why do so many people in the dsa have jobs as baristas? is it because they are unionizing or is it because so many are left wing they are forming a union. I've never worked at a coffee shop or anything and feel kinda left out but I have worked at mcdonalds for example.
Starbucks has tuition reimbursement for the first Bachelors though Arizona State University Online (I think), and part time heath insurance for 20 hours or more. Along with the coffee shop intellectual meet up culture.
And I'm also guessing it's easier and less demanding than other no/low credential options.
They also have a bunch of locations in the U.S.
They have a bunch of locations in pretty much every single Western country except for Italy, Greece, and Australia. I've been hit with "ackshually" for stating it before, but the company has basically been a failure in those three countries compared to the rest of the West. EDIT: They have 428 locations in Turkey which is nuts.
No surprise that all three of those countries have very strong coffee culture (bordering on snobbery sometimes)
Australia has a coffee culture?
Is this sarcasm lol
no it was a question.
They invented the flat white bro.
never woulda guessed.
Makes sense, plus coffee shops tend to attract the kind of people who are already politically engaged and want to talk about this stuff. Way easier to organize when half your coworkers are already reading theory on their breaks instead of scrolling TikTok
Yeah sure reading theory lmao
Whereas over here, you'll get minimum wage and people moaning about their crap Too Good To Go bags.
Barista is the go to job for underemployed college graduates who can't find a job in the field they studied but identify too much with the middle class to get a job at Walmart or McDonalds. Being a barista lets you work in a nice environment with and serving other college educated liberals, and you can feel a little like an artisan. But it also leaves them feeling stuck in a working class service industry job where they don't make as much as they thought they would when working on their degree.
Bingo. Its a McJob for underemployed college grads who grew up watching sitcoms where the characters either worked or hung out in coffee shops.
this is a fantastic way of putting it, well said.
Not sure, but I know they’re pretty involved with some of the Starbucks Workers United work, so they may be recruiting very heavily there
On Starbucks, superstar philosopher Slavoj Zizek wrote: "Corporations like Whole Foods and Starbucks continue to enjoy favor among liberals even though they both engage in antiunion activities; the trick is that they sell products with a progressive spin: one buys coffee made with beans bought at above fair-market value."
From my understanding based on speaking with people who’ve worked there long-term, Whole Foods pre-Amazon takeover actually did treat their employees pretty well and walked the walk for the most part.
They did say it’s almost a night and day difference post-Amazon though. Tons of the extreme cost-cutting and poor employee treatment in everything that Amazon is infamous for leading to very high employee turnover and extreme overwork, drastically lower quality of their foodservice departments and no longer stocking many longtime customer favorite brands in favor of cheaper brands and pushing the new mostly-crap Amazon version of their 365 store brand very heavily.
I'm sure Amazon is worse, but that WF CEO was a real douchebag.
You can't expect an awful lot of sense from Zizek or his followers
He's criticizing Starbucks and their customers for pretending to make a difference by paying more to feel good about themselves while not actually making any substantive difference to the world. Seems pretty in keeping with the sub's ethos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g
Jeff Bezos looked a lot like Bozo the clown when, just after his flight in space, he was laughing so much in saying that the Earth is fragile and in thanking his exploited employees for their generosity toward him.
Nobody who shops or works at these places believes the company is uber ethical. They enjoy being there because it's less likely to see The People Of Walmart there. The progressive spin on fair trade coffee and trains rights pins is how they pretend the store isn't just a middle class paradise.
The first job many people with a degree look for if they are going to be underemployed is barista. I’ve seen so many people say they can’t even find an entry level job and the only things they’ve applied for are barista positions which makes them weirdly competitive because everyone else is doing the same thing.
Anyway the DSA trends towards underemployed people with degrees and barista is the number one job those people want.
I mean you not wrong, their seem to be alot more labor strikes at Starbuck. Then let's said target or Wal-Mart
It’s less crappy than most fast food jobs. Same reason why there are bartenders
Trans healthcare is covered by Starbucks—I’m sure that’s a draw.
