r/WorkReform • u/zzill6 š¤ Join A Union • Jul 24 '26
š” Venting Unregulated Capitalism will kill us.
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u/PirateJohn75 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
I was in Air Force acquisitions for six years.Ā When I went to the one-month acquisition school, one of the instructors was talking about specification writing.
He said that he used to use the Air Force chocolate cookie spec (a document of more than a dozen pages of how to make chocolate chip cookies) as an example of spec writing run amok...
...until he met the guy who wrote it.
The spec was written because the Air Force would contract out cookies to feed an entire base, and contractors would constantly try to ride the razor edge of what they could get away with.Ā Finally the Air Force had to write a spec to make sure that they weren't getting screwed over and also to make sure the contractors didn't make cookies that would make an entire base full of airmen sick.
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u/thatblerd03 Jul 24 '26
That reminds me of how musicians would make contracts with venues that include weirdly specific things like "no green m&ms" backstage. If the odd requests were ignored it was a sign to check the other requirements, like electrical wattage/capacity.
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u/usr_bin_laden Jul 24 '26
other requirements, like electrical wattage/capacity.
specifically life-safety requirements like Pyrotechnics and Heavy Rigging!
if you can't get the food and beer rider correct, how do I know you're not going to burn the whole nightclub down and cause a historic tragedy?
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u/gay_annabeth š” Decent Housing For All Jul 24 '26
I get the feeling you have a specific one in mind, probably the same one I do, I just can't think of the name of the club
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u/usr_bin_laden Jul 24 '26
There's multiple. Nightlife accidents are often recorded as huge tragedies in cultural memory because it's people having fun, dis-proportionally young people, and almost always highly preventable.
My cousin knew people involved in Ghost Ship and I always wonder if I had seen the venue: would I have known it was unsafe? I have been to a lot of warehouse venues....
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u/smarmy1625 Jul 24 '26
take your pick
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u/gay_annabeth š” Decent Housing For All Jul 24 '26
ok I guess it happens more often than I thought... should've expected that, just a little dumb on my part
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u/Wise_Quality_5083 Jul 24 '26
Van Halen
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u/FardoBaggins Jul 24 '26
And musicians nowadays use this practice to just be oddly specific luxury riders bec Iām a rockstar which has nothing to do with theirs or crew safety.
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u/tehlemmings Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Oddly, this is the one thing LiveNation actually helped with.
Artists frequently end up with entire tours playing only LN venues because of the way LN's contracts work. One odd consequence of this is that venues all need a baseline level of competency and "not fucking over our repeat customer" in order to keep their operation running now.
It's sort of like a mob protection scheme. LN will help you, but if you fuck up and hurt the client they really care about, it won't go well for you.
That, and there's just more venues now. The way production is set up, you'd just never book a venue that can't host you because someone else will be able to. You're not dealing with the one local venue hoping for the best anymore. And there's enough large touring artists that it's easier to copy homework and find the bad actors.
Plus scale is just out of wack. A small venue trying to lie and say they can fit arena equipment... It just wouldn't even make sense.
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u/Hour_Tour Jul 24 '26
But also, having worked years as a house light tech I never saw the green room rider, so funky M&Ms wouldn't have had any bearing on my ability to deliver on the tech rider.
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u/Double_Rice_5765 Jul 24 '26
My uncle played in a famous orchestra, he said there were 2 main frequencies that classical musicians tune their instruments to, if i remember right, one is some ancient one used by one of the big guys like mozart, when they would tune to their local church bell or something sonit wouldnt sound weird to the locals, and the other one is some modern scientific frequency thats like a comprimise between all the archaic european standard bell towers from diffeteny cities or cause it sounds the best to humans or something, i cant remember which, but its basically tradition vs science, and according to him, there were MULTIPLE fist fights about which of these were superior, despite all their contracts clearly stating that they would only tune to one of them. And any y time i feel like the world is getting too crazy i just think of those classical musicians going full street beefs on each other.
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u/PolyMorpheusPervert Jul 24 '26
This is the 440Hz (modern) versus 432Hz (classic) debate.
If you just look at the cymatics of frequencies you can see that 432 is more harmonious.
In a universe that is constantly seeking harmony, it would behoove us be like the universe.
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u/galacticjeef Jul 24 '26
Yeah this uses āchakrasā as evidence and claims that the 440 hz tuning was came up with by nazis to make people more placid, I would not cite this as a scientific source
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u/A_Thorny_Petal Jul 25 '26
Van Halen, it was basically "no Brown M&M's or we can absolutely wreck the hotel room on your dime, trash the venue, not play and you still have to pay us all in full."
