Comments by "Wandering Existence" (@WanderingExistence) on "Why Billionaires Try So Hard To Look "Poor"" video.

Wage labor is renting yourself via "self ownership". Employment is literally renting another human being as if they're property. The insidious dynamic of employment is that it's a rental contract, like if you rented capital (say, a chainsaw from Home Depot), you pay rent for the "time preference" (basically the cost of time) for a piece of property. Capitalism is based on a principle of self ownership, which sounds empowering, until you realize that most people don't own enough capital goods to make enough income other than themselves, and must rent out the authority over themselves as pieces of "human capital". This is a process of dehumanization where human beings are valued for their return on investment as capital goods. This is why, at the very least, capitalism needs unions and safety nets (or abolishment), or else the system won't value people for their human value. Importantly we must also think about our sick, elderly, and disabled people, as they can't provide competitive economic return for the investor class to value. We must figure out a way to change this economic system if we wish to value each other.
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It works, for the state and for capitalists... But not for most people.
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Because it's like feudalism... People don't have control over their lives. Democracy to the workplace.
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 @CharlieKellyEsq Massive inequality says differently. Some of the hardest working people are the lowest paid which is absolutely ridiculous.
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@EMan-cu5zo You say "merged together" like they haven't always mediate each others power. Manifest Destiny created thousands of 160 acre private farms for settlers. The creation of all those private property plots was good for the material interests of the nation state, the ideology of capitalism, and at the time the settlers, who were made small capital owners at the expropriation of the indigenous population.
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@EMan-cu5zo I know that's what you mean, but that's just one way in which they coordinate power. I'm talking about something more fundamental to both the state and capitalism. The state does a lot of subsidizing capitalism, like the inherent creation of private property and debt markets, the way you phrase it makes it seem like capitalism and the state haven't always worked together. My original comment was about how money is a shared tool that helps governments and large capital owners expand their influence over others. Coinage was invented by the state to pay soldiers and to easily tax resources, in fact a currency is valued/needed because someone has to have it to pay their taxes. Coinage can also be leveraged (power and debt puns intended) by capitalists to make money off of money. Capitalism has always had a long list of merged interests with the state, largely because capitalism is a product of state violence, even though many people think of the two institutions as antithetical.
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Democratic accountability. Democracy in the workplace!
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@Shisha2025 Worker and community share holders. They're called "stakeholders".
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@DrivingGod04 Working is inevitable, but working for a capitalist is not. Just like working for a feudal lord is not the same as just working, one is a process of creating another is an oppressive social system.
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It's complicated, but companies leverage their mktcap to raise funds
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@Shisha2025 🤦🏼 Shareholders aren't democratic, they vote but money buys vote. Stakeholders are democratic, 1 vote per person. Cooperatives are run by and for members, and so they take care of their members better. Worker cooperatives also share profits so money is distributed more equally throughout society instead of having to be so heavily redistributed through government welfare and programs. Worker cooperatives don't want to sit around and wait for governments to raise the minimum wage they want to raise their own wages, and they often put a pay ratio cap in place.
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@tg-k6yt255 Way to miss the point. Why do Home Depot shareholders deserve 18% average annual dividend raises, while their workers wages trail significantly, when most shareholders that don't work at Home Depot get paid more compounding raises than employees that is a problem. We all understand Milton Friedman's point about digging a trench with spoons is a lot more hard-working than an excavator but that's not what I'm talking about. You seem like the type of person who would call shareholders job creators while the company fires 7000 people at the same time it does 100 billion dollars in stock buybacks... Yeah, that was Google. Guess what? I'm a $HD and $GOOGL shareholder because I understand that capital bias exists in capitalism. I don't deserve that $$, but that's what capitalism incentives. At least I will tell you the truth; it's a bad system.
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@mattkase6644 How does the state pay large amounts of soldiers to utilize their monopoly on force? That's one of anthropologist David Graeber's (RIP) fundamental points in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years; before coinage, credit was the main system of trade (even before barter), but roaming soldiers had a hard time buying things in local credit markets due to a lack of community trust in travelling soldiers. So the state created a racket for their own stamped coinage to pay soldiers. By forcefully demanding taxes paid in their currency, they were able to create demand for the coinage and trust that someone else would accept the same currency because they too had to pay tax. In an interesting unmasking, we see that coinage too is a form of debt, as it's given out by the state but there is an obligation to return it to the state via taxation, and that coinage only arises with a monopoly on force to racketeer demand for a particular stamped metal or bill. This allows the state to have much more economic power to fund larger armies, because without payment the people with swords or guns wont do the state's bidding. The PDF and audio is free. If you're watching this channel on 'how money works', you'd probably enjoy it. I know it gave me a better understanding of the complicated history of Money.
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@mattkase6644 They deleted the link to the audiobook playlist, just search it here and find the playlist with 13 chapters 🤙✌️
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@Shisha2025 I didn't agree, stakeholders are most community oriented.
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@Shisha2025 Stakeholdership is democracy, stockholders can have more than on share, and that's determined by money invested. It's different, go look it up.... Or you could just keep saying "nahuh", lmao
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