Your Biggest Vulnerability is your Shitty Compensation

The 1830's reform of the UK, which begrudging wrestled power from the Lords and distributed voting power more evenly over the UK (rammed cities like Manchester had almost no voting rights), only happened when some of the Lords houses were close to being burned down.

Thankfully the UK didn't follow France into the anarchy that was the French Revolution, and Earl Grey could make them see reason. But damn did we come close.

The threat of violence that the worker wielded against their employer was indeed a good incentive to keep things amicable.

Nowadays, we don't know where the Lords necessarily live, the size of the Lords private armies don't need to be more than a handful of security guards, and AI/Robotics is diminishing the need for that handful of guards at all.

Ultimately, businesses offer poor compensation because they can get away with it and society has designed the economic model to support this. The economic model does not reward work, but rather ownership of assets, and this principle exists throughout every nation. It's a society modelled around protectionism of wealth, where the wealthy can hand wealth down to their children.

In the United Kingdom, a third of people claiming government assistance are in employment. Over 50% of those buying their first home get gifted money from their parents to do so. Starting from nothing means playing a rigged game. It's like playing Monopoly, where one player starts out with half of the cards and everyone else thinks they can win if they strategise well enough.

Many core economic theories that are taught about productivity and pay are wrong. Anyone living in the real world can see that marginal productivity and price theory are wrong. If the game was perfectly fair, these theories may have some weight, however there's a multitude of factors that skew the board. Poor compensation does have consequences, and they may be felt by individual businesses. However, by and large, these consequences are offloaded on to the rest of society.

The pressures he describes seem correct and mirror what I’ve seen.

Think he’s wrong about this being close to blowing up. Think that’s coloured by his own personal situation. I suspect unfortunately the powers that be correctly read the situation as significantly more room to squeeze.

It might read as bad to usa ears but keep in mind there are people breaking down ships with zero safety, zero job security, low pay, bad equipment and certain heath impact etc. People will bear crazy stuff and still show up to work

This comes off as slightly on the entitled side. Yearly salaries at $100k+ is very high by Western European standards. I can only imagine what our Eastern European colleagues would feel about it. If you can live a comfortable life and send our children to school well fed perhaps broaden the horizons a bit before ranting off about how much better the world would be if you could be paid a bit more.

In ancient times, slaves didn't revolt because they were oppressed by weapons and violence. Instead of paying workers, resources were used to pay and feed the military. Slaves were considered "war bounty" and tradeable goods.

When the incentives of workers favour burning buildings rather than working for wages, the next step is either to use force/control or to rebalance wages.

Don't care, stocks are up

Signed, Anyone who you'd like to care

Hold on you can't be throwing around such perversely high numbers like 81,680$ for your European readers.

Today is international workers day and we are sharing a capuccino with my colleague.