Idk sex or something
I love Starbucks for the fine conversation with the baristas... they're a fantastic mixture of not understanding a word of English, chronically retarded or some level of bourgeoisie stuck up their own arses. I consider myself lucky to walk out with the right, seriously overpriced, shit excuse of a coffee.
If you’re using the word bourgeois to describe baristas, what is its use at all lol
Some of them are extremely "middle class". The international student types are also extremely likely to be bourgeois. The chronically retarded were forced there by the job centre.
Unless a given barista’s family has so much money that it doesn’t matter what they do (true for very few of them, almost none in fact), then they are in the process of falling out of the middle class, ie. undergoing proletarianisation. You are just overlaying a thin layer of pseudo-class analysis on your cultural grievance, but sadly these days that is basically what this sub is mostly
Yeah lol, bourgeois means a specific thing and not just stuck up or pretentious. Probably they meant bougie. I'm with you on the frustration with this sub, it's held up damn well compared to the rest of reddit but there's a noticeable drop in quality compared to when I started using it in 2020.
You're not working class if you don't need to work for survival. Some former working class workers transfer over to the bourgeoise quite easily. I've given a longer comment in reply to somebody else. I don't know or care what bougie is.
By the way... the meaning of proletariat, or working class, is the workforce who need to sell their labour and don't own any means of production. Anyone with a sizeable savings account, their own property owned outright or other means of production isn't working class... they don't need to sell their labour to survive. Their property and land itself is a means of production. It's a relatively strict category, despite most of the workforce being in it.
Where did you come up with this idea? So if you work on the factory line for UAW’s Volvo plant, cranking out car parts with a literal crank, and you save up for a house using a rural first home owner’s loan— you are not working class? It’s not like you can live off the land.
The key here is loan. You need to pay that loan back, thus you're working to keep that roof over your head... thus working for survival.
If you're 60 and have long paid off your home, have savings and don't actually need to work... you're simply not working class. You would have been back then, but not now. You're not selling your labour for survival, but boredom or luxury.
There's a clear distinction between loans or mortgages to provide a basic need... that's working class. You're selling your labour to pay for that. Once you've fully paid it off, then have a large nest egg... it's no longer about survival or need.
Working class people receive pensions and social security. The Volvo worker retires. He’s spent his entire life in a working class job. He might pick up a retirement hustle driving disabled people around or pouring coffee. He’s still working class. He doesn’t own the bus or the business or the factory. There are working class people who don’t live in abject poverty every second of their lives.
I notice you're sticking to your example and not at all engaging in the ones I have given.
If your Volvo worker has a sizeable savings pot, owns his house outright and works for something to do, rather than for a particular purpose of survival... how is he working class?
The problem with your angle is that it would make a lot of the bourgeoisie category working class. The rich student, whose parents pay her way, but is in a low paid job for pocket money, doesn't own the means of production. But she's not working class, because she's not selling her labour for necessity.
Nobody said that the working class had to be in abject poverty. Lots of dual income households aren't struggling, but are still working for necessity. They wouldn't be able to feed themselves if they both quit. Having a somewhat modest holiday, like going to Disneyland, isn't bourgeois.
The Starbucks worker, close to retirement, working to pay for luxuries is bourgeois. They could quit their job tomorrow and still be comfortable for another 25 years. Some of them were formerly working class, especially those who are over 55 and even more so over 60. I'm not hating on them for it, they're simply products of their own eras.
Similarly, the Starbucks worker whose wages are being spent on a nice public school are very unlikely to be working class. They're also working for a luxury, not a necessity. They aren't selling their labour for survival, for the most part.
That's a misunderstanding of the bourgeoisie on your part. The well-off staff don't actually need to work, but it's something easy to do for extra money, simply just something to do or a side income to pay for their children's education. The main difference between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is the need to work for survival.
If you look around the workforce, the bourgeoisie aren't always who you immediately think they are. The ones who have their houses paid off, good pension pots and are working because they're bored are bourgeois. The ones who were stay at home mums and whose husbands have very well paid jobs, but they're bored because their kids are now in school are bourgeois. The international students, whose parents pay their way but need some pocket money are bourgeois.
