So, this is more of a local event, but it's all over the news here in PA, but the other day, the Palmer candy factory in Reading, PA basically exploded. Full on exploded. BOOM! While the cause is still unknown, it's reported to be a gas explosion. People were reporting smelling gas and alerting supervisors to the smell in the days before the explosion. Heck the above article mentioned that they smelled gas months before and quit as a result. The supervisor just said don't worry, we have it covered. But they...didn't. UGI (gas company) reported never being called about it and now the factory exploded.
I'm going to be honest, I'm livid. To quote from the article:
"Everyone complained about smelling gas, and they kept making them work," he said. "The supervisors told them it was nothing. It was being taken care of."
And I hate having to use a tragedy like this to get up on a soap box and push my political agenda, but let's think about this. Reading is a very poor city. In 2011, it was considered the poorest city in the US. It's marginally better now, but not by much. it's definitely been hit by the war on normal people. So, the people there are desperate, they're accepting any job they can get, they're underpaid, and they're saying "hey, it smells like gas in here", and the bosses are just like "keep working". And then tragedy happens. This could have been avoided. If the incident was reported they mightve shut the line down for a while to address the gas smell and probably fix it, but hey, they ain't got time for that, time is money. The profit motive ensures that potential profits are more valuable than people. Screw the workers, we gotta make money. And when people don't have a right to say no, people are forced into dangerous situations they would otherwise not be in because that's what they need to do to survive. This isn't the first time something like this has happened. It probably won't be the last either. As some lefties discussing the topic have said online, our safety regulations are written in blood.
But, to some extent, regulations aren't good enough. I'm sure there are regulations to prevent that. But the workers reported to the supervisor, and the supervisor did nothing about it. Regulations are only valuable if enforced, and violations happen regularly. The link I just mentioned is violations that were caught. Imagine how many more go uncaught and unpunished. Don't get me wrong, these regulations do improve things somewhat. But they are, as I like to say, a band aid. The best way to protect workers is to give them the individual freedom to quit. Some people did mention quitting, not liking the smell. But then others didn't, and others might have been hired in the mean time and they didn't quit. The fact is, most people aint quitting unless they have another job lined up. And that can take time and effort to find, and there's no guarantee that the new job is any better than the old job. I mean if you're moving laterally you aren't really getting anywhere. Unless people have the freedom to say no, not just to any individual job, but to all jobs, then freedom under capitalism is just merely the freedom to choose your master. And given the system and the profit motive is what causes these kinds of calculations to be made, well, people are going to continue to do so.
This is why I'm so cynical of socialism and other leftie fixes. A lot of lefties think if only work were organized a different way this could be avoided, but they still have the same incentives. Under market socialism, people are still subjected to incentives that incentivize them to put productivity over other concerns, and while workplace democracy could fix this, i could also see it ending in a similar way if some manager (keep in mind socialist organizational structures probably have hierarchies too) ignores the concerns, or if a majority of workers stupidly decide "gee, this gas smell is concerning but if we dont keep working we'll fall behind the other company" or something like that. Nor can we trust states. I mean, a high profile disaster impressed upon me in my political science education was the problem the challenger disaster. The government knew that it was risky to launch in 20 degree weather due to a design problem with the rockets. But because Reagan wanted that thing in orbit in time for his state of the union, most people took the risk. In college, a common exercise they have people do in political science classes is to give people the facts that the people who made the decision to launch at the time had, and ask them whether they would launch. And most would. The simple pressure of deadlines and stuff like that will pressure most to engage in such behavior. This is why i dont trust market socialist mechanisms to solve the problem, nor does handing the industry over to the government solve the problem. it's only when we divorce peoples' well being and paycheck from the profit motive, IMO, that they begin to behave rationally and be like "yeah, we should shut this down and see what's up." To be fair, unions might be willing to speak up given their adversarial relationship to capital, but even then unions can be corrupt and in some cases like with the rail lines (and consider what disaster we had recently there), the unions are so detoothed they can't even strike because that might mess up productivity too much.
I'll say it again, as long as people are put under the pressure to perform in order to get money, they will tolerate a tons of BS for a check. This is one of the reasons why UBI is so liberating to me. While it maintains some level of profit motive to do work, it also gives individual workers to say that they want out of leadership, whatever that leadership may be, decides that productivity is more important than a potential safety concern. And with that ability for individuals to just walk out, without having to go through a union, or management, or whatever socialist mechanism leftists think of in order to think about shutting down production, it allows individuals to make the decision to not abide by the group's decision and to quit. And that provides a counter pressure to the profit motive. Sure, those who are dedicated to profits and increasing the profitability of a company at all costs will do what they do, but rather than everyone else being forced to abide by those decisions at great risk to themselves, people will be able to walk out and say no.
Same crap as when i discussed the gamestop incident when covid began here in PA. Gamestop wanted workers to come into work during covid without taking proper safety precautions, workers had to do it, until the government shut it down. Or take when I was down on vacation in Georgia that one time and we were evacuating due to a hurricane. The entire area was under mandatory evacuation, and these businesses were forcing people to come in when they should be evacuating. It's only when the state finally steps in and say "no, too dangerous, you have to close" that these guys close. As long as profit motive is at the forefront of peoples' minds, and those people have power over other people and force them to come in for a paycheck, it doesn't matter how unsafe the conditions are, they'll make people come in and work, until the disaster happens, and the place blows up, burns down, or gets swept away by a hurricane.
This is why we have safety regulations, and it's good we have some safety valves, but let's be honest, this isn't good enough. We need a right to say no, not just to any job, but all jobs. People are oh so worried about "oh what if some lazy person doesn't work"...so what? "But it's unfair to me". But you shouldnt be forced to work either. "But you cant give people something or nothing or they won't work". We don't need everyone working and we can balance the incentives to get people to work any way. And it just goes on and on. People are so worried about work and productivity and forcing people to work, that they dont think about the downsides of this and the issues the profit motive has with the economy. These people dont care about you. You're disposable tools to these people. And theyre there to extract maximum productivity from people and throw you away when you're done. And even if you die, I wouldn't be surprised if some wouldn't be trying to get you to cover your shift anyway. Yes, I know that was a joke, but these people care so little that yeah....
Going back to the topic at hand, I know that during the news segment on it tonight, they were interviewing people who knew one of the workers, and the behavior was bizarre. Like, they were just going on about how they were such a hard worker and blah blah blah. And yeah, we tend to do that in society, we define people through their work, and celebrate their work ethic. "Oh, they were such a hard worker"...YEAH AND NOW THEY'RE DEAD. Working hard isn't the flex you think it is, and if these people didn't have to work in such a crappy factory, then maybe they would still be alive right now.
It's just baffling how many people miss the point on that.
Anyway, rant over. I just wanted to give my thoughts on this one.
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