The profit should equal exactly the minimum wage, no more and no less. In fact it should not even be called “profit”, just the wage of the administration. Doesn’t matter if a profession is “skilled” or “unskilled”, people should be paid to live not to value their skills above others. No reason an MD should be paid more or less than a janitor and we wouldn’t be able to live without either of them. The pandemic showed clear as day how much work is “essential” and badly paid compared to “inessential” and “skilled”.
It’s not even like employers themselves are particularly skilled anyways. Now if you believe that some people inherently deserve a worse life due to their profession, you can just say it.
Ok, I’ve read all this. And it’s ridiculous, no one will open a business if they make $0. Raise the minimum to something livable like $20 and let them make a few million, probably with hard caps over something like $10+ million profit. They won capitalism, congrats, the rest goes back into the company/taxes. It shouldn’t meet exactly the productivity, just better than what we have now.
This idea is fine if you literally just want to survive, but your perfect world would have nothing of joy in it.
let them make a few million, probably with hard caps over something like $10+ million profit
lmao lost lib came over here to defend millionaires. So long as there exists people personally tied to property profiting “a few million”, they’ll have very little to lose to overturn or bypass those “hard caps” to make a few billions. There’s no “winning capitalism” if you can still influence politics to unlock more capitalism to win more. People should open businesses to serve their community, not to rule them.
I very much don’t support billionaires, but I just don’t understand how you’d expect to have anything entertainment-wise in a minimum wage=exact productivity. Microsoft isn’t making Xbox from the goodness in their heart.
What would we spend our $33 on? Just our house and food? I’d much rather $20 and be able to go to the movies or restaurants.
If something has genuine entertainment value, why wouldn’t people create it because they want to be entertained, or to entertain others? Without needing to worry about money to survive, lots of people would pursue arts, literaly just producing “entertainment” for others.
I don’t understand how you get the idea that without profit motive nobody would be creative, or life would turn gray and bland. Restaurants would be just as popular or more popular: people would take more risks and try new things because they aren’t afraid of failing and potentially ruining their lives. Similarly with movies: most junk produced now is just the same playbook because it is guaranteed massive profit; there’s little creativity involved.
There would maybe be a tiny fraction of the entertainment we have now, how would people get enough capital to START the businesses? If min wage is $30, they would have to be instantly profitable or they would run or of money paying employees and shutdown. Movies could never be funded, even a $1 mill movie would take someone saving up for 33k hours of work.
The only thing that could really exist in a full communist society is one person businesses and not even that really. Historically full communism hasn’t resulted in a cultural boom like you expect, the USSR was a shit hole and people just worked and bought food - there wasn’t anything else to do.
We just need a mix, good working conditions, with good quality of life. I’d rather enjoy myself for slightly less money than do nothing with slightly more.
Literally every fully communist society has been a shit hole throughout history. It simply doesn’t equate to good living conditions. It’s why there have been so many revolutions in communist countries, it gives people nothing of value apart from literally not dying, and even then, not really.
What does work is the Scandinavian approach with a mix of capitalism so we have things we can enjoy and spend our money on, with strong social aspects so the wealth gap isn’t as much of a problem.
The only thing that could really exist in a full communist society is one person businesses and not even that really. Historically full communism hasn’t resulted in a cultural boom like you expect, the USSR was a shit hole and people just worked and bought food - there wasn’t anything else to do.
Huh, somebody tell Mosfilm that they didn’t exist. They’ll be surprised. Speaking from one’s ass is generally considered rude. Next you’re gonna tell us they didn’t go to space or develop cool linear programming algorithms or other advanced research. Never change, Redditor.
Indeed. One of the best films ever produced, Come and See from 1985, was produced by Mosfilm. There’s seemingly some confusion where expensive must mean quality, and it can’t be quality unless it’s expensive. That’s utter nonsense: the highest grossing movies are bullshit propaganda Marvel movies that have no lasting value; and some of the best and most lasting films, such as Come and See, made “only” $21M at the box office and so would be considered a flop.
Profit motive in entertainment kills creativity, because creativity (as risk) is potentially costly, and not guaranteed money. Profit motive finds a profitable “script” (see the Marvel franchise) and just prints it in a thousand different fonts and calls it a thousand successful films.
Looks like a tiny fraction to me, on a tiny scale. Most expensive soviet film was War and Peace (1967) which cost 8 mill rubbles or $75 million in today’s currency. And that’s with top earners in the USSR earning around 500-1000 rubbles a month, most around 100-300/month. Most movies could not be made in a society where there is zero extra money and wages are so high, investors wouldn’t invest and there wouldn’t be any startup capital.
