Healthcare: ❎ "No, that's communism!"
Mandatory Labor: ✅ "Yes, that's patriotism!"
🙄
We can do both. It will take time and strong, sustained effort. But we can do it.
Socialism/communism = “someone got something that I don’t think they deserved.”
They’re just bad words to people. I think a lot of the “normal people” on the right are just people who are too stupid to understand politics, so it works like their football team. You don’t need to know anything about the Dallas Cowboys or Patriots to hate them. Democrats are bad because they are the other team. We don’t need to know what “woke” means - it’s just a word that describes people on the bad team.
If you manage to avoid the trigger words, and they haven’t been propagandized on whatever specific topic, it’s really easy to convince them to agree with a lot of left leaning ideas.
We could call it "The Large Jump Ahead" or something.
For anyone else who didn't get the joke, I already googled it and figured it out: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
If anyone is curious, I found it using, "Asian jump ahead" 😅
Nice, good job!
kinda abstract, how about "Down to the Good Ol' Countryside"?
Yeah, not doing volunteer farm work to give private people and corporations free work and profit.
If there were some state-owned ones that the food was used to feed public school kids or others on government programs, maybe.
But no way for someone else’s profit.
Oh, sweetie, that is precious. You are and have been your entire life.
Here is a complete list of farm subsidies you are paying for. The totals are mind bogglingly huge.
Will they get to keep the produce? Otherwise, this is just slavery and very much in line with conservative ideology again.
When watching the TV Series The Handmaid Tales I kept thinking that things like their very heavy security appartus, military for the continuing seccession war and heavy use of dedicated manpower doing manual work in house chores (at least for the upper classes) would use too much manpower, taking it away from actual productive activities and thus making a modern nation level of life (in the material sense, not other senses) unsustainable, though Gilead could sorta keep going for a while drawing down on the wealth of the part of the US from were it was formed, before falling down to mid-XX century South American levels of wealth or worse.
However temporary slavery like this "national duty field work" might actually "solve" some of the agricultural production manpower shortage problems in such a society.
So it actually makes sense (in a sick way) that it's appealing to the most extreme Fascist amongst the Republicans.
Where does it say you don't get paid?
Also, in terms of understanding how things happen, this is definitely not a bad thing.
So many people take everything for granted. I worked a couple of years in agriculture. Long days, tough work. I will never look down on a farmer, and it thought me some neat lessons in life too.
Where does it say you do get paid?
Maybe in that one aspect, but I'd imagine the mandatory labor at likely very low wages will make most people resent it more than anything.
Is it better to force poor people to work in farms to survive? In a world where a large number of 'modern' westernized countries have active military conscription for young people, I don't see this as being worse than that, either. The thing with slavery, is that it is lifetime, unpaid, terrible conditions, based on a feeling of superiority, only for the targeted groups, etc.
Of course, the better solution is just to treat farm workers fairly and pay them well, and work on automation at the same time. But rich people were forced to work in farms too, the conditions would probably get a whole lot nicer for everyone involved, and it would probably create a pretty big incentive to start automation as well.
edit: to actually be fine, it would have to be run by the govt. on nationally owned farms, like schools are, for workers to be paid and well treated, and for rich people to not be exempt
It was tried back in the 60's. It failed.
Wow, never heard of this, thank you
Great source, thanks for sharing!
Some choice excerpts:
Problems arose immediately for the A-TEAM nationwide. In California's Salinas Valley, 200 teenagers from New Mexico, Kansas and Wyoming quit after just two weeks on the job. "We worked three days and all of us are broke," the Associated Press quoted one teen as saying. Students elsewhere staged strikes. At the end, the A-TEAM was considered a giant failure and was never tried again.
"These [high school students] had the words and whiteness to say what they were feeling and could act out in a way that Mexican-Americans who had been living this way for decades simply didn't have the power or space for the American public to listen to them," [Stony Brook University history professor Lori A. Flores] says. "The students dropped out because the conditions were so atrocious, and the growers weren't able to mask that up."
She says the A-TEAM "reveals a very important reality: It's not about work ethic [for undocumented workers]. It's about [the fact] that this labor is not meant to be done under such bad conditions and bad wages."
