I’ve definitely shared this concept or observation or whatever you want to call it before, but recent events have made me think of it again. I should clarify first that what I base this train of thought on isn’t entirely something that clicks for me, something I might not get into expressing, but it definitely makes you or at least me wonder why the implications in the train of thought aren’t considered, at least outside my occupation (since I’m in an occupation designed to work around the otherwise neglect of the concept), and I thought of running this by.
Back in the old days, it was common for business people to pay their workers more honestly, as in based on what they thought the worker seemed to deserve. Often the workers would seem underwhelmed. Organized criminals would then step in and say “you’ll get more out of us” and so that part of society grew. For some reason, the first thing within the mind of the people in charge, trying to assess everything, was “let’s invent this thing, we might call it the minimum wage”. Alrighty. So this side thinking, what do we think of it? Something happened, right?
So here is where the train of thought works into the picture. Matters of monetization are just one arena up the sleeve of bad actors. A lot of people feel abruptly socially isolated. When this happens, instinct is often to seek out companions. Social life might be dead or people might be avoidant. Someone I know is in such a situation. Along comes what might be called a bad actor. To them, they might see a potential extension of themselves with freedom of minimal effort. And voila, someone new joins the “bad crowd” or “dysfunctional crowd”.
Watching this unfold myself, I think to myself. Places have a “minimum reference point” for the topic of exchange/payment/whatever the word is, so then what does the non-thinking come from to apply this thought to the whole isolation thing mentioned? Anyone here have people they know who were absorbed into a bad part of society when everything seemed dead and thought “well, it’s not like anyone else was going to give them what they need”?
I read the whole thing multiple times and still have no idea what you’re proposing
Right there with you. I understood none of it so here’s chatGPT’s intrepretation of it:
They reminisce about how, historically, business people paid workers based on perceived merit, leading to feelings of underwhelm among workers. This dissatisfaction opened the door for organized criminals who promised better compensation, thus fostering a shadow economy. This historical anecdote sets up a discussion about the introduction of the minimum wage as a regulatory response to such economic exploitation.
The author then draws a parallel between this economic dynamic and social dynamics. Just as bad actors exploited workers’ dissatisfaction, they argue that social isolation makes individuals vulnerable to negative influences. When people feel isolated and lack social support, they might be more likely to fall into bad company, similar to how workers turned to criminals for better pay.
The crux of the argument is that just as there is a “minimum wage” to ensure fair economic treatment, there might be a need for a “minimum reference point” in social contexts to prevent isolation and the subsequent vulnerability to bad actors. The author is pondering why society doesn’t apply the same proactive thinking to prevent social isolation as it does to prevent economic exploitation.
The concluding thoughts suggest that the author has observed people being drawn into negative social circles due to a lack of alternatives, similar to how workers once turned to criminals. They are calling for a societal reflection on how to provide better social support and prevent people from being lured into detrimental situations due to loneliness or isolation.
Assuming this is correct I kind of understand what OP is saying but I still don’t get what they’re actually suggesting. Some form of mandatory socialization for isolated people perhaps?
I mean that’s not inaccurate.
As a person whose first language isn’t English I didn’t understand anything they said
As a native English speaker, I didn’t either.
Which part is confusing?
I found it very confusing between …
I’ve definitely shared this […]
… and …
[…] “well, it’s not like anyone else was going to give them what they need”?
Give the biggest example of a part that confused you.
I’m not sure I can give a larger part that 100% of it. I would recommend that you follow the advice of Northrop Frye and sit down and think before writing. The number of people who are misunderstanding or plain old not understanding what you are suggesting (if anything) should be a strong clue that you have communicated with stunning ineptness. To cite the linked document, these people (myself included) don’t know “whether [you] are pregnant or just have gas on the stomach”.
Learn structure. Learn expression. Learn, in short, to think, remembering, as per Frye, that “there is no such thing as an inarticulate idea waiting to have the right words wrapped around it” but rather that “ideas do not exist until they have been incorporated into words”.
Then, once you’ve actually solidified the thoughts in your own head so you understand yourself what they mean, try to communicate them again. You’ll find a lot less frustration that way.