I’d still rather a mix of capitalism and socialism with good production value.
The only thing that could really exist in a full communist society is one person businesses and not even that really.
You’re capitalist but so ignorant about capitalism that you aren’t even familiar with co-ops and partnerships.
people just worked and bought food - there wasn’t anything else to do
Take ten seconds to think about this one. You honestly think people just toiled away at work, went to the store, then… just stared at a wall in their mud hut? You honestly think there wasn’t any literature, or theater, or TV, or movies, or music? No one played sports or went to school?
From what I’ve read of theory (and from what AES states have done in the past), the state funds entertainment and cultural development. There was a lot of film that came out of the USSR for example that was funded by the Ministry of Culture I believe. There is a full acknowledgement of people’s desire for entertainment and culture as part of the definition of living a good life, and when the government’s true desire is to improve the lives of its people, it must allocate resources to cultural development[1].
It’s also worth noting that while movies and the like are indeed rather costly, a large portion of the cost of blockbuster movies comes from the disgusting sums paid to the few stars at the top of the call sheet. These costs would disappear and producing such media would automatically be a less costly endeavor than it is now.
I’m going to paste some of my notes from Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners: At the Nineteenth Congress of the CPC in 2017, Xi Jinping pointed out that while socialism with Chinese characteristics has made major developments, a new principal contradiction emerged ‘between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life’. In terms of the people’s needs, these move from material and cultural needs to the need for a better life, which encapsulates material, cultural, political, public, and environmental life. Attention has been paid specifically to resolving this contradiction. ↩︎
Microsoft is a great example because they continuously do dumb shit that puts their workers at risk specifically because the owners are so stinking rich that they’ll never face the consequences themselves. They just bought Activision-Blizzard for almost 4 billion dollars (money none of us will ever have) to get the IP of repetitive but profitable games such as CoD and Diablo. Meanwhile their workers get terrible working conditions are run by a serial abuser and in some cases have even been driven to suicide. From most developers I’ve seen they specifically produce games because they like making games, and yet the existence of millionaire (billionaire in this case) CEOs makes the lives of the developers we both like worse.
As you’ve said, you’d like $20 to be able to go to the movies and restaurants. But before that both you and the workers of those need to pay the rent, and none of the billionaire profit is going to the people actually making the games you like. That is why making the profit be zero is important, so all resources can be put into both your life as a worker and those of the workers who make shit you like, and not to buy some submarine for Bobby Kotick (unless… 🥺 ). Similarly Bob Iger’s riches do nothing to help Disney make Avengers 32: Never-Ending War. Microsoft doesn’t do shit, the workers do, and to make Microsoft’s execs get more actively detracts from what those workers get.
In the current system you’re right, but only because to make $0 you yourself won’t be able to survive.
To suggest that profit motive must exist to want to start a business though is not valid. Think of all the big name “inventors” of the past couple centuries: yes they were being paid enough to live, but what motivated their invention and discovery was genuine passion for knowledge and invention. I’d start a business that made $0 if I was producing a product I thought was cool and meaningful. In fact, not being tied to a profit motive would let me experiment with more unusual ideas for goods and services.
If you pay people enough to survive and entertain themselves, it doesn’t magically turn everyone into a braindead consumer (ironically, that’s what the current system does). If you pay people enough to not have to worry about survival, they can be creative and explore the landscape of ideas, leading to novel discovery and inventions.
Sure, I haven’t done the exact calculations, it just means I’d rather have slightly less than the exact cost of production if it means we could actually spend our new wages on stuff we enjoy.
Idk how you expect companies we enjoy to exist if there is no point in owning/investing in a company.
… I don’t expect companies like the ones that control our planet to continue to exist. I really wish they were impossible tbh. Like we all agreed they were as bad for the planet, like worse than nuclear weapons, and just collectively agreed to ‘never again’ y’know.
So not being exploited is devoid of joy, but being exploited has joy, can you please explain this thought more, where I come from exploitation is not joyful
Not at all what I said/meant. We just wouldn’t have anything non-essential to spend our new found money on if wages = 100% of the revenue.
You couldn’t feasibly fund a movie(33k hours of work to earn $1mill which makes for an awful movie with today’s wages, it would either have to be a 1 person movie or way more startup capital to pay these massive wages), or open a restaurant, you’d be out of money long before you get enough traction, only thing that could be created is one person side project type things like.
I just don’t understand how your 100% communist society would work, who would have enough money to start businesses if they was no extra money? The problem with society right now is that there’s TOO much extra money, not extra money existing at all.
