Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends • Hacker News Board

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#281

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

jtr1 wrote: post #193

technotony wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes up a lot, nobody is literally chained to their desks. Democracy in the workplace comes from voting with your feet and taking another job at another company. It's not perfect, particularly for lower income people, but it's also not slavery and generally the arc of worker rights is improving through time. You could make a case that some of the current anger in the united states is because COVID's destruction…

Personally, I'd love it if everyone could easily vote with their feet. I think there's more overlap between certain libertarian and socialist visions of the economy than most people realize. In our current system, there's a lot of factors that prevent people from voting with their feet: healthcare, location, switching costs, and availability of jobs being chief among them, but also newer phenomena like non-compete co…

Non-compete contracts tend to be unenforceable.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#282

Post by leetcrew » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #208

macd wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we want to prevent people from doing that?

Because it defeats the purpose of a progressive capital gains tax? If the concern is that someone is paying less in tax off $250,000 in capital gains when they realize their wealth than someone who is paid a wage of $250,000, the policy prescription (with which I agree), is to tax $250,000 capital gains like income, I.e. at the top marginal tax rate. What happens if I liquidate $50,000 at a time over the course of 5…

I don't think it makes sense to tax the appreciation of an asset over twenty years as if it were a single year of outsized income. if you want to treat it similarly to income, you should divide the realized gain by the number of years the asset was held and assess taxes as if the person made that quotient in income for each of those years (under the rules/brackets for each year, possibly with some adjustments for inflation). this would make it harder for average joe to estimate his tax liability when he sells, but it prevents the tax optimization you mentioned and is (imo) pretty fair.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#283

Post by dlp211 » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 7:40 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #257

bedhead wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long argued for massive estate taxes on the very rich that forces a partial reset on wealth and avoid medieval times when land ownership was just passed down generation to generation. It's the only fair and practical wealth tax I can think of. I have no problem at all with Bezos being filthy rich, however, I have a giant problem with his kids and all descendants being billionaires. A huge estate tax would also m…

Frankly, this wouldn't do much. Most familial wealth in america ends up getting lost. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-why-90-of-rich-peopl... .

Three things. First, this is only true of the past and doesn't saying anything about the future. Second, this "study" isn't weighted based on the size of the estate. Third, that 10% matters far more than you could imagine.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#284

Post by blockmarker » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 7:40 PM UTC

babycake wrote: post #21

brenden2 wrote: post #2

I think this plays into the current social unrest as well. People have been trying to separate the looters and protestors, but they seem to completely ignore the extreme inequality that exists throughout the US, especially in this period of high unemployment. People at the bottom have it bad, very bad. Being ignorant of that problem is just going to make it worse. Lashing out at fancy retailers in fancy neighbourhood…

Politicians, police, corporations, media... the institution is trying to pushing the idea that protestors == looters. And therefore the protests should be quelled. Several states even went so far as to declare, without any evidence, that the majority of the people in the protests were from out-of-state troublemakers... which makes no sense. Even more fitting, President Trump called the protestors thugs and terrorists…

>Politicians, police, corporations, media... the institution is trying to pushing the idea that protestors == looters.

You cannot say that corporations are doing that when Google, Sony, Target, Home Depot, EA, Square Enix, Ubisoft, Facebook, Apple, Intel, Levi's, Banana Republic,Amazon, Spotify, Snap, Netflix, Microsoft, Zillow and Disney are in favor of the protests/riots. And those are the ones I found on the first article I clicked.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#285

Post by Apocryphon » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #274

jtr1 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an argument a lot of non-authoritarian socialists make: democracy only governs the few hours when people are not sleeping or at work, so a deeper, fuller democracy would include running workplaces democratically as well. Whether by employee-elected boards, cooperatives, democratically run unions (a necessary distinction), or some other form of collective control, that the consent of the governed is a question…

Democracy is not an efficient way of running a business. Look at the multi-trillion dollar deficit as an example. Workers are incentivized to choose themselves over the health of the company or the customer. Also, people overwhelmingly would rather exchange their stake in the company for the equivalent value in cash. It's only when the company's valuation skyrockets when they retroactively declare this to be unfair.

As we've seen in recent cases, corporate management has become incentivized to choose the interests of the investors over the health of the company or the customer or their workers, making short-term decisions that look good in quarterly reports.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#286

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

alexose wrote: post #142

I find it very disappointing that the most reliably lucrative career arc for a programmer nowadays is to get hired by a tech giant and stay there as long as possible. And the second most is probably to go to work for a company that could get gobbled up by a tech giant. I've made a career out of small startups, and I wouldn't trade it for a thing. On the other hand, if I'd gone to work for Amazon straight out of colle…

> On the other hand, if I'd gone to work for Amazon straight out of college, I'd probably have a boat by now.

Anyone who'd bought AMZN probably has a boat by now.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#287

Post by freeone3000 » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #276

Frost1x wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And its growing ever more unavoidable in daily life for anyone trying to live. Pretty much everyone is becoming subject to these authoritarian regimes (corporate structures) as they invade and carve away at our democracy through financial influence, regulatory capture, etc.

The more powerful the government is, the more it can be corrupted.

But that's an extra hoop. Without joining together in governance, what stops corporations from exercising their power on individuals directly?

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#288

Post by megaman821 » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #262

megaman821 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. If the people tried to topple the monarchy, they would be actively in conflict with the military. I am pretty sure you can start a co-op without risking conflict with the military. Can you tell me the exact things the government is preventing people from doing in this case?

Another metaphor: "Linux is open and free, it can be a major desktop OS if everyone just switched to it, but because they haven't they obviously don't care for it."

Not to go off on a tangent but what you said is true, most people don't care about Linux...or Windows, or MacOS. They have a general apathy to whatever desktop OS they use, with a slight bias to whatever they used last. People just want to use the applications they want and need.

Perhaps the same statement would apply to workplace control. Most people have a general apathy to their workplace governance and only care about their pay and benefits.

I really don't know how you make people care about things, but compelling a change that people are free to make today by government force is last on my list of things to try.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#289

Post by dlp211 » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #172

bedhead wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long argued for massive estate taxes on the very rich that forces a partial reset on wealth and avoid medieval times when land ownership was just passed down generation to generation. It's the only fair and practical wealth tax I can think of. I have no problem at all with Bezos being filthy rich, however, I have a giant problem with his kids and all descendants being billionaires. A huge estate tax would also m…

There are tons of loop holes. In the end, if said legislation passes both floors the only ones got hit are the middle class people who don't have the knowledge and means to use those loopholes.

Estate taxes on the Federal level have never even come close to being applicable to middle-class estates.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#290

Post by Apocryphon » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #276

Frost1x wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And its growing ever more unavoidable in daily life for anyone trying to live. Pretty much everyone is becoming subject to these authoritarian regimes (corporate structures) as they invade and carve away at our democracy through financial influence, regulatory capture, etc.

The more powerful the government is, the more it can be corrupted.

And what keeps corporations from becoming governments unto themselves?