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Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

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Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#361

Post by rkeene2 »

bsder wrote: post #196
nradov wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who does classified work (including software developers) can't do it at home.

Not at all true. However, your department will have to install things like properly certified safes into your house. This may mean bolting things into your concrete basement, etc.

For all practical purposes it is true that classified work will not be done at home for a long period of time -- because doing meaningful classified work over a long period of time requires connectivity to a classified network, which requires a bit of infrastructure and the relevant accrediting authority has stringent requirements for this kind of thing.

I've personally participated in the accreditation of on-site SIPRNET (which operated by DISA at SECRET//NOFORN) enclaves and it is an expensive process that your company will not pay to have done at your house.

In addition, there would need to be daily audits of the security records for things like vaults, rated security room (even without open storage), and a vault for the Type 1 encryption device (which needs its crypto keys updated regularly) -- at the least -- which connects your (or really DISA's leased line) to the peer.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#362

Post by int_19h »

qu4ku wrote: post #347
dang wrote: post #153

All: this article deserves a better discussion than it's gotten so far. It's a rare thing: a new angle on one of the absolutely most-discussed topics here. That's interesting, regardless of where our reactions all land on agree/disagree, like/dislike, us/them and so on. If you're going to add comments to this thread, can you please engage with the specifics of the article?

This article got its central point not only wrong but patently wrong. Remote work puts downward pressure on the highest salaries [think globalisation but on a smaller scale — poor countries are main beneficiaries of globalisation]. People with a low amount of opportunities will have more opportunities [upward pressure] and the highest earners will need to compete with higher number of people [downward pressure]. It l…

Why is it meaningless in the context of inequality? Inequality is a relative measure, so if higher-paying jobs become more lucrative, while lower-paying remain the same, inequality has increased.

You can argue that inequality stemming from that doesn't actually matter, because nobody is worse off - but that's a different argument from whether remote work creates inequality or not.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#363

Post by int_19h »

fancyfish wrote: post #300
eanzenberg wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea is false. Intra-generational mobility in the US is quite strong. Half of people in the 1% are not in the 1% a decade later. About 50% of people move up 1 quintile from their starting quintile of income. I don’t have stats on how this compares to EU or other countries, but this shows a majority American people can move between income quantiles in their lifetime. [1] https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/in…

This. The US has an abnormally high social mobility, even compared to the EU. You have a better chance of moving to the top 1% here than anywhere else. I'm a Tier 1 FAANG engineer and worked very hard to get here, coming from a middle income family. By first studying hard and building projects to get into a Tier 1 university. Tier 1 top-talent engineers are just worth multiples more than lower talent people and deser…

It can be better than EU while still being dismal. Although I'd love to see some stats (not anecdotes) showing that it's better on the whole, because that's certainly not the case for those I know of.

More importantly, measuring it as a single number for the entire country hides a lot of nuance that matters. It's rarely constant across the spectrum, and those at the bottom of it usually see far less social mobility than those higher up. US is pretty good at social mobility for middle class specifically, but really bad for those below that.

Regarding the "silver spoon" bit - why do you take a complaint about inequality to mean that you should be earning less? The way I see it, others should be earning more, and have quality of life closer to mine. And they would, if all that money wasn't collected as economic rent by their employers (in case of small businesses, the chain goes a bit further up, but there's always somebody skimming of wealth generated by other people at the end of it).

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#364

Post by Robotbeat »

rmrfstar wrote: post #200
Avicebron wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't understand this mindset, it views the system that we have as fundamentally meritocratic and that only hard work matters. This is demonstrably false with a cursory review of how our (the US) education system, economy, and geographic distributions reward and punish people.

> it views the system that we have as fundamentally meritocratic Agreed. There is another dimension to it as well. Labor pricing is set by "replacement cost." In a country where workers have been made precarious intentionally [1], replacement cost will be much lower than (a) the surplus value created by the worker, (b) the risk a worker bares in work activities. There is empirical evidence that this is taking place o…

Does this imply there aren’t enough employers, so that collusion among employers is feasible?

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#365

Post by rmrfstar »

Robotbeat wrote: post #364
rmrfstar wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it views the system that we have as fundamentally meritocratic Agreed. There is another dimension to it as well. Labor pricing is set by "replacement cost." In a country where workers have been made precarious intentionally [1], replacement cost will be much lower than (a) the surplus value created by the worker, (b) the risk a worker bares in work activities. There is empirical evidence that this is taking place o…

Does this imply there aren’t enough employers, so that collusion among employers is feasible?

Feasible and documented [1], but I think that labor monopsony is only part of the issue.

Why are fast food workers signing non-competes, arbitration clauses, and NDA's [2]. The whole balance of power is out of wack.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo...

[2] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/state-attorneys-general...

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#366

Post by qu4ku »

int_19h wrote: post #362
qu4ku wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article got its central point not only wrong but patently wrong. Remote work puts downward pressure on the highest salaries [think globalisation but on a smaller scale — poor countries are main beneficiaries of globalisation]. People with a low amount of opportunities will have more opportunities [upward pressure] and the highest earners will need to compete with higher number of people [downward pressure]. It l…

Why is it meaningless in the context of inequality? Inequality is a relative measure, so if higher-paying jobs become more lucrative, while lower-paying remain the same, inequality has increased. You can argue that inequality stemming from that doesn't actually matter, because nobody is worse off - but that's a different argument from whether remote work creates inequality or not.

But that is not what is going to happen. Jobs that can't be done remotely will be +/- constant — that's a simplification as there will be some second-order consequences like movements in real estate prices in both directions. Jobs that can be done remotely will become less lucrative [reasons above]. [There may be some second-order consequences like the unlocking of innovation, but that's speculative and hard to estimate economic impact here].

I have a personal, sad and rather extreme theory — anything that can be done remotely will be commoditized. But that's another story.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#367

Post by yowlingcat »

throwlaplace wrote: post #47
bzb3 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are miserable people who want to make things worse for remote workers because if everybody can't have something then nobody can.

Every time there's an article on hn highlighting how a vulnerable/at risk/marginalized group of people is being put further at risk the typical response is exactly yours: selfish instead of charitable. They're not miserable people simply because you don't get to have another luxury. They're circumspect and compassionate for not simply being complacent and instead exploring all of the effects. You do realize the autho…

I think if the world is going to improve for poor people, then individuals who aren't poor are going to have to learn how to not oversimplify reality into simplistic narratives for their own mental comfort. If you admit that reagonomic "rising tide rise all ships" rhetoric is structurally flawed (which is certainly true), then I think you can probably make the next step towards understanding that unless you have four commas in your bank account, you do not have enough clout to change the structure of the current socioeconomic system. And from there, you can probably make the next step towards understanding that it's built that way for a reason, that the hierarchical aggregation of socioeconomic capital towards the top of the hierarchy was designed intentionally.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#368

Post by dpoochieni »

aabeshou wrote: post #358
dpoochieni wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The effects of raising minimum wages are twofold: long-term businesses will invest more in automation as it will be more profitable; short-term they might fire one or two people who might make sense at 12 but say now at 15 it does not. Actually think about how it affects different size business, large corporations can easily afford the automation, fire many people as they have many others. A small business having to…

arguably, a business that pays someone less than a living wage doesn't deserve to operate, just as a business that can't exist without using slaves doesn't deserve to operate

Yeah but those people still have to eat no? Bad job is better than no job (Granted, not talking about extremely bad)
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