Capitalism calibrates incentives to make workers risk death for subsistence

Evidence

To goad egoistic people on to the extent that they will condescend to take charge of an army of workers and employees, you have to offer them cars, fine women, honours and unparalleled security. But to get them to ruin themselves physically and mentally and continually risk their lives by going down a mine every day, a regular supply of watery soup and meat once a week is thought to be tempting enough. A strange psychology! — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 194

Categorization

• CANDY: Biting dark-comic observation about unequal incentives, quotable in conversation.
• XREF: connects to: Capitalism’s own productive development raised worker living standards and defused revolutionary hunger — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 662; Unemployment structurally disciplines workers and lowers labor costs in capitalism — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 150; Under capitalism consumption targets abstract value rather than bodily need — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 753 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Corporate cost-benefit analysis can explicitly price human life against repair costs #exemplifies (0.90)
• Capitalism’s own productive development raised worker living standards and defused revolutionary hunger #contradicts (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 662
• Workers internalize capitalist values and accept precarity as deserved #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 63
• Mineral capitalism’s labor demands favored strength and youth over skill and experience #exemplifies (0.85)
• The falling rate of profit forces capitalists to intensify labor exploitation #expands (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2376
• Capitalism requires willing state complicity in producing compliant labor forms #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 162
• Capitalism requires disciplining workers into accepting private property and wage relations #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 834
• Finance functions to obscure capitalism’s raw dependence on precarious life #expands (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 46
• Unemployment structurally disciplines workers and lowers labor costs in capitalism #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 150
• Even tiny intimations of mortality drive humans to prove their worth #exemplifies (0.75) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 229
• Capitalists are as bound by market imperatives as workers are #qualifies (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 124
• Short-term profit incentives override distant and slowly accumulating environmental harms #corroborates (0.75)
• Market dependence makes workers hope for capitalist success. #complicates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 368
• Under capitalism consumption targets abstract value rather than bodily need #complicates (0.70) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 753