- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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Yeah, then they lose all their best and brightest who are disappearing off to work on their own things.
All these idiot C-suite trash will wind up holding is a bag of yesterday’s technology, a mass of obsolete infrastructure and a bunch of brands they’ve helped destroy.
It is by design. Pool a bunch of money, buy companies to bleed them dry. Wait for new companies to take their place, rinse and repeat.
I had a shower thought the other day that if more CEOs were shot dead, there’d probably be less Return to Office.
People are sometimes like “oh but violence is bad!” but ignore all the casual harms inflicted on people by capitalism and friends.
You had me until you distilled everything into “capitalism”… Life isn’t black and white.
Inb4 the intellectually dishonest response of “but I said ‘and friends!’”.
So brave
Where would you lay the blame?
And how is that hypothetical response “intellectually dishonest”?
I am sorry calling out the fake capitalist regime we have, got your panties all bunched up
The regime we have is made up of real capitalists, who behave as capitalists often have throughout history. The kind of capitalism that’s fake is the Chicago-school free maket kind, which has never existed in real life, because it embodies a contradiction in terms. The market is either “free” as in freedom from regulation, or it’s “free” in terms of no oligopolistic barriers to entry. It can’t be both simultaneously. Tuly free markets have a lifetime comparable to free hydrogen atoms: they quickly settle to an equilibrium state that’s less free (by either definition).
The (attitude) Adjuster goes blam.
They also ignore literally all of human history when they say shit like that. Hell even the civil rights movement only worked because of Malcolm X’s threat of violence.
Malcolm X was a fringe figure: the NOI got lots of press but didn’t really do all that much besides indulging in infighting and encouraging local Black businesses. Their approach to politics was separatism. H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, the Panthers, and many others were more closely involved in direct action.
They also ignore all the freedom of the lower classes which was won through violence against the upper class.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Why do you think the mega rich are so keen to invest in robotics? With AI and robotics, there is no palace guard that’ll turn sides when everyone’s had enough.
They’re just trying to scare the Americans out of the office so they can replace them with cheaper H1Bs who won’t talk back.
I’m in management now but I say go get ‘em please.
most management I would assume would be with the workers. If your not c suite your nothing.
You’d think that, but a depressingly large percent of middle managers identify more with the bosses than with the people doing real work. They believe that if they toe the line and work hard at enabling the sociopaths, they might eventually get the promised invisible handjob.
Interestingly, I’ve known more senior managers than middle managers who are radical. I’m one, and I’ve known many others. I think that those who really understand how the system works end up advancing, but they’re also the ones with no illusions about how the sausage is made.
Capitalism has made me moderately rich (and I started from near-destitution), but that doesn’t mean I am unaware of its many toxic side effects. You have to live within the system that exists. People who don’t know how to do anything make shitty revolutionaries and incompetent reformers.
Tech is a bit different because a significant portion of your compensation comes as stock when you get higher up the ladder but yeah.
Stock options and grants are a tool to trick you into accepting lower pay and conflating your interests with those of the capital class. (Speaking as someone who has received both!)
Yeah I’m speaking from experience here in that about a third of my pay is in stock.
I wouldn’t say my pay is low though, for what it’s worth.
Only idiots confuse owning some stock with being part of owner class lol
Same type of idiot who sold out the country for 401k and a McMansion
Yeah I would say that is high enough but its pretty up there for stock to be all that significant.
H1Bs are fine with coming into the office and won’t put up a fight with any corporate policy….
I thought they did not need a union because daddy google was a GOAT
Maybe up until they stopped having “don’t be evil” as their company motto?
Look, I’m kind of an outsider on this conversation because until we get a DaVinci for mechanical work, I’m never going to be WFH, but there’s something interesting I’ve noted with all my programmer friends.
The industrial world, that’s where unions are, they’re getting pulled out but that’s the places unions live. The people working in stores are starting to push hard on unions. My industry, biomed, hasn’t really gotten unions off the ground, but it’s rumbling. We’re a small industry that’s so short on people it’s just easier to move jobs than start a union, but we’re a mix of tech and industrial backgrounds. But the programming tech backgrounds, at least here in the midwest, is apparently so anti-union I don’t know how it’d get off the ground from what I’m hearing from my friends. Their coworkers who are mad about RTO will immediately turn around and say the corporate lines about unions. I’m honestly kinda baffled and hope your industry gets it figured out.
Unions will not increase the average wage. They will only even-out wages across the economy. Which means they will increase the lowest wage.
Unions will not solve the social problems in the US. UBI (Universal Basic Income) will solve them.
You need to advocate for UBI. There is no good reason not to have it.
UBI doesn’t cost the economy anything. That’s no “donating money to poor people”. Poor people will immediately spend it on food and housing/apartmenting, which means the money stays (better yet, flows) within the local economy.