It was hidden deep in the middle of a contract that included DETAILED technical specifications (that affected not only performance, but crew, venue and the band's safety) on electrical/power/grounding needs.
The band could walk into the green room, look at the bowl of M&M's and if there was a brown one it was clear that they absolutely had not read the contract with enough detail to actually follow any of the technical guidelines.
Kinda fucking brilliant, actually. What sounds like rockstar excess is actually a savvy safety check.
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u/BaronAleksei Jul 25 '26
Either that, or the venue had read the contract in full, signed it, and then chosen to not follow at least one part of it.
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u/ADGx27 Jul 24 '26
That was Van Halen IIRC. One stipulation was a bowl of M&Mās with no brown ones in it
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u/fadermango Jul 24 '26
Live music touring tech - I have a saying, "There's never just one cockroach".
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u/WorldlinessUsual4528 Jul 24 '26
We were just talking about this in another sub, about some of the "stupid" rules that managers implement. They got implemented because someone kept trying to cut corners and not do the job they were paid to do. Not because we enjoy micromanaging.
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u/smarmy1625 Jul 24 '26
Air Force chocolate cookie spec
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u/PirateJohn75 Jul 24 '26
Looks like it has been updated a few times since I went to acquisitions school in 1997 š
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u/BionicTriforce Jul 24 '26
Ahhh so this is specifically for MRE cookies that makes a bit more sense. Those need to be super accurate to make sure they last as long as they need to.
I was thinking this was more for how cookies were baked fresh.
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u/smarmy1625 Jul 25 '26
maybe I had the wrong one. this one has recipes
https://www.dla.mil/Portals/104/Documents/TroopSupport/Subsistence/Rations/mil/44072.pdf
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u/GonzoKata Jul 24 '26
so, the first thing you learn is, don't trust the 'free market' š
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u/nikkiscreeches Jul 24 '26
The tags on mattresses and pillows are there so that the consumer doesn't buy a toxic bed/pillow due to the literal garbage they were putting in them. Deregulation has helped no one but companies. If employers could give you less breaks, no meals, no water they would.
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u/GoodDogBrent Jul 24 '26
there was a history lesson i never forgot where the church could side with the king or the people. the church, which needed money, had to keep the king happy because the people had no money. so it had to cater to two very different demographics.
it feels the same way today. except that the people are so poor that there is even less incentive to cater to them. and that is why present deregulation is so rampant. present governments just dont see any profit in helping people.
another trend i see is skyrocketing prices. imagine bread costs $5 and is taxed at 10%. thats $.50 of tax collected per bread. but if prices go to $10 then tax revenue is $1, even though tax rates never increased the revenue did. in this fashion governments get more tax revenue, people suffer more, but corporations also pay more taxes and since people are so fucking poor its the only logical thing for governments to poach.
so we will keep seeing more deregulation because it increases tax revenue where the money is even if it fucks over the population because they are poor.
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u/Shigglyboo Jul 24 '26
Governments arenāt supposed to be profitable. Itās supposed to be made of citizens to benefit citizens. For us by us type thing. No corporate money belongs in government. Thatās what taxes are for.
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u/GoodDogBrent Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
yes, they're not supposed to.
supposed to.
look up 'police goals' and think about why police have
quotasgoals.or you can come up with your own idea as to why prices of everything keeps going up and the government doesn't care.
turns out when city budgets are created they already factor in the amount of fines they will collect as future revenue.
when NYPD protested against deblasio the way they protested (because they're not allowed to go on strike) was by not giving out fines.
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u/MoneyBeeeee Jul 24 '26
a toxic bed/pillow due to the literal garbage they were putting in them.
Bonus round; it's still kinda garbage in there, as modern memory foam generally contains flame retardants, formaldehyde, and a cornucopia of other chemicals.
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u/disfiguroo Jul 24 '26
I work in food safety, and I can confirm that if it wasnāt for vigilant oversight and fines, weād have literal poison in almost every food. No oversight, no fines? Might as well not have the regulations.
