Why do people think this is true?

>Your placement on this totem pole depends on your genetic endowment, your talents, and work ethic. So it is a fair system where the intelligent are rewarded and the unintelligent are not.
>Believing in the meritocracy meme
Read Micheal Young's "Rise of Meritocracy"

I love how reactionaries still use this despite the cartoon being based off explicitly Russia and Russia alone

You can literally move up from the bottom to the 2nd rung of the hierarchy with almost no effort, so all that this chart shows me is that anyone who is on the bottom is there out of their own choices.

What's a good, non-meme solution to this?

No thanks. I worked hard and got rewarded. So did everyone else I know. If you can't figure it out, it's probably because you're dumb or aren't trying hard enough

>Aristocracy
>Clergy
What powers do these groups have in modern western nations.

Clergy used to have influence.
Aristocracy because muh wealth retention and usually own big corporations and media outlets.

The media are the new clergy, and families like the bushes are aristocrats

On top of this, the military tends to come from the lower classes. I'd say the totem pole was hideously out of date, but I don't think it's really ever been in date.

The third and fourth rungs are easier to get to than the second one, the whole thing is stupid.
As long as your not too fat or retarded you can join the army, and all you need to do to be a priest is read the bible a couple of times and wait for another priest to die.

>entering into a consensual contract with an employer to do work in exchange for pay is being exploited

This is my favorite commie meme. How is someone able to exploit me if I agree to the working conditions and can quit whenever I want?

>agree
Do you actually have a viable alternative? Can you really talk of agreement if the alternative is starvation?
Commies are dumb in that there's no real alternative to society no matter what they dream, but the argument for exploitation is solid, if irrelevant.

The alternative are a thousand other jobs I could do or otherwise go on fucking welfare. Nobody has to starve in most western countries.

The argument for exploitation is fundamentally retarded.

You could put Communism as the name and change the priests to propagandists and commissars then it would work. Societies tend to form a stratified hierarchy and Capitalism is no different. With capitalism there's a decent chance of advancement, which some don't have.

Heck, just stand on a street corner yelling at people about their sins and depravity and you've already reached the 2nd rung.

Do you agree that industrial workers in england that worked 16 hours per day to avoid starvation and died at their 20s were in no way free? If so, you are implicitly agreeing that a """free""" work contract does not by itself imply freedom, and should change your argument. If, on the other hand, you think they were free, you are honestly retarded and delusional and the discussion is pointless.

It's because the whole thing seems much better suited to medieval feudalism.

They changed their conditions though. Eventually the lower classes clawed their way to better working conditions. Unless you have a huge labor glut organized labor has power in capitalism. There's a reason unions are very effect. The main issue is statism and government intervention in businesses.

>Your placement on this totem pole depends on your genetic endowment, your talents, and work ethic.
nigga unless you live in Sweden or Norway you should know this is factually false. The social mobility outside of a few (not all) Nordic countries is absolutely shit.

>I worked hard and got rewarded. So did everyone else I know.
Sure you did m9

Do you agree that there is not a single industrial worker in England working 16 hours per day?

...

Your question was "How is someone able to exploit me if I agree to the working conditions and can quit whenever I want". But you are now implicitly agreeing that those are not sufficient conditions to discard exploitation.
In relation to your new argument, those conditions still exist in the third world, where industrial production has been exported (at the very least, most of the world lives under the circumstance in which not selling your labor means starving). Capitalism is a global interdependent system and the fact that you don't see the worse of wage slavery doesn't mean it doesn't exist. On the other hand, syndicalism and welfare are being attacked everywhere.

This. Although using the black sun as a symbol I think is a poor choice.

Do you agree that an universal statement can be refuted by a counterexample but can't be proven by an example?

AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

end yourself retard

HURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

How do you move there? Also, with no effort?

So you don't want to understand any criticism and dismissed others are not working hard. Wow read the fucking essay coz Young was satirizing people like you

Because it lets them have the fantasy that they'll be the righteous class warriors who overthrow the corrupt system and live happily ever after.

Become a priest or pastor. The latter option requires a Bible (sometimes), and the ability to yell at people fervently.

Says a dumb poorfag lmao

You didnt get it, classcuck

qt

And all of those thousand other jobs are also exploiting you because they know they can get away with it. Even if a handful of businesses treat their employees ethically, that's still only a tiny fraction of the job market and the rest can go on price fixing.

Not a fan of third positionism but the gist of that pic is 100% correct. Unfortunately capitalism in its current liberal progressive form is unstoppable barring apocalyptic events.

It is more or less true, but only as a matter of conceptualization.

The problem is old-school Marxist analysis doesn't work for the 21st century, where a 25 year old computer literate nobody can spend 50 hours making an app that makes him a millionaire overnight.

Of course this doesn't happen all that often, but it doesn't make sense to talk about the rigidity of early capitalism in the 21st century, and it doesn't make sense to reduce current capitalists to mustache-twirling robber barons anymore.(Though you could of course argue that it never made sense to do that).