The bourgeoisie tend to like relatively easy jobs and don't really care about the low pay, because they're not doing it to survive. Some of the bourgeoisie are former working class. Some of them have a large inheritance behind them. There are loads of scenarios. They're not working class if they don't actually need to work. Coffee shops, expensive clothes shops and hotels (not cleaning) are full of these types of workers.
The staff who've been forced to work there by the dole are working class. A job is a job, even if they hate it and don't have a clue what they're doing. They have their rent to pay and food to buy... not because they're bored, fancy a very expensive Safari holiday or are topping up in their kid's expensive education. Their children are going to the local state schools. They're likely to live in social housing, not a detached 5 bed with 2 or 3 cars.
What fraction of starbucks baristas do you think are so well off that they’re doing the job just for fun?
There are plenty of people who have a side income for reasons other than survival. For a start... some people actually enjoy working. If you have a house and savings behind you, work is a lot less stressful, because you can quit and still be alright.
Okay but you didn’t answer my question
Ok but your question wasn't actually in good faith. They're a chain which must be in well over 50 countries.
No, it was in perfectly good faith.
I am quite certain that the fraction of baristas that own so many assets that their work at starbucks is a pure choice is small. So small that’s it’s laughable to consider starbucks baristas to be “bourgeoise” in any significant capacity.
It's a pretty accurate assessment, in most locations.
Brother, half the time I get escorted out for demanding a damn COFFEE FLAVORED COFFEE!
The uncut coffee flavored coffee there sucks.
They're not pretending to be coffee flavoured any more. It was all about the lavender and strawberry in the summer. They advertise drinks they have no clue how to make too. Some of them have the pure cheek to use those swivelly screens in a vague attempt to get you to tip. Nah, if I'm paying £5 for a shite coffee and you fumble around trying to put any old syrup and milk in my vaguely coffee flavoured hot water, I ain't tipping. I wasn't gonna tip anyway, but at least don't scowl at every customer who has already been a victim of daylight robbery. Honestly... 20-35% or "other amount"... wtf?
I had to explain to one how to make ice coffee because they ran out.
My mate and I were trying to get a limited edition hazelnut birthday drink, which came with a cup. There were posters up for this specific drink and cup in the ones I tried. None of them knew what drink I wanted, even when I kept pointing at the poster and to the birthday cups... which they denied knowing anything about. They kept trying to sell me random drinks or death stare through me. I tried a few different ones and packed it in... it wasn't happening.
cause it’s easy, has that “aesthetic”, and allows them to be close to their vices.
stand around talking all day, perfect fit for DSA
The first they/them dominated industry.
Because they're always hiring and offer low-physical labor opportunities for people who wouldn't do well stocking shelves or loading trucks at Amazon. Walmart nowadays hires foreigners almost exclusively, retail clothing stores don't pay nearly what a barista makes, and Mcdonalds is beneath most people. Not a ton of other options for zero requirement entry level jobs that you can chronically call out from due to tiktok illnesses.
Part 1 / 2
People who work in professions where they earn tips are to some extent partially petit-bourgeois. They as a person earn money from something they "own" (themselves). They are not a perfect encapsulation of a wage worker, and thus they will confuse the situation. In some situations a similar role like a hair dresser is actually "renting" a spot from the owner of the business as opposed to being an employee. The hair dresser themselves develops a client base with personal relationships and may follow them where ever they go.
As for why they dominate political organizations, being skilled at personal relationships translates to navigating organizations well. That wouldn't be a problem were it not for the reliance such people have towards money itself disconnected from labour time. The wage worker who doesn't get tips doesn't need to be explained the labour theory of value because they live the labour theory of value. They have employment based by the hour where they only get a job if they can make more value in that hour than they get paid. If they don't have surplus value being extracted then nobody hires them. It isn't as much that the labour theory of value is incontrovertibly true as that the institution of wage labour itself makes the labour theory of value true. The labour theory of value isn't true to someone who gets tips because this thing called "money" enables them to generate extra value from thin air based on personal relationships.