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u/RunawayHobbit Jul 24 '26
Itās the same with boat stuff too. My spouse was a vessel inspector for the US Coast Guard. The amount of bellyaching he had to push through just to do his job was insane. And the stuff he was making them fix was just diabolical. Iām talking literal gaping holes rusted away in the engine room floor that someone tried to cover up with a piece of carpet, asbestos in the walls they wanted the crew to renovate, lifeboats that were non-functional bc the system to lower them into the water didnāt workā¦ he would have passenger vessels run lifeboat drills and one ferry literally ran over the dummy lifeboats lmao
You want another Titanic? Costa Concordia? That one Greek ferry that sank and killed like everyone on board? THEN LISTEN TO THE FUCKING COAST GUARD
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u/IamElylikeEli 18d ago
reminds me of that one youtube home inspector that says he has Never inspected a home that is actually built to Code, every single one needs severe repairs. most people use the inspector recommended by the builder and oddly Those inspectors never have any issuesā¦
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Jul 24 '26
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u/Moneia āļø Tax The Billionaires Jul 24 '26
Looking at the history of the regulatory bodies shows why we need regulations. The one that sticks with me is The 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide Incident
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u/DAVENP0RT Jul 24 '26
For me, it's the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
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u/Moneia āļø Tax The Billionaires Jul 24 '26
Ooofff - yeah, that's another of the reasons to distrust anyone who says that we need to reduce safety\quality regulations
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u/Vaeon Jul 24 '26
Ooofff - yeah, that's another of the reasons to distrust anyone who says that we need to reduce safety\quality regulations
So....the entire Republican party?
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u/Moneia āļø Tax The Billionaires Jul 24 '26
Yeah, whether the 'honest' ones or the ones who try to hide it like Libertarians
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u/dumbestsmartest Jul 24 '26
I'm so confused. Why would they use antifreeze, a known toxic substance by that time, to make the liquid compound? What am I missing?
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u/the_post_of_tom_joad Jul 24 '26
The medicine that killed Dr. Calhoun's patients was Elixir Sulfanilamide. During September and October 1937 this drug was responsible for the deaths of more than 100 people in 15 states, as far east as Virginia and as far west as California. The drug and the deaths led to the passage of the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which increased FDA's authority to regulate drugs. Sulfanilamide, a drug used to treat streptococcal infections, had been shown to have dramatic curative effects and had been used safely for some time in tablet and powder form. In June 1937, however, a salesman for the S.E. Massengill Co., in Bristol, Tenn., reported a demand in the southern states for the drug in liquid form. The company's chief chemist and pharmacist, Harold Cole Watkins, experimented and found that sulfanilamide would dissolve in diethylene glycol. The company control lab tested the mixture for flavor, appearance, and fragrance and found it satisfactory. Immediately, the company compounded a quantity of the elixir and sent shipments-- 633 of them--all over the country. U.S. Food and Drug Administration www.fda.gov The new formulation had not been tested for toxicity. At the time the food and drugs law did not require that safety studies be done on new drugs. Selling toxic drugs was, undoubtedly, bad for business and could damage a firm's reputation, but it was not illegal. Because no pharmacological studies had been done on the new sulfanilamide preparation, Watkins failed to note one characteristic of the solution. Diethylene glycol, a chemical normally used as an antifreeze, is a deadly poison
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u/Moneia āļø Tax The Billionaires Jul 24 '26
Reading the paper and checking on Wikipedia, it looks like this was the incident that led to the discovery that Diethylene glycol was toxic.
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u/benk4 Jul 24 '26
Yeah that's a pretty egregious mistake. Shows that they weren't even doing cursory testing of safety though. Probably one guy made that decision and no one checked it.
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u/Moneia āļø Tax The Billionaires Jul 24 '26
I think it sounds egregious now that we have safety testing baked in from top to bottom and a better understanding of how chemicals work in out bodies.
Back then it was probably just another Tuesday
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u/Wise_Quality_5083 Jul 24 '26
Thalidomide. One young badass woman, Dr Frances Kelsey, refused to be bulldozed and saved millions of lives and prevent birth defects.
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u/polopolo05 Jul 24 '26
Capitalisms has killed before and will kill again. This is why you have to keep it in line with regulations.
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u/Downvote_Comforter Jul 24 '26
The scale at which Republicans/conservatives have convinced working class people that "regulation equals bad" is profoundly depressing.
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u/xbromide Jul 24 '26
If a CEO had a magic button that hurt people but increased profits they would be slamming that button in shifts.
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u/LarryCrabCake Jul 24 '26
They do that already just with like 3 extra steps
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u/iskandar- Jul 24 '26
I recommend anyone who thinks government food regulations are unnecessary to read up on Teddy Roosevelt and the meat inspection act...
