Radium Girls & the Failure of Unregulated Capitalism

There is no regulation in capitalismo. You should be aware of that by now.

So much propaganda here.
Drivel.

I think Now that Trump is in Office Unregulated Capitalism is making a comeback.

Indicative of the time? It’s still like that! Women are not valued as highly as men, shown in part in how we are still being “Girled” at work every day. Where I work, the men are provided personal protective gear, paid for by the State, but if women were to wear the same protective gear, even if buying with their own money, they would be laughed at and questioned, why? Your job is not as dangerous as ours (even though we work in the same place) and besides, if anything ever happened, we would protect you (if we are around and if you don’t piss us off and if we don’t leave the place unsecured on purpose and make jokes about how you take safety too seriously afterward).

Violations in ethical, moral, and just work safety issues like this in America's past does make you tentatively wonder how the western world has "offloaded" its Radium Girls and Boys to the Global East and parts of LA.

When the mention of how their/these womens' hometown ostracized them due to trying to get their rightful dues, it makes juxtaposing the average ambivalence from people (at least in subjective experience) look dark if not darker due to the larger scale. This docu-video put a few things in perspective or at least made think about them a bit more.

Libertarians don’t seem to want to live in a society. We got past being hunter-gatherers by delegating expertise. We NEED interconnected systems to exist the way that we do. Unless you can weave, tan, farm, butcher, build a home, set up power infrastructure yourself, etc, you need a society and you need to trust specialists.

Wonderful work! So detailed and well presented, you’ve got a follow from me ❤

Your throwaway comment about lesbians at the start triggered an entire story in me which I am now writing. It's a fantasy historically inspired retelling of some of the stuff but make it queer horror.

This is why we need both intensive regulations and unions. Because the free market is only free for everyone except the workers and the consumers.

What a staunch reminder of how the regulations that many today complain about are written in blood

I guess I’m a radium girl cuz I’ve licked some tips that made me sick too 💀

This is capitalism. The vast majority of business owners will act in similarly disgusting and deceitful way to enrich themselves, given the chance.

And we've not allowed those same people to take complete control over the government. Far worse things than this story will happen over the coming years.

not libertarianism catching strays from u this vid

PLEASE don't call her "Marie Curie". Her full name was Maria Skłodowska-Curie. She kept her maiden name because of the fact she was Polish and not only was it a move for feminism since it was uncommon at the time for a woman to not take her husband's last name completely, she also kept it because Poland didn't exist on the map at that time for over a hundred years then, and it wouldn't for the next 20. She was a very patriotic woman, that's the reason she named her first discovered element Polonium. I know they don't teach westerners this, but her Polish last name was VERY important to Maria.

This really should have more views, absolutely awesome video man.

I haven’t seen the video yet so apologies if this is addressed in the video- but there’s a play about the Radium Girls that I saw performed once, I went in not knowing the story, and it really helps to remind you that these were real people with lives and families who were utterly neglected by doctors and workplace. It’s tragic

I think libertarian views are best summed up by this joke: how do you know if someone’s a libertarian? They know the age of consent in every state. Ick.

Regulations are written in blood. People have died for the safety we enjoy now. Which is why it’s scary when people in political power want to get rid of these regulations and fire people in key safety administrations.

If one person murders another. Life sentence. If a company hurts groups or even whole populations? We still have no idea how to handle this. Even as companies become bigger and bigger and have their fingers in every aspect of modern life

You mean science being wrong.

My high school did a play based on this story. It was good

My school did the music based off this last year, it was sooo good

i wonder when lesbians were invented

Maria Sklodowska-Curie*

real great watch after hearing that the trump administration wants to scrap OSHA

Im not even 14 minutes in yet and im already hearing details about this i hadnt known about. What do you MEAN the radium guy warned a girl not to lip point or shed get sick???

reminds me of bobbybroccoli

Erin Brokovich

How would negligence be avoided in any system outside of capitalism?

good vidoe

this video came across my recommended and all i can think about is how a congressman recently introduced a bill to get rid of osha

this is such an informative and well put together video

The more i learn, the more i believe that the people who choose money over the lives of others are ontologically evil. No one who has a soul can act like that. They are not human

And one year after this video dropped, we enter the NEW gilded age. In this dark era of new robber barons, all the lessons of the past century have been abandoned in favor of unmitigated greed, and an orgy of wickedness. All worker and consumer protections are being dismantled, the worst person you could possibly think of to head the FDA was just confirmed by the senate, and the fascist party now in power has just introduced a bill to eliminate OSHA altogether. We are too damned stupid to learn from our own history.

i grew up near a town that is a superfund site because of all this, though they've replaced a lot of the yards by now.
i took a week-long class one summer hosted by the local union and they went pretty in depth about it in relation to our area (the class was about unions more generally but one day we covered this as an example of why worker's rights are so important.) to be honest everything about the radium poisoning viscerally scares me, knowing if i'd been born 100 years earlier it could easily have been me. maybe i would have used my fingers instead, but i'd probably still be screwed.

such a good video! i’ve read radium girls by kate moore but your visuals really added to this horrific and terrifying story. justice for everyone involved.

WHEN I FOUND OUT FLINN WAS ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR LEADED GAS. WHEN I GET U FREDDY WHEN I GET U

In my vocational school I found just straight polonium- was used to destatic photos- the supply closet hadn’t been used in a solid 4-5 decades now I was the first to go thru it lmao
I was also, apparently, the only one who knew what it was as I chucked it across the room and told everyone to get out

"cautiously optimistic for the future"
That has not aged well...

Being unscrupulous and immoral isn't a function of capitalism or a state. It is far more deeply founded than that. The socialist gets it wrong when he says the profit motive is the source of corruption, and the libertarian gets it wrong when he says the power allocated to a state is it's source. All human systems are subject to this and the ideology only influences the minutiae of the atrocities. Very great vid otherwise.

And this is why we need unions, the average person cannot adequately push for regulations, but unions can

Me when capitalism 😡
me when socialism 🤤

"now i don't think they were moustache twirling evil" proceeds to show evil looking guy

A couple years back I visited Ottawa to visit some radium girls' graves. It was just so sad to think about how these girls' lives had been taken away from them at such a young age, especially while right next to their graves.

Hope you guys enjoy this one! Very different from my normal stuff. I'll be going back to Unpacking videos and other such after this! One small correction: Mae Keane was an employee of Waterbury Clock Co. in Connecticut, not Radium Dial. (Of course only realized the error after uploading 😢)