… unless the person works voluntarily, that is.
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Not vegan so correct me if I’m wrong here, but I thought the whole point of veganism was an objection to the non-consensual use of animal products. Humans are aware of the use of their labor and consent to it, exploitation by circumstance notwithstanding.
- 7 hours
I don’t work voluntarly tho, i have to work because otherwise i am gonna be homeless and i can’t get food
- 11 hours
I do not consent, no. I only go to work because otherwise I am threatened by homelessness.
- 1 day
Consent is a bad metric because it ignores externalities—stuff like economic incentives, implicit threats of loss of basic needs, propaganda, trauma. Someone can be said to consent to exploitation, even if they only did so to continue surviving under oppressive economies/states. I “consent” to have the value of my labor extracted, pooled, and distributed to business owners in the same way I “consent” to the privacy policies (and the sale of my Personally Identifying Information) of the software the company I work for requires us to use (to remain employed)
That’s why I prefer focusing on exploitation. Someone doesn’t have to know they’re being exploited, agree that they’re being exploited, nor even want to not be exploited for it to still be unjust to exploit them and identify when it is happening. Veganism is a stance against animal exploitation.
- 23 hours
i do think that “voluntary” is a pretty clear term. would you still do it if it didn’t cost you anything, and it also didn’t get you any physical reward?
- SorryImLate@piefed.socialEnglish14 hours
Define “physical reward”?
I would argue that the good feeling from a well done job counts as a physical reward 🙂 and is a necessary motivational feedback. If you mean monetary or resource awards, I agree.
- 12 hours
That good feeling is a psychological reward. It is not physical. You cannot hold it, touch it, or give it to someone else for doing a job.
- SorryImLate@piefed.socialEnglish4 hours
Eh, it impacts my physical body, those hormones exist. How about extrinsic awards, as opposed to intrinsic awards?
exploitation by circumstance notwithstanding
yeah that was exactly what i was referring to. as long as we’d rather stay in bed in the morning, we’re not doing it voluntarily. and be honest, do you go to work voluntarily? would you still do it if you didn’t need the money? if so, then yes, it is vegan.
- 11 hours
Wait… So unless food magically appears with no labor at all, because labor isn’t fun, no food is vegan?
So no food is vegan other than literal windfall fruit from a tree? Or does picking it up could as labor?
Religions are less strict
- 4 hours
well, the question is whether you enjoy the act of picking up a fruit and eating it, i guess. like, even if a full platter suddenly appears in front of you, you still have to shove the mass into your mouth. do you enjoy doing that? if not, then why do you eat?
- 3 hours
I find hunting, fishing, raising livestock, and gardening quite rewarding. Don’t make the first ones vegan.
But plenty of people, per OP, don’t “like” anything other than shoving food into their mouths, and sleeping.
This is such a stupid baby child perspective. Bitch, please, calories cost work. That’s literally thermodynamics. Get over your erudite fantasies of fully automated luxury (gay optional) (space optional) communism being now. It’s not now.
- 25 minutes
i never said that other people find all work unpleasant to do. there are many people who do a whole lot of activities voluntarily. (just look at how many people go to the gym, etc.)
But plenty of people, per OP, don’t “like” anything other than shoving food into their mouths, and sleeping.
so no, that’s not what i meant.
Sure you can make that argument under capitalism, where people are deprived of the value their labor created in order to force them to work more so they may survive. Hence why people should strive for communism. If everyone lived vegan people would be compelled to work as they are able in order to not cause undue burden on others, which again would not be vegan.
“From each according to their ability to each according to their need.”
If everyone lived vegan people would be compelled to work as they are able in order to not cause undue burden on others, which again would not be vegan.
i don’t quite get your last sentence. what if the person themselves doesn’t want to work?
If the person doesn’t want to work how will they sustain themselves? They have to rely on other peoples labor without contributing their own. If people don’t want to subsidize someone else then that person would either have to start working “against their will” or take other peoples labor without consent, which you have already pointed out, is not vegan. So if everyone were vegan that person would be compelled to work as they are able in order to be able to remain vegan.
Idk its kinda tortured logic when spelling it all out lol
- 1 day
Nature compells us to work for food anyway, that’s not exploitation and coercion, that’s just survival.