Yeah... turns out when you don't force corporations to do things safely you end up with poor people getting literally made into ground meat. TLDR, food safety was so bad that workers were regularly getting body parts ripped off and mixed in with the meat.
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Jul 24 '26
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u/iskandar- Jul 24 '26
Yup, great book and Sinclair doesn't get the appreciation he deserves for pushing Teddy to act on what the book described.
For those reading this who may not know, Theodore Roosevelt fucking loathed the author of the book because Sinclair was an avowed Socialist. However, after reading the book and knowing how Sinclair did his research for it even The arch Bull Moose himself was forced to agree that if even 1/4 of the things listed in The Jungle were true, the meat processing business was utterly fucked.
Teddy may have been the bull in the office that forced through reform saying: "radical action must be taken to do away with the efforts of arrogant and selfish greed on the part of the capitalist."
But it was Sinclair and his dogged determination to expose the inner workings of the meat processing corporations that forced him to act.
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u/ChebyshevsBeard Jul 24 '26
Chalk is honestly some of the nicer stuff they were putting in milk. One example that always stuck with me was that they would take the cream because they could process or sell it for more, and then toss ground up livestock brains in to trick people into thinking there was still a layer of cream.Ā
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u/SeriousMite Jul 24 '26
Theyād also put drops of formaldehyde to keep it from spoiling.
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u/analogy_4_anything Jul 24 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/FqRgAIMvPAbaU
People walking around drinking milk and refusing to rot like the Corpse Bride.86
u/Syzygy_Stardust Jul 24 '26
Also borax! Just straight up poisoning entire families for profit.
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u/analogy_4_anything Jul 24 '26
āItās just good business!ā š¤”
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u/TrulyOutrageous42 Jul 24 '26
"we can trust companies to regulate themselves" - US conservatives
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u/Astramancer_ Jul 24 '26
I had a friend who fell hard for glen beck style libertarian nonsense before glen beck went so far off the deep end even fox kicked him out.
One particularly fun conversation we had about why regulations exist is imagine you go to the gas station and pump a gallon of gas and go on your merry way, only to run out of gas again in 5 miles because their gallon was short.
In his world, he'd have no recourse. He apparently should have measured the gas and haggled with the gas station until they came up with a compromise for price/volume.
But his world in his head was... "but a gallon is a gallon? If they gave me less it wouldn't be a gallon" He literally could not comprehend that the only reason why a gallon is a gallon no matter where you go in the US is because the government comes by every month to make sure a gallon is a gallon and fines the ever living shit out of them if it's not.
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u/Radic_Allef_Tist Jul 24 '26
Conservatives have goldfish memory with just about everything. So many of their "rollback" policies are just about scoring cheap, temporary political points with their idiot base while the elite rake in any fiscal benefit. It usually involves some regulatory lesson history taught us.
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u/ELSMurphy Jul 24 '26
All regulations are written in blood. Someone or some thing (usually a lot of someones or some things) died and that's where the regulations came from. Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, Radium clock dial painters, etc.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire led to more than 30 new labor and safety laws, including mandatory unlocked exit doors, automatic sprinkler systems, and regular fire drills. These sweeping reforms were developed by the New York Factory Investigating Commission and later inspired national standards like OSHA.
The legal battles of the Radium Girls led to state occupational disease acts, federal bans on radioactive consumer products, and strict industrial safety standards.
The Donora death fog was a historic air pollution disaster that killed 20 people and sickened nearly 7,000 others in Donora, Pennsylvania, starting on October 27, 1948. It was caused by a weather trap that held poisonous factory smoke close to the ground for five days. This was one of the precursors to the clean air act.
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u/Killdebrant Jul 24 '26
Boomers be like:
āGovernment needs to stay in their lane, government is trying to control too much.. but also OMG THE CHEMICALS THEY USE CAUSE CANCER, WHY IS NO ONE STOPPING THEM!ā
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Jul 24 '26
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u/PM_Me_Your_Kinks369 Jul 24 '26
Those people also forget that EVEN WITH REGULATIONS these corporations constantly break the law and endanger everyone.
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u/Enough_Breadfruit229 Jul 24 '26
If the profit outweighs the fines it's just the cost of doing business
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u/littlebrwnrobot Jul 24 '26
Donāt Tread on Me
Unless youāre a corporate fatcat with no regard for my health, safety, or wellbeing. Then tread on me harder daddy
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u/someoldguyon_reddit Jul 24 '26
Is killing us.