Without money though their societal role as different than the proletariat isn't possible, they transform from an "artist" creating some kind of artisanal coffee only they could make into a person who sits behind a desk and hands people standardized products. One can argue that they could still be creative without receiving tips in a moneyless world, but the incentive without tips wouldn't be there. Capitalist expansion threatens to transform them into that as much as abolishing money would, Starbucks is like this thing that is turning the petit-bourgeoisie into proletariat, and since people react more negatively to losing something than to gain something they don't have it becomes a hotbed of political activity.
"Democratic Socialism" doesn't abolish private property itself and rather takes issue with a more nebulous concept of wealth inequality. The problem isn't property, but rather than some people have more property than others. The reliance this people have upon money as a measuring stick of the value they produce makes it impossible for them to imagine a world without it. How would you compensate artists without money? Under Communism there would be no compensation, rather all would be available and everyone would participate in making that possible. The artist as a social role wouldn't exist, rather art would just be something people do as much as going to a warehouse to move boxes to make sure there is stuff available that you need is something people do. The same person would do both things at different times, as is needed.
Imagine a situation where everyone is being stubborn and everybody is waiting for someone else to sort a shipment of boxes that just came in. The person who needs that stuff the most is the person who is most likely to actually sort through the boxes when supplies runs low. It is possible somebody might have been gracious enough to automatically send you art supplies, but if nobody does then I guess it is Mr. Artist Man who is going to have to make sure supplies stay stocked. Food works the same way except since everyone needs food it is far more likely that somebody might have already gone through most of the process, if you are looking to get niche things it is more likely you will need to personally do the work to obtain them. Industrial production means that it is quite difficult to individually produce one good for only one person, so anyone producing anything will necessarily produce it for a lot of other people. Unless someone is so stubborn as to intentionally destroy everything but what they need, or to be so incredibly inefficient that try to obtain only what they need at any given time, someone is necessarily going to produce far more than they need. Since property doesn't exist if you go get a box of supplies that lasts a month, those supplies will be available to everyone else as well. Just as much as you could go get that box from the warehouse since it wasn't property, others can share the supplies you brought "the last mile". You might be stubborn and refuse to share, thinking you did the hard work of carrying it so it now belongs to you, but more than likely you will be a reasonable person and think that it doesn't matter if someone else uses it because you can always just go get more.
Now one can begin to understand that in such a system the social role of "artist" doesn't exist, but instead there are just "people who do art". People who do art also "people who need to eat" and "people who need to be clothed" so they will under similar conditions of necessity engage in the labour required to fulfil their needs for those things as well. The artist who refuses to participate in anything else at this point is no longer an important person, but rather they are just a person who refuses to take care of themselves. People might not mind that this artistically minded person has chosen to only ever eat when someone else nearby has used the industrial oven to produce more than needed, but they will be regarded as a person who is capable of less than someone more capable than others. There will always be such people who are stubborn or selfish and try to produce as little for others as possible, but they will be regarded as being as pathetic as they actually are when this manifests as a person who chooses to starve waiting for somebody else to work for them. Again there is no property, so the products of the industrial cooking machine are available to everyone, and it is possible somebody might never actually end up using it themselves simply because there are so many other people who do use it, but somebody who isn't even capable or refuses to use it even for themselves is just a incomplete human being.
As it stands right now the system is not set up in such a way that one person could conceivably engage in all the labour they need for themselves. We ship stuff across the ocean multiple times to produce things for instance so it would really be possible for people do everything themselves now, they will have to wait for someone else to send them stuff first (presumably people educated about supply chains will understand the need to give stuff away "for free" on the assumption that eventually a down stream product might come their way, and people on the other end educated about supply chains will understand the need to give finished products to those who produce inputs), but as time goes on new production techniques and facilities might end up being developed such that most people will be able to produce most of the things they need. For something complex like the internet, some people somewhere might need to tirelessly work to keep it running, and most people will never participate in doing it, but such people keeping the internet running also use the internet themselves so they will have reason to keep it running. For most other things though there will eventually be sufficiently easy to use machinery within range of most people to enable them to cover most of their needs.
