said workers or by a person elected democratically by the workers (who should themselves be an equal owner of the means of production).
It would be better if the person in charge of determining the runnings of the factory and the allocation of all that wealth could be an elected position that could be unelected if the business was not going well.
Similarly, it’s a crazy concept to say that all of that purchasing of machines, property, and resources could be a waste because we predicate the whole thing on “risk” like it’s a game designed explicitly to put one person into a higher class over the other and not a matter of wasted resources that should be meant to increase the well-being of both individuals equally.
I got a solution: we stop rewarding this by all taking a risk and making our own stuff, instead of bending over backwards to get exploited.
I can’t tell if this is pro or anti capitalist tbh
Good.
it’s almost like the economic model name we give it is irrelevant and we should instead be focused on processes and outcomes 🤔
“Processes and outcomes”
The title of the book you are describing is literally “Capital.”
Because it’s presented in such a villainous manner.
I think it (maybe unintentionally) falls on the pro-capitalist side because it suggests that the fundamental contradiction of capitalism — that private ownership of the means of production inevitably leads to class-based unequal relationships to production — can be reformed. In reality, reforms are used by the capitalist class to placate workers and defuse revolutionary fervor, and are eroded almost immediately after passing. Only a complete revolution to collective worker ownership of the means of production can resolve the contradiction.
I meant because the trope of the poors being ignorant racists was a bit too hard to believe someone would want to admit to.
“Yeah, that might work. But, here’s the kicker. He voted for the same guy I did. The other candidate was promising tax reforms, enforcing anti-monopoly laws, etc. But, my guy got everyone scared about trans athletes and brown people crossing the border. My worker’s a good guy, but he’s super racist. As long as you’re going after the brown people, that’s what matters to him.”
Yeah, that’s a bit anti-worker, but racism and bigotry is one way that capitalists stoke division in the ruling class, and it has been very effective so far.
it suggests that (…) can be reformed.
it could. unfortunately the boss’s dad owns the politicians making the law, so it won’t be.
Only a complete revolution to collective worker ownership of the means of production can resolve the contradiction.
that’s just delusional. if such thing happened, and every person in the world would get the same amount of money and means of production, it would only take time for those better at management/leadership to - again - have more than the others.
people are not equal. i am not taking position and claiming it is good/bad, but it is a fact, no matter how someone might not like it. and all this is not saying that the current system is not fucked up.
<it could. unfortunately the boss’s dad owns the politicians making the law, so it won’t be.>
So de facto, due to structural issues inherent to the system, it can’t be.
Marxists never claim that people are equal. The motto is, after all, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”
There’s a lot more I could say to dispute your understanding of socialist theory and history, but I don’t have all day, so suffice to say: collective ownership of the means of production does not have the same structural tendency towards class formation as private ownership does.
Even the best co-ops have traces of it
pretty obviously pro cap
Worse yet, I think it is pro-government
in what way is describing how a system works pro anything?
The best systems are those that analyze the practical processes and outcomes and optimize for distributed prosperity regardless of the individual component processes’ economic model.
Some systems make sense to be capital-driven because of the massive initial investment required to ship the first product for things that are luxury-only (movies, etc)
Other systems should NEVER be capital-driven because they are tied to basic human needs and rights (health-care, education, etc)
The first step towards reaching the best system for everyone to attain a minimum level of prosperity that scales upward based on their own desire for additional luxury is breaking down existing systems to identify the exact places where they fail, so we can be selective about how build systems going forward and intelligently implement safeguards when we choose one system vs another for a given vertical.
lol you know anything about rhetoric because this is really naieve
As with the other comments you’ve made, you’re just saying words without understanding their meaning.
I understand rhetoric very well.
Stating an intentionally limited or cherry-picked set of facts with the intent to deceive can be a rhetorical ploy, but that’s genuinely not what the OC did, by a long shot. They fairly honestly break down (one of) the actual problem(s) with capitalism and how we wound up where we are.
From my perspective, you are the naive one, looking for simple narratives to pin your arguments on, and denying attempts to engage with the nuance of human behavior and history.
