covid
it’s so weird to see businesses try nonsense to stay open amid a pandemic, ex gamestop arguing they are “essential”, because otherwise they will cease to exist. what if — hear me out — labor was not held hostage by wages, and this entire scenario endangered no enterprise?
covid
there is an alternate socialist present in which non-essential workers just get time off during the pandemic, or are incentivized to retrain for essential work to expand critical capacity, but that time off doesn’t force businesses to shutter because rent doesn’t exist. after the pandemic, imagine just going back to work. the restaurant is a little dusty, but with a flick of the switch and a few hours cleaning, you’re serving food like nothing changed.
covid
@garbados some German politician suggested something similar:
now that people in the hospitality industry are out of a job, how about they go harvest vegetables, now that we can't have seasonal workers from Poland come in
my suggestion is that we make all politicians with racist policies do that.
covid
that's exactly what happened after WWII. Exactly.
covid
@garbados once we've done healthcare we need to do real estate.
covid
@garbados it's hard trying to speak up about this because people are so used to the status quo that they can only view things from a perspective of the current state of affairs. Like, yeah, restaurants are probably going out of business over this and people need to pull stunts to stay afloat.
But that's because we built the system like this. We can build it a different way. This is not ordained by nature, we're free to choose differently!