(continued)
Part 2 / 2
Under Communism, "baristas" wouldn't exist, instead they'd just be people who are better at using the coffee machines than everybody else. Conceivably people might "tip" them by bringing them everything else they need in exchange for a super special coffee only tthe "artist" could make, but entities like Starbucks are already in the process of rationalizing those roles away and making it something anyone can do. Much of the conservative disdain for baristas comes from both their and their customer's insistence that the barista produces some intangible value worthy of praise. Just imagine a curmudgeon thinking a barista is a glorified coffee machine and you can imagine how much such people hate baristas and the culture that surrounds them. I salute their disdain for petit-bourgeois value mystification.
Therefore baristas join the DSA because capitalism threatens to destroy their way of life, conservatives hate the DSA because they think the way of the barista should be destroyed by capitalism. "Democratic Socialism" is actually far more "conservative" than conservatives are. I too think that baristas should be destroyed, but not by capitalism. Given that the barista's "way of life" would be destroyed both by capitalism and communism they have to support some other option that does neither, and "Democratic Socialism" by promising to "redistribute" wealth will slow or reverse the process by which capital accumulated that wealth in machines that replace everyone. Communism states that the machines are good, it is just that everybody should be able to use them whenever they want as opposed to this current situation where there is this small group of people gatekeepers the machines and preventing people from using them unless they are used in precisely the correct way that will allow them to own more of the machines. Instead of the machines only being used when they make more machines, the machines should be able to be used whenever someone needs something the machines produce.
The "Democratic Socialists" don't disagree with the gatekeeping of property, they just think that the Barista should gatekeep the property machine from everybody else so they can use it to get "tips". The system they envision preserves the concept of social roles which derives from money and commodity production existing. It is therefore supported by people who are self-important about the social role they have have but are threatened by capitalists like Baristas are. You can defeat the capitalists quite easily but it comes at the expense of abolishing all social roles, and most people aren't willing to do that as they can't imagine a world without social roles so they support "Democratic Socialism" rather than Communism.
One might also argue that it would be impossible to defeat the bourgeois state so one must be a democratic socialist (who most likely also wants to ban guns because no point trying to fight the state, but police should be abolished because reasons even though you've already admitted you can't defeat the agents of the state, so why would the agents of the state abolish themselves just because you told them to?) but then one is only supporting "Democratic Socialism" rather than Communism out of cowardice. "We can't do it by going against the state so we have to do it through the process!" okay, you can try your way, but then you should take no issue with people trying to alternative, which means for one thing you should support people obtaining the guns needed to revolt against the government even if you are trying to go through the government yourself. You can take a more moderate path but if you are specifically doing something to stop those more radical than you then your concerns about the impossibility of revolt were covering for not supporting the results of the revolt. That the Social Democrats have consistently used the state power they think is impossible to overcome to crush revolts demonstrates that their belief in the impossibility of overcoming it is actually wishful thinking on their part. They want it to be impossible to overcome and they will prove to you that it is impossible to overcome it themselves! It isn't an idle disagreement on what is possible but instead a fundamental difference in desired outcome that will come to blows if pressed.
Therefore the "voting" method, while useful to demonstrate preferences, cannot be a solution by itself. Anyone who suggests it is the only solution will inevitable end up enforcing that it be the only solution, and they often already do, and thus it makes perfect sense as to why Democrats keep trying to ban guns. That is the only way to ensure that he Democratic method of voting is the only possible path available.
Therefore too the over-representation of certain professions in the DSA is no accident either. They support "Democratic Socialism" because it is specifically suitable to them.
(finished)
What the fuck is the DSA? The Dick Sucking Association? Can I join?
I'm a lifetime member.
Its a good cause but it sure is a big thick mouthful to pronounce.
It’s romanticized. Is seen as aesthetic.
starbucks and dsa are both magnets for lumpen pmc, albeit for different reasons
Obviously it's a stepping stone to the US Congress, as AOC will tell you. Does your job have that?