Yeah, well, I’m no communist! There shouldn’t even be a minimum wage, let the free market decide!
— Temporarily inconvenienced billionaires at my workplace.
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2026
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There shouldn't be a minimum wage! The free market should decide!
If everyone had a baseline standard of living, capitalists could pay whatever they wanted. And if their proposed wage wasn't worth doing, then no one would do it.
No one would do it
Unskilled labor does not have the luxury to just “not do it”. The capitalists know this, which is why they depress wages as far as they can to keep an entire class of workers under water.
If I were to lose my job, which can happen at any time working in a non-union shop in an at-will state, I would not be able to go anywhere and receive comparable wages in my area. I am studying to get certifications in a different industry that would give me some amount of freedom. For now, I work at the mercy of my employer.
The free market is a scam. It will take massive changes, paradigm shifts, to create an environment where the workers are free to go work where they choose, and be given actually competitive compensation.
Unskilled labor is a myth created by the ownership class.
Unskilled labor as in, I do not have any degrees or certifications that I can simply take to a new employer to leverage anything above starting at the bottom. This will almost always mean making less money. At-will employment mixed with unequal application of company rules and policy means that any day at work could be my last. Unemployment checks are a joke, and would not even cover my rent.
What would you call that?
Labor
It's really not, there's jobs out there that can be learned in a week on the job, and people who don't have any qualifications to do much else. If you're one of those, you're a special kind of fucked, because you're among the easiest people to replace.
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But you're only obligated to work under the threat of illegal homelessness. That's not a free market, that's coercion.
If your basic needs were guaranteed, then unskilled labour especially would dictate the value of work in a truly free market. And if you truly can't find a job that will satisfy your desired lifestyle, you won't die or be imprisoned or suffer from illness.
How would my basic needs be guaranteed? If the government is going to provide the social safety nets they owe to us, then why not have them regulate labor, providing basic labor needs being guaranteed? Unions would be great, but there will be plenty of businesses that will not have them. Why not provide a safety net to the workers who will inevitably fall between the cracks?
The government shouldn't be providing safety nets, it should be maintaining the floor to ensure all citizens' basic needs are met. There should be no "what ifs".
The labour needs are already met, and would continue to be met in a free market where labour was optional for the labourer because people have wants. If you believe the government would need to ensure that labour needs are met, you're believing the capitalist lie that foundational labour must be bought under threat of violence.
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The free market assumes abundant choice and perfect information. And that's why we have monopolies and massive marketing to counter that.
There shouldn’t even be a minimum wage, let the free market decide!
And it did, sadly. 2/3 of the US states still use the federal minimum wage as a guide, even though it doesn't even purchase a cup of coffee these days.
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Omg, I have to say this way too often. The amount of people who think capitalism is commerce is too darn high.
Honestly we need to explain this shit more often. As soon as people understand exactly how much a billion dollars is they get visibly angry.
"You know what the difference is between a million dollars and a billion dollars? About a billion dollars."
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You are not a capitalist. You are capital.
Basically we're all serfs.
And increasingly ill-treated ones.
Serfs were tied to the land, and produced what they actually, directly used, as well as traded their surplus for goods. The rise of capitalism came alongside expelling the serfs from the land, turning them into wage laborers.
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This is the dialogue people should be having with the ones who are misguided, if even a few people understand it that’s progress
these are important distinctions that are often glossed over and obscured: capitalist vs supporter of capitalism; Republican vs Republican-aligned voter. terms that make one seem like part of the in-group when they're not; terms that are nouns rather than verbs, that make an idea seem like an identity, so that changing your mind seems like uprooting your whole personality
Technically small companies also are just employees. Risks outsourced and it can be easily killed away when the bigger company doesn't need them anymore. That's so fucked up and governments all around protect this behavior.
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If you work you are not a capitalist.
The whole point of capitalism is making money without working.
The petite bourgeoisie exist as laboring capitalists, they aren't really working class but they aren't haut bourgeois either.
I hate the "it has existed since caveman times." Trading is an action and a concept, something we had always, meanwhile capitalism is just a system developed by the spooky scary muslims.
Lots of people back then worked in a version of gift economy. Trade was with outsiders and was more like a mob meeting with backup standing behind the ones doing the bartering. There was no central authority to make trade clean and board toom style.
Why "false class solidarity". I think it's honest, if misplaced, solidarity. Temporarily embarrassed millionaire and all that.
Lukacs actually has a term for that - false consciousness and it is a massive problem
The issue even more dire, those who exploited by capitalist, most of them doesn't even understand "word" anymore.
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