What I want is the workers (colectivly) to own the means of production, and then to get the entirety of the value of their labor. My issue is not with “extra money” as you put it, but that the capitalists have stolen the money from the backs of the workers.
I also would not call any money extra money so long as even a single person is starving, or does not have clean water, or is without a home, or cannot get basic medical care, or any pther basic need. I think these are a little more important than movies
You couldn’t feasibly fund a movie(33k hours of work to earn $1mill which makes for an awful movie with today’s wages, it would either have to be a 1 person movie or way more startup capital to pay these massive wages), or open a restaurant, you’d be out of money long before you get enough traction, only thing that could be created is one person side project type things like.
I haven’t watched it yet, but Solaris is widely regarded as a great movie. I don’t see why you insist that some specific guy needs to get boatloads of money in order to finance a movie that is made solely by the people not getting those boatloads of money. If they make Solaris 1 and it generates a lot of money, why should somebody who is not the workers get all that money?
They could then easily make Solaris 2 earning the wages from the sales of Solaris 1 and if its great it just keeps going. If all people have comfortable lives they won’t need some wealthy Prometheus to descend from Olympus with fiery cash. 33 dollars an hour amounts to some 1.3k dollars per week. At that rate people will be able to work less for their shitty day jobs and afford to work on their artistic endeavours. Don’t you or any of your colleagues have any artistic interest that you can’t pursue just due to lack of resources and time? Imagine working half the amount and being able to contribute to projects you actually care about with your leftover time and money.
I haven’t watched it yet, but Solaris is widely regarded as a great movie.
It is one of my absolute favorite films. It is an extremely slow burn and very long, but thoroughly enjoyable. It touches on a lot of realy important themes and does so thoughtfully. I highly suggest everyone watch it if they have the chance.
One of the absolute best films ever made, and indeed in my top 3 I’ve ever seen, is also a Soviet film produced in 1985 by Mosfilm (who produced Solaris), called Come and See.
it’s on my ever-growing movie backburner and I’ll possibly watch it this month. I’m not much of a movie guy but everything I’ve seen from the USSR and even the DDR so far has at least been an interesting experience. The same can’t be said for much from AMPTP studios.
I just saw US News as the community name in hot. I favor materially increasing the minimum wage and enjoy meaningful discussion about economic issues, so I jumped into the thread.
Then I noticed how unanimous and fervent the comments were in opposing any profit driven enterprise at all. I thought this is a surprisingly skewed group for discussion of American minimum wage. I looked at the instance and finally realized I had accidentally intruded.
The profit should equal exactly the minimum wage, no more and no less. In fact it should not even be called “profit”, just the wage of the administration. Doesn’t matter if a profession is “skilled” or “unskilled”, people should be paid to live not to value their skills above others. No reason an MD should be paid more or less than a janitor and we wouldn’t be able to live without either of them. The pandemic showed clear as day how much work is “essential” and badly paid compared to “inessential” and “skilled”.
It’s not even like employers themselves are particularly skilled anyways. Now if you believe that some people inherently deserve a worse life due to their profession, you can just say it.
Dont forget with raising that minimum wage to meet profit, we are also going to take the means of production.
Ok, I’ve read all this. And it’s ridiculous, no one will open a business if they make $0. Raise the minimum to something livable like $20 and let them make a few million, probably with hard caps over something like $10+ million profit. They won capitalism, congrats, the rest goes back into the company/taxes. It shouldn’t meet exactly the productivity, just better than what we have now.
This idea is fine if you literally just want to survive, but your perfect world would have nothing of joy in it.
lmao lost lib came over here to defend millionaires. So long as there exists people personally tied to property profiting “a few million”, they’ll have very little to lose to overturn or bypass those “hard caps” to make a few billions. There’s no “winning capitalism” if you can still influence politics to unlock more capitalism to win more. People should open businesses to serve their community, not to rule them.
I very much don’t support billionaires, but I just don’t understand how you’d expect to have anything entertainment-wise in a minimum wage=exact productivity. Microsoft isn’t making Xbox from the goodness in their heart.
What would we spend our $33 on? Just our house and food? I’d much rather $20 and be able to go to the movies or restaurants.
If something has genuine entertainment value, why wouldn’t people create it because they want to be entertained, or to entertain others? Without needing to worry about money to survive, lots of people would pursue arts, literaly just producing “entertainment” for others.
I don’t understand how you get the idea that without profit motive nobody would be creative, or life would turn gray and bland. Restaurants would be just as popular or more popular: people would take more risks and try new things because they aren’t afraid of failing and potentially ruining their lives. Similarly with movies: most junk produced now is just the same playbook because it is guaranteed massive profit; there’s little creativity involved.