Suppose I was writing an equation. If it was incalculable, it would be due to having structurally written a part wrong. If not, anyone mathematical enough could solve it. If there is ambiguity, something can be rearranged until someone can triangulate what is being communicated based on what they all interpretationally have in common. That’s why I ask. In terms of structure/expression, only one would be an issue and I actively ask about it.
Your job here is to pitch an idea that others do not currently accept. Whether they do not accept this idea because they disagree with it and need persuasion, or simply have never heard of it, it is incumbent upon you to communicate this idea effectively. If you do not communicate this idea effectively, your idea is stillborn. Hence Frye’s position of ideas not existing until they’ve been incorporated into words.
It is your responsibility to express your ideas using the five Cs: Correct, Complete, Concise, Courteous, and Clear. Failure in any of these is going to lose you your chance to persuade others of your concepts. Notably it is not incumbent upon anybody else to try and tease the five Cs out from you. There’s a whole lot of ideas out there competing for the attention of people, and if your ideas aren’t structured in a way that makes people want to read them, they won’t spend the time. They’ll move on to the ideas that are properly communicated.
Given your screed above, I’ll do you a solid and critique it piece by piece. Every so often I’ll parenthetically add one of the five Cs I think you’ve broken like this: (Courteous).
I’ve definitely shared this concept or observation or whatever you want to call it before, but recent events have made me think of it again. I should clarify first that what I base this train of thought on isn’t entirely something that clicks for me, something I might not get into expressing, but it definitely makes you or at least me wonder why the implications in the train of thought aren’t considered, at least outside my occupation (since I’m in an occupation designed to work around the otherwise neglect of the concept), and I thought of running this by.
The first paragraph is rambling and incoherent (Clear). There’s at least three ideas expressed in there, without linkage internally (Clear), and no visible relationship to the rest of your essay. It strikes me as ranging from entirely irrelevant—nobody cares if you’ve expressed this before, nobody cares what your vague and unnamed occupation is, etc.—(Concise) to flat-out confusing and head-scratching—the entirety of the second sentence, even if it were relevant (which I rather doubt) should be taken out back and shot, replaced by at least a pair of sentences, possibly more, that actually communicate—(Clear).
Back in the old days, it was common for business people to pay their workers more honestly, as in based on what they thought the worker seemed to deserve.
How old are we talking here? At no point in my nearly 60 years of life, nor in my father’s life before me, does this describe how salaries were assigned. (Salaries have always seemed to be assigned as “whatever the bosses think they can get away with paying”…) If this is your thesis statement, it is absolutely unsupported by most people’s lived experience, I’d guess, and thus is a big breach of (Correct). If you have receipts, naturally, that would be fine, but you don’t supply them, which is a breach of (Complete). So which is it? Incorrect or incomplete?
Often the workers would seem underwhelmed.
This statement is so vague it could be held up as an example of how “vaguebooking” escaped the confines of Facebook and bled into Lemmy. (Concise) (Clear)
Organized criminals would then step in and say “you’ll get more out of us” and so that part of society grew.
And again, more receipts are needed. This is such a bizarre explanation for the nature of criminal enterprise and its history in humanity that if you don’t substantiate it this is just going to make people stare at you and then check your temperature quickly if you were to say it in person. (Correct) (Complete), one of the two.
For some reason, the first thing within the mind of the people in charge, trying to assess everything, was “let’s invent this thing, we might call it the minimum wage”. Alrighty. So this side thinking, what do we think of it? Something happened, right?
And here we fall into a straight-up example of purest word salad. (Clear) I have absolutely no idea what it is you’re even trying to communicate here. Which leads us to the next paragraph.
So here is where the train of thought works into the picture.
This is a complete non sequitur from the previous paragraph. There’s no linking of the concept(s) of the previous paragraph to guide the reader’s thought. You’re just back to mentioning this vaguely-articulated “train of thought” from the first paragraph that has not yet even come close to being introduced. The result is confusion. (Clear)
Matters of monetization are just one arena up the sleeve of bad actors. A lot of people feel abruptly socially isolated. When this happens, instinct is often to seek out companions. Social life might be dead or people might be avoidant. Someone I know is in such a situation. Along comes what might be called a bad actor. To them, they might see a potential extension of themselves with freedom of minimal effort. And voila, someone new joins the “bad crowd” or “dysfunctional crowd”.
