*squints*
(midwest.social)
Track_ShovelUnder this plan, would the farms be nationalized, or would people be forced to work for the profit of private farm owners?
You already know
Nationalized industry that always produces food at cost and pays all of its workers well and fairly would be a great idea so long as the people setting it up aren't completely untrustworthy fucks.
Oh wait
I'm all for it. Just like Canada needs to ween itself from America's corporate tit, citizens need to step up to make this happen. Too often money is used as an excuse to not do something, when it can be done.
Real farmer here(who has never voted red). I don't trust the average American not to completely fuck up any harvest and not to bitch constantly about the heat or dirt. It's bad enough hearing people who work in AC complain about the heat too me.
I worked on an assembly line making CV joints. The inner and outer races had a numbering system based on measured size. The outer races were honed, and there would be size variations we would have to keep adjusting for. 4 inners go with 4 outers, 5 inners with 5 outers and so on. 4 was the most common.
One shift, on a Saturday, one of the workers used 4s for everything. Some were failing, inspection at the end of the line, but a lot didn't. Well, then the 4s ran out. Since that is the most common size, we were down. She intentionally ran us out of parts by building things wrong, potentially making scrap or defective drive train parts because she didn't want to work on Saturday.
Her job, that she applied for and took, knowing there are times when would have to work weekends. A job with a good union and Healthcare.
I can only imagine the kind of employees you'd get by forcing them to work the fields, for I'm going to guess way less than UAW wages. In the sun. I think you'd see a lot of sabotaged equipment or crops.
I spent my teens working on farms (labour intensive vegetables) and can confirm. Every spring we’d have a few crew from last year, and new ones; even in gorgeous spring weather people would last a couple days before quitting. And it’s not difficult, but it requires attention to detail, which some people either don’t have or don’t care to have.
So... Slavery with more steps?
We should use the budget we use to put people through the army to instead have them work on public works projects. Maybe it can just be part of being in the army. Not just farm work but construction work and especially maintenance work.
The government can hire people without making them indentured slaves or trained killers. Well, at least it used to be able to do that
Slavery, but with overweight incompetent people.
DEAL, however as these farms are worked by the public they should become owned by the public. And the harvest be distributed at-cost to the public.
While we're at it, nationalize ~~Monsanto~~ fuckin Bayre I guess. Either that or stop letting them fucking copyright seeds.
Monsanto has not existed as a brand since 2018. The name of the new baddie is Bayer, who acquired them and got rid of thae name. Same shitty playbook, but let’s focus our anger on things that exist.
Sorry, haven't kept up with the ever-shifting hydra of corporations well enough I guess 🤷♀️.
Hydra is right. They’re owned by the same group of entities who all have cross-holdings in each other making them essentially one giant megacorp.
https://www.investing.com/equities/bayer-ag-ownership
Honestly I'm all for it. It gives you some understanding how food is produced, gives you some contact with nature, maybe some physical exercise, some respect for farm workers, and such.
as long as the farms are publicly owned and there's no profit interest.
even then, it's basically slavery, or a framework for it. it'll quickly slide into "undesirables" being made to work there. then conditions will go to hell because who cares about those people, I want my produce.
while corporations get free labor win win for them!
Definitely better than military service
The only justification for a military draft is an existential threat. Having to import farm workers from south of the border isn't one.
And a little bit of glyphosate in the lungs.
yeah well that is an issue with workings conditions in general, i'd say. not specific to this proposal here.
I totally would but I dont want to take a job away from those hardworking American farmers. They've fought too hard to win them back and would just be a shame to take them all away again.
I wonder how many rich kids will develop bone spurs?
Ok, they can work retail.
Not while you forbid cashiers to work sitting down for no reason at all.
Come to Walgreens where you are forced to keep busy 9 hours straight on your feet. Cashier can't just wait on customers. Nope they must constantly look busy stocking etc. It's hell!
When you only have one person operating the entire store, it's so much better for everyone (who owns the store)!