And what one dude who went through the program as a 17 year old has to say about it now:
But he says the experience also taught them empathy toward immigrant workers that Carter says the rest of the country should learn, especially during these times.
"There's nothing you can say to us that [migrant laborers] are rapists or they're lazy," he says. "We know the work they do. And they do it all their lives, not just one summer for a couple of months. And they raise their families on it. Anyone ever talks bad on them, I always think, 'Keep talking, buddy, because I know what the real deal is.' "
My reading is that it failed because there was no political will to actually provide for local-born farmers any more than immigrants. And as such, it was doomed to fail from the start.
Caesar Chavez was a goddamn American hero until he sold out.
Rich people will be exempt, of course.
People in University or with University Education will "of course" be exempted from this duty which, by an amazing coincidence will exempt the scions of the rich and upper middle class.
It's a similar technique as what's used in not just the US but also countries like the UK to make sure the children of "upper" classes don't have to endure certain hardships and have enhanced future opportunities even in accessing Upper Education: it's not at all *cough* *cough* because they're the children of wealthy parents, it's purelly because they frequent (expensive) private schools and the children of the poor and working class too when they frequent such schools have access to those things (the "small" detail that the poor and working class cannot actually afford it, remains unsaid).
Whenever a Neoliberal talks about how meritocratic their system is, remember that they defend privatised education, something which as I explained above just means a two tier system were those who can afford it purchase for their children easy access past certain gatekeepers of future opportunities such as access to certain Universities whilst the rest are in a different track - the state school system - with far lower chances, all of which is the very opposite of a merit-based system.
Yes, usa is a hyper-capitalistic country. Not all (actually none other) countries behave like this. But they all use the dollar as currency. The difference is that usa is the economic superpower but that does not make them control way the world world any longer. It disappeared when the culture war was lost. The war on drug was lost too and now there is a class war. Wonder how that will go
I can almost hear the bone spurs growing...
Cases of bone spurs are skyrocketing
Repeat after me class.
FUCK
YOU
PAY
ME
As someone who farmed for the first couple of decades of my life - no. We need to utilize drones for farming and ban the use of tires and fossil fuels (which deposit heavy metals) on fields.
Also pretty sure glyphosate/Roundup caused health issues for everyone I know and myself (all farmers/in farm communities). It's a neurotoxin and is in the entire Ogallala acquifer and most ground water around farms and their watershed. I spoke with a lead state toxicologist in the PNW about this. It verifiably has effects on fish and insects in the watershed here (which Monsanto claims is too diluted to have effects).
My father was a farmer in the 90s and wrote to Bill Clinton to ask for more regulation and study of the effects of pesticides and more protections for farmers in relation to pesticides and Bills response back was basically “No”. It did come on a really nice piece of paper though and had the “from the desk of the president” letter head and everything.
I emailed Trump and Biden both about implementing a free national online school prek-college, using adaptive learning and with no time restrictions. Kids can use this online school as a supplement to regular schooling or in lieu of. This way, parents who are concerned about school shootings or illness can still feel like their kid is getting an okay education.
Adults who have already graduated can take these classes to refresh knowledge (helping to combat misinformation online). If Christians want to teach and learn Christian theory, fine, that can be in a Christian theory area (Christian science should not be considered actual science but instead a theology).
Teachers can compete for best online class and schools and teachers could get bonuses for the most popular material. The grading should be done by either a computer or paras who are employed at the national level.
Students then can also have access to various language accomodations and disability accomodations for all their lessons. This is also why there should be no time restrictions - kids with learning disabilities might take a year to learn a half semester of algebra, or young adults with jobs might also need extra time too. The time limits we place on learning are arbitrary and only help out people with advantages already.
Last there should be no general studies requirement with the adaptive online learning. If a kid LOVES trains, let the adaptive learning teach them all about trains. Maybe that means the kid will learn about calculating the impact speed of two trains colliding, so they incidentally learn math and physics. But we shouldn't require they learn math and physics if they don't choose to.
Anyway, I wrote this out to them and got really lame letters back too. It's crazy because this school idea is a legacy program that could cement a president's name forever in education, like how Teddy Roosevelt is associated with National Parks. Yet Trump didn't want the idea. Biden neither. Maybe Harris will like it. It's quite elegant imo and win/win. I've spoken with numerous educators about it and they have no criticisms. It's like our government doesn't want progress
And just for the record, Monsanto is now part of Bayer.
