Not sure if anyone saw the tweet by Ken Childs - https://twitter.com/TheKenChilds/status/1161847717397696512/...
These Amazon ambassadors are complete fakes; and the top comment is about shutting down a conversation?
I feel like im talking to the borg
291–300 of 387 posts
Re: I feel like im talking to the borg
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not the same risk. That's a voluntary agreement of work in exchange for cash, and either side can stop at anytime. Legal and contractual obligations like pensions and severance can also be layered on. What assets and liabilities that employee has in their personal life doesn't factor into calculation, they could be independently wealthy for all you know. Also why does it have to be "large quantities"? Buy 1 sh…
> Also why does it have to be "large quantities"? Buy 1 share and you're a part owner. Many large companies have stock plans. It's not rare and if you're an employee then by definition you "have money" from working. Because the distinction is whether one's primary activity is using capital to gain income, versus working for pay. "Ah but a worker may own some shares!" isn't important. It's tough to nail down color nam…
This thread was about the term, and that's the definition. If you have to change it to "you'll know it when you see it" then perhaps the definition is not so useful. The biggest companies have started from the smallest of ventures so your personal perception of size and importance has nothing to do with the term's qualification.
And no taxes are not theft, they are a contract in exchange for citizenship and sovereignty of the nation. Evading taxes is theft, by you from the government.
Re: I feel like im talking to the borg
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is Pavlov's dog experiment, where instead of the bell, you have an upvote Count conditioning and reinforcing behavior. Natural human interaction has never had a number placed next to every thought and utterance. The numbers have fucked up the way people think and behave.
I could understand if both the parent and grand parent were equally down voted, but they're not. Instead the parent is downvoted without any explanation as to why they're wrong, and a culture of pointing out why someone is wrong before downvoting them is the only reasonable dividing line I can think of between the 2 comments, thus seemingly proving the parent right...
It's because repeating posts provide no value.
Re: I feel like im talking to the borg
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any "medium" without strict moderation is a representation of society. You think twitter is toxic, but what is toxic actually - society, people.
The medium absolutely shapes what occurs there, what is discussed and what isn't, and how it is discussed and how it isn't discussed.
Not twitter.
Re: I feel like im talking to the borg
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone can buy shares or start a business and own their means. It's only become easier now with the internet. And yes, I agree that it's a useless definition. I've never seen it used outside of esoteric political debates.
> And yes, agree that it's a useless definition. I've never seen it used outside of esoteric political debates. Esoteric? It's a central concept for understanding how capitalist societies are structured. The central concept, even. It's not math, it's language, exceptions or hard-to-pin-down boundary regions don't wholly invalidate or render useless an idea.
I said it's a useless definition, not an invalid idea. Being a central concept does not mean it's not esoteric.
Re: I feel like im talking to the borg
#296I want to play the devils advocate here. If these jobs were gotten rid of with automation would these workers be better or worse off? I know the essential argument is that the job should pay more and also not be automated away but due to the competitive nature of capitalism there is a tipping point where it becomes cheaper to have robots do the work. Should all these jobs be replaced by robots? What would society loo…
This is a relative of the “lump of work” fallacy. These workers are currently hired by amazon and its contractors because amazon has already displaced other forms of work (retail, logistics, call centers). Experience shows that increases in productivity caused increases in living standards and work conditions across the board. So, usually, one would expect people to be better off with automation even if there’s some…
"Experience shows that increases in productivity caused increases in living standards and work conditions across the board."
Only if you average it across entire societies. For example, living conditions in many peripheral de-industrialized areas in various countries often deteriorate for long periods of time while central cities benefit from cheaper products. So it's not just about "transitional friction" - it's huge swaths of society, in terms of geography and the population.