Seriously. I went in for some passport photos and there was literally one guy working there. We had to wait for him to finish sticking and working at the cash register before we got helped.
Bone spurs don't stop you from standing for 8 hours.
To be honest, I've never actually looked up what bone spurs are. I've only ever heard it in the BS-rich context that is Trump, so I didn't bother looking up facts ¯\(ツ)/¯
Thank you for educating me.
Make America Great Leap Forward Again
Great. We all say this about the service industry, too. So since farming is your life blood you think its hard and people need to understand.
By that logic, everyone should be drafted for many different vocations to gain perspective on other people's careers.
Edit: Also it seems she's implying that someone else will pay the wages if she wants a draft. She wouldn't have to rely on imported employees if she payed a living wage to begin with.
I don't think this is a bad idea. Have young people do a 2 year service in let's say, three month periods, in different socially important sectors like health, public space maintenance, care of the disadvantaged, forest maintenace, etc. chosen at random. It would help people realize a lot of things about the society we live in.
By what logic do you jump from this would benefit people to we should force people to spend their time doing this under penalty of law? Why should people do this instead of continue to further their actual life or education? Why should people do what can't be well paid work instead of earning actual money?
It would help people realize a lot of things about the society we live in
i.e. this falls under education
I don't disagree at all. Gives kids a little nibble of different sectors before they commit their lives to one. Not to mention the hard work, and perspective you gain by doing so.
And maybe it will help pay for college when they realize that’s what takes them away from retail and from physical labor
Everyone should have experienced working retail. That should reduce the amount of Karen's massively!
You'd think so, but I had a colleague who boasted about how rude she was to a retail worker. This colleague was a fellow minimum wage sales assistant. Some people are just entitled little pricks who want all the respect, but aren't willing to reciprocate.
Do serious farmers even want inexperienced randos picking their precious harvest though? I guess it might depend on the crop, but a lot of vegetables and fruits need the proper handling, or they'll be ruined or at least second-rate.
Tbh, I think especially the work-intensive low-qualification jobs like picking berries and stuff are easy enough to teach. I'd be more afraid of people who really don't want to be there doing the job.
The people doing the job right now really need the money, so even if they most likely don't enjoy doing the job either, they have a lot of incentive to perform well.
If you put some rich kid there who is just biding their time, that can't be fired and that doesn't need the money either, they will likely be nothing more but a waste of space at best and actively harmful at worst.
LOL yes if you enslaved me to enrich some POS by working his land I would absolutely be at best useless on purpose and if I could "accidentally" make it worse eg dropping stuff or messing it up in transit I absolutely would.
It’s not unreasonable to expect at least 2-3 days of throwing out most of what a new person produces, and most people won’t be half decent until mid season. Even picking berries needs technique and experience to separate the unripe from the ripe, to avoid crushing the fruit, and moving quickly. But compared to some office jobs I’ve had, where because of politics and large org structure, it takes 6-12 months to figure out what’s going on…
Malicious incompetence is way too easy in this kind of work.
There was some politician way back, can't remember who, was going on about getting convicted felons in prison to pick crops.
Yeah no.
Or, and hear me out here: We could pay people a competitive wage for their labor.
I understand the need for agricultural subsidies. The government inserts itself into the normal supply/demand process to protect the general public against a famine.
What I don't understand is why those subsidies don't seem to be flowing past the greedy hands of corporate farmers and into the pockets of farm laborers.
Actually I don't think it's that terrible for an idea, as long as things like food and accommodations are provided, and you can't get out of it by paying (e.g. pay someone to do it for you).
I'd like to see billionaires doing hard labor alongside ordinary people.
You can get out of it by paying
See The Rich doing hard labor
Pick one
If we're doing it, we gotta add in a rotation of frontline retail/restaurant work.
How about we just add it to curriculum for school. During general highschool educational, you must take at least one Public Service class per year. You can choose from farming, retail, plumbing, electrician, road crew, et cetera. Each kid has to do a certain number of hour per school year, and it's required even if private school kids. Disability would obviously be an exception, but otherwise you need to be doing at least X number of hours per school year to graduate. Could help people understand how these things work, and hopefully build some empathy in the little sociopaths.