And here we finally see your point…ish? You’re saying money isn’t enough; that there needs to be also a “minimum social wage” if I’m reading you correctly. This is actually an intriguing idea that’s worth developi…
Watching this unfold myself, I think to myself. Places have a “minimum reference point” for the topic of exchange/payment/whatever the word is, so then what does the non-thinking come from to apply this thought to the whole isolation thing mentioned?
…DAMMIT! And the development peters out. There’s no exploration of what such a “minimum social wage” might look like. How you’d measure socialization. How you’d prevent bad actors from gaming whatever rules you came up with (like they game minimum wage). No definitions. No expansion of ideas. No nothing. Definitely this is not a pregnancy, it is just gas on the stomach, to invoke Frye again.
Anyone here have people they know who were absorbed into a bad part of society when everything seemed dead and thought “well, it’s not like anyone else was going to give them what they need”?
And here’s a segue away from the actual idea’s ghost and back into vague and meandering non sequitur.
This is why you’re getting faced with confusion instead of robust discussion.
If you really want to have a robust discussion you need to learn to communicate your ideas better. You should probably pick up a book on informational writing (technical writing, essay writing, etc.) and maybe even take a class on it to have a teacher assess your writing (in far greater detail than I did!) to improve it. That way you’ll express more than gas on the stomach.
In line with a part of what I was saying, is it always one’s fault if another person doesn’t understand? This isn’t what one would call “deflecting”, success comes from both ends (one could yell into the void, but is there anyone there who may hear or is it all deaf). I would not blame someone else if this was an issue. For a third time, it’s why I may say to give specific pointers (which nobody has done yet), which would also allow one to know what to dissect, not that two of the five things you mentioned aren’t opposites, as well as range between objective (correctness/completeness when it comes to that) and relative. People ran the whole thing by an algorithm which didn’t have this issue, but then people said they had the same problem from the algorithm, so I’d take a guess and say maybe it’s not just a me thing. Also keep in mind (and this addresses several parts of your dissection), but the first part of all of this is also contextually a recap of a previous inquiry, and much ambiguity comes from the efforts to contrast the two societal concepts a second time (also, does one really need to be ultra specific every time they use an adage like “the old days”?)
“Attention shoppers! We have a lost ChatGPT named Call Me Lenny who was found in the Casual Conversation section of our store. You can find him at the information desk of our instance. Thank you.”
Could you rephrase your proposed law in a few bullet points?
I’m not sure what the objective is here. Being more mindful of sustainable business?
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Current law says people must follow wage law for workers
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This law is based on organized criminals gaming the competition
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Current law does not say people should give a certain level of social investment
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But should this be considered since it’s another avenue
Okay. I think I understand.
Right now wages are taxed, and companies paying wages are also taxed, that tax money goes to the government. The government is an organization of the people. Shouldn’t the taxes count as investing back into the social structure?
I don’t mean the social structure. I mean citizens. Company. Companions. Those people who this place is typically all about. Some would say comradery itself is like money.
- Company offers a person a job for a certain amount of money.
- Person works the job
- Company pays person the amount of money agreed
What would you add?
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Person is also provided for their social needs, parallel to the monetary needs.
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Person works the job
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Person goes home not feeling they need to hang out with that bad influence a few houses down because they wouldn’t need to under these circumstance
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Crime lowers itself because criminals hired to look for the isolated can’t find any low hanging fruit
I don’t understand, do you want social services to be handled by private business instead of the government?
Social services as in what I’m talking about (asking because I never specifically mentioned that)? Nevertheless, anything that works out works, I’m not partial when it comes to that.
Okay let’s game a scenario, I own a mobile coffee cart. I need somebody to push the card around and sell coffee to people. I find somebody to push the card around and sell coffee. And I pay them x per day.
How do I also provide for their social needs? As a coffee cart service, I can’t provide a break room, the employees are out on their own beats. What would this social structure look like?