Re: I feel like im talking to the borg
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is a fallacy. If you're going to talk about profit then you must also consider that the risk and loss also goes to owners while workers get paid either way. I think you're falling into a set pattern of argument rather than looking at what's under examination and considering it on merit. > This is something that should be rather simple to understand in the HN/Startup crowd. Considering that anyone can buy share…
I don't think your point is going to get across. You're talking to basically a huge crowd of well-paid individuals who can and do frequently swap between employment and self-employment, including employing others. The people who these talking points might hit better with are people who don't have the capital, or access to such capital, to be able to do such things.
I came from one of the poorest places in the world. I didn't have access to capital when I was born or young. I do have access now, and it's the ability to be a 'capitalist' under my own efforts which is responsible for that change.
This is why generalizations on audiences are pointless. Don't assume people are incapable of understanding an argument or empathizing with a perspective just because of their current place in life.
Re: I feel like im talking to the borg
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also why does it have to be "large quantities"? Buy 1 share and you're a part owner. Many large companies have stock plans. It's not rare and if you're an employee then by definition you "have money" from working. Because the distinction is whether one's primary activity is using capital to gain income, versus working for pay. "Ah but a worker may own some shares!" isn't important. It's tough to nail down color nam…
This thread was about the term, and that's the definition. If you have to change it to "you'll know it when you see it" then perhaps the definition is not so useful. The biggest companies have started from the smallest of ventures so your personal perception of size and importance has nothing to do with the term's qualification. And no taxes are not theft, they are a contract in exchange for citizenship and sovereign…
> This thread was about the term, and that's the definition. If you have to change it to "you'll know it when you see it" then perhaps the definition is not so useful. The biggest companies have started from the smallest of ventures so your personal perception of size and importance has nothing to do with the term's qualification.
You keep ignoring important parts of what's commonly considered the defining properties of the capitalist class, to make the idea seem less useful and much more slippery than it is. Or maybe taking that one sentence from WP as the entirety of the definition, period (though, again, ignoring important parts of that, even). I'm not sure you're going to find what you need to understand the concept, if you're interested, in an HN discussion.
Re: I feel like im talking to the borg
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine that this may be true, but only if there's a single union in the industry. Why on Earth would that be the case?
Because Unions are basically corporations that go by another name and want to gobble up the market share? Unions are not benevolent. They are bureaucratic organizations that want to grow in power and resources just like a corporation. Their interests just happen to be orthogonal to corporate interests which can be beneficial for employees. https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/
An interesting model.
I suppose you could describe many groups of people as corporations by another name so I'm not sure how far that gets us, and I tend to treat groups of people large enough to have emergent behaviours as essentially amoral anyway.
Your market share comments are interesting. I remember Matt Levine making an observation about Uber's 'contractors', if they attempted to unionise could be guilty of price fixing, because they're supposed to be competitors. The corporation seems to be another step along where price fixing within the corporation is allowed, and the union goes a step further again by making monopolistic behaviour ok.
As a society that has decided that a corporation can decide how to organise itself and work together internally, but also a society that has decided that monopoly, or at least the abuse of that monopoly is wrong, these seem to be interesting exceptions.
Re: I feel like im talking to the borg
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
>you're either with them or against them. well if you're dealing with a corporate entity the size of amazon and their weird bot/shill twitter army that's pretty much the only sane response. Do you seriously think if you chat nicely with these PR people they're going to hook you up with someone who matters and amazon is going to have a nice chat about their anti-union practises with you over a cup of tea? Makes about…
Putting aside that you've given up entirely on any form of discourse with the account you're responding to... You aren't only talking to that account - you are having a public conversation in front of millions of people. ...and if the discussion goes something like: Company A: "We believe in xyz." Twitter B: "You are an ." ...then what benefit have you delivered to the other millions of people reading? All you are do…
> To them, a logical, well reasoned, and UN-emotional argument is persuasive, and far more likely to help you achieve your goal.
I'm not so sure. Know your audience. On hackernews I agree. But there are forums where nobody reads or understands your well reasoned arguments..