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Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

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Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#41

Post by libertine »

OrangeMonkey wrote: post #22
libertine wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>#1 - we do, we can quit anytime we want and find another place to work for. Sometimes this is not straight forward for example when you have some responsibilities in your life, or when your career is too specialized with little to no transferable skill (like when you´re proficient at an internal process of a company). Unless we could quit and be self sustainable without a job, then yes, at that point you could say o…

I think my point is being misunderstood just slightly. Its not that 'finding a job is easy' its that we are not slaves and while we can not necessarily choose who we labor for, we can choose who we do not labor for.

I believe I understood your point, we are just treading a fine line, which is:

You need to work for a living, and while you´re not a slave (because it´s not forced labor), your livelihood depends on it - and that has a conditioning effect on many levels (emotional, financial, relationships...)

Of course we always used a form of work to sustain ourselves, the difference might just be on the rewards we get from it.

Maybe that´s why some people exaggerate when they say they´re slaves of work, perhaps is a coping mechanism that allows them to frame that activity as something they´re being forced to do, rather than a deliberate choice they´re not happy about.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#42

Post by VictorPath »

bjarneh wrote: post #25

> ...between 1971 and 2018, 3,280 trade unionists were murdered in Colombia. > Is there a solution? Not within this system. No amount of union organizing or progressive legislation will alter the nature of work in it. Why are they killing the union leaders if unionization does not work? The massive push by large industries to get unions out of the mix indicates that unions helps workers massively. Collective bargaini…

In 1985, FARC entered a peace process and began working electorally and non-violently. The right never went for this and despite the government agreeing to a peace settlement, the right slaughtered political candidates, trade union leaders, etc. So eventually FARC reformed and began its armed campaign again. Something to think about for complaints about FARC "terrorism" from 1985 on. Actually they began doing so well that the US began having to bankroll the Colombian military with Plan Colombia (not a new thing, Kennedy was doing the same thing on a smaller scale).

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#44

Post by [deleted] »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #14
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #5

If you took all the income from the billionaires and distributed it evenly, the average person wouldn't even get a 2% raise. If you took all the wealth and distributed it evenly, the a average person wouldn't even get $500. In the US - Billionaires have $1.3T: https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires/ That's ~$3880 per US person. Globally, there's a lot more people, and countries aren't as rich as the US. Eve…

The thought that 'billionaires' are the problem is missing the point. There are folks worth the better part of $1T. They are a bigger part of the problem, by several orders of magnitude. The systematic problems are, that the system is rigged so a tiny few skim from everything, leaving the absolute minimum they can get away with for the rest of us.

[deleted]

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#45

Post by vladharbuz »

lr4444lr wrote: post #38
vladharbuz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but I have a slightly different question to ask. Imagine you work at, say, a game development company, along with 99 other developers. The only other member of the company is a CEO and shareholder, who decides how much to keep for himself and how much to pay the employees, but, importantly, does none of the actual work himself. Let's say the game is wildly successful and the employees are collectively p…

No, it is not wage theft, because wages are not assets. The shareholders take the risk. Employees get their salary regardless of whether the game is a success, flop, or somewhere in the middle. Bonuses tread that middle ground. I personally do not like bonuses, but they are exactly that: give the employee the opportunity to partake in the profits in a way that exposes him to some risk.

Yes, this is the prevailing view! However, I think the magnitude of the reward an investor should get, as well as the actual amount of risk they are exposed to, is overstated. Also, there is nothing stopping us from having a system where the employees become "members" of the company and shoulder some of the (diluted) financial risk, thus doing away with shareholders. This comment has a couple more thoughts on this, as well as a link to my essay on this topic. Let me know what you think! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32424519

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#46

Post by pxmpxm »

lr4444lr wrote: post #24
becquerel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can choose who we work for (sometimes), but we can't choose not to work at all. Our engagement in the capitalist labour market is mandatory; otherwise we starve to death. Doesn't sound like we have much control over our labour to me.

Parasitism was a crime in the USSR. Venezuela for a time, maybe still, had compulsory field labor during the oil price crisis. Where exactly - "capitalist" or otherwise - can you choose not to work without having to submit yourself to extensive checks for actual means tested poverty to get guaranteed food/clothing/shelter?