Neo-liberal capitalism is vastly more productive and ingenious than leftists and communists are in general willing to admit. The only thing I really hate about postmodern capitalism is the insistence on multicultural/immigration propaganda in order to bring in low-skilled labor from developing countries, which hurts the wages of the working and lower-middle classes in the countries that bring them in.

you don't have the power.

Exactly this. People act like communism and capitalism are some eternal forces that have been at it for millennia, but they are both created by the same people during the French revolution.

I want to make babies with Christ-chan. Fuck this board's Anne Frank fetish.

"third positionism" is fascist nonsense that makes it seem like they oppose capitalism
they never attack the right, only the left

>Many miners work at the gold mine owned by Corporación Ananea. Under the cachorreo system they work for 30 days without payment. On the 31st day they are allowed to take with them as much ore as they can carry on their shoulders.[5] Whether the ore contains any gold or not is a matter of luck. Pocketing of nuggets or promising chunks of rich ore is tolerated.

Capitalists will defend this

>they never attack the right, only the left
Okay, that's clearly bullshit.

>The problem is old-school Marxist analysis doesn't work for the 21st century, where a 25 year old computer literate nobody can spend 50 hours making an app that makes him a millionaire overnight.

The dotcom bubble 2.0 is looking good.

telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/10/22/snapchat-is-pumping-the-next-tech-bubble-with-more-hot-air/

>boom and bust cycles are Marxist analysis

eh, no.

I would argue the pole is still true, but nations would need to encounter warfare to discover just how solid the fundation is.
Peacetime totem is a lot different, and it should have been done serious attempts at depicting it.

>15-30 year investment of Networking, Luck & Education to reach Clergy/Politician/PHD class
>Little effort
WTF are you smoking.
I get that you don't understand the used terms, and what they translate to, but how do you miss it that bad?

Profit is international merchants sitting on generations of wealth, having power from Internationalism and a post Cold War world.
Its one of the images good replacements of "Kings".
The Ruler class is basically the same as Kings, but less significant.

And Clergy isn't Clergy in a modern society. Clergy is IDEOLOGY. Clergy of old in Christan Societies used to be a chokepoint that is equivalent to any Social covenant that can be engage in. It was to the point where they also served as rudimentary judges, due extremely high social prestige.
To be a modern day clergy, you need to actively engage in Social Ideological Warfare, in a active level, with a good network.

Meanwhile Army isn't army either. If you state doesn't have active law enforcement, or engage in warfare, there isn't a relevant army class. But if you do: Its a very obvious class with high social status from what is done in conquest.
Lower table: Medium society is marked by the fact the underclass is starving, but the medium is doing fine. Its not exactly the true middleclass, it also involves any higher social class that isn't actively engaging in their position(but still get the benefits). The middleclass exist to make a broad easy recognizable class.

And the underclass is ironically still the same. Just with a lot more export. Common examples include Brazils export of Soy to feed a lot of modern agriculture. Or any second world nation's export of metal. Or grunt work needed to maintain infrastructure.
Its just that in the first world, backing up society isn't a harsh job. Even more so when the heaviest duty backbone jobs has been automated to remove the burden, for the sake of earning more money. And motorization has lead to backbone being 5-10% of population instead of the feudal 95% or the early modern 30-60%.

===
And thats what I got to say, in the Marxist class society, as imaged early in the 1900s.
If you where to realistically rethink, it would be a lot of thought work.

If they willingly took that gamble, why should I be upset? If it isn't circumventing any laws in the area, why should I care?

>15-30 year investment of Networking, Luck & Education to reach Clergy/Politician/PHD class
Dude, just stand on a street corner, declare yourself a preacher, and start yelling at people about their sins. Boom, you're now a pastor, welcome to the elites.

I'm probably richer than you and I can tell you with a straight face that the biggest reason I've several houses is thanks to dumb luck, being born into a decent family and happen to know the right people.

Want to see if someone's rich for real or faking it? See how they reach to inheritance taxes.

>all non-responses except for "muh nordic countries"

Guess how I know you're all under 18 and wrong

"We you rule" this bothers me.

>wage labor is a pleasant and entirely voluntary contract where you can just switch to another job if you don't like your job
Stop living in a fantasy land. This literally doesn't happen outside of theory.

>The main issue is statism and government intervention in businesses.
Have you ever read "The Jungle?"

Because there's no option other than working in a shitty factory or mine or something similar.
>b-but just save money and start your own business
Literally just try walking a mile in a Peruvian or Indonesian factory worker's shoes. You'll change your tune pretty quick.

This. Also mfw pol is triggered

>Thinks rung order starts from top
>Second rung
>Doesn't understand how a ladder works

This is why you'll always be on the first rung you dumb faggot

not that guy but that is a great book! you're right, a bit of government intervention must be present in business to protect against shit like rats in our meat

I really hate class conscious goyim, I just want to take all their food and property and force them to work fields

This falls flat on its face once you realize that the majority of wealth in capitalist countries is inherited. The wealthy have just become a new aristocracy, and the access to aristocracy is literally no different now than it was in the 17th century - buy your way in.

