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The contributions dont need to be unique, only essential, like World of Warcraft at it's height needed its large team of people to bust ass to push content regularly otherwise the game has content droughts, which means players get bored and drop their subs, which means the games not making them money. You NEED the raw manpower (very specialized manpower in many many cases for game dev, WoW's visual art teams, sound design teams, encounter design, and cinematics teams being all world class and the parts of the game that people consistently enjoy even during WoW's rough patches) Bobby Kotick isn't making World of Warcraft successful, the developers are (were?) making World of Warcraft successful. - Zambrah
People that pour concrete and tighten screws are essential to constructing a building, but the architects and team leaders are the ones that have higher value. It's the same in the game industry.
Is Kotick paid too much? Probably. If I were in charge of a game studio I would give every employee substantial stock and/or rev share on top of their salary. But I'm not a CEO of a company yet, nor do I have even a small team. Because the games I want to make, or play are usually niche.
You can blame Activision-Blizzard, or Ubisoft or what ever big game studio / publisher for bad employee practices, but I blame the public as well. People keep buying the same games and microtransactions over and over again. We go to the same movies and listen to the same garbage music, because its comfortable. And the big companies in turn pump out the ole comfortably numb sludge.
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I'd say your last point is a bit of a non-sequitur. People liking comfortably shale media isn't necessarily immediately connected to the ethics of the production of said media, or the value distribution among the creators of that media.
Sure, consumers should try to also care about the ethics behind a product when buying it, but that is (probably intentionally) very hard to do because the unethical stuff is very often hidden deep in the supply chain, and even if not, it is generally not openly declared on the product. And you usually don't really have a lot of ethical options either.
But i have no problem imagine a company producing shale media ethically.
And no one is claiming that all work has the same value. Not even Karl Marx claimed that. The problem is that some people leech way too much value from the work of a group because they are the ones in control of how that value gets distributed.
I kind of view the modern billionaires similar to feudal lords. Instead of owning land, they own distributed companies, but the basic idea is the same.
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On July 27 2021 13:49 Simberto wrote:
I'd say your last point is a bit of a non-sequitur. People liking comfortably shale media isn't necessarily immediately connected to the ethics of the production of said media, or the value distribution among the creators of that media.
Sure, consumers should try to also care about the ethics behind a product when buying it, but that is (probably intentionally) very hard to do because the unethical stuff is very often hidden deep in the supply chain, and even if not, it is generally not openly declared on the product. And you usually don't really have a lot of ethical options either.
But i have no problem imagine a company producing shale media ethically.
And no one is claiming that all work has the same value. Not even Karl Marx claimed that. The problem is that some people leech way too much value from the work of a group because they are the ones in control of how that value gets distributed.
I kind of view the modern billionaires similar to feudal lords. Instead of owning land, they own distributed companies, but the basic idea is the same.
Worth mentioning Medieval Peasants Worked Less And Vacationed More Than Modern Americans Do
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Idealizing medieval peasant lifestyle. That’s gold right there.
If Lords and Kings allowed their workers to work less than forty hours a week, it’s because that’s all they could squeeze out of them. Laundry could take 15-20 hours back then. And that’s just one “house work” job. But of course why would an author think about that when they have an axe to grind.
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On July 27 2021 22:19 Husyelt wrote:
Idealizing medieval peasant lifestyle. That’s gold right there.
If Lords and Kings allowed their workers to work less than forty hours a week, it’s because that’s all they could squeeze out of them. Laundry could take 15-20 hours back then. And that’s just one “house work” job. But of course why would an author think about that when they have an axe to grind.
I don't think anyone is idealizing medieval peasant lifestyle. GH used that comparison to show that modern US working class lifestyle sucks balls.
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On July 28 2021 01:12 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2021 22:19 Husyelt wrote:
Idealizing medieval peasant lifestyle. That’s gold right there.
