Товарищ

[Soen Eber]

Oh damn, I've got a whole grocery bag full of child slave produced half-off Easter candy - I totally didn't know about that. My grocery store tends to hide it so I lucked out.

Who can I kick some money to, in order to make up for profiteering off of that?

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Who can I kick some money to, in order to make up for profiteering off of that?

I have a small monthly going with UNICEF.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Oh damn, I've got a whole grocery bag full of child slave produced half-off Easter candy - I totally didn't know about that. My grocery store tends to hide it so I lucked out.

Who can I kick some money to, in order to make up for profiteering off of that?

The story seems to be two years old, and concerns Nestlé Australia's evidence to a senate committee considering some proposed Modern Slavery reporting requirements, which Nestlé Australia said would be too complex and expensive to implement because they apparently go considerably further than do those in force in the UK.

So we don't know what the Australian legislation actually looks like or whether the company is complying with it, only that in 2018 they said they thought the proposed legislation would be too onerous and time-consuming.

Here's the company's UK statement.

https://www.nestle.co.uk/sites/g/files/pydnoa461/files/2020-09/Nestle_Modern-Slavery-Report-2019.pdf

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Watch it to the end

 

[danielravennest]

Watch it to the end

I like how its the future, but he needs half a dozen tablets to keep track of his business data. Hadn't they heard of spreadsheets?

(DS9 ran from 1993-1999, spreadsheets have been around since 1979)

Also, slogan at shoelace factory union: "Workers of the World, Untie"

 

[Free]

I like how its the future, but he needs half a dozen tablets to keep track of his business data. Hadn't they heard of spreadsheets?

Dude, Ferengi financial tracking requires a great deal more than your simple Excel technology.

 

[Free]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Free]

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Free]

Ooh, pineapple mango...

 

[Free]

 

[Khamon]

It requires a huge shift in consumer attitude. Not many people are going to want to productively work in service industry positions because it’s what they want to do. That’s okay because a lot of it can be automated.

But I hear loads of complaining about self checkout, having to print our own documentation, tagging our own luggage, even (still) pumping our own gas. Add to that picking up our own Robot Caesar’s pizza, <insert very long list here>.

Regions bank recently closed their Selma branch and opened a small building with indoor ATMs and a couple of rooms where one can converse with a virtual presence employee to open accounts, discuss loans, and be shown how to use online banking. The project will be complete when they replace the employees with AIs.

Customers are not thrilled with this new arrangement. But we’ll have to accept such transitions as universal income and medical care are implemented. Prep and training we need. I don’t often see this aspect attached to these discussions.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I've just finished reading Slave Empire, by Padraig X Scanlon, which is a remarkable reconsideration of the role of slavery, and the British anti-slavery movement, in the creation of the British Empire, and it makes it very clear that the British government, the British slaveholders and investors, along with the classic liberal economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and most of the white British abolitionists, all agreed that abolition had to be managed so that the cost to the employer of paying daily wages to free workers in plantations and factories, both at home and in the colonies, was less than that of using enslaved labour.

"Wage labour, both agricultural and industrial, has got be cheaper than using slaves" was, it seems, baked into most capitalist theory right from the start, and a great deal of abolitionist thinking was devoted to devising ways to keep incomes low and ensure that wages stayed pretty much at near subsistence level, so that the workforce had to work pretty much full time in plantations or factories, or starve (the British, at least, really didn't want former slaves setting up as subsistence farmers, trading their surplus, because that was no use to the European investors who underwrote slavery in both the US and other European colonies and former colonies).

Slave Empire: How Slavery Built Modern Britain: Amazon.co.uk: Scanlan, Padraic X.: 9781472142351: Books

Buy Slave Empire: How Slavery Built Modern Britain by Scanlan, Padraic X. (ISBN: 9781472142351) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

www.amazon.co.uk

How slavery fuelled the British empire

Padraic X Scanlan discusses how slavery fuelled the British empire and explores the complicated motivations of abolitionists

www.historyextra.com

 

[Free]

"Wage labour, both agricultural and industrial, has got be cheaper than using slaves" was, it seems, baked into most capitalist theory right from the start, and a great deal of abolitionist thinking was devoted to devising ways to keep incomes low and ensure that wages stayed pretty much at near subsistence level, so that the workforce had to work pretty much full time in plantations or factories, or starve

How the end of slavery led to two different minimum wages

After the Civil War, companies didn’t want to reach into their own pockets to pay recently freed enslaved people.

www.marketplace.org

Wage slavery - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Innula Zenovka]

How the end of slavery led to two different minimum wages

After the Civil War, companies didn’t want to reach into their own pockets to pay recently freed enslaved people.

www.marketplace.org

Wage slavery - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Planters were eager to protect their bottom line. In the 1820s and early 1830s leading abolitionists such as James Cropper had argued that wage labour was cheaper than enslaved labour. Cropper and others had pointed to poor wage earners in the United States, Mexico and the Bolívarian republics of South America to prove workers paid a pittance would still return each morning to the fields or workshops. Suddenly, two elements of the ‘experiment’ of freedom converged. When they accepted wages, apprentices proved that apprenticeship was working to teach the everyday discipline of wage work. But to prove that free labour was more profitable and efficient than enslaved labour, apprentices had to accept low wages, specifically. By and large, they would not – unless threatened by the military or magistrates.

(Slave Empire, Chapter 8).

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I've also recently finished Empireland, by Sathnam Sanghera, which was rather more familiar to me, since a lot of it is about Britain and India, and much of it touches on my personal history.

Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera and Slave Empire by Padraic X Scanlan – review

Wilful amnesia ... two fascinating journeys through Britain’s imperial past and present suggest attitudes must change

www.theguardian.com

I can recommend both books.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

‘Late capitalism’ is written off as a crank’s phrase. But there’s more to it than that | Zoe Williams

People may roll their eyes at the concept, but at least it tries to address a problem that won’t go away on its own, writes Zoe Williams

www.theguardian.com

 

[WolfEyes]

All those familiar faces... now you've made me feel old. Get off my lawn!

 

[WolfEyes]

pumping our own gas

Is illegal in Oregon. What is called self serve here is not self serve. Replace the red with blue and green with red and that's another thread.

https://www.staroilco.net/oregon-and-self-serve-laws-at-the-pump/