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u/drunkshinobi Jul 24 '26
This. Many are already dead because of it.
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u/polopolo05 Jul 24 '26
Capitalism has killed before and it will kill again...
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u/Teledildonic Jul 24 '26
The Deserter: (he opens his eyes and stares right through you) It was real. I'd seen it. I'd seen it in reality.
Half-Light: Some kind of great terror. Worse than what you've seen.
You: Seen what?
The Deserter: The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone ā everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed. And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death... the sweetest, most courageous people in the world... (he's silent for a second) You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you know.
You: What?
The Deserter: That the bourgeois are not human
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u/polopolo05 Jul 24 '26
That the bourgeois are not human
that is correct they are a cancer... like a hoard of zombies that must consume wealth instead of brains.
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u/No_big_whoop Jul 24 '26
"Give me another bump of that pure, unrefined capitalism"
-MAGA probably
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u/polopolo05 Jul 24 '26
"Give me another bump of that pure, unrefined capitalism"
-every CEO and Billionaire
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u/Anyashadow Jul 24 '26
Remember, The Jungle brought regulations not because people were getting hurt or dying, but because people were revolted about what ended up in their food.
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u/Less_Party Jul 24 '26
Libertarians when you tell them a functioning government is the only thing standing between their compound and the Nestle death squads.
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u/Staff_Guy Jul 24 '26
I am surrounded by people that, quite literally, do not or cannot or will not give these things consideration. Government bad, trump good. That is it, the beginning and ending of their thoughts. They do not want to give any thought or time to politics.
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u/Anthaenopraxia Jul 25 '26
But Trump is in the government, he's even the head of government. How do they maintain that disconnect??
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u/KerissaKenro Jul 24 '26
There are two types of regulation. The ones written in blood, that need to be there for our health and safety. And the ones written by industry giants to squeeze out their competition
The tricky part is figuring out which one is which and eliminating the unfair and corrupt ones and saving the ones vital to saving lives. There does need to be regulation overhaul, but it needs to be done slowly and very carefully by people who know what they are doing and actually care about people. Which means it wonāt happen until we oust corrupt politicians who care more about pleasing their donors than the lives of their constituents
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u/Winter_Persimmon_110 Jul 24 '26
The solution in broad strokes is quite simple. The wealthy must be removed from political influence. This is the point of a socialist revolution.
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u/ripyourlungsdave Jul 24 '26
It should be known that we do still dye milk.
But it's mostly to wash out the ever-so-slightly bloody coloration that can come from overworked udders or the strange coloration that can come from all the hormones and preservatives in it.
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u/SkyFullOfWisteria Jul 24 '26
The sheer horrors of the milk farming and production process is why i stick to milk alternatives now like oatmilk. Im sure if coorporations could they'd absolutely put like lead or something in there as well. Poor cows though :(
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u/polopolo05 Jul 24 '26
I cant do oat milk it makes me too gassy. I normally do soy... almond is unethical. I like rice milk too but its hard to find.
I do occasionally lactose free beef milk.
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u/gamercrafter86 Jul 24 '26
Rice Milk is so delicious, I wish I could find it more easily and it wasn't so expensive
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u/BigDump-a-Roo Jul 24 '26
Calling almond milk unethical while still consuming cow milk is something else. Cow milk requires much more water to make, and also relies heavily on animal torture to mass produce.
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u/Pale_Apartment Jul 24 '26
The reason the tag on mattresses says "don't remove under penalty of federal law" is because mattress companies would fill mattresses with bloody linnens from hospitals and trash. Every single regulation is written in blood. It's so awful that we must defend things like "the polio vaccine".
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u/obmasztirf Jul 24 '26
Capitalism is a cancer meant to consume as much as possible.
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u/PM_Me_Your_Kinks369 Jul 24 '26
They even made a game about it some people may have heard about: MONOPOLY
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u/bomboclawt75 Jul 24 '26
It why American chocolate tastes like literally vomit to Europeans- Butyric acid.
Butyric acid is a fatty acid found in dairy products, giving them a distinct tang. In American milk chocolate, such as Hersheyās, it is either naturally produced via controlled lipolysis (the breakdown of milk fats) or intentionally added. Because it is also the same compound found in human vomit, European and international consumers often describe this chocolate as having a sour or "sickly" taste.
