Comments by "Rick B" (@rickb3650) on "It’s Not Just Shein" video.

  1. Have to disagree with you there. The basic economic model of piece work is based on a progression of diminishing compensation for the worker's labor as material costs are reduced by volume. The worker (theoretically) receives fixed compensation while realized profits constantly increase.
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  2. Taxes and tariffs. They tend to place the financial burden on producers and middlemen (donors), that's why both parties are opposed to them.
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  3.  @IronicCliche  Yes? What did you mean to write in your first sentence? Perhaps I misinterpreted the point you were trying to make.
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  4.  @IronicCliche  I always read it all. TLDR is a crime against human nature and the cause of too many problems to count. The employee's personal expenses are external to the function and therefore, irrelevant. The employer does not pay for the worker's travel time or fuel or anything except the number of units that worker produces (which makes wage theft really easy). You understand that control over relevant variables matter, but seem to have missed how that effects the employer's revenue. Your last sentence, "As such, the worker's net profit per unit also go up with increased production." even ignoring the error in terminology, is just wrong. The whole point of piece work compensation is an absolutely flat wage for the worker, regardless of time and labor. It specifically excludes the worker's participation in profit, whether that profit goes up or down. But of course, that only works one way because when the profits go down the worker is eliminated and their compensation goes to 0.
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  5.  @IronicCliche  Wow. 😮This is not "my logic", this is very simple math. If you are paid 1 p/piece, you are paid 1 p/piece, period. That's it. It doesn't matter how many pieces you make, how long it takes you to make them, where you live, how much tax you owe, the price of fuel or your lunch or what you send home to your your mom. If I'm your employer, I don't care about any of those things, I pay you exactly 1/piece. The reason I pay you 1 p/piece is that I now own the finished piece that you made and I can sell that piece for >1. If I sell it for 2, you get 1 and I get 1. If I sell it for 5 you get 1 and I get 4. if sell it for 100, you get 1 and I get 99. As my employee, you always get 1. Your pay is flat and my profit is variable. What is most relevant to this topic is that I (employer) have the power to both, keep the 99 and decide that 1 is too much to pay you and that you should get only 1/2 p/piece from now on, while your only choice is to take 1/2 p/piece or 0. All I have to do is hire somebody that will make my stuff for 1/2 p/piece. Piece work, even when the rules are followed, is a dead end for workers. A robber baron named Jay Gould once said, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half". There's always someone somewhere that is willing to do more for less, commonly because they have nothing.
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  6.  @IronicCliche  Why would you think I'm offended? It makes absolutely no difference to me if you ever get the point. I just wanted to show someone who appears curious how things work IRL. I'm just trying to pass on some understanding that was handed to me years ago. Approaching 60, I've already lived the game, and thanks to a willingness to learn from others, avoided a whole lot of mistakes. Of course, I made more than few of my own, but I would like to see those who follow me avoid them because they will have to live in a much harder world than I have. Thanks mostly to those lessons, I "retired" when I was 42. I've spent the years since then doing what I want to do because I won a rigged game, and the reason I was able to win was because I learned and understand how the rig works. Being right matters. "Winning" an online argument doesn't. Knowing what is, matters. Fighting for an erroneous belief, especially when that belief is detrimental to you, doesn't. Just look at whatever history has happened in your own life and project that forward over the next twenty years. If you've written an accurate representation of what you believe about this topic, you've misunderstood or been mislead on a number of important issues. I've simply tried to show you some very basic facts so you can reassess what you've based your opinion on. Young people today are going to go through some horrible shit and the rest of your lives will be lived in a much harder and less hospitable world than the one I have, and mine was/is demonstrably worse than my parent's, and if you have kids, theirs will be harder than yours. This is already a done deal and there's nothing that you or anyone can do to change that. What you can do is learn why this is and how things actually work, so you can work to reverse this presently inevitable progression. I'd rather not die knowing that the idiots and their evil masters of mine and previous generations, effectively ended history. That's the only reason I replied to your comment in the first place.
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  7.  @IronicCliche  ? It's not my loss. I wish you luck.
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  8.  @IronicCliche  You should re-read my second to last comment. I'm not yet 60 and have been retired for almost 17 years. I made enough in this rigged game to cash my chips while I was still young enough to enjoy my life the way I want to and while the things I love still existed. All I've lost are some dear people, a lot of great dogs, and my youth, all of which is inevitable. Doing something you don't enjoy until you're too old to do much of anything is a wasted life, lived to make someone else's dream come true. I'm spending part of my morning with a cup of coffee, banging away on a YT comment because that's what I want to do, right now. My greatest personal concern is that the world is burning and the monsters who set it on fire are stealing it from the young people and children who will never have any opportunity to even see how wonderful it was. They've doomed you to a lifetime of far less and, if you let them get away with it, will doom everyone forever without a though for the misery and suffering they inflict. Statistically and due my lifestyle, I'll only be around for another 15 - 25 years, so I won't see the worst of what's coming, but I really don't like the idea of people like you having to endure a lifetime of suffering in ignorance and lack. Becoming virtual, if not literal, slaves to a sick system of cruelty and greed in a collapsing ecosystem. "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been." - Whittier
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