So I was gonna do an article on this ad at some point as it's a really good ad, but Kyle beat me to the punch, and also had an interesting debate with himself about whether felons should get jobs and I found it interesting and figure it would just be better to respond to his video directly. Ive been kinda trying to break responding directly to kyle as i feel like half my blog is just discussing stuff he does as he's one of my favorite commentators, but again, he had that interesting discussion on a subject I have some choice words about, so I might as well kill two birds with one stone here.
First of all, the commercial. I've been seeing this all week, and it's a REALLY GOOD commercial. Basically it has random job applicants applying to retail jobs claiming they had 88 felony charges that they're facing and when asked they basically cite the charges trump is facing. And in interview after interview, they're told they're not gonna hire felons. The point of the commercial being that if Trump isn't even qualified for a retail job these days, why should he be commander in chief.
And you know what? They're RIGHT. Trump should not, given the charges and gravity of them he's facing, and how many of them are DIRECTLY RELATED to his last tenure in the job at hand, be seriously considered for president. he's damaged goods, no one should take him seriously, and why the F isn't Biden up by 20-30 points already?
Now, without a criminal conviction and possibly the conviction being related to an insurrection a la the civil war (not just jan 6th as that's been debated recently), Trump is unlikely to ever be formally barred from the position. BUT....something is seriously wrong with this country if we're seriously considering him again. I admit Biden aint perfect. I didnt vote for him in 2020, I could rip him to shreds if i really wanted to, BUT....I kinda feel like he hasnt been bad, and most criticisms arent his fault, and at this point him getting a second term is...well...it's our best option. Let's just leave it at that.
But TRUMP? Like come on, even putting aside the mere political differences, this dude is NOT qualified at this point. He was horribly incompetent in his last stint with it, and he's done various things that are now why he's facing those 88 charges. And...come on guys. Really? This guy? Even fricking vivek would've been better since at least he's not facing Trump's rap sheet. And given how much i despise that guy, that's saying something.
Like, on top of everything else, the horrible conservative positions, the gross incompetence, January 6th and other criminal activities kind of put trump on a different level altogether. heck thats also why im treating him differently in 2024 compared to 2016 and 2020. In 2016 he was that demagogue who was an idiot but eh i understood why people liked him given hillary. In 2020, it's more, really? You want 4 more years of THIS GUY?! But....okay.
2024, it's like....OKAY, CAN WE NOT?! CAN WE FRICKING NOT?! This guy IS facing criminal charges, some of which are related to attempting to overthrow the results of the last election, which he LOST, and we really wanna give this guy the reins again when he talks like he wants to become putin or xi? Really? This is scary.
And yeah, he's not qualified to run a hot dog stand at this point and given how many of his former enterprises were scams, i literally wouldnt buy a hot dog from this guy. Why are we trying to make him president AGAIN?!
So...good commercial. Shows the double standards he's facing. And yeah he is facing double standards. i didn't write about this but he is doing a trial this week, and honestly, im pretty sure if this guy was ANYONE ELSE he would be in jail for contempt of court. Yeah he's that bad. But because he's the former president with a literal lynch mob backing him up, he's being treated with kid gloves. It's sickening. This guy is basically real life eric cartman, and he needs to be told no and punished already. But instead we keep spoiling him, and enabling him, and not letting him face the consequences of his actions, and at this point, it's like, yeah, he's gonna keep it up until things get real for him. And if he were some black dude who didn't have millions of dollars, he'd be in jail for life, if not beaten to death by police violence already. Like holy crap. There really is a sickening double standard in this country as far as justice goes.
But, now, to get to Kyle's point. Kyle had an interesting discussion on his program about this, and he basically asked if we should be denying felons jobs. His argument is this, like okay, they did their time, paid their debt to society, why do we still punish them by denying them jobs? He didn't seem comfortable denying people jobs just over a criminal record.
As a leftie, I kinda understand where he's coming from. I mean, everyone needs a job to survive, we tend to stigmatize felons by making them ineligible for most jobs, and shouldnt they be eligible if they paid their debt to society?
