|
|
|
|
|
by blacktriangle
1755 days ago
|
|
It's the sad irony of collectivism. When you remove all concept of individual ownership and accountability in the name of universal equality, you've effectively destroyed the individual as a unit and just turned them into another resource to be taken advantage of, nominally for the good of the whole, but in reality for the good of the ruling party. |
|
Germany comes to mind, in particular, as an example of how collectivism can actually help allow for sane work hours. I worked there for a few months. One of the things I deeply respected is that my co-workers were completely okay with the bakeries closing at 3:30pm, supermarkets closing at 6:30pm, being open for only 2 hours on Saturday, and completely closed on Sunday because "the supermarket employees also have families and need time to rest", words which you would almost never hear in the US. (In larger cities of Germany, supermarkets have longer hours, but rarely past 8pm or 9pm, and definitely never 24 hours like you often find in the US.)
What is at fault is rampant, extreme capitalism, which at that extreme milks humans of every last drop at the expense of their health, because their health is not a part of the financial optimization function at all. If you can profit by driving your employees to insanity, you profit, and that is deemed optimal by an extreme capitalist system.
(And before some social media flamewar-instigators accuse me of advocating for extreme communism, no, I'm advocating some balance between mostly captalism and some strong labor laws that everyone must abide by to maintain the physical and mental health of the country.)