The reason the US doesn’t have UBI yet isn’t because it isn’t affordable. It is. The reason UBI wasn’t introduced so far yet is because they wanted to scare the people into working harder. It’s for psychological reasons, not for real (financial/technical) reasons.
If there is 1 homeless person sitting by the street, people will say “they’re lazy and deserve this because they didn’t work hard. So i need to work harder”. If there’s 100 homeless people sitting by the street, people start to realize it’s not their fault and the system is at fault; and will demand drastic dramatic changes. UBI is an effective way to prevent that. UBI isn’t a choice - it’s a necessity for a stable society.
Unions will not increase the average wage.
Unions (and redistributive policies) can increase median, not just mean wages. That’s the figure that matters to the “average” (50th-percentile) worker. The trillions of dollars hoarded by billionaires do nobody any good but the billionaires themselves.
UBI without worker’s power and strong unions will just become a leash in the hands of the state to enforce social compliance. Unions and UBIs are not mutually exclusive. Also without strong unions, who do you think will advocate for UBIs? Neo-nazi, billionaires, and other people that want to give the bare minimum to defend the status quo from its collapse. The first to talk about UBI in the USA was Nixon, and it’s not by chance. The élites see the UBI as yet another tool to maintain the status quo and their privilege, giving scraps to the rest and subduing the state to make their own interest. UBI is a technical tool and therefore, by itself, it doesn’t solve social problems or shifts power. The shift of power should happen contextually to the introduction of the UBI, otherwise, it will just turn into yet another way to oppress the working class.
I see your point. I think i understand the individual arguments and just for the sake of clarity i would like to list them again:
- UBI would make the people dependent on government approval.
I think this depends on whether it’s properly implemented. If it’s properly implemented, it’s Universal and does therefore not depend on social compliance.
- UBI is a technical tool and therefore, by itself, it doesn’t solve social problems
I disagree. Giving resources to people solves problems, including housing, education, and medical care. Maybe the details of where and how to allocate the resources need more elaboration.
Maybe this is a misunderstanding because what i mean by UBI is “give resources to the people that they can use for everyday life without expecting something in return”. In so far, public schooling or public healthcare are also a form of UBI for me.
- Neo-nazi, billionaires, and other people that want to give the bare minimum to defend the status quo from its collapse.
Actually, I would like to keep the system from collapsing. If it does collapse, it will cause devastating harm on not only you, but all of society, probably turning it into ruins and a state-beyond-return.
- The shift of power should happen contextually to the introduction of the UBI
Realistically, that’s not gonna happen. There’s not gonna be a “worker’s revolution” in the US. The rich take it all, leaving nothing for the poor. Dreams of a “revolution” are fairytales people tell themselves at night to sleep easier. If you really want change and to improve lifes, advocate for UBI. It really helps.
I think this depends on whether it’s properly implemented. If it’s properly implemented, it’s Universal and does therefore not depend on social compliance.
No system willingly surrender its power. Any implementation of UBI in the current power structure will just reproduce the current power structure.
I disagree. Giving resources to people solves problems, including housing, education, and medical care. Maybe the details of where and how to allocate the resources need more elaboration.
If this happens in a way that benefit people, it means the power shift already happened and the UBI is just the consequence of it, not the cause. The hard problem is the power shift, not the details of the UBI, that are reduced to a technical problem. Technical solutions follow from a rearrangement of society, not the other way around, despite what hackerinos and techbros believe.
Actually, I would like to keep the system from collapsing. If it does collapse, it will cause devastating harm on not only you, but all of society, probably turning it into ruins and a state-beyond-return.
The current system based on consumption, growth, and the industrial/post-industrial productive mode is unsustainable. It’s going to collapse regardless of UBI. Conservatives and reactionaries are so supportive of UBI exactly because it has the power to extend the “business as usual” a little longer, until bigger factors like soil exhaustion, climate collapse, biosphere collapse, oil EROI and other major factors will eventually make our mode of living unfeasible. That’s not an argument against UBI per se, but we should be wary of how it can be appropriated to make our life worse and this is a very concrete consequence. UBI as a starting step (good) vs UBI as a pacifier (bad).
Realistically, that’s not gonna happen. There’s not gonna be a “worker’s revolution” in the US. The rich take it all, leaving nothing for the poor. Dreams of a “revolution” are fairytales people tell themselves at night to sleep easier. If you really want change and to improve lifes, advocate for UBI. It really helps.
I’m not a revolutionary. I don’t believe revolutions have ever happened. I also don’t believe a major political change is going to happen in fascist USA anytime soon, unless Trump really fucks up his game. Sometimes there are just no good moves.