Life is complicated and trying to fit everything into a tidy little “capitalism bad” box isn’t going to produce the results you hope.
lmao words have meaning
and i don’t really care to read paragraphs from you
“Too many words” is the response of a disinterested child who views engaging in conversation like eating their vegetables.
Go back to your YouTube shorts I guess.
just an accurate description of the hellhole we live in.
it is a fact. facts are not pro- or anti- something, they just are.
this is sane washing wealth inequality
the reality is usually those original rich family members did some real heinous shit to get that wealth
this is sane washing wealth inequality
it is not sane washing of anything. it is a description of things.
stop, calm down, take a deep breath, and then answer the question:
- is it true?
not - “do you think this is how it should be?”
because it seems you have trouble grasping that these two are completely different questions.
if you don’t understand how framing works thats on you
- is it true?
Do you think wealth inequality was achieved through the behaviors of the insane? These systems were purpose built to function a certain way for the benefit of certain people. It was incredibly sane, just selfish.
Generational wealth inherited from people who benefitted from immoral systems is a fundamentally problematic system. Breaking down the logic behind it is not “sane-washing” or whatever unless it comes with opinions on the merit or fairness of the problematic elements.
Quite the contrary, the OC did not offer any opinion on whether these things were fair or “okay”. They only fleshed out the specific logic used in the creation of these systems.
insanity is more sane washing
selfish greed is more honest
sometimes evil is more descriptive
You’re just saying words without meaning at this point. I’m sure it feels good to put a label on something you don’t like but you have done nothing to communicate what you actually intend in an effective way.
if it makes you feel better thinking that…
if you actually care about the subject pick some actual rich family names a do a little googling
keeping it contemporary, the less bad assholes are the zuckerfucks or bezshits
the actual evil families are like the musks or the trumps, they don’t get the silly titles, heious fuckers
and i have zero interest in convincing boot lickers of anything
It’s true that capitalists deserve to exploit workers?
where do you see such statement in the comment i reacted to? some red circles would help.
Does react mean reply? You replied to my comment which was
I can’t tell if this is pro or anti capitalist tbh
Maybe you replied to the wrong comment?
where did i say or agreed to that “workers deserve to be exploited”, the sentence YOU put in my mouth so you have something to disagree with? i replied to right comment and you know very well what i meant, you manipulative asshole.
It’s true that capitalists deserve to exploit workers?
Where did I say you said anything?
Thank you for the nice, pedagogical explanation!
I really enjoyed this. I hope AI didnt write it haha.
But who made the AI?
Beep, boop, you’re right that that post might have been written by AI. If you would like, I can swear like a sailor and we can delve into whether or not that shows I’m human.
Why are all this discussions centered in 1880 industrial England? Less than 10% of people work in manufacturing in Western economies, time to come up with better examples maybe? Do you also live in a house with a clock on the front wall?
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This was originally published in 1937, so
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It applies to more than just manufacturing by using manufacturing as a generic exmaple. If a person works at a restaurant and makes $X worth of meals every day, if a person works at a software company and makes $X worth of software every quarter, etc.
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This was posted in 2026.
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Dont like selling your software to your boss? Sell it to clients directly and pocket the difference! The means of production are literally a laptop and an internet connection, about 200 dollars capex for a decent ThinkPad and 30 opex, free if you go to a library.
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$4.00 in October 1937 has the same buying power as $91.78 in August 2026.
Damn has there ever been a time where a working class American was paid a fair wage? Other than the brief period after WWII up until Reagan, that is.
That was still only a relatively small portion of the working class and even then it was only possible because the US took over control of global imperialism and were subsiding domestic worker wages with wealth extracted from the rest of the world.
surely not when you factor in in real estate 🙈
Appropriating the surplus value of labor
Yes, exactly!
(Maybe I’d say stealing or obtaining through coercion but why get too picky, eh?)
Instead of distractions over exact numbers, apply Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit: Does the pattern of owners profiting more from workers’ labor, and compensate as “market allows”, hold true regardless of the specific dollar amounts?