Well...there's no formal prohibition against hiring such people. And businesses tend to have valid concerns with hiring such people. Would you wanna hire a shoplifter if you were running a retail business? Is this guy a danger to himself or others if he's a sexual assaulter? Should a pedophile get a job around children? You gotta ask these kinds of questions, and I don't really blame businesses for not wanting anything to do with these guys.
heck, to go further, let's apply some human centered capitalism a la my own approach. Jobs dont exist for the purpose of employing people. We have this weird idea that everyone should have a job, but then we have a society that is explicitly discriminatory against hiring certain people, and a society in which not everyone can even sustainably get a job.
But, most jobs are made by the private sector. And they're not made for the purpose of employing people. They're made to get work done. And that's why our society is so unjust in the first place. We have this idea that everyone should work and we deny them resources so they can get by by working, but then this puts them at the mercy of employers who just focus on the product. They dont care about workers, they hate hiring workers, and when they do, the cheaper the better. They want slaves. They want people who people who will do tons of work cheaply. Heck it's why slavery was historically allowed in the US and other countries. For a while it literally was okay to just fricking own people outright. And we needed to fight a war just to end this practice.
And now wage slavery is what has replaced it. It's ironic, apologists for slavery literally argued in favor of literal chattel slavery by arguing the conditions of wage slavery were worse. And for a while, maybe they were. There was no guarantee after all that employers would treat employees well or pay them well. And without labor regulations, they wouldnt. So, let's face it, our society works people until they cant work any more and then it throws them away. Thats why they allow retirement btw. you retire at just the right age where you cant actually work any more. Your body goes to crap after that and you develop all kinds of issues in your late 60s and 70s. So yeah.
But yeah, that's what jobs are. And sure, we can try to regulate them, but employers will find ways around the regulations. I mean we have rules against discriminating against black people for example, and yet minorities still face harder times getting jobs and generally make less money. You cant prove it a lot of the time, but yeah, that's because a lot of businesses don't wanna hire those people. Thats why SJWs push affirmative action, but that's like discrimination to fight discrimination, but I digress.
Then you have stuff like the government with job guarantees, which sound good on paper until you realize it's the government just making work for people to do to justify this system of working and make it fair. After a while, and again, this is why I'm so beyond this stuff, it's like, why bother? Why dont we just focus on freeing people from work? is work so great in the first place? I dont think it is. So yeah, I'm just to the point of saying "forget jobs, let's just give people money." I mean, given we still need work done, yes, some people will work on top of their UBI and that will solve the problem of who does the necessary work for society, but this idea of employing every single person? It's something that's impossible to reasonably accomplish and in my opinion even desireable.
So...should felons be given some guarantee to work? Eh, I dont think so. I'd rather just give them a UBI and let them sink or swim in the free market. if they cant work, they can't work, oh well, at least they can do whatever otherwise. LIke that's my solution.
Because the idea of making a job just so a felon can work seems silly to me. And the idea of making employers hire felons is also kinda silly. I mean, it sucks if youre a felon. But....if people dont want you, and they have a good reason for it in this case, well....what more can you do? You are owed the right to a decent minimum living standard, which UBI would provide, but productive work? Well, again, if youre not qualified youre not qualified. I dont really think theres much we can reasonably do for felons here. There are legitimate reasons to discriminate against them given their past actions, and i dont like the idea of creating jobs just for felons to do because jobs are the things to do.
The thing I learned the hard way when i entered the job market after college is no one is owed a job, there is no perfect job for every person, jobs exist to benefit employers more than the workers, any worker benefit is secondary, we spend so much time trying to get employers to give poor people money in exchange for work even though they really dont want to, because they want slaves, so why bother? Why do we keep up this facade? it feels like what the soviets used to say, "I pretend to work and they pretend to pay me." We need to move on from jobs, and move on from work, and while there's still a place for productive work in our society, i think its importance and centrality in our lives should be questioned and lessened. Work exists to make things, let's not glorify work, if anything let's admit it sucks and try to move away from it, and yeah. So that's my view on THAT.
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