How do I explain to my female friend that Capitalism is not to blame for why she has to go to work each day?

Your friend can always join a barter society.. The drawback is barter societies tend to draw unstable and antisocial folks.

Whop wrote:

I've seen several women post such things on social media, but I also have a personal friend who thinks "capitalism" is to blame for why she has to work 5 days per week. I'm kind of dumbfounded as to how to explain to her that people doing work is what allows there to be food at the store, electricity, gas at the gas station, etc... Kind of feels like I'm a daddy explaining to his 5 year old why adults go to work each day. My friend is 32 years old and college educated. :/

What would you say?

Explain to her that Capitalism is why she only has to go to work 5 days a week. That 250 years ago 90% of the population had to work in agriculture every day or everybody would starve. The agricultural and industrial revolutions which lifted the western world out of what we now consider poverty were driven by Capitalism and freedoms of Western Liberalism(in the classic sense). The reason only 5% of the US works in agg and we are a net exporter of food, whereas other countries have 40% of people in agg and are starving is thanks to Capitalism. So tell her to thank Capitalism that she has her cushy 5 day a week 8hrs job in an air-conditioned office and still has a level of consumption that 80% of the world can't dream about.

Waitforit4 wrote:

I have a couple female friends in their 30s like this. They low key want to be traditional stay at house wives, but can't (most can't find a guy that wants to date them due to all the options out there) so they rage at capitalism. It's sad really.

Where I live, there are plenty of men and women who think like this. Their social media feed (they are always active on sm) are full of memes about how capitalism kills and tax the rich headlines.

I always wonder why they don't gather their savings and move to a part of the world where land is dirt cheap due to not having a modern capitalist system and become subsistence farmers scratching a living from the land, a goat, a few chickens and maybe a calf, and dying young. But they have no skills, or at least the skills they do have only work in a urban capitalist society.

And they live in a fantasy wonderland where their little memes will bring about a societal change, and we can all move to a system of benign communism, with no money, all doing what they want each day.

Personally I think these types have undiagnosed Schizoid personality disorder, it is very pathetic as they get older and it becomes obvious that their lives will never really progress.

Wikipedia:

In 1908, the first five-day workweek in the United States was instituted by a New England cotton mill so that Jewish workers would not have to work on the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.[11] In 1926, Henry Ford began shutting down his automotive factories for all of Saturday and Sunday. In 1929, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Union was the first union to demand and receive a five-day workweek. The rest of the United States slowly followed, but it was not until 1940, when a provision of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act mandating a maximum 40-hour workweek went into effect, that the two-day weekend was adopted nationwide.[11]

And to add to that, she can retire at age 62 and not work for the last 30 years of her life. People used to work until the day they died.

Primo Numero Uno wrote:

Explain to her that Capitalism is why she only has to go to work 5 days a week. That 250 years ago 90% of the population had to work in agriculture every day or everybody would starve. The agricultural and industrial revolutions which lifted the western world out of what we now consider poverty were driven by Capitalism and freedoms of Western Liberalism(in the classic sense).

Pre-industrial societies were not doing back breaking work all day every day. That only occured with mechanization - once machines did the heavy lifting, working hours dramatically increased up to 16 hours a day 6 days a week. We can thank Christianity for having Sunday as a day of rest and thank the unions for campaigning for 8 hour days.

cmr055 wrote:

i know this one wrote:

A women-bashing post on Letsrun? I’m shocked.

It’s not a “women-bashing post”. Gtfo of here

To the OP: because it’s comforting to think that society is to blame for one’s own personal shortcomings

Coastal elites, MSM, immigrants and Hollywood celebrities have held me back.

Tell her that socialism is simply another form of capitalism. It's ALL capitalism. The dynamics of supply and demand are baked into our existence. You cannot get rid of capitalism, you can only pretend to do so.

Doesn't the pursuit of a hobby generate a need that requires the work of someone else to fulfill?

Where do all those scrapbooking supplies come from? Who keeps the shelves of Hobby Lobby stocked except on Sundays?

Precious Roy wrote:

In a socialist system (a truly socialist one), people would only have to work as long as needed to produce the goods and services that people need. We would have the rest of the time to ourselves to pursue hobbies, be with family or just hang out and have fun.

Ohhhhhhh, so that's why my best friend and his family "escaped" (his exact words) communism. It was just too much fun (he never told me that).

She is correct:

Capitalism is why we work 40 plus hours a week - 5 days a week... standardly... some people work 6 or 7 days a week depending on the job. Hourly workers overtime is compensated at 1.5 or 2 times the pay rate... I know many workers who do this every week because the overtime is the only way to have decent middle class wages. Companies are okay with the overtime because the standard rates are under paid.