Every* American Citizen
- Except my kids, obviously.
That's the beauty of it.
Conservatives will push for laws that affect urban public schools and have their kids in private schools or live outside city limits.
I mean a national labor corps with incentivized participation isn't the worst idea. Gives people the opportunity to get work experience without necessarily having to understand their career direction in life.
Shouldn't be a draft in any circumstances but absolute crisis situation, like essential infrastructure is on the brink of total collapse and regular pay incentives aren't getting bodies on it fast enough.
Who knows, might get some people into work they didn't realize they'd gel with, plenty of inspector positions are behind work load and I've got s feeling a part of that is just people not knowing the work is out there.
I'd be super on board for this. Treat it similarly to the military, where room and board are provided, and they ship you to an underserved part of the country to help.
Especially if we extended the GI Bill to cover participating. Like, do 4 yrs and you get full tuition covered at any public university.
I think it would really promote national unity and help to lift people out of poverty. You'd have people from all over the country working together, bridging a lot of our internal divisions. You'd get people out of their bubbles and echo chambers and have them actually seeing the country.
If we could normalize it, where it's just what people did after highschool, it would give people time to figure their lives out. Remove the pressure of having to choose a career right away. I know so many people who "had to go to college" because that was the next step, but didn't have a clue what they wanted in life, so got useless majors and have dead ended. This would be perfect for people like that.
Plus infrastructure in the US is a joke. And even as the OP implies, farming is a broken business in the US for a number of reasons. There are never enough people working soup kitchens and food pantries, or cleaning up our national forests to prevent forest fires. If we could mobilize our young people en masse, we could make a huge difference in this country.
I'm 1000% on board.
Yeah that's all fine but it's blocked by one of two major political parties in the US doesn't believe government should exist. At best they'd support a privatized version of the that siphoned money out and didn't help people that need help.
We're going to struggle to get anything done as long as conservatives are treated as if they have any merit.
Without a draft it's just a Keynsian jobs program like CCC or Teach for America. Not the worst idea in the world.
I heard in Finland it’s kinda like this. You have to do something like a year in the military or a year in civil service and I like it. Don’t want to do the military? Fine, do the postal service or some shit just do something. It’s like a great equalizer since rich and poor have to do it and they all have the same options.
I already think some kind of required (paid) community service year should be required for every citizen, so I guess part of that could be agriculture.
Required I think doesn't cut mustard, like I said, it should be required only when all other possibilities to address a labor shortage crisis have been exhausted.
Required service is something you do when you're in a weakened or threatened position with what you're invoking it for, so doing it unnecessarily just doesn't help quite as much as one might think.
There's better ways to address a perceived national attitude problem than forced labor.
There's great arguments here about how a service corps could bridge divides and give all youth a better pathway from highschool into the (often predatory) worlds of job markets and higher ed, and also great arguments about why mandatory service infringes on freedom pretty significantly.
Is there a way to structure a national year of service idea that gives people the freedom to opt out yet would still get chosen by many kids from diverse backgrounds? Like how do we get kids who have had a college fund ready to go since they were born to see the benefits of spending a year building bridges? It would be a neat cultural shift.
Probably from social isolation by everyone who did do that.
Like if the rich asshole kids wanna mark themselves out by skipping out on a national service that's their prerogative, just the same it's everyone else's to make judgements about them based on that.
That "some of y'all never worked a service job and it shows" tweet hits a lot harder when there's a federal budget for the messaging about the good of lending a working hand to your fellow countryfolks.
Why should we be subsidizing labor costs for large agribusiness?
I can think of a lot more virtuous forms of national service.
The next post explains that agriculture is so important, it should be controlled by the government, with quotas, and rations...
/s
Because then we can seize the means of production.
What’s “our farms” do we own the means of production? Do I get food or resources from this farm? Wtf
they'll take you to the town square and the agricorps will bid on you
You can eat all the apples you like just make sure you pick 4000 per day.
As long as every farmer has to work in the city for a year.
No, the farmers design bridges and dams.
The engineers work in hospitals.
