This question will require some explaining, so bear with me (I phrased it how I did because I wanted to emphasize one of the connections). I ask this here because economics seem to be a huge topic here, especially when it comes to certain schools of thought (not that I’m judging, you have your reasons).

So here is me trying to explain my question.

First, I must admit I find the concept of a minimum wage to be, for a lack of a better word, incomplete (weird? not well-oiled? I couldn’t find the word). While being based by the hour albeit not factoring in the amount of work done, I understand basic existence amounts to a certain etimated value, and you don’t want overhaggling, so a glass floor is made. But a glass floor can break under pressure. But I digress.

Anyways, I was talking to someone about the concept, and we started using analogies using letters in place of concepts: “W cannot pay X a certain amount of Y so in order to pay to live she goes to Z.”

It was one of those no-context moments, so our minds were drawn to a third friend who related to it platonically, this person wasn’t mentally compatible with most social groups, so then criminals (the Z) would come and say “come join us, we have the friends you’re looking for”.

He added, “police consider ‘bad crowds’ a huge problem, but nobody pays the involuntary loners any minimum due, no glass floor provided by the public sector, no nothing, and the wrong people get the upper hand here because they’re there to farm you while you just want someone to value you enough in a way that translates well to you, and our bedroom community becomes a gossip-cursed cesspool because there is no adhesive”. Should point out this isn’t a new thought process, in fact it’s relevant to me occupationally.

Promoters of universal basic necessities of Lemmy, why is there a lacking here? Is it not weird we (officially) have it out for one aspect but not the other?

  • Doctor xNo
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    1 year ago

    This might sound a bit shizo, but I assure you in advance: The following is only a funny comparison and I do not actually believe it to be real. I do however sometimes get amazed of the similarities to it though:

    Sometimes life feels like everybody tells me how it has worked outside of my current habitual environment ‘fog-of-war’ (like getting taught how marketing and commerce works when you don’t have to deal with money as a kid yet, or knowing how public transport to work and back works on a daily basis as you see people use it while you grow up not having to rely on it for anything yet), until I eventually either inevitably or by choice start taking part in any of those “mundane” things that have always seemed to basically have worked fine for everyone out of my view. When I do, the world around me gets this (I know the official term is different, but I’ve always called it after the Jim Carrey movie:) “Truman-Show-effect”, where it really looks like everybody suddenly has to start actually doing the story they only had on paper up until that moment (with consistency as key) and then end up failing horribly in practice. 😅

    When I turned 18 I started driving and since we’ve litterally gone from almost no real control systems to stationary traject-control nightvision camera’s and a cop sighting every 10-20 minutes driving through cities. I got my first real job at 20 and the inflation went into crisis, I eventually at 26 or so started using a train to work (that arrived in the building I worked at), and it started to constantly either be cancelled or waaay delayed and way too often only the random one I was taking even though I had fluid hours and had no real pattern in which one I took daily. Skip to more recent things: 5 years ago, I met my wife-to-be who lives far away from my country and had planned to spend half the years to come there and half the years in my homecountry for work, while getting her everything to legally be able to join me, then covid happened and long-distance flights got disallowed while my job screwed me over and ended up making me spend savings to just survive, leaving me in a (still currently going on) financial distress preventing me to even be able to go to her now. It all seems to fall apart when I actually observe or take part in it. I might need to rename myself to Shrödinger soon if this goes on… 😂

    Anyway, sorry for the long digress, just had to get this out there. And once again: I know I am not in a TV-show. I have a very active imagination, but I’m still not crazy (or narcissistic 😅) enough to think that to be even possible… 😬😂

      • Doctor xNo
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, Occam’s Razor would suggest something like this. Like I said, it just ‘strongly seems like’ sometimes, but I still have just enough grip on reality to realize it’s not. 😅 It does give me a descriptive way of explaining my frustration in it, though. 😅