Mastodawn

Nick Kearney Feb 6, 2023

Jenniferplusplus

We have layoffs for exactly the same reason we have homelessness. Both are expensive, harmful, and unnecessary. Both are sustained anyway because capitalism requires that work is compulsory. Both exist to be used as a threat to compel work and deference from workers.

So, I don't know. Keep writing papers and articles about the real effects of layoffs, I guess. But please understand that you'll never convince boards and CEOs to stop doing them, because the harm of layoffs is the desired outcome. So make your audience the people who've been taken in by their lies, and the people who should be protecting us from them.

Jenniferplusplus Feb 5, 2023

To be extra clear, homelessness is what makes layoffs effective as a threat and punishment. And in the USA, withholding health care also plays a large part. These are all escalating levels of violence to the same end of making work compulsory so that they can dictate what work you do, when, where, and to whose benefit.

That power to compel and dictate work is what capital is. Money is only a loose proxy for capital, and they will sacrifice enormous amounts of money to retain and expand their power.

Jenniferplusplus Feb 5, 2023

I need to mute this, but I'll check back in on it. I'm glad it's resonating, because if we have any chance at all to survive this fight, we have to understand that it is a fight.

Graydon Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus And that the fight is about the stark and binary choice between an egalitarian prosperity or an aristocratic authoritarianism where most are slaves.

One World One People Feb 6, 2023

@jenniferplusplus Commerce and Exchange
When you engage in a purchase or barter it is a relationship between three entities: the receiver, the provider and the commodity and each of these entities must benefit from the relationship. Your work for another or at the direction of a council is the same. Where your labor is the commodity and must be respected as the other entities in the exchange are. *Visualize a balance with three trays: buyer, seller and commodity must in balance. OWOP

DrBob, 🧠 Mechanic Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus One has to wonder why America is the only developed country in the world, and the wealthiest one, which does not provide free, basic #healthcare to all of its citizens. Reprehensible really.

Jasmine Feb 5, 2023

@drrjv @jenniferplusplus

The Tories have destroyed the NHS, though😔 It's really bad in the UK.

@drrjv @jenniferplusplus The US provides free basic healthcare to almost none of its citizens. Even Medicare recipients have copays and deductibles after paying into the system for 40 years.

caseyjonesed Feb 20, 2023

@drrjv @jenniferplusplus we prefer to allow profit on pain & misery.

DC Bollard Dad Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus I’m reading Engels’ Anti-Duhring right now, and I had to comment to this on how relevant it is to what I read just last night. Engels essentially debunking Duhring’s claim that Money=Capital and that Marx never differentiated between the two. He did, and he made it very clear that Capital is something much greater than Money.

Obsolete Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus In one case spending $44 billion to expand their power

Jenniferplusplus Feb 5, 2023

@SNerd that one is still undecided. He keeps getting evicted from offices around the world, which suggests he lost a lot more than he gained. But he certainly thought he would gain power by owning Twitter. Or at least not lose it.

Obsolete Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus Getting evicted is part of the cost cutting plan.

mrjonno Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus
Yep. Structural violence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence

Structural violence - Wikipedia

Tyler Knows Nothing Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus preach it! One of the best encapsulations I’ve heard. Thank you!

Callisto Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus It's not like all unhoused people don't have jobs. The 40%-ish of them who do, just don't have the *right* jobs. Which, the stratification of jobs is another plank of capitalism.

sxpert Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus at which point it become indentured servitude, if not slavery (think of the large cohorts of unpaid prison labor)

@jenniferplusplus *nodds in agreement*

One doesn't need to be sentenced to #ForcedLabour if having #WageWork is socioeconomically required to survive.

In the end, the results are the same...

Chris_MS Feb 6, 2023

@jenniferplusplus thank you for this!

bassplayer Feb 6, 2023

@jenniferplusplus
The economy: There is low unemployment
Jerome Powell: Inflation is too high, lets crash the job market
Everyone Else: =/

Monetary policy has a high degree of impact on the economy. Not the the current administration, the Fed and they only have one or two knobs to adjust.

