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Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

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201–210 of 293 posts

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#201

The only reason anyone in the US supports these people is because they have never lived in the socialist big government utopia these politicians champion. In fact, not even the politicians themselves have lived in the society they propose! How is that for a brilliant starting point. Ask anyone who has experienced these ideas in the flesh and you’ll find someone absolutely perplexed that US voters don’t laugh these pe…

Antitrust law isn't a socialist idea; it's a capitalist one. The idea behind it is the standard neoclassical principle that markets achieve maximum efficiency, and therefore consumer welfare is maximized, when they are competitive. No less a capitalist than Adam Smith articulated these ideas when he wrote "people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#202
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right-libertarianism was an attempt to unite the libertarian parts of the left with socially liberal elements on the right against authoritarian ideologies; their main distinction are views on property rights I don't think this is correct at all. What's called right libertarianism or laissez-faire capitalism emerged in the mid 20th century (e.g. Ayn Rand). It stole the term which had historically been a left term a…

Imagine if the mafia went around to collect protection money from business owners and then spent tiny percentage of that money funding various projects, many of which went nowhere and there are some projects that benefit their victims. This is the setup you're in with the government. Wealthy people pay most of the taxes and support the government system. Tiny percentage of their confiscated wealth was apparently used…

Free markets only work if transaction costs are reasonable.

I actually agree with you that the fundamental purpose of government is to be a middleman, but that is the most important thing in the world!

All the time people want to talk about negative externalities - lowering transaction costs is the ultimate positive externality, and it doesn't get accounted for on anyone's books, so people get deluded into thinking there is no return on tax money.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote is highly contingent on one thing, that a man's salary is hard to replace. For most of humanity, it is. I'd wager if you work at a FANNG company you don't view it that way. Hard to get quite as much, maybe, but getting some making $250k to move to $200k a year is much, much different than someone moving from $45 a year to $30k a year, or $25k a year.

I don't think you can generalize that much. Personally none of that stuff mattered once I earned more than like, twice minimum wage. Nowhere near $200K. Maybe that's a US thing, since you guys have so much tied up in work (health insurance etc). I just think about having enough money to get by and help people around me, employment fits around that, not the other way around. Sure, people who are actually earning biscu…

It goes pretty fast if you have kids in the US. We have twins and preschool alone is 700/month. You're also supposed to save like 500/month/kid for college - we have 3 so that's another 1500/month. Minivan to lug everyone around is 600/month.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of social democrats start out as libertarians and then move left once they see the bigger picture of power dynamics beyond the individual.

This was my experience as well. Started off as a libertarian. But then I started working, first in the lobbying industry, then in Silicon Valley. Meritocracy is not as good an idea as it seems to be in practice.

"Meritocracy is not as good an idea as it seems to be in practice"

Why not just consider that it is a label which may not apply to the reality you observe? Have we gotten to the point where considering that any X is not Y is considered a "no true Scotsman" fallacy?

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another point of her platform is that underpaid "contractors" are in fact "employees"

Like the underpaid, overworked campaign staff of Sanders [1] and Warren? [1]: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/7...

The underlying issue is that while the Sanders campaign’s collective bargaining agreement with its staff union sets hourly pay above $15, there are also salaried workers on the team.

Your statement is at minimum misleading, according to the article you linked.

EDIT: Reading it further, it's a terrible article. Yglesias is a hack. No Sanders fan, but this is yellow journalism.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#206
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The left is pro science as long as you don't discuss biology, evolution and the differences between men and women or ethnic groups.

There are taboos on the left, but there's no right wing alternative to the science. I mean, if there was some viable insight into biology that required eschewing leftish ideology, why couldn't it be monetized with startups?

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#207
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now name the Democrats trying to replace capitalism...I'll wait.

57% of them: https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socia... All of the major candidates have endorsed the Green New Deal, which espouses a massive economic program where the "public receives" "ownership stakes." It also calls for a WWII-level economic mobilization premised on wide-scale central planning.

[deleted]

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#208
post #110
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, agreed, both sides have ample ability to manufacture outrage (I mean, come on: no one serious actually expresses the outrageous contempt you're imagining, that's 100% interpretation) over takes like this. I just don't see why it's remotely as asymmetric as you think it is. You don't think lefty folks get offended too?

The post you're replying to is presumably a high income left-leaning voter from the way they phrased the comment. They're literally expressing what you say doesn't exist quite clearly. And anyway your own candidate in 2016 famously called everyone that didn't agree with her "deplorable", and it's a common theme throughout left-leaning high income coastal communities to look down on those hicks in flyover country who…

According to the quote I've seen, she called "half" of Trump's supporters deplorable. I think it's clear in hindsight that essentially all of them supported the things she was deploring, which is why it was a bad move, but she wasn't claiming that.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#209

This is only surprising if you subscribe strictly to Sinclair's quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." In reality, many many people work at jobs that they don't believe in. I personally haven't been able to hack it - I'm too stubborn to keep my mouth shut at appropriate times. But ultimately, people can and will vote against "their own self…

I’m assuming your health insurance covers physical therapy in the event you suffer an injury while patting yourself on the back?

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#210
post #5

Wasn't too surprised to see that Bloomberg neglected to mention a pretty self evident reason why tech workers might want that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... I'm pretty sure that if the anti-trust litigation in 2001 hadn't battered microsoft then tech wages would not be as high today. Competition among employers is good for wages, and the fewer and bigger the employers, the less the co…

The Seattle Times estimated in the 1990s that Microsoft created 10,000+ millionaire employees in the city. This was before the anti-trust litigation. In fact, most everyone I knew that worked for Microsoft in the 1990s became a millionaire.

And today one million dollars can buy you ... 1/2 a Bay Area house?
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