There would maybe be a tiny fraction of the entertainment we have now, how would people get enough capital to START the businesses? If min wage is $30, they would have to be instantly profitable or they would run or of money paying employees and shutdown. Movies could never be funded, even a $1 mill movie would take someone saving up for 33k hours of work.
The only thing that could really exist in a full communist society is one person businesses and not even that really. Historically full communism hasn’t resulted in a cultural boom like you expect, the USSR was a shit hole and people just worked and bought food - there wasn’t anything else to do.
We just need a mix, good working conditions, with good quality of life. I’d rather enjoy myself for slightly less money than do nothing with slightly more.
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Literally every fully communist society has been a shit hole throughout history. It simply doesn’t equate to good living conditions. It’s why there have been so many revolutions in communist countries, it gives people nothing of value apart from literally not dying, and even then, not really.
What does work is the Scandinavian approach with a mix of capitalism so we have things we can enjoy and spend our money on, with strong social aspects so the wealth gap isn’t as much of a problem.
Huh, somebody tell Mosfilm that they didn’t exist. They’ll be surprised. Speaking from one’s ass is generally considered rude. Next you’re gonna tell us they didn’t go to space or develop cool linear programming algorithms or other advanced research. Never change, Redditor.
Indeed. One of the best films ever produced, Come and See from 1985, was produced by Mosfilm. There’s seemingly some confusion where expensive must mean quality, and it can’t be quality unless it’s expensive. That’s utter nonsense: the highest grossing movies are bullshit propaganda Marvel movies that have no lasting value; and some of the best and most lasting films, such as Come and See, made “only” $21M at the box office and so would be considered a flop.
Profit motive in entertainment kills creativity, because creativity (as risk) is potentially costly, and not guaranteed money. Profit motive finds a profitable “script” (see the Marvel franchise) and just prints it in a thousand different fonts and calls it a thousand successful films.
Looks like a tiny fraction to me, on a tiny scale. Most expensive soviet film was War and Peace (1967) which cost 8 mill rubbles or $75 million in today’s currency. And that’s with top earners in the USSR earning around 500-1000 rubbles a month, most around 100-300/month. Most movies could not be made in a society where there is zero extra money and wages are so high, investors wouldn’t invest and there wouldn’t be any startup capital.
I’d still rather a mix of capitalism and socialism with good production value.
You’re capitalist but so ignorant about capitalism that you aren’t even familiar with co-ops and partnerships.
Take ten seconds to think about this one. You honestly think people just toiled away at work, went to the store, then… just stared at a wall in their mud hut? You honestly think there wasn’t any literature, or theater, or TV, or movies, or music? No one played sports or went to school?
From what I’ve read of theory (and from what AES states have done in the past), the state funds entertainment and cultural development. There was a lot of film that came out of the USSR for example that was funded by the Ministry of Culture I believe. There is a full acknowledgement of people’s desire for entertainment and culture as part of the definition of living a good life, and when the government’s true desire is to improve the lives of its people, it must allocate resources to cultural development[1].
It’s also worth noting that while movies and the like are indeed rather costly, a large portion of the cost of blockbuster movies comes from the disgusting sums paid to the few stars at the top of the call sheet. These costs would disappear and producing such media would automatically be a less costly endeavor than it is now.
I’m going to paste some of my notes from Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners: At the Nineteenth Congress of the CPC in 2017, Xi Jinping pointed out that while socialism with Chinese characteristics has made major developments, a new principal contradiction emerged ‘between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life’. In terms of the people’s needs, these move from material and cultural needs to the need for a better life, which encapsulates material, cultural, political, public, and environmental life. Attention has been paid specifically to resolving this contradiction. ↩︎
Microsoft is a great example because they continuously do dumb shit that puts their workers at risk specifically because the owners are so stinking rich that they’ll never face the consequences themselves. They just bought Activision-Blizzard for almost 4 billion dollars (money none of us will ever have) to get the IP of repetitive but profitable games such as CoD and Diablo. Meanwhile their workers get terrible working conditions are run by a serial abuser and in some cases have even been driven to suicide. From most developers I’ve seen they specifically produce games because they like making games, and yet the existence of millionaire (billionaire in this case) CEOs makes the lives of the developers we both like worse.
As you’ve said, you’d like $20 to be able to go to the movies and restaurants. But before that both you and the workers of those need to pay the rent, and none of the billionaire profit is going to the people actually making the games you like. That is why making the profit be zero is important, so all resources can be put into both your life as a worker and those of the workers who make shit you like, and not to buy some submarine for Bobby Kotick (unless… 🥺 ). Similarly Bob Iger’s riches do nothing to help Disney make Avengers 32: Never-Ending War. Microsoft doesn’t do shit, the workers do, and to make Microsoft’s execs get more actively detracts from what those workers get.
