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How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

npr.org

251–260 of 268 posts

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is precisely why they initiate the transfer while they are alive by making a will. A will is not a transfer. The law is very clear on this. The government gets the property, then redistributes it to the rich kids via a nanny state program called "inheritance law". > What’s your justification for changing the law on property? To increase fairness and justice. What's your justification for not? > this amounts to…

> To increase fairness and justice. It’s not fair for you to decide what other people own. Its injust for you to have that much control over other’s property. > What's your justification for not? According to you I am changing the law, same as you. Fairness and justice. > A will is not a transfer. The law is very clear on this. Thats not really the case, and I’m unconcerned aboit statutes that were written by oligarc…

It seems you're just confused on a basic level about how property works - property is coercion. It is literally the initiation of coercive violence on people who enter certain areas or touch certain objects (or threats thereof).

> ...for you to dictate ... that would be a hierarchy with you at the top ... your proposed authoritarian restructuring of society ... Quit trying to dictate the world to the rest of us

Once again, you're confused on a basic level - what makes my proposed system more authoritarian than yours? You want property law enforced with one particular distribution, I want it enforced with another particular distribution. What makes my distribution authoritarian and yours not?

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#252
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is more than a bit naive. Companies have a wide variety of values. Some certainly do the best they can for their hires as they’re able, others very shrewdly extract every bit of value they can. Most fall in between in a variety of ways. But assuming the best intent is just plain ahistorical. We’re only a century out from when companies routinely hired armed security services to threaten and ultimately mu…

"routinely hired armed security services to threaten and ultimately murder people organizing to get their share of what wealth they created" To be honest that sounds to me as if those people "organized" to take by force what they thought they deserved. In that case, hiring security for defense seems justified.

Welcome to the dueling value systems of labor since feudalism I guess? But the “force” used by labor wasn’t violent, just large scale solidarity.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#253
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how quickly CP2077 became profitable I doubt it's a good example of necessary death marches. Quite the opposite. I suspect they could have delayed until winter 2021 and still turned a profit easily.

They would have had to survive long enough, though. Profits in the future don't help you to pay your bills in the present.

Considering the success of Witcher, GOG.com, and their preorders it's unlikely they would have gone under.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To increase fairness and justice. It’s not fair for you to decide what other people own. Its injust for you to have that much control over other’s property. > What's your justification for not? According to you I am changing the law, same as you. Fairness and justice. > A will is not a transfer. The law is very clear on this. Thats not really the case, and I’m unconcerned aboit statutes that were written by oligarc…

It seems you're just confused on a basic level about how property works - property is coercion. It is literally the initiation of coercive violence on people who enter certain areas or touch certain objects (or threats thereof). > ...for you to dictate ... that would be a hierarchy with you at the top ... your proposed authoritarian restructuring of society ... Quit trying to dictate the world to the rest of us Once…

> It seems you're just confused on a basic level about how property works - property is coercion.

No, property is a social construct that humans use to denote who has exclusive rights over the disposition of a thing.

> It is literally the initiation of coercive violence on people who enter certain areas or touch certain objects (or threats thereof).

No, property is literally a social construct that humans use to denote who has exclusive rights over the disposition of a thing. Coercion comes afterwards, when people seek to enforce this norm on people who dispute it.

> Once again, you're confused on a basic level - what makes my proposed system more authoritarian than yours?

The hierarchical nature of the relations. Your system has people who have the power to grant and confiscate all the property in society. Since property is the right to determine the disposition of a thing, your system results in the ruling class exerting property rights over everything.

> You want property law enforced with one particular distribution

False. I am not specifying the distribution that is enforced.

> I want it enforced with another particular distribution. What makes my distribution authoritarian and yours not?

You’re choosing the distribution that is enforced, whereas I’m advocating for a distribution that is collectively decided absent coercion. My distribution is the emergent result of repeated interaction under egalitarian social norms. Your distribution is a hierarchical imposition of your preferred distribution.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#255
post #30

This is going to sound egotistical, but it's not intended that way, just the experience of your average prole. The times that I have been the most successful, most motivated, most driven, most productive, and most useful, in study, career, relationships, and life, have tracked exactly with periods in which I've gotten out what I've put in. When I started my career and a company took a chance on me - we absolutely kil…

I'm still early in my career (around 32, 8 years in), and I can heavily relate to what you said at the beginning. The company I work for recently got acquired and the entire culture changed to one of "fuck the engineers, only contracts matter, engineers are just butts in seats, the more the better (quality not required)". My boss is constantly turned down when he tries to advocate for me, or say that I deserve a slig…

>The company I work for recently got acquired and the entire culture changed

There is only one thing to do after your company is acquired: get out of the company that got acquired. Full stop: get out. You can do this one of two ways: via the org chart, taking a lateral promotion into the acquiring company, into a part/division/product team/group that existed before your company was in the mix. The second is to leave and get another job elsewhere. Everything else will eventually be discarded.