The doctors we shoot for being nerds.
Perfect society.
Edit: we also kill all the sparrows for some reason.
I'm pretty sure many of those farmers, especially the young ones would not return to the farm. Farmers are stuck in the fantasy that they don't need the cities. They don't need any products beyond what they need to ride in the their GPS controlled air conditioned tractor as it plows perfectly straight rows. None of which is built on the farm.
Please don’t make me work in a hospital they get mad when you take patients apart
I so want to make a farmer, who likes to complain that comfy office jobs aren't real work, work a phone support hotline for a year.
Probability that this person is over 30?
Every American has to do one season of farm work but all food is now free. Monkey's paw curls and all that.
Farmers can't just have free labor and still get all the profits.
Wait till they scapegoat sparrows
That’s how you get a famine.
They kind of are already taking the same tactic with refugees and immigrants.
Here's a reference for those who don't recognize this.
i think we should force everyone to do at least 2 years of philosophical education and study.
It would unironically be good for the average persons intelligence.
At this point, we should force everyone to just line up to get a solid smack across the face. Real hard too.
we can throw that one into the philosophy lessons somewhere.
Just need courses on logic and fallacies and that would be 🤌
i feel like fallacies are a bit of a golden goose, if you're educated in the field of fallacies, you're basically just educated in the field of debate, being educated in philosophy is going to allow you to generically recognize these fallacies, though without being able to identify them, as well as all of the additional benefits of engaging in philosophy (like understanding the concept of worldviews)
another problem with fallacy, is that you can also just kinda, make shit up. Or accuse people of doing the same fallacy you're doing, it's sort of cyclic in nature like that. It's interesting in theoretical thought though, i'll give you that one.
Trump's new nickname should be the Orange Red Herring
You could probably fit it into the K-12 program without losing any value elsewhere if you cut out things like memorizing maps in regions of the world that are so unstable that those maps won't be valid anymore by the time kids graduate, studying writers like Shakespeare that lived so long ago that what they wrote in could barely be called English, and mandatory electives.
you would definitely need to push this as a required junior/senior class, the unfortunate thing is that you need a legitimately insane teacher to actually learn something valuable from it. Generic course material doesn't work as well for something like this i think.
There are definitely some interesting ways to integrate it into english though, that's an idea.
So there was a reduction of family-operators farming between 1950 and 1990; by 74%. Of course, the number of hired workers has risen. On the surface that makes sense. I would imagine that farms hire illegal immigrants so that they can pay them less than the minimum visa-required pay (which is slightly more than minimum wage); probably also do not provide much in the way of benefits or vacation either. That’s my hunch.
But if i were a young man, and i went through college, and was struggling finding a career in my field and facing the student debt i no-doubt accrued during college, i sure as shit wouldn’t want to spend any amount of time doing indentured servitude. If i did, I’d voluntarily join the Peace Corps or something.
This is insane.
Would you feel differently if people who choose to serve have student debt forgiveness? Like, if the GI Bill covered participants?
I don't see well-paid civil service as a bad idea. Farming is a way of life, done right, and some of us like it and are willing. When a friend in Germany was about finished with Gymnasium (secondary school) was being faced with mandatory military or civil service. They chose civil, I forget what they did, probably something in IT field. It depends on need and ability what choices are available, but there were several options available and they didn't hate the idea of a few. It prepared them for university, today they are living quite decently abroad, in the final stages of writing their dissertation. If the USA had this and did it correctly, (proper cool off breaks, hydration, well-paid with comprehensive medical), I see it as a boon with real life skills gained, money to start a life, and a more self-sufficient, yet interdependent society.
The person that wrote that is like 31 years old last week
and
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
old habits et cetera
What if we just make being black, like, illegal, and then we can arrest all black people and force them to work in farm fields...
Wait. This seems familiar.
If you run out of blacks to arrest, you can just go get more from Africa.
I'm 47.
Get back on the farm, slaves. Danny needs his guava juice.
Get bent loser I have a job and house and life, if I go farm for you I'll lose it. Steal a kid like the army does.
My personal lived experience is the only valid one 😠
-Conservatives
(See also: the only moral abortion is my abortion, government spending is handouts unless it’s for my farm and business or subsidizing my unnecessary gigantic vehicle. Queers are bad but my daughter came out to me and I really wish everyone would stop bullying her, etc.)