G*mers, man…
In the current system you’re right, but only because to make $0 you yourself won’t be able to survive.
To suggest that profit motive must exist to want to start a business though is not valid. Think of all the big name “inventors” of the past couple centuries: yes they were being paid enough to live, but what motivated their invention and discovery was genuine passion for knowledge and invention. I’d start a business that made $0 if I was producing a product I thought was cool and meaningful. In fact, not being tied to a profit motive would let me experiment with more unusual ideas for goods and services.
If you pay people enough to survive and entertain themselves, it doesn’t magically turn everyone into a braindead consumer (ironically, that’s what the current system does). If you pay people enough to not have to worry about survival, they can be creative and explore the landscape of ideas, leading to novel discovery and inventions.
If there were caps on profits of 10m, then minimum wage could sure be more than 20 bucks friendo.
Sure, I haven’t done the exact calculations, it just means I’d rather have slightly less than the exact cost of production if it means we could actually spend our new wages on stuff we enjoy.
Idk how you expect companies we enjoy to exist if there is no point in owning/investing in a company.
Why do we need privately owned companies or investors, what do they contribute?
… I don’t expect companies like the ones that control our planet to continue to exist. I really wish they were impossible tbh. Like we all agreed they were as bad for the planet, like worse than nuclear weapons, and just collectively agreed to ‘never again’ y’know.
So not being exploited is devoid of joy, but being exploited has joy, can you please explain this thought more, where I come from exploitation is not joyful
Not at all what I said/meant. We just wouldn’t have anything non-essential to spend our new found money on if wages = 100% of the revenue.
You couldn’t feasibly fund a movie(33k hours of work to earn $1mill which makes for an awful movie with today’s wages, it would either have to be a 1 person movie or way more startup capital to pay these massive wages), or open a restaurant, you’d be out of money long before you get enough traction, only thing that could be created is one person side project type things like.
I just don’t understand how your 100% communist society would work, who would have enough money to start businesses if they was no extra money? The problem with society right now is that there’s TOO much extra money, not extra money existing at all.
What I want is the workers (colectivly) to own the means of production, and then to get the entirety of the value of their labor. My issue is not with “extra money” as you put it, but that the capitalists have stolen the money from the backs of the workers. I also would not call any money extra money so long as even a single person is starving, or does not have clean water, or is without a home, or cannot get basic medical care, or any pther basic need. I think these are a little more important than movies
I haven’t watched it yet, but Solaris is widely regarded as a great movie. I don’t see why you insist that some specific guy needs to get boatloads of money in order to finance a movie that is made solely by the people not getting those boatloads of money. If they make Solaris 1 and it generates a lot of money, why should somebody who is not the workers get all that money?
They could then easily make Solaris 2 earning the wages from the sales of Solaris 1 and if its great it just keeps going. If all people have comfortable lives they won’t need some wealthy Prometheus to descend from Olympus with fiery cash. 33 dollars an hour amounts to some 1.3k dollars per week. At that rate people will be able to work less for their shitty day jobs and afford to work on their artistic endeavours. Don’t you or any of your colleagues have any artistic interest that you can’t pursue just due to lack of resources and time? Imagine working half the amount and being able to contribute to projects you actually care about with your leftover time and money.
It is one of my absolute favorite films. It is an extremely slow burn and very long, but thoroughly enjoyable. It touches on a lot of realy important themes and does so thoughtfully. I highly suggest everyone watch it if they have the chance.
One of the absolute best films ever made, and indeed in my top 3 I’ve ever seen, is also a Soviet film produced in 1985 by Mosfilm (who produced Solaris), called Come and See.
it’s on my ever-growing movie backburner and I’ll possibly watch it this month. I’m not much of a movie guy but everything I’ve seen from the USSR and even the DDR so far has at least been an interesting experience. The same can’t be said for much from AMPTP studios.
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I just realized we stumbled into lemmygrad
Out of curiosity, where did you think you where, and what finally made you notice? I am genuinely curious.
I just saw US News as the community name in hot. I favor materially increasing the minimum wage and enjoy meaningful discussion about economic issues, so I jumped into the thread.
Then I noticed how unanimous and fervent the comments were in opposing any profit driven enterprise at all. I thought this is a surprisingly skewed group for discussion of American minimum wage. I looked at the instance and finally realized I had accidentally intruded.
Thank you so much!