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The Brief Origins of May Day

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Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#181

Post by ses1984 »

dauertewigkeit wrote: post #114
ses1984 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us have way, way more in common with a meat processing worker than we have in common with the people who sign our pay checks. The wealthy class makes multiples of your salary in passive income and their marginal tax rate is lower. You work and fork over 40%. They do nothing and pay 15% or less. You put your retirement money into a 401k. They put their retirement money into a “charitable foundation”. You draw…

I said nothing about belonging to different economic classes. My point is simply that if you are 1 of 50,000 in a meat processing plant, you do not really have any way of competing with your fellow workers. You might try to work harder and faster, but then you end up raising the bar for all, and you now have to maintain the new pace. And once the rest catch up with your pace, the pay for all will be lowered again. In…

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Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#182

Post by pessimizer »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #131

> Literally thousands of working people embraced the ideals of anarchism, which sought to put an end to all hierarchical structures Something that groups of people rarely seem to realize: you don't have to accept a binary. You don't have to put all hierarchical structure to an end. You don't have to do ONLY one thing or ONLY another. Life is about balance. Doesn't matter what side of a spectrum you're on. Conservativ…

> Something that groups of people rarely seem to realize: you don't have to accept a binary. You don't have to put all hierarchical structure to an end. You don't have to do ONLY one thing or ONLY another.

I do not understand your framing. You don't "have to" do anything. These are people talking about what they wish to do.

> Life is about balance.

Pseudo-Buddhist bullshit.

You are lost in abstraction. These arguments are actually about material conditions, they're not just personality conflicts. Middle-class people lose contact with this fact, because they have no material worries; or rather their material conditions are simply tied to whether their employer believes they are profitable to employ. Of course middle-class people have to "compromise." Or rather they have to paint their total and continuous submission as a compromise, complain about the inflexibility of their bosses, and dream of one day having the leverage to order people around themselves.

Arguing that the best solution is in the middle is just the moderation fallacy. It's not profound, it's the law of averages. It's the kind of thing you can say regardless of subject, an invariant, that will always make people who believe in the law of averages believe you said something profound.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#183

Post by parpfish »

bee_rider wrote: post #178
throw0101a wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes solidarity between workers possible is the homogeneity of their labour. Ethan Hunt play by Tom Cruise and Waitress #2 played by Jane Doe aren't very homogeneous with regards to pay and fame, but they're both part of SAG.

Doesn’t the “G” in SAG stand for “Guild?” A guild is different from a union, right? It is more like a bunch of independent contractors making connections or something like that.

a guild for software would be interesting.

not only would the collective provide benefits to the individual workers, but it would serve as an (optional) form of licensure/credentialing that ensures each member has a baseline level of competence. it could make hiring so much easier if you could skip the fizzbuzz screening rounds by pulling from a pool of vetted talent.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#184

Post by flmontpetit »

constantcrying wrote: post #128
bsnnkv wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There is no snark here. The union wants my job outsourced so that factory workers can keep theirs. Please tell me why I should have solidarity with them.

The core proposition of syndicalism is that the workplace should be democratized. Democracy is far from perfect, and if often fails, but we believe in it nonetheless because everything else is worse.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#185

Post by jjj123 »

constantcrying wrote: post #68
parpfish wrote: post #16

Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers? I know that we’re not a monolith and are actually a heterogeneous mix of opinions, but there frequently talk about job dissatisfaction (career burnout, comically stingy equity grants, etc). But when organizing comes up, it’s usually treated with disdain because so many have bought into highly individualistic hustle-culture and the narrative that unions only exis…

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You make it sound like organizing you and your peers is just virtue signaling toward the plight of the working class.

It’s not virtue signaling. There are material gains that could be made by organizing. Layoff protection and the power to set company direction are two big ones that come to mind.

It’s okay to want to unionize for selfish reasons. In fact, I think it’s borderline propaganda to suggest the only reason a wealthy person would organize is because of their own class guilt.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#186

Post by bee_rider »

parpfish wrote: post #183
bee_rider wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t the “G” in SAG stand for “Guild?” A guild is different from a union, right? It is more like a bunch of independent contractors making connections or something like that.

a guild for software would be interesting. not only would the collective provide benefits to the individual workers, but it would serve as an (optional) form of licensure/credentialing that ensures each member has a baseline level of competence. it could make hiring so much easier if you could skip the fizzbuzz screening rounds by pulling from a pool of vetted talent.

Yeah. There are groups like ACM, IEEE has some computer sub-group if I recall correctly, and there are more niche groups like SIAM. But, they all seem to have a somewhat academic focus, at least in my (very limited) experience.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#187

Post by flmontpetit »

matkoniecz wrote: post #164
cruzcampo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The threat of violence is the only way social progress has ever been made. This is a lie. Poland and many areas occupied by Russia managed to end Russian control without this.

In other words, the rest of of us should just wait until some foreign powers dissolve our oppressors for us?

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#189

Post by zackmorris »

parpfish wrote: post #16

Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers? I know that we’re not a monolith and are actually a heterogeneous mix of opinions, but there frequently talk about job dissatisfaction (career burnout, comically stingy equity grants, etc). But when organizing comes up, it’s usually treated with disdain because so many have bought into highly individualistic hustle-culture and the narrative that unions only exis…

The simplest answer tends to be the right one, so in the face of the inexplicable, the answer is usually ignorance.

The tech track works great if one falls into line and doesn't rock the boat by questioning authority or trying to see the big picture. If one clings to original teenage fantasies like the idea that intellectual prowess and financial success eventually bring esteem and a social life. If one chooses to avoid becoming mired in dead end physical labor jobs like everyone else, even for a time, in worship of their own cleverness.

But should the unthinkable happen, say, the loss of a loved one due to a hyper focus on work, or witnessing one's work being used to take from others, or waking up one day to find oneself disillusioned with the direction tech is going, then suddenly tech loses its luster. One starts to recognize it for what it is - just another way to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few.

Tech has come to symbolize sheltering from reality, like a state sanctioned drug. It's a way to pat oneself on the back and downplay the wisdom of those outside it. Blindly worshipping it to the exclusion of the other wonders of life is the surest way I know to separate oneself from the soul, other than money perhaps.

In good conscience, I must add that the vast majority of tech today is phantom tech, not real tech. It serves to entertain and distract rather than be a labor-saving device. So in that sense, it's understandable that people invested in solving anything except any real problem have a disdain for the plight of labor.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#190

Post by [deleted] »

parpfish wrote: post #16

Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers? I know that we’re not a monolith and are actually a heterogeneous mix of opinions, but there frequently talk about job dissatisfaction (career burnout, comically stingy equity grants, etc). But when organizing comes up, it’s usually treated with disdain because so many have bought into highly individualistic hustle-culture and the narrative that unions only exis…

[deleted]
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