The construct of society is predicated on the idea of “from each… to each…” That saying often gets conflated with left-wing politics, but that’s just the point of animals (humans included) grouping together; after all, what’s the point of living in society if it doesn’t convey any benefits to the individual that they could not provide for themselves? That would be exploitative of the individual. But if they are benefitting, then it is only fair and just to also give back to the society one extracts benefits from, otherwise it is exploitative of the others.
Put another way: no one should be obligated to participate in society, but then society should likewise have no obligations to the non-participants.
- 5 hours
Put another way: no one should be obligated to participate in society, but then society should likewise have no obligations to the non-participants.
funnily enough, that is exactly what capitalism postulates. that those who don’t work, don’t deserve to eat. “useless eaters” and all that, my mother can (sadly) give you a long and stern lecture about that (she is very much what you would call a “conservative”).
capitalism re-formulates that by saying that you need money to buy food, but to get that money, you have to work. in other words, who doesn’t work, doesn’t get food. that’s why many people say it’s cruel and inhumane because it makes people suffer who don’t work. and that’s exactly why we have things such as social safety nets etc. where the state gives money to people sothat they can buy basic stuff with it if they are poor. because society at large revolts against the concept of “who doesn’t work, shouldn’t eat”. or at least that’s how it is in most (civilized) countries, except of course in america people don’t always see things that way.
Nature compells us to work for food anyway, that’s not exploitation and coercion, that’s just survival.
Not all of us ahem bourgeoisie ahem
The construct of society is predicated on the idea of “from each… to each…”
of course, however what makes a societies differ is exactly what gets filled in to the “…”
“from each slave to each slavemaster” -> slavery
“from each serf to each lord” -> feudalism
“from each worker to each owner” -> capitalism
“from each person (according to their ability) to each person (according to their need)” -> socialism 😄- 5 hours
ok so what you’re describing here is that …
- first of all, labor seems to be the constant in your worldview that everything revolves around. do you believe (or think that it’s possible / desirable) that we will eventually have a fully automated luxury society?
- if yes, how would you call such a system?
secondly, it seems to me that the point that “bourgeoisie” doesn’t work is a big problem to you. mind explaining why? is it because society desperately needs that 1% extra labor output? is it because of some “work is a moral must” mindset (quasi-religious)? is it for some other reason?
thirdly, it seems to me that you’re defining
communismsocialism as essentially our current society, just that CEOs don’t get huge bonuses and shareholders don’t skim company profit. so, in other words, our current world minus the stock market: every company has to emit zero profit (such that no shareholders gain from it) and all the money must instead be spent on the business itself: wages to workers and resource acquirements.did i understand that correctly? would you add anything? do you think that this setup is already feasible in today’s legal framework through worker-owned businesses? (“co-ops” and what they’re called)
This socialist ideal of providing luxury goods to the poor masses for cheap is exactly the problem. If the world would be more capitalist, we wouldn’t subsidise the meat industries and the poor would be forced to buy beans.
not necessarily, very abridged version:
The tendency of the rate of profit to fall will soon mean that an industry will stop producing said commodity. It can’t anymore if it’s unprofitable. This is where the state has to step in and start subsidizing that industry or buying the commodity themself in order to articially inflate demand in order to keep that industry afloat. See e.g. the “butter mountains” of the EU.
That wikipedia article on “The tendency of the rate of profit to fall” is a horrible introduction btw. If you want to know more you can read “Arbeitslohn und Kapital”/“Wage labour and capital” by Marx himself, much more digestible. And rather short.
- 23 hours
The tendency of the rate of profit to fall will soon mean that an industry will stop producing said commodity. It can’t anymore if it’s unprofitable. This is where the state has to step in and start subsidizing that industry or buying the commodity themself in order to articially inflate demand in order to keep that industry afloat. See e.g. the “butter mountains” of the EU.
ahem i just so happen to be very familiar with the whole concept of the tendency of rate of profit to fall (TRPF) and you’re misunderstanding it here. it turns to be unprofitable in the sense that the profit rate approaches zero (for example, exponentially), it does not go negative! companies continue to produce stuff as long as the profit is larger than zero, which it always stays. so they continue to produce stuff indefinitely, according to the model. even though they make less and less profit with it. no state subsidizing involved here.
this is maybe a subtlety here. something can converge towards zero while also always staying positive. check out this function:
- 16 hours
ahem I know about e-x and convergence thanks, I had some math in high school too.