Layoffs are the private sector anticipating what the fed is signaling.

To be fair no one wants hyper inflation

Lucifer ☄️Jul 11, 2023

@bassplayer @jenniferplusplus If fair is really what you're looking for, it's probably time to stop treating the current greedflation like it's a monetary issue and not an antitrust issue.

Ratcheting inflation and letting corporations preemptively cut wages while also jacking prices on top of record profit margins is not a preventive of hyperinflation, it is a tactic of class warfare

bassplayer Jul 15, 2023

@lucifermorningstar Your response assumes that there is a single entity controlling all of what you mention but I doubt there is. The fed has a mandate to keep inflation at 2% and unemployment below 5%?. Companies shitty or not are going to react. Remember the government caused this by printing $ to coverver pandemic and bank failures. Thereby destroying the purchasing power of the $. If only there was another form or currency that is resistant to government manipulation...

Lucifer ☄️Jul 15, 2023

@bassplayer Yes, the Fed has one tool in its box- interest rates- and it's not always the right tool for the task.
But no, the cause of this wasn't just the fed printing money for disaster relief- remember, big corps have been issuing debt of their own and using that to buy their own stock and juice dividends. It was after rates went up that banks started struggling; a lot of them hold that shitty debt and they know it's risky as rates go up

Lucifer ☄️Jul 15, 2023

@bassplayer Fundamentally though, the Feds' decision to use interest rates to cap price inflation (which, let's be honest, is not happening because there's too many dollars out there chasing not enough goods- it's because sellers don't have to compete on price and they're reporting record profit margins) is a decision to pull down prices by creating unemployment and thus less consumer demand.

A windfall profits tax and antitrust action would do the same but without all the layoffs and poverty

bassplayer Jul 15, 2023

@lucifermorningstar I agree with this except for the last. Sure you would recap some revenue but you would effectively offshore a lot of companies and then you would lose any revenue gains.

bassplayer Jul 15, 2023

@lucifermorningstar I tend to agree. Banks held shitty debt but up until the yield curve inversion, bonds were considered good assets. Rhe fed is currently operating at a loss and they are stil raising rate. Regardless if I'm a business, workforce reduction is the most effective way of mitigating budget. There is a whole nother conversation as to how management makes bad choices and the workers pay. Still that is the current reality.

Debbie156 Feb 6, 2023

@jenniferplusplus

The Fury 🐧💻❗️🔥

@jenniferplusplus I always thought George Carlin summed up things like class very well.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4CRIkSpo6f4

George Carlin speaks on class, taxes, etc.

YouTube

Andi 🌻 Last Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus thank you for these perspectives.

Luke MacNeil Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus If you're hired by a company to do a job are you then entitled to work for that employer for decades until you decide you're ready to move on?

Would it be better if they just fire everyone randomly with no severance?

Many of these layoffs with their sizable severance packages don't really seem to be the humanitarian disaster they're made out to be in my eyes.

Would it be fair that you can quit at any time for any reason, but they can't ever quit you?

Jasmine Feb 5, 2023

@luke @jenniferplusplus

🤡

Jenniferplusplus Feb 5, 2023

@luke in your fantasy land, is my shelter and health care still conditioned on me working?

Luke MacNeil Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus
I am sorry people lost their jobs. It is a bummer.

But it happens, and in this particular instance - there are more jobs.

It's not exactly depression-era conditions in the job market, nor are we living in times of indentured servitude in which the Corporation would be responsible for your housing and healthcare in exchange for slavery.

The jobs were cut and people were given a reasonable buffer to find new work and even relocate if necessary.

That's pretty fair.

Jenniferplusplus Feb 5, 2023

@luke fairness is not a useful framework for this subject.

Luke MacNeil Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus is law a useful framework for this subject? As far as I can tell, none were violated.

What would be a useful framework for the subject?