Well… the social problem described does/would remain. The execution of the response though is another story. It should be noted the IRS (or whatever the equivalent is in other places) oversees a lot of that business stuff, and that level of things often overlooks matters of wage on a small scale, which here might include the coffee stall thing. So it wouldn’t be alien to chalk up the oversight you bring up to the business type, even if it’s not something anyone looks forward to.
My occupation is very conceptual in its nature, it’s inspired by and one might say connected to a company in Israel called Personal Heroes, which people might know by their explanation of themselves of being to charity what criminal records are to crime. Before I moved to where I am now, they, in a possible effort to maybe make the world a better place, attempted to brainstorm a construct that would act as a makeshift answer to everything I mentioned, along with the already-existent aspects of itself which were inspired by Personal Heroes. It’s the kind of thing you might see on Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den, even though they were never consulted, and such things often go through several drafts/revisions/restructures. The current way it works for us in this part of the occupation is that deals are made which create incentive which is then channeled into a call to combat the bad influences I mentioned by removing their low hanging fruit, which involves competition. In a way, it could be compared to a hookup service if it was with a business model. It works though in a rather rickety way.
Person is also provided for their social needs, parallel to the monetary needs.
Here’s the problem in your thoughts: “social needs” are undefined, and they’re different for everyone. Money is a common denominator, a universal tool for meeting material needs pretty much regardless of what they are. You need food? No need to grow it, spend money. You need a pet? No need to go out and domesticate an animal; spend money. You need a house? No need to build it, spend money.
So what you need to do is come up with a common denominator the bridges the gaps between people’s differing social needs, otherwise you can’t systemise meeting those needs and thus can’t build any social/government infrastructure to do so. You need friends? No need to go out and make them, do _____ instead. Need intimacy? No need to primp or preen, do _____ instead.
And then, how do you stop this “social administration” (for lack of a better name) from being corrupted and turned against the populace?
It doesn’t necessitate an agency if that’s what you’re wondering. It would be more something that can be defined as akin to a norm with systemic aspects in how functionality is ensured but with the gaps filled culturally.
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After going back and forth for a bit in the threads below, I’m going to say the plan isn’t workable.
As far as I can tell the core thesis here is Businesses should be responsible for the social well being of a employee outside of the business
Without a concrete definition of what well being actually means, we can’t have a productive discussion here, but its moot. Whatever definition you provide, a business will simply pre-select employees to already satisfy the well-being standard to be eligible for employment.
Looking for a happy employee from a two parent home with a great social life and no drug problem, living in a low crime neighborhood to work 8 hours a day at my coffee shop
Typically businesses become responsible for employee benefits in broken systems where they want to externalize the cost of the benefit without raising taxes (like the USA), but in well function social democratic societies the government actually provides benefits directly via taxes (Scandinavia)
I thought at least the discussion could be considered a good exercise. But everyone frets the small stuff :(
The big issue, is you haven’t given us anything concrete to discuss.
Every single question in this post is just trying to get you to give a concrete example so we can talk about it.
I don’t think this is something that can changed with laws. It has to be a cultural thing or else there wouldn’t be that same weight / understanding behind why they need to do it and actually trying to socialize.
Also socialization isn’t as easily quantifiable as money is and once you start doing that then it loses something in the process.
Why not both?
Because trying to make laws around socialization, at least for businesses, will lead to them just optimizing how to be just within the bounds of the law which pushes the problem down further and they have to create a new law for it. This is worse for socialization because it’s ambiguous meaning it can be “satisfied” without really being satisfied.
It’s like a parent telling a child a rule for the house without the child understanding why. The child will follow the rules because there is expected punishment but it is fragile. If the child understands why and agrees then the child will follow the rules and it will be robust.
So yeah you can do both but I think only one of them actually solves the issue, the other just delays it.
Edit: added apostrophes.
In a way, you wouldn’t be wrong, though I like to think of this as being pushed into the realm of experimentation. Even the wage laws everyone knows of were once thought of like this. Not denying impracticality, just saying it seems worth fidgeting on from the drawing board, that and the fact it does describe a real phenomenon.
A minimum level of socialization?
That’s one way one could put it.