If you think this is truly beneficial you should be able to hire people to do it. If you can't convince people to do this what right do you have to force them?
I’m able to have a sense of empathy for all those people you listed, without having done every single one of them personally. I don’t know what the best way to teach empathy is, however.
you can't have competitive wages on a free market as long as somebody else is willing to do it for less. That's why migrant labor would have to end first.
Didn't we try that here after Brexit? From what I remember, farmers were having to let crops go to waste because Brits didn't want the jobs, even after wages were raised. Most farm work is seasonal, people don't really want that instability.
Edit: https://foodwastestories.com/2021/10/09/120000-pigs-culled/
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/lack-of-workers-lfood-to-rot-in-fields-cost-of-living-crisis_uk_62fa7fb3e4b071ea9589136d
https://www.fruitnet.com/fresh-produce-journal/higher-wages-fail-to-halt-labour-crisis/185817.article
They had to bring in special visas, because no one else wanted the jobs.
Tbh, I'm not convinced that this would really happen. There's not that much price elasticity to a lot of agricultural products. If the strawberries cost too much, most people will just not be able to afford strawberries and thus will just not buy them but instead buy less labour-intensive produce instead.
One could argue that if strawberries cannot be produced in a way that earns everyone involved a living wage then we shouldn't produce strawberries, and that's a totally valid point to argue.
It's also fair to argue that we need to cut out capitalism's inherent inefficiency of having to feed the capitalists in the process who did contributed nothing in terms of labour. But on the one hand, this hasn't worked out that great in the past and on the other hand this would require more of a change than to just kick out migrants.
What would be more likely to happen (since we've seen it happen during Covid already) is that the wages will go up, but the locals still won't do the work, thus strawberries will rot on the fields, the shelves will be empty, the prices will go up, but not enough to cover the losses for the farmers and the farmers will plant something less labour-intense next season.
(Wages would have to go way, way up before people will voluntarily quit their job in an AC'd office to work on a field.)
100% guarantee that those who are proposing this will have some sort of exemptions for themselves and their oligarch friends.
Age exemption was right there in the second sentence (18-30).
Guarantee these bastards are all older than that.
This is definitely proposed by someone who runs a farm and wants free labor.
Id cost them so fucking much in repairs. I don't need the produce to eat, the local varmints will suffice.
Yeah. I've read some handbooks and have some ideas. They would not like this idea for long when they start losing thousands a day in repairs.
Oh I would just fuck with the irrigation. If we are talking what I've read in books, well all I've got to say is "Gooooooood morning Vietnam!" cause that's about the experience everyone would get.
Like being over 30? Or more than that?
$
i'm proposing this and i've already done farm labor twice so far (two seasons). i would recommend it to everyone who's moderately physically healthy, i'd say.
This is what MAO did during the cultural revolution. Intellectuals and ‘professionals’ got sent to work in the communes. Hard to believe that MAGAts are asking for commmnist policies, but then the Kirk thing has surprised me in terms of the policies they want now. Since Kirks policies are no longer acceptable?
It makes sense when you understand that MAGA doesn't really have a ideological base. They are a group of people pissed off on the economic prospects of their lives without having any real understanding on how to fix it.
When you choose your words, you can get a MAGA to be 1000% aggreeable on the "libtard" views they rail against every day. I do it every day and I'm not exaggerating.
Is it possible to learn this power?
They nationalized Intel for chrissakes (ok, partially) and are or have done the same with TikTok. It's like they're doing a bass ackwards play at the horshoe theory. Anything to avoid the middle at Capitalist Socialism.
i think supporting intel was a mistake. intel produces cutting-edge chips, unlike ARM which is significantly cheaper and catching on to intel performance-wise.