I don’t know what it means for the tendency of the rate of profit to be negative (or positive, or 0 for that matter). It’s not a number. If you’re talking about the rate of profit of course that can go negative. I think what you mean is that it will be balanced out, but not as high as it was before. Here is how its explained in Wage labour and capital, emphasis mine
We have just seen how the fluctuation of supply and demand always bring the price of a commodity back to its cost of production. The actual price of a commodity, indeed, stands always above or below the cost of production; but the rise and fall reciprocally balance each other, so that, within a certain period of time, if the ebbs and flows of the industry are reckoned up together, the commodities will be exchanged for one another in accordance with their cost of production. Their price is thus determined by their cost of production.
If you want to illustrate this movement a function like cos(x)/x would be more prudent. Here is 10*cos(x)/x to make it “pop” more:
Remember that convergence doesn’t necessarily mean monotone convergence, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a monotone graph in economics 😄 Here is a more illustrive graph for TRPF
You also say that “companies continue to produce stuff as long as the profit is larger than zero, which it always stays” which is absolutely false! A companies profit absolutely can be zero, or even negative! Remember profit = m - m’, where m’ is the money you have after selling the commodity. Or in more plain words, if you have less money after selling than before producing you made negative profit. If you didn’t get your investment back, you didn’t make profit.
- 27 minutes
yeah ok, i didn’t mean to belittle you by explaining convergence and such, it’s just that i wasn’t sure what level of math education you got.
Thats the exact opposite of capitalism. Unprofitable business go bankrupt. Then their possessions and their labor force gets absorbed by other companies.
This is to align work with reality.
If politicians would artificially decide what companies to keep someone would have to pay for their mistakes. Markets are much better at this (just read “the use of knowledge in society” by Friedrich von Hayek)
Just like the suffering of animals is unnecessary to feed the planet, we now have to pay for the costs of climate change, because people want to life in a socialist fantasy.
Ok so unprofitable businesses keep going bankrupt, get gobbled up by a bigger corporation until one corporation has a monopoly. That’s the trend we’re seeing right? How many corporations for food are there left now? Nestle, Unilever, Coca Cola, Mondelez and that’s pretty much it right? Well what happens when the tendency of the rate of the profit to fall forces them to no longer produce food. Do we just go extinct?
This (in case of the “butter mountains” and in general) isn’t some politicians deciding which companies to keep, this is the state intervening to save itself. They have to prop up an entire industry that cannot reduce costs any further which means that the price keeps fluctuating around 0 profit which means the entire industry goes extinct. That’s why there is a fixed price on milk, not to save some companies, but to prop up the entire industry. Capitalism will devolve sooner or later into state planning since without this state intervention industries start collapsing.
Could you imagine the ramification of the entire dairy industry dying out? (😸) The economy would go haywire, entire villages depend on their dairy farming, they would revolt it would be pandemonium. This is where capitalism finally leads.
Veganism is extremely capitalistic, because it relies on supply and demand to change the amount of animal suffering that is/was produced.
Veganism is simply not taking part in animal suffering, you’re thinking of “animal liberation” which is the active part.
And yes one way to reduce animal suffering is to leverage basic market laws about supply and demand. But buying and selling isn’t capitalism. People in every socialist nation ever have bought and sold stuff, and when stuff wasn’t in demand the supply reacted accordingly. If you want an introductory book I can recommend some (earnest, not trying to be mean, it just seems like you don’t know the definition of the terms you’re using).
But there is also direct action, adoption of rescued animals and maybe some other stuff I can’t remember right now that people that take part in animal liberation do.
Buying and selling with a currency is capitalism. If I would just get a meal ticket from the communist party, I might trade away more of my belongings, but thats not the same market vegans try to address.
This is not how communism works, how any socialist society operates, I’m sorry but you’ve completely fallen for the propaganda and are living outside of reality.
The fact that “Buying and selling with a currency” is not capitalism is also very clear from the fact that we were buying and selling with a currency under feudalism, under slavery, currency predates capitalism by millenia.