Would the utopian ideal of a socialistic society be a good framework? Maybe, but that would you be your fantasy land, not mine.

Jenniferplusplus Feb 5, 2023

@luke I presented a framework right there in my first post. In case you missed it, here it is: capitalists are engaged in open and violent class warfare. I said what I meant, and I think you should too.

You are busily defending them, and I'm not interested in helping you do that.

Luke MacNeil Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus oh ok then. Fight the power.

I hope that someday you can find a workplace that will never let you go, no matter what happens in the global economy... as is your inalienable right.

Have a great day.

AuthorGoddess Feb 5, 2023

@luke @jenniferplusplus

This is the "but without workplace harassments, how can I date a woman?" argument. The fact that there are nuances to the situation doesn't prove the statement wrong. It proves which side you're on.

Luke MacNeil Feb 5, 2023

@AuthorGoddess @jenniferplusplus it's nothing like that at all, I'm very much on the side of the worker in most instances.

Not this one though.

Just because you work for a company doesn't entitle you to work for the company forever.

They don't owe you housing for your entire life.

They needed 25 coders while they were growing and business was good. They don't while the entire global economy is consolidating.

That's not evil. That's common business sense.

I'm ex-salesforce.

AuthorGoddess Feb 5, 2023

@luke @jenniferplusplus
Go ahead. Double down on your hyperbolic response. And don't think I don't see your "but *I* don't see/experience it" argument against very common workplace harassment.
*judging stare*

Luke MacNeil Feb 5, 2023

@AuthorGoddess @jenniferplusplus ok. Double down on not making any sense or adding anything to the conversation.

AuthorGoddess Feb 5, 2023

@luke @jenniferplusplus
Yes, you did do that.

Luke MacNeil Feb 5, 2023

@AuthorGoddess @jenniferplusplus except I didn't. I made perfect sense and laid out a completely reasonable argument.

You just didn't agree so you turned it into some other injustice you see in the workplace and categorized me as a mysoginistic republican MAGA POS.

It's just not the case. All I did was present an opposing point of view of the recent mass layoffs.

I'm not wrong about it either.

Luke MacNeil Feb 5, 2023

@AuthorGoddess @jenniferplusplus also the "without workplace harrasments" argument is one I've never heard by anyone in my entire life.

All conventional wisdom I have ever heard or learned or given points to "no, you don't shit where you eat".

Literally nobody thinks "oh, well who can I date at work". Sometimes it happens anyway, but every living human knows better.

Jennifer Moore 😷Feb 5, 2023

Why choose those two rather extreme alternatives which probably almost no-one would agree with?

Why not consider "If you're hired by a company which can very well afford to keep on hiring you, the default ought to be that they do". Does that scenario not feature in your thinking?

Luke MacNeil Feb 5, 2023

@unchartedworlds If you subscribe to HBO because you want to watch Game of Thrones - do you keep subscribing indefinitely, with 4% cost of living increases year over year because you can afford it?

This doesn't feature in my thinking because that's not how capitalism works. There have been layoffs as long as there have been companies.

Does the scenario where you agree to all the terms and conditions of employment and the laws of your state when you're hired not factor in to your thinking?

Jennifer Moore 😷Feb 6, 2023

Re "that's not how capitalism works":

Seems like you're coming from "you silly people, don't you understand this is the way the world is?" But there's a difference between "I don't understand what's going on" and "I don't think this setup is good for the average human being".

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-01-30/column-how-big-tech-is-using-mass-layoffs-to-bring-workers-to-heel

Merchant: Big Tech is using layoffs to crush worker power

Wildly profitable tech companies are citing an as-yet notional recession to make deep workforce cuts. They may have another agenda.

Los Angeles Times

Luke MacNeil Feb 6, 2023

@unchartedworlds sure. We can have a marxism vs socialism vs capitalism discussion all night.

The thing is we as a society have decided on capitalism.

Expansion and contraction of markets is pretty normal for a capitalist society. It is not right to vilify The Company for playing by the rules of the game and the demands of it’s shareholders.