Basically, intel can't continue because they're at their natural end of life: with the end of moore's law, it's only a matter of time till ARM catches up performance-wise, and out-competes them on price.
with the end of moore's law, it's only a matter of time till ARM catches up performance-wise, and out-competes them on price.
I’m not so sure about that, at least in single-thread applications, but I’m also not sure it matters. When performance reaches a certain point the average consumer doesn’t really need more. And I think we’ve largely reached that point for the average consumer.
Though the goals were different. Intellectuals weren't sent from their labor, they were sent to get re-educated because Mao thought they were too bougie.
MAGA's woke is pretty close to Mao's or Stalin's bougie.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
Who's the "our" in "our farms" referring to? 👀
You know…good people. (Pay no attention to the fact that the definition of good people changes wildly every day based on the moods and whims of Dear Leader.)
A very good point.
…right , so only the family farms? Not any farm owned by a corporation, right?
I was thinking more like "farms collectively owned by the populace"...
Nope. It’s slavery. They want to do a slavery.
And not even smart. Farming today is sonething you have to train at and want / need to do. Grab 100 people that have never farmed before and set them loose in a field to find out how quickly crops burn.
Hint: Marxist-Leninists really like slavery, so that's not a distinguishing factor.
I think the big difference would be that under this you'd probably be working for next to nothing to enrich Monsanto or something, whereas under a Socialist system these would be public lands owned by the people, do be distributed to the people.
Having the military do farm work/construction is also pretty common in those kind of countries too.
We are not slaves. Fuck off. If your business can't survive, then you go out of business.
But think of the exposure you'll get!
- Exposure to sunburn
- Exposure to insect bites
- Exposure to the elements
- Exposure to pesticides and agriculture chemicals
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that Kelly is over 30?
/ owns a farm and doesn’t realize the logistics of training tens of thousands of new farm hands who do not want to be there every season.
Make it so the farmer has to pay the median wage to anyone drafted like this.
I bet they'll shut up real fast.
Hell back in HS we got first shot at detasseling corn and deroguing beans. I lasted a day, some boys lasted a few. By the time they brought in the mexicans a week later, there would be maybe 2 of the scariest foodball players left, and they did make decent money by the end of their little stint.
Your average person is going to get heatstroke from this.
If only it came with a few more aspects of maoism. Like the obliteration of landlords
Judging by how hard the GOP is fighting to protect the Epstein files, they have some other things in common with Mao.
do you have sources about the mao side of this?
You mean a wanton disregard for the will of the people right?…..Right Annikin?
they have some other things in common with Mao.
Evidence?
Those guys could finally get jobs!
1 Maoism
2 ???
3 wait 30 years
4 economy multiplies to 10000x it’s original size
I dunno, the math is pretty compelling
not the worst idea really; community or civil service would be better. especially outside the town you’re from.
my high school made everyone do 40 hours community service and the connections and friends I made then still stand today and I live thousands of miles away now
Forced labor is never a good idea. Best solution for the kids would be to coordinate with others and burn all the fields in conjunction. Would bring the country to its knees begging other countries for assistance with food. The government would likely collapse and give up on the forced labor as soon as possible.
"The slaves acted like terrorists."
It's not like they had a choice what country they were born in.
yea not forced labor on farms - i’d propose local community service, help the town out, administer local elections, vfw, or local hospital or something more civic based.
I liked more when it was volunteer community service to gain access to a higher level of scholarship option. 75% scholarships didn't require volunteer work, 100% scholarships did. No one is forced to do anything, but you can choose to do so and it benefits your options.
tieing it to scholarship is difficult because you're gonna end up with a bunch of nerdy guys who have the palest skin you've ever seen standing in the middle of texan sun ... not ideal.
So... you want to bring back the WPA? I've been in favor of that idea since the 1990s. It should never have ended.
WPA
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
Yes, thank you for defining for those who didn't already know.
BRB, gonna go kill a few sparrows
Before you go melt your pans.
Need the pans to catch the sparrows bruh
Sparrows first, then pans
You know, you have to have a solid, repeatable plan for farm success, 5 years sounds about right.