If Lords and Kings allowed their workers to work less than forty hours a week, it’s because that’s all they could squeeze out of them. Laundry could take 15-20 hours back then. And that’s just one “house work” job. But of course why would an author think about that when they have an axe to grind. I don't think anyone is idealizing medieval peasant lifestyle. GH used that comparison to show that modern US working class lifestyle sucks balls.
Can you clarify how that article is not idealizing peasant lifestyle? You don’t have to be an anthropologist to sniff out falseness like that article.
“Consider a typical working day in the medieval period,” said Schor. “It stretched from dawn to dusk (sixteen hours in summer and eight in winter), but, as Bishop Pilkington has noted, work was intermittent — called to halt for breakfast, lunch, the customary afternoon nap, and dinner.“
Ah yes, a leisurely 16 hour work day of back breaking work, but don’t worry, they get a halt for breakfast lunch and then a nap before dinner. And again, this is all excluding the actual housework and chores that fill up the remaining time.
It’s far better to compare some European countries work lifestyle, (because they do have healthier schedules,) than to do some revisionist history of 800 years ago.
Edit: I don’t want to come across as too adversarial, apologize for the bullshit comment.
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On July 28 2021 01:12 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2021 22:19 Husyelt wrote:
Idealizing medieval peasant lifestyle. That’s gold right there.
If Lords and Kings allowed their workers to work less than forty hours a week, it’s because that’s all they could squeeze out of them. Laundry could take 15-20 hours back then. And that’s just one “house work” job. But of course why would an author think about that when they have an axe to grind. I don't think anyone is idealizing medieval peasant lifestyle. GH used that comparison to show that modern US working class lifestyle sucks balls.
Correct.
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On July 27 2021 22:19 Husyelt wrote:
Idealizing medieval peasant lifestyle. That’s gold right there.
If Lords and Kings allowed their workers to work less than forty hours a week, it’s because that’s all they could squeeze out of them. Laundry could take 15-20 hours back then. And that’s just one “house work” job. But of course why would an author think about that when they have an axe to grind.
I have read the article before.They are talking about agricultural labourers.So when it is grain harvest time they may do 14 hour days, but they do less work at other times.
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On July 28 2021 02:28 Husyelt wrote:
Ah yes, a leisurely 16 hour work day of back breaking work, but don’t worry, they get a halt for breakfast lunch and then a nap before dinner. And again, this is all excluding the actual housework and chores that fill up the remaining time.
It's an article promoting a book. The main statement is that leisure time in medi evil Europe is often portrayed incorrectly. It's not a scientific essay or an opinion piece on capitalism. In no way it idealizes anything, that's what you read into the article. There's just a few shallow lines on this and that with a bunch of quotes from ancient texts.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of questionable things in there, such as Germany doing well in terms of giving leeway to the working force. Which seems to be true, if you do not control for part time workers and minimal wage contracts and other forms of ways to optimize statistics.
By the way, household work rarely gets into those statistics, so you're right. Only because household work in medi evil times had to be done, doesn't mean it's still a huge issue today, especially if you're trying to analyse hidden discrimination effects of the labour market.
On topic: I don't idealize billionaires and agree with most of what Drone said.
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I like the way you're thinking about this question. Personally, I see them as a net positive because wealth is not a zero-sum game.
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Northern Ireland26854 Posts
On August 04 2021 09:20 AirbladeOrange wrote:
I like the way you're thinking about this question. Personally, I see them as a net positive because wealth is not a zero-sum game.
Power does tend to be, and they wield plenty of it.
There have been periods in history where so much additional wealth created that it’s pulled everybody’s lot up. We don’t appear to be living in such a time, given various metrics.
The distribution starts to matter when weighed against an increase in certain expenses, or erosions/attempted erosions of working conditions and the likes.
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On August 02 2021 23:30 GeckoXp wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2021 02:28 Husyelt wrote:
Ah yes, a leisurely 16 hour work day of back breaking work, but don’t worry, they get a halt for breakfast lunch and then a nap before dinner. And again, this is all excluding the actual housework and chores that fill up the remaining time.