Acquisitions are always bad for the acquired company. If you aren't laid off in the first year, you'll be pushed to attrition yourself, but make no mistake: the old company is dead and its people and their brains are the least valuable asset to the parent company, so get out of the small company.

>My boss is constantly turned down when he tries to advocate for me, or say that I deserve a slight bonus

Just so it's said plainly: this feeling always means to get another job. Listen to it: you want more money, you deserve more money, and that's a perfectly good reason to leave.

You can come back to this company after you bounce your salary up, or not, it happens both ways, but they aren't going to give you nearly as much as you get by changing jobs. Ever.

>At this point, I have had all productivity beaten out of me. I really don't understand the mindset.

You are in an abusive relationship with the company you work for, this is natural.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh right and Covid toes? No no it doesn't. What is the percentage of people who have that type of reaction? Have you even looked at that? It's miniscule. It's argued not to be from Covid directly but by comorbidities and would happen with any illness. The news media blew it up out of proportion to scare you and millions of other people like you who have a poor grasp ofstatistics and risk... for money and it worked! W…

Honestly, the only people who seem to be in clown world now are the people living in states that did not take it seriously early. Your leaders not taking it seriously to begin with is the reason you are in this situation now. Where I am we took this seriously early last year, and as a result have been able to live life mostly like normal since. Anyway, you live in a democracy, so maybe convince as many people as poss…

Borders closed is not really somewhat normal.

Honk honk!

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#257
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still early in my career (around 32, 8 years in), and I can heavily relate to what you said at the beginning. The company I work for recently got acquired and the entire culture changed to one of "fuck the engineers, only contracts matter, engineers are just butts in seats, the more the better (quality not required)". My boss is constantly turned down when he tries to advocate for me, or say that I deserve a slig…

> The company I work for recently got acquired and the entire culture changed There is only one thing to do after your company is acquired: get out of the company that got acquired. Full stop: get out. You can do this one of two ways: via the org chart, taking a lateral promotion into the acquiring company , into a part/division/product team/group that existed before your company was in the mix. The second is to leav…

Yeah, you're definitely right, it helps to see you put it so plainly. I'm going to do my best to focus on what's right for me, thanks.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#258
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could believe that but still... in retrospect, it seems you are correct.

I don’t claim to have all the right answers, but I am a psychologist, and I have spent many years learning how to not think. All of the errors, mistakes, and failures in my life can be viewed as lessons I was always supposed to go through. A perfectly positive attitude charms our brains into properly regulating our internal physiology. Anxiety and the other negative internal states (mania, depression) typically can b…

I suppose my biggest issue is actually accepting that reality might not be as malleable as I thought. It's an extremely hard thing to accept even to this day (and I am hitting 41 y/o very soon).

Prioritizing your health is an absolutely sound advice every time. I started doing that and even if the improvements are small and hard to feel just yet, it still feels great to feel better than two weeks ago.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#259
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you get both the worst pandemic and worst hack in a century right 1-2 year after killing the very teams whose job it is to prevent said catastrophes, at what point do you stop blaming things on bad luck?

Where has anyone blamed anything on bad luck? I think our institutions are terrible, and definitely a factor in things like the pandemic and the hack. I just think it makes no sense to reduce that to blaming the republicans or even a specific act of the Trump administration, based on pure imagination of an alternative outcome. If ‘American republicanism’ is to blame for how bad the pandemic is, how do you explain Eur…

> it makes no sense to reduce that to blaming the republicans

When they were the ones who cut off funding to the very agencies whose job it was to prevent, then it absolutely makes sense. If I cut off your house's alarm system, and the very next week there's a burglary, you would absolutely blame me for it.

> how do you explain Europe’s performance

Again, I'm not talking about the response to the pandemic, but specifically about prevention. And yes, China, Europe and other countries should've had their own agencies in charge of tracking and preventing worldwide outbreak, but this is whataboutism. What I care about is that the US cutoff it's alarm system and ended up getting attacks the next year.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#260

I agree with this on principle, but I just can't shake the feeling that this sort of conveniently "incidentally" leftist NPR story is slanted, and therefor untrustworthy. I've been gaslit by too much media for too long to trust anything I read from anything even slightly mainstream. Everything is politically compromised, with few exceptions (WHO, CDC, UN, the list goes on).

It looks like you've been using HN primarily (though fortunately not exclusively) for political and ideological battle. That's not allowed, because it destroys the curious conversation that this site is intended for. "Primarily" is the line at which we ban accounts that do this, so can you please stop? There's lots of explanation about this at these links:

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