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u/soilfrontier Jul 24 '26
This explains so much. I didn't know this but always couldn't stand the pukey taste of Hershey's chocolate. Bleh.
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u/bomboclawt75 Jul 24 '26
I read it's something to do with it being a cheap way to use spoiled milk.
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u/socool111 Jul 24 '26
One of my favorite stories is that my best friend growing up was always conservative. Normally not socially but like pro guns and free market etc
Then he got married and opened his own businessā¦he realized how easy it was to tax dodge and fuck his employees over, and finally realized that govt regulations are there because you canāt rely on people to do the right thing.
They of course treated their employees very well, especially for the industry, but they are now democrats lol .
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u/Winter_Persimmon_110 Jul 24 '26
Friedrich Engels came from a wealthy family that owned textile mills. He saw how the proverbial sausage is made and became Karl Marx's best friend.
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u/Udder1991 Jul 24 '26
Always reminds me of that picture from a girls science fair project saying how much wood shavings can we put into food before people notice.
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u/cantadmittoposting Jul 24 '26
I know how cynical everyone is about this these days but...
Regulations exist because a democratic, elected government is supposed to represent the body of citizens as a whole against abuses by a small fraction of the population, that's literally the point.
It's collective bargaining power against people who try to break the social contract. Regulations exist because the bulk of all the citizens decided to not allow a small number of unethical citizens continue to injure them (physically or financially).
On top of that, it's extremely important to note that Adam Smith was not an anarchocapitalist, like most theoretical versions of capitalism these days seem to claim. Smith, while "inventing" capitalism as a system, repeatedly stressed that a "free" market only existed in the context of an ethical society that had strong, independent, and unbiased courts and legislatures that specifically existed to stop abuses by monopolistic or power-concentrating greedy elites (well, also sometimes to protect capitalist property, but it was a two way street here, since the root assumption was a fair society). Heck he even straight up worried about the potential of the populace to start glamorizing rich capitalists because he thought that was a really bad idea.
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u/youtalkingtoyou Jul 24 '26
Regulated capitalism is also killing us. Turns out capitalism kills.Ā
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u/Bleezy79 Jul 24 '26
Most of us didnt forget anything. Half of America's voters thought it would be a good idea to elect a lifelong conman fraud insurrectionist as our president. He's doing more damage to this country than any of our enemies could ever imagine. Putin has always wanted to destabilize America and Trump is making sure that happens for him.
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u/Zipeline98 Jul 24 '26
From The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair:
āIt was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and whiteāit would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together.
This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw oneāthere were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale waterāand cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast. Some of it they would make into "smoked" sausageābut as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatine to make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it "special," and for this they would charge two cents more a pound.
Such were the new surroundings in which Elzbieta was placed, and such was the work she was compelled to do. It was stupefying, brutalizing work; it left her no time to think, no strength for anything. She was part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed for the machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence. There was only one mercy about the cruel grindāthat it gave her the gift of insensibility. Little by little she sank into a torporāshe fell silent. She would meet Jurgis and Ona in the evening, and the three would walk home together, often without saying a word. Ona, too, was falling into a habit of silenceāOna, who had once gone about singing like a bird. She was sick and miserable, and often she would barely have strength enough to drag herself home. And there they would eat what they had to eat, and afterward, because there was only their misery to talk of, they would crawl into bed and fall into a stupor and never stir until it was time to get up again, and dress by candlelight, and go back to the machines. They were so numbed that they did not even suffer much from hunger, now; only the children continued to fret when the food ran short.ā
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u/no1ofimport Jul 24 '26
Remember they donāt have all the safety features and quality control because they care about us or the environment but are forced on them because they would poison and kill us all if it could help them make one penny more in profits.
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u/Wonderful_Exit6568 Jul 24 '26
Or lock the doors so no worker can take a break and has to burn in an accident on their ten hour work day.
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u/RedStag86 Jul 25 '26
Theyāre like funny warning signs in public. Every sign/warning has a story.
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u/No_Training6751 Jul 24 '26
Now whoās regulating Government?
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u/reddit_sells_you Jul 24 '26
We are supposed to be. But we are too lazy and too cheap to pony up and play soldier.
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u/Winter_Persimmon_110 Jul 24 '26
Whoever fights for control of it and wins it. In the USA the wealthy fought the monarchists for control and won. In China, Cuba, Laos, DPRK and Vietnam, the working class fought the wealthy for control and won.