It's an article promoting a book. The main statement is that leisure time in medi evil Europe is often portrayed incorrectly. It's not a scientific essay or an opinion piece on capitalism. In no way it idealizes anything, that's what you read into the article. There's just a few shallow lines on this and that with a bunch of quotes from ancient texts. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of questionable things in there, such as Germany doing well in terms of giving leeway to the working force. Which seems to be true, if you do not control for part time workers and minimal wage contracts and other forms of ways to optimize statistics. By the way, household work rarely gets into those statistics, so you're right. Only because household work in medi evil times had to be done, doesn't mean it's still a huge issue today, especially if you're trying to analyse hidden discrimination effects of the labour market. On topic: I don't idealize billionaires and agree with most of what Drone said.
I only focused so much on this, because it’s used as a gotcha, as GreenHorizons put it.
“Did you know that Americans work far more than medieval peasants did? Capitalism is bad see?”
When I typed in “medieval peasants hours worked”, that stupid book and the many articles tagging along was at the top. And it’s worse than that since Google just puts in “also asked” and it goes to the same article. All of it surmised from a single excerpt the author found to make their books argument sexier.
The living conditions and horrible environments back then made any outside work unbearable. 8 hours or 16 hours. It was practically slavery. People can harp on Amazon all they want, but at the end of the day you technically can leave that job and hopefully find something better. Now this becomes a problem when Amazon kills off local competition. I’ll agree when those situations arise, and they do.
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asking this on a predominantly left leaning site and expecting anything other than predominantly left leaning answers is pretty funny.
personally, without getting too involved into a discussion that is very complex and sophisticated, i am of the opinion that making blanket statements that "all billionaires deserve hate because of their very existence as billionaires" is fucking stupid. to op, if youre genuinely interested in a proper answer to your question, you need to try and conduct better research than ask the question on a gaming site and receive answers from people who fail to even understand that the billionaires dont actually have the ability to distribute the money that theyre apparently worth.
i mean some of the points here are straight up asking for socialist societies and they probably dont even realise it.
theres a lot of shit that should and could be done better, especially in relation to taxation and the overall management of wealth in any given country, but to put all of society's problems on "the evil billionaires" is so god damn naive and ignorant its ridiculous.
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On August 05 2021 17:55 evilfatsh1t wrote:
asking this on a predominantly left leaning site and expecting anything other than predominantly left leaning answers is pretty funny.
I think there's been a pretty good variety of answers, given with nuance and the reasoning behind them. I asked it as a philosophical question, not a political one. But anyway thank you for your input as well. Just out of curiosity, what site do you think I should have posted this on instead? The only internet communities I belong to are this one and a mental health forum.
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i dont know about sites, but just research information in general.
learn about economy, various political/social systems, politics, history, psychology, business management. theres probably more related topics that ive missed too. you may ask whether some of these topics are even relevant, but trust me they are all factors in the answer to your question.
truthfully theres too much to learn from scratch to develop a clear understanding in a matter of days or weeks, but thats the complexity of such a question. theres also no guarantee that you discover an answer for yourself that isnt completely biased or incorrect.
to be fair despite tl's left leaning tendencies i would consider tl to overall be a good site to get opinions on both ends of the spectrum. you shouldnt seek information from a political perspective but if you do come across information with a political colour to it look at what people are saying on both sides.
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Northern Ireland26854 Posts
I’m pretty sure users in this thread understand that a billionaire’s estimated net worth is not available to them as liquid assets, nor have most responses claimed billionaires are the root of all evil or innately deserve hate, closest sentiment to that would generally be ‘a system that produces billionaires kind of sucks’.
Nuance and additional context are of course generally good things to pursue, in the case of billionaires most pro-billionaire points tend to be points in favour of the companies they are/were involved with, in stimulation of the wider economy, provision of additional employment etc.
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EPT