Capitalism is why workers wages are stagnant (factoring in inflation) over the last 30+ years as corporate profits increase... why the wage gap continues to grow... and why we still have to work 40+ hours a week even through technological advances have made workers way more efficient.

Also, why we in America get 1 or 2 weeks of vacation a year and often don't even use all of it (and are sometimes looked down upon by our peers and bosses if we do)... while many other western nations have 6-8 weeks of vacation a year standard.

I don't mind working and earning a wage and get fufillment from my work... I also like my free time which I wish I had more of and wasn't so tired from work to enjoy... of course when I'm home my work phone is still ringing, people are still emailing, and international customers are whatsapping me at all hours of the night.

Is this the new thing? I thought it was the “Universe” that advised middle aged women on their life course, not capitalism.

You mean like bears who hibernate through the winter? Or snakes who lie in the sun? Or cats who sleep 18 hours a day? Or dolphins who play in the waves? And on and on.

Humans are quite active as far as creatures go, but working all day? Nah. Lots of singing, dancing, storytelling and art making. Where did all those cave paintings come from? When did we have time to invent music? Compose epic poems? Name the constellations? Work is what you do to survive. It's food, water and shelter. That didn't take up all human's time. They had lots of time for other things.

banana splits wrote:

Humans are quite active as far as creatures go, but working all day? Nah. Lots of singing, dancing, storytelling and art making. Where did all those cave paintings come from? When did we have time to invent music? Compose epic poems? Name the constellations? Work is what you do to survive. It's food, water and shelter. That didn't take up all human's time. They had lots of time for other things.

And my dad working his a$$ off allowed me as a kid to learn many of the things you posted. I learned music, I learned martial arts, I learned different sports. Thanks Capitalism for bringing teachers into my life.

So could you please present an example of this socialist system you outine working in real-life practice? The reason Socialism has never worked is not that it has not been tried but because it is truly impossible to function in the real world. What you see is that everyone only produces as much as they think they need to and there are massive shortages. People are not motivated to work productively unless they are working for their own profit. The other issue is no one is motivated to innovate because the state owns whatever innovation you come up with. Being able to profit off of your innovation is a massive incentive. Our lives are better because people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs come up with better tech, of Pfizer comes up with a vaccine to end a pandemic. Leftists love the European quasi-socialist model. But you look at all innovation the past few decades it has almost all come from the US. The US has born pretty much every tech giant, compared to Europe has Spotify and that is it. In the race for the Covid Vaccine, the US kicked the rest of the world @$$ with 3 superior vaccines in a shorter time period.

Capitalist Societies have innovated far beyond all other societies and that type of advancement is what improves the quality of life. It may make you feel good in the short run to steal Elon's money and give it to less well-off people. But if the capital is not in Elon's hands we do not get Tesla, Paypal, or Space X which over time will advance society far more than a short-term increase in consumption due to wealth redistribution.

And let's not forget, Capitalism is not Corporatism, or Cronyism. Government involvement in markets, such as subsidizing, is not Capitalism... regardless of what brain-dead liberals continually repeat. Corporatism is much closer to Socialism, than Capitalism. Liberals are too dense to understand this.

Capitalist systems with a social component work really well in Europe for example.

Yes, computer technologies where mostly advanced in the US but the US is not able to build one good car. The US dominates tech but has no idea to actually build stuff. The iphone could not be build in the US. The would not know how to do it. Foxcoon knows how to do it.

And Elon Musk is just a huge welfare recipient. He made his money with emission certificates. He can't build cars and his rocket business also gets huge subsidies.

Primo Numero Uno wrote:

So could you please present an example of this socialist system you outine working in real-life practice?

Credit unions have done much more for low income communities than banks have precisely because they are owned by the very same people. They also weathered the 2009 financial crisis bunch better because they were not over-exposed in pursuit of speculative profits.

Thursdayeveningmarxist wrote:

Capitalist systems with a social component work really well in Europe for example.

Yes, computer technologies where mostly advanced in the US but the US is not able to build one good car. The US dominates tech but has no idea to actually build stuff. The iphone could not be build in the US. The would not know how to do it. Foxcoon knows how to do it.

And Elon Musk is just a huge welfare recipient. He made his money with emission certificates. He can't build cars and his rocket business also gets huge subsidies.

You do realize that the US used to build all sorts of stuff, right? The US was a leader in 'building stuff'.