This - the very same people that push far left collectivist ideas like the ones linked intentionally sidestep the fact that every single socialist set up had compulsory labor participation. The only difference is that with the latter set up, they get to fully control what you do.

The reason why I saw no homeless people growing up is because the commies locked them all up.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#47

Post by OrangeMonkey »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #33
OrangeMonkey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm concerned my response will be taken poorly so I will try to phrase this well. I hope you take this in the manner I intend it - with love in my heart. We, as humans, are only entitled to what we can ourselves provide. To believe otherwise may be to hoist the black flag to take from others that which they did not earn. Now, we as people are also compassionate and we want the elderly to not starve and we want the in…

> We, as humans, are only entitled to what we can ourselves provide. So then why do we have inherited wealth, why not ban that. Make things equitable, born with nothing but you can scavenge yourself. > To believe otherwise may be to hoist the black flag to take from others that which they did not earn. You mean like "private property"? Your logic only makes sense in an equitable world, where everyone is born equal, b…

This is diving into a conversation that may be best not had on HNN. @Dang - delete this if you like man, no offense taken.

I don't think the goal is equity but equality. At least, that is my goal. I want the lowliest shoeshine boy to have the opportunity to do amazing things.

I make no apologies for the country I was born or the circumstances. I grew up on a poor farm in a broken trailer surrounded by my backwoods relatives. I chose to do something different.

My view does not make sense only in an 'equitable world' - consider the inverse. If everyone decides not to work because they are 'owed food so as to not starve' then who will harvest the grain, who will sow the fields, who will till the earth. A policy that would require people to work and then give away all of their product is not equity its slavery.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#48

Post by solar-ice »

vladharbuz wrote: post #31
lr4444lr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing significant stops people from forming worker collectives. Maybe it's telling that they're so uncommon?

You are right that people can absolutely form co-operatives. However, if I wanted to work on, say, World of Warcraft, I could hardly show up and demand Blizzard be turned into a co-operative. Maybe you meant “well, if people are so upset by the status quo, why don't they just all quit and form their own co-operatives to make Starcraft 3?”. This is a great point, and a really interesting question. I think we should al…

Part of the issue (in countries where you're not liable to be shot or accused by the police of running a cult or what-have-you) is that worker co-ops do not generally have access to significant capital or loans from VCs and banks which are scared of them, so cannot usually spend outside their means to grow - while companies that mesh well with current financialised society can.

As a result, co-ops need to grow differently and often compete differently; you can't afford to pay 50 people right out the gate to build Starcraft 3 to sell in 2 years' time. You need to be making money from day 1, and you can't compete directly with companies that have access to capital or you lose immediately.

There do exist co-ops in the video game industry - Motion Twin, behind Dead Cells, is one.

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#49

Post by kris-nova »

Very familiar sentiment to thoughts I have been thinking and feeling over the past year or so. Interesting to see more of this stuff popping up. I am starting to think unionizing is going to be the path to start pointing the majority of folks towards.

https://medium.com/@kris-nova/why-i-wrote-hacking-capitalism...

Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich

#50

Post by matwood »

vladharbuz wrote: post #37
interfaced wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the game fails are those 99 employees ready to give their salary back? I imagine many places would allow their employees to buy options or stock.

Great question! Maybe they are, maybe they're not, and you're right that this should influence how the company is structured. But our current system goes quite a bit past simply "solving" this problem with investor shareholders, because that sole shareholder is entitled to any future profits the company makes, regardless of whether it makes a completely different game, and regardless of the massive contributions futu…

It's the same argument if someone should take options in lieu of salary in a startup, and the answer is almost always no. Options tend to end up worthless as most startups fail.

IMO, a better question is to ask what allowed the single investor to become an investor to begin with. The nature of investing means the investor must be able to also lose all their capital. What can we do as a society to make easier for the 99 other employees to 'invest'. For me this means having social safety nets like healthcare and UBI so that people can take less salary or risk what little they have in a venture like you originally described.

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