Layoffs suck, yes. The largest tech firms laying off 10% of their workforce is not class warfare though. It’s just not.

It’s a bummer.

Jennifer Moore 😷Feb 6, 2023

"we as a society have decided on capitalism" is an odd way of putting it, considering we were born into a system which was already running.

and it's a system in which the richest have disproportionate power to set the terms of exchange, and disproportionate power within politics & media. That's part of why it's hard to change towards fairer shares for the 99%.

Luke MacNeil Feb 6, 2023

@unchartedworlds yes. When I say “we” I’m referring to America. I understand that you do not like capitalism. There are clear problems with it.

You were born into a democratic capitalist republic though.

You’re free to explore communist, socialist, and dictator led countries now and throughout history. Then we can talk about the big tech class warfare issue and how inhumane and evil layoffs with 6 figure severances and/or government unemployment assistance are.

Jennifer Moore 😷Feb 6, 2023

Well, I'm in England, so it's not a republic. But yes, I'm not convinced that "being born into a capitalist society" is the same as "deciding on a capitalist society", when my power to change it is very limited.

Luke MacNeil Feb 6, 2023

@unchartedworlds what? You just famously decided to leave the EU.

You've had a democratic socialist party on your ballots for 100 years.

https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/brs/1951/51.htm

As a free person, which I assume you are - you're welcome to go try living in a communist society like china or cuba, or a dictatorship like Sudan or Myanmar.

In that context capitalistic corporate layoffs may not seem so extreme.

The UK has an unemployment rate of 3.7% which means work is not all that hard to find.

CPGB: The British Road to Socialism (1951)

Jennifer Moore 😷Feb 6, 2023

Funnily enough, I was not personally in a position to decide that the UK would stay in the EU :-)

Luke MacNeil Feb 6, 2023

@unchartedworlds Well when you live in a society with millions of other people, you're right. You don't get to personally decide the economic structure of the country.

That is a shame.

It's also the same position every living person is in.

I'm sorry you got laid off or your friend got laid off or whatever - but it's not the work of the Global Elite Anti Christ Forces trying to personally bring you down.

If you employ people at scale, market conditions can force you to cut back. Happens.

Jennifer Moore 😷Feb 8, 2023

You're inventing things here that I didn't say.

Luke MacNeil Feb 9, 2023

@unchartedworlds I am, I'm conflating your comments with the general conversation and vibe I'm also seeing on linkedin and other social networks.

Luke MacNeil Feb 6, 2023

@unchartedworlds It is my belief that Marx was on a far more "good for the average human being" track. That didn't play.

A lot of what companies do is reprehensible and the power imbalance is absurd and needs a reckoning, but laying off 10% of the workforce with 6 months severance and fully vested RSUs just isn't that dirty, no matter what the oped says.

There are lots of reasons to be mad at capitalism, but this is a really, really weak one.

Luke MacNeil Feb 6, 2023

@unchartedworlds you know when you take a job that some day that job may not be needed anymore.

They know when they hire you that one day you could quit.

Throughout your time working at the company it's both the individual and the company's responsibility to consistently assess if the deal is still fair and adjust and/or terminate it if necessary.

These are some of the softest layoffs this country has ever seen. It's not like the only plant in town moved to China and 70% of the town moved

Luke MacNeil Feb 5, 2023

@unchartedworlds Those that I know affected by the Silicon Valley layoffs are leaving with 6 months salary - well over 6 figures.

On top of that, all of their RSUs are immediately vested - and when all that money is gone, they're still eligible for unemployment assistance.

I really don't understand what else could be expected.

We have the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years right now. It's not exactly forcing people out on the streets to starve with no options.

Seems reasonable to me.

Steve E Feb 5, 2023

@jenniferplusplus if you are a tech worker that was laid off (or not) and interested in joining or creating a tech worker's co-op, please let me know, and I'll point you in a productive direction.