Tobacco specifically?
Mostly cotton.
weed farm
Yeah no, I would die. I can't operate a lawnmower without crippling myself for a good couple of days with allergies, insects will go out of their way to sting/bite me instead of anyone else, and I am too pale to be outside for long periods of time without blistering. Stick me in a factory instead.
We unironically do this with people looking to get temporary working visas in Australia. It's wild.
Extend the working holiday visa for a second year. But close enough.
Sure, but only if all Americans have to work for, and live on, one year of service industry work - like waiting tables, checking out customers, or serving fast food. Especially the rich ones.
You know, it might not be a bad idea, because once regular people realize agriculture is exempt from minimum pay laws and OSHA, they might demand change
Fun fact: You'll get like 10 $ per day and free housing (a bed in a shack) and food during that time.
Lets give the Peace Corps guns and deploy them domestically!
It could start a.... Cultural revolution... One could say
Or just make it a function of the military. A crop corps, if you will. We already have the Army Corps of Engineers. This would be just another civil function.
After all, food independence from other states, and ensuring the security of logistics supply like food, are an important part of any military strategy.
Will they have tome between the mopping and the pushups?
I hate it, but it's preferable to Anarcho-Capitalism.
While I get the frustration with current systems, forcing people to do anything—whether it’s military service, farm labor, or any other work—goes against individual freedom. In a free market, people choose the jobs that fit their skills and interests, which leads to more innovation and productivity. Forcing everyone into the same mold is just another form of government overreach. Anarcho-capitalism believes in voluntary interactions and the power of markets to self-regulate. Let people work where they’re best suited, not where the state dictates.
There's always a question of where do we draw the line?
The justice system is a form of government overreach. To be truly free, everyone should be allowed to do absolutely anything, including murder and theft.
Hmm, doesn't seem like a good idea. People might infringe on other people's right to live, or more importantly, their private property. Maybe we should do something about it... Idk, adopt some laws, have police that can arrest you for committing a crime?
Okay, now we already have a government, but they don't do a whole lot. Yet to some, this would still be called overreach.
Ding ding ding, it's a fire! In your neighborhood! Who's going to put it out? Well the private firefighters are - IF the owner first sells the house to them for cheap. Otherwise, what's the point even?
Wait, shit... Maybe firefighters shouldn't be private either?
Anyway, this is all too much for my tiny mind right now. You see, I grew up somewhat poor so I should've gone and worked the farms at the age of 7 instead of going to school, which my family shouldn't have been able to afford under a completely fair, anarcho-capitalist system. Unfortunately, it was free for me - other people suffered and paid taxes so that I could receive free education I didn't deserve, and the social mobility that comes with it. I now have those peoples' blood on my hands, for they paid a little bit of income and social taxes.
When your xenophobia and racism reached levels that inhibit your red scare, turning you into a bootlicker: united authoritarianism
I actually think this is brilliant. Most Americans have no knowledge or personal connection as to where their food comes from and what goes into producing it. The ag sector is also, sadly, rife with worker abuse, farmers commit suicide at way higher rates than the general population, and our food system is getting increasingly industrialized and specialized, with small farms getting gobbled up by megacorps. But because agriculture usually happens away from population centers (sometimes far away) there's not a lot of public awareness (or sympathy) of issues. Meanwhile soil depletion and unsustainable practices are setting the US up for all kinds of potential future disasters (second dust bowl, anyone?), and that's before you factor in climate change.
So yes, let's have all Americans get even a few months of experience with our food system!
Without pay i assume.
It's not just a Maoist idea though.
I remember hearing that there was a similar concept in Soviet Union at some point, when normal citizens worked collecting fruits or something like that.
Then free food suplimentation for life? Maybe... ask me when I'm not high and hungry.
Wait, I've seen this one before. Didn't they already try forced farm labor? I think there may have been a war with this issue as a driving force in the conflict.
But then they should consequently call it
ReichUS Labor Service.country roads, take me home up to the mountains, down to the farms~
I really love when people get radicalised because of maga cunts and proceed to think that everything opposite is heaven on earth