Because it is

No user. You aren't a pastor. You just engage in FAITH, not CLASS WARFARE.

>insert hundreds of exceptions

>those at the bottom can climb their way to the top
Ideology

>what is inheritance tax
>ideology
Also ideology

>Your placement on this totem pole depends on your genetic endowment, your talents, and work ethic. So it is a fair system where the intelligent are rewarded and the unintelligent are not.
I have never in my life, seen so much shit come out of one mouth.

You do realize that most wealth is lost within 2 or 3 generations, yes? And that most millionares and billionares are self-made, yes?

If you cheat, and count 3 generations as 90 years, maybe.
Even then its unlikely. Even among 8-16 heirs, the income base is most likely still there.

Or you are confusing upper middle class, with upper middle class breaking into real wealth for reasons.

Is that the only reaction image you've got you fucking faggot? Cuz it's shit,

nigger have you heard of self-employment

>9gag

Because the Industrial Revolution wasn't fun

It's really the only reason why anti-capitalism still exists. It should go away at some point.

I can't find the exact quote, but Marx wrote about this concept exactly. For lack of the direct quote, I'll paraphrase:

The traditional slave is tied by property to a single master. By definition, he has no freedom of movement and is forced to work. Because he is the property of someone, and his death comes as a loss of property, the way he is forced to work is by threat of direct violence. Now imagine an nontraditional slave, who may choose to work for any master, but must nevertheless work for one. Because he is not the property of anyone, and his death would mean little to any one master in particular, the way he is forced to work is by threat of starvation. This is the industrial prole. He is "owned" by the entire class of "masters," the bourgeoisie, at once. He has freedom on movement, but not the freedom to choose not to work.

End rough paraphrase. Now you may argue, "But people living in every time period have had to work, so in what way is this system of production truly exploitative?" The answer to that can be found in Peter Kropotkin's work, especially in The Conquest of Bread. But to sum it up briefly, it is that there is enough in this world for everybody to eat and live in a house. Easily. Metric tons of food are thrown out every day while people starve, and houses go unoccupied while people sleep on park benches. So why, then, is food and housing not given freely? It is because they are owned by the bourgeoisie. While the common farmer of days passed had to toil in the fields on threat of starvation, he toiled because there was not enough to feed everyone if not everyone worked. The common laborer of today must work because the things he needs to survive are kept from him by people who have more than one can imagine.

It is the reverse of the anti-Soviet grocery store propaganda. In the Soviet Union, people starved because the grocery store shelves were empty. In the West, people starve outside of fully stocked grocery stores. Why?

>those at the top can lose everything.
thats why the same families stay rich for hundreds of years?

>my anecdote is absolute truth: the post

inheritance tax is a joke and theres lots of loopholes to getting around it

I don't get why people criticize capitalism as being "unfair".

Life is unfair. No one said it wasn't going to be. Any and all attempts at making life pleasant for everyone will end in failure.

Some people are lucky, some are not. This is the way all living beings experience life, and nature will not be circumvented.

I dunno. Clearly the whole concept of poor people working for all doesn't apply to 1st world cunts that import everything. Or I mean, there are poor people working elsewhere, but both the booshwasee and the welfare class in America benefit from foreign slave labor...idk man

Too bad commiefucks have no feasible solutions for this.

>fag
>racial slur
What the fuck? And no it isn't.

Nations still has "lower labor".
Its just less obvious when farming is no longer manpower intensive, and neither is mining, nor is forestry. And all of those are supported by oil, which is not manpower intensive either.
So the support pillar of society went from 80-95% of society, to 2-5%.

People complain about capitalism being "unfair" because it is a system of exploitation perpetrated by humans against other humans. Therefore, it is within our power to change it. People could attribute a similar circumstance of human on human aggression, like murder, to be an example of "life's unfair," and therefore, not worth the trouble of trying to fix it. But that would be ridiculous.

Capitalism isn't unfair. Uneven bargain in any position is unfair. And half the reason early capitalism was shit, is that workers realistically needed collective bargaining to even get what they needed.

He's not wrong though.

When a person's options are work or starve, any contract they make is inherently coercive, and therefore involuntary.
This means that all wage labor is exploitative, unless the worker has some basic income, or guaranteed food/housing.

>When a person's options are work or starve
>be hungry
>need to get some food or die
>FUCK IM SO OPPRESSED

except those at the top have zero incentive to uplift those beneath them and but have an incentive to exploit the lower classes and the means to do just that

>Everybody totallt starts with the same possibilities, guys, the American dream isn't a sham, you guys, you can TOTALLY achieve wealth, only if you weren't too lazy/useless/stupid etc.
>Failure is always fully a result of your lacklustering skills and/or talent, you guys
>plz no revolution, you guys

That's not capitalism, that's any goverment.

It's funny this argument is happening, since Sinclair wrote that novel to highlight how immigrants and people on the bottom rung were being systematically fucked over, and to show these exact shortcomings of laissez-faire capitalism.

But the only thing people got up in arms about was the quality of their wage-slave hot dogs. He was rightfully pretty pissed.