Let us not nitpick numbers as a distraction, but instead focus on the trend and the systemic issues of low wages, inferior benefits compared to many other nations, so they have less artificial scarcity and better lives, which is the goal. Demand better for all, not less for others once you got yours!
Gold
Well, technically, customers pay bosses.
Customers give the business money for the goods. It could be directly to the boss, or other employees of the business. When we say the customer pays the boss in this case, “pay” refers to an uneven relationship between the customer, the business, and the boss. The business has a product that the customer doesn’t have or doesn’t have the means to produce, so they give the business money to obtain it. In this relationship, it is considered appropriate for the company to charge more than it costs to produce the good. The price is set by the boss, who decides what profit is achievable, and what they are willing to do to maximize that.
In the poem the worker is said to pay the boss because the employee is in a similar position as the customer. In this case, they are giving the boss a higher value than they are receiving from the boss. They are exchanging their labour and the finished goods in exchange for two items the boss has a monopoly on: money (which is required to obtain goods in a system where you are alienated from the fruits of your labour), and access to the means of production.
You could simplify the “labour and the finished goods” for surplus labour value. I hear some guy wrote some compelling books about how many yards of linen a coat is worth. Might be worth a gander.
In this case, they are giving the boss a higher value than they are receiving from the boss
Well of course, because a business has more expenses than just paying the worker. Material needs to be paid, taxes, insurances etc. If the worker would receive the full value for his production, the company would lose money and go bankrupt within months.
They are exchanging their labour and the finished goods in exchange for two items the boss has a monopoly on: money
Your train of thought has a gap. The boss has no monopoly on money. The customer has. He’s the one that buys or pays something. The boss is, more or less, at the mercy of his customers. This is less of a problem if the boss sells something that is crucial to your life, like food, water, housing etc, so things you really need to survive, but a big problem if you sell something that isn’t.
That’s why I usually say that we as society absolutely have the power to decide which companies live an die. We just don’t work together and use that power.
I can’t remember for sure how capitalism defines labor. I think it’s just an expense. You know, the idea is that if you can buy it for cheaper than you can pay to make it, then you’ll just fire all of your workers and buy the product. Just like that.
That’s why every time there’s a disruptive technology, every company loses its fucking mind. “Oh, I can get AI to code for cheaper than my engineers? Time to get rid of those expenses.”
If he’s paid four dollars a day and only makes 10 dollars worth of products, he’s probably turning a loss once material costs and everything are accounted for? As 10 dollars would be revenue, not profit
The specific numbers are hardly the important part of the story.
The outrage is the important part, math is for nerds!
The story exists because of the numbers.
And if they’re not important to the story, there’s no reason for them not to be accurate.The story exists because of an employer taking advantage of an employee. The numbers can be whatever makes sense.
Look up sec filings for the company you work for (or whatever company you feel like getting mad at), and compare revanue and profits to employee counts, and how those numbers have changed in the past 15 years. If we define “productivity” as profits divided by employee count, then for my job “productivity” has increased 30x in 15 years while my wages have increased approximately 2.5x. If you define “productivity” as revanue divided by employee count, then it’s even worse.
The exploitation is the point, and the story works for anyone who’s worked too hard for too little, regardless of the specific numbers.
Agreed. The numbers are the basis of the abuse. So just use real numbers
The numbers are a measure of the abuse.
The existence of the numbers is the reason for the abuse
As 10 dollars would be revenue, not profit
It does not specify what the $10 is a measure of.
Talk about missing the forest for the trees. I notice that Econ101 people never want to include profit, or advertising to the cost of production. Both are inefficiencies due to adding cost without value, but it’s invisible to the system. Always left out when it comes to factoring costs. Weird.
The numbers are certainly off. This person would probably only be paid $2 a day, the costs and materials would only likely account for another $2 per day and they sell $10 in revenue and make the owner $6 of profit. But even then thats company profit and the boss takes a salary too. Then there’s taxes and other stuff and it gets complicated.