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u/hopopo Jul 24 '26
It wasn't companies that were doing that. It is people how make decisions.
It was people who make decisions, it was living and breathing people! People with names, and faces.
Nothing will change until there is no personal responsibility for decisions they make.
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u/Winter_Persimmon_110 Jul 24 '26
This is a take without any trace particles of class consciousness. The people who run the companies have a conflict of interest with the working class employees and consumers.
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u/Winter_Persimmon_110 Jul 24 '26
In regulated capitalism, the capitalists write the regulations. Capitalism kills us. We need socialism.
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u/kingtacticool āļø Tax The Billionaires Jul 24 '26
Turns out even watered down capitalism is going to kill us.
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u/spunkychickpea Jul 24 '26
Correction: Capitalism will kill us.
You may be able to regulate capitalism for a time, but you cannot regulate it forever. The regulations simply slow it down.
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u/Stunning-Pen-2412 Jul 24 '26
Even regulated capitalism will kill us as the capitalists use their power to eliminate regulation.
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u/Slumunistmanifisto Jul 24 '26
Led was used as a sweetener in milk. Some milk was diluted with water from untreated sources, so it would fill with worms in the bottle.
Bring back leaded worm milk for the children!
-big Worm Kennedy probablyĀ
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u/Cory123125 Jul 24 '26
The thing is, what we have is worse than unregulated.
Now regulations are being written by companies to control us further.
Just look at the Frontier Model Forum for instance.
If they get what they want, computers will be purchased by you, but owned by companies and hardware mandated to do as they please.
Not only that, but they'll get the unfettered ability to change public opinion through secret biases added to their LLMs.
That might even be stomachable if they had competition, but they also are most loudly using security and safety theatre to get the government to effectively ban competition from existing.
You could be the most anti AI person in the world and this would affect you massively.
There is no escape from this right now because the very government that should be regulating them, would be regulating us with the rules they pretend do the right thing.
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u/TBTabby āļø Tax The Billionaires Jul 24 '26
People have forgotten that every regulation is written in blood. We're going to have to learn the painful lessons of the past all over again.
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u/tommycnuthatch Jul 24 '26
exactly!
all those politicians (almost exclusively republicans) who rail against regulations should taste test all that diarrhea lettuce before it goes to market.
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u/plsobeytrafficlights Jul 24 '26
yes, chemicals, broken glass, and occasionally, even human fingers sometimes shows up in your food,
but who will consider the needs of the billionaires??
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u/JasonDeSanta Jul 24 '26
āRegulatedā capitalism will kill you too. This shit was more āregulatedā at some point and now it isnāt, because itās in capitalismās nature to unshackle itself to suck up more and more power, money, and other resources for the capital owning class. Stop with these shitty liberal takes that suggest capitalism can be tamed and regulated. Even the most āregulatedā capitalist systems are going through the same downward trend.
There is more than enough for everyone to live extremely comfortably, but somehow the working class is poorer and poorer each year. Good luck regulating your way out of this dogshit system.
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u/DrunkyMcStumbles Jul 24 '26
Remember: the tobacco companies didnt ho away. They just pivoted. Mostly into food production
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u/TheHipsterBandit Jul 24 '26
They actually added borax (yes the cleaner) to milk. A ton of kids ended up with bovine tuberculosis because of it.
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u/jibjab23 Jul 24 '26
Rules are written in blood. Reminded of this every time there's some tragedy in Asia I hear about that could have been easily avoided if rules and regulations were followed and enforced. Sadly life is cheap in a lot of places so tragedies will keep happening.Ā
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u/lemons_of_doubt Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Every regulation of this type is written in blood, there is aways a death before people can do something normally many.
When you remove you guarantee they will come back again just as soon as some more blood as been sourced to rewrite them.
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u/Jackschitt3512 Jul 24 '26
They didn't just put chalk in the milk, they also put borax in it. Check out The Poison Squad, a pbs doc about the creation of the FDA.
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u/powerforc Jul 24 '26
This is coming from the women who was selling pandemic memorabilia during the pandemic. She's a sociopath
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u/AmaranthWrath Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
Child labor laws exist because without them companies would still be employing children. That they needed to be regulated is proof that without laws companies would do whatever they want.
Edit: no shade to anyone, but YES I KNOW that they're letting minors work bc various bills and reasons etc. But I'm glad your links are educating other people. Thank you. š«”