Would make more sense if post was talking about slavery, not labor. Labor is compensated.
- 1 day
Compare the GDP of your country to earned income, do a tiny bit of math, discover what portion of the workforce are slaves.
- 12 hours
There is some labor out there that doesn’t really contribute to the reported GDP numbers. Water and wastewater workers don’t directly contribute to GDP numbers but do allow other people and businesses to contribute to GDP. The amount of treated water a city creates isn’t counted towards GDP.
- 9 hours
Thank you, that is a totally fair criticism.
Actually, wait. Wouldn’t that mean that the earned income from labor that doesn’t contribute to GDP should be excluded (perhaps not in its entirety, because that labor indirectly contributes)? Which means that the difference between GDP and the compensation to labor to create it is larger?
Mm, so if a worker creates added value, that makes the worker a slave? Interesting theory.
- 24 hours
When GDP is three times earned income, labor is being undercompensated so much that approximately two-thirds of the workforce is enslaved, yes.
- 22 hours
I will try rephrasing it: its a nonsensical, fucking stupid proposal that gdp should equal earned income, and that somehow if the two are not equal then the difference amounts to slavery.
Do you care to elaborate, why do you even think these two should be the same, and what the difference has to do with slavery, as it relates to the actual meaning of that expression, not random things you don’t like.
yeah but do you go to work voluntarily? would you still do it if you didn’t need the money? if so, then yes, it is vegan.
I go to work for money (in the job I chose), and I get money, i call that a fair deal. If I was owned by someone, was forced to work, and would not get paid in return, I would be a slave. I mean what do you think it should be like? I don’t go to work and I get paid anyways? Who makes the shit I buy with the money then?
- morto@piefed.socialEnglish22 hours
Sorry to burst your bubble, but if your work’s payment feels like a fair deal, you’re very privileged when compared to the average human
Edit: even being able to choose your job is a privilege…
- 24 hours
i mean, i only asked whether you go to work voluntarily, and whether it could therefore be considered vegan.
- 19 hours
The only way someone can work voluntarily is if they have the option to not work and still live with some semblance of comfort and security.
This means that almost all people are obliged to work.
- 16 hours
As a vegan I’m of the opinion that humans are an exception and as such cannibalism, murder and genocide are all vegan and morally correct.
- 4 hours
why so? what makes humans non-animals?
also what kind of view is this? where is the meaning in that?
- 14 hours
I don’t think you need to be vegan to realise we’re the exception.
Like, people don’t tend to get very upset about cannibalism in the animal kingdom, it’s actually quite normal for some species. And murder and genocide only apply to humans in the first place, as these concepts don’t exist for animals, either.
- 1 day
We are also riddled with pesticides (perfumes, deodorants), bred in captivity (social/gender/sexual norms) and - if you’re going to consume us either way - our caloric and nutritional values are abysmal (compared to our alternatives).
- 19 hours
CW holocaust stuff
if you’re going to consume us either way - our caloric and nutritional values are abysmal (compared to our alternatives).
Well you can still make leather from human hide and other human-based products. That’s what the nazi’s did with their prisoners. The whole work camps where basically human agriculture where they were maximising the profit the could gain by minimizing the cost of sustaining the labor-power. They were calculating how much calories people need in order to do exactly the work required and nothing else so they could save penny’s on food. That’s why they started experimenting with human leather, in order to recoup some of the costs by creating commodities from the corpse a laborer left behind etc. It’s really was the same mentality that goes into dairy farming or chicken or really any animal agricutlure ever.
Disgusting zionism
When the Holocaust survivors arrived in Israel from the inferno, they were attacked as “sabonim” (Hebrew slang for a naive person but also for “soap,” a reference to Nazi experiments to make soap from Jewish fat) or “sheep to the slaughter”; feeble exilic Jews, pale Ashkenazi nebbishes who shouted in their sleep.
In germany we have the saying: „to wash you hands in innocence.“ I guess thats what that was about.
no that’s biblical https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/die_Hände_in_Unschuld_waschen look at “Herkunft”
- 23 hours
dude … pls put that behind a spoiler tag. that is a serious infohazard there
