Microbitch (@Microbitch)

Capitalism is the only remedy against those who would abuse it, that doesn't end up turning into a fight to the death between those seeking power, that ends up corrupting all who take part in it. The idea that the Government was going to come to the rescue when somebody tried to subvert Capitalism in order to destroy it, however understandable, was always misguided because the Government has long been for sale, beholden to those contributing to its campaigns for re-election. Looking at Torba's post https://gab.com/a/posts/115515519927801837 (which I'll post a receipt of, below, because I know how fond he is of letting his gabs self-erase) I see something that probably would have been understandable if posted by a young person, back in the 90s. Misguided, but understandable. I've met survivors from that era's brutal job market, and it's not too hard to tell what they were running into. Businesses were colluding to hold down wages, sacrificing their own short term profitability as they blocked the recent graduates with the strongest credentials from any kind of work being offered, in a practice that was referred as "economic terrorism." We end up with accounts of engineers living in cardboard boxes underneath bridges, while substance abusing ex-frat boys in corporate boardrooms lived large, presiding over what remained of the economy they were hollowing out. None of that was good, and no decent person would ever want to see it come back, but if Torba thinks that any variant on Socialism would have been a remedy, the historical record begs to differ. After the downsizings of the 90s came the outsourcing of the aughties, during which the Government did something telling. If an American scientist or engineer tried to market one of his inventions overseas, he could be imprisoned for "illegal technology transfers," but if a large company not only exported that same invention, but sent over the factory in which it was to be manufactured, no charges would follow. That was seen as being merely "free trade." A double standard that blunt and shameless leaves no room for doubt as to what the Government was doing: it was reducing the American scientists and engineers (the victims of that era) to the status of a captive labor force that wasn't free to sell its labor to foreign companies, while American companies were free to do business with whoever they wished. The Government was rigging the game to the benefit of the employers at the expense of the employees. Given that this was the choice it made, and went on making, how could anybody believe that giving it more power would have made life better for the employees, instead of worse. What finally changed life for the people who were being beaten down, around the turn of the Millennium, wasn't governmental action, but rather an inevitable market correction. Economics 101: If one attempts to hold the price of a commodity to below an honest market equilibrium price, shortages will appear. They can be hidden with creative bookkeeping for a while, but after a while, nobody will be fooled. The way the story played out, this time, was that universities joined in on the attempt to suppress wages, by refusing to hire new people to do anything but low paying adjunct work. This resulted in their hires racing from place to place, working multiple jobs just to pay for food, rent and gasoline, unable to keep office hours. Millions of students noticed this, panicked because midterms were approaching, and went looking for tutors. Instead of there being just a relative handful of independent employers, there was now millions of them, albeit for temporary work, leaving those temporary employers in a bidding war against each other that sent the once artificially (and actively) suppressed wages in Mathematics skyward. Back around 1990, advanced math tutors were getting by on minimum wage, and struggling to find work at that price. In 2025, with the same qualifications that person in 1990 would have had, I can easily charge $120/hour, rising to over $200/hour in the case of truly advanced material. That's a line of work that the physicists and engineers can often get into, and the pay is good enough that we can now fund our own startups, with or without help from the banks. That took care of our financial problems. All that the government would have done, given a chance, would have been to get in our way, some more. As our bank balances grow, we have more and more money to spend, and that's an opportunity for somebody else to earn an honest income by selling something to us - a house, not so long ago, and soon, some repairs. Our startup will, at some point, be hiring technicians and more engineers, as so many have already. This isn't something only happening for STEM people, but I bring up that case, because it's the one with which I'm most familiar. (continued)