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Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

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

#231
post #142

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…

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

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

That's the wrong question or perspective. What they are trying to do is cause enough damage that the only option left will be for people to depend on government support, jobs, etc. That grows government large and ultimately fundamentally changes this nation to the core.

You can't say "let's replace capitalism"...because you just can't do it that way. California is a perfect example of the kind of planned manipulation I am talking about. We are paying incredible amounts of money for our fuel. Much more than in other parts of the nation. There's an agenda here to push everything related to climate change and "green", whether it makes sense or not. So our roads are not maintained, our fuel taxes go through the roof and politicians ignore cries for help. Their objective is to force everyone onto some mythical form of public transportation that can never work in CA, but that's not going to stop them. They close entire road lanes to create space for a few bikes and create massive traffic jams in the process. So it isn't about coming right out and saying "we want to replace capitalism", it's about having that as a plan and then plotting a series of measures that will cause so much damage that, over time, that will be the result.

Let's forget the socialist label for a moment.

Here's reality: Not one of the people proposing these extreme ideas has ever lived, and much less managed, anything even remotely close to what they are proposing to do.

Let's assume for a moment that they sincerely believe --not know, but believe-- these ideas are good. People like AOC have been indoctrinated by schooling into pretty much that world view. She and the others have never actually lived in the kind of society they so enthusiastically champion.

It stands to reason that, if one is going to push for certain ideas the sensible thing to do is look at history and try to understand if these ideas, when applied, produced results at least equivalent to and ideally superior to the status quo.

Well, we have history on these ideas. Lots of it. Across multiple continents, cultures, nations and time. And there isn't a single success story anyone can float to the surface. Quite to the contrary, the common denominator is that the result of adopting these ideologies is disastrous. Poverty and misery increase. Economic development collapses. Social inequality increases. Government grows large. Populations grow dependent. And darkness takes hold.

We have people pushing for the equivalent of coffee enemas to cure cancer. It might sound interesting, but there isn't one single bit of evidence that it does as promised and lots of evidence showing it causes harm. To make things even more interesting, those pushing for coffee enemas have never had one themselves and, instead, are the beneficiaries of everything they say is bad in our current system.

As I have said many times: This isn't a matter of opinion. It's a matter of history. These people are dangerous.

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

#232
post #189

It is odd that so many otherwise tech savvy people are supportive of 20th century solutions to 21st century problems (to borrow Andrew Yang's phrase). People don't want to use the 4th best search engine or twitter or airbnb. We all know this. These kind of things are naturally winner take all and will pop up elsewhere on the global stage if we push them down here. Instead, apply a VAT. This would be a productive and…

Honestly, in a way, it is almost two sides of the same coin. Warren knows that breaking up a company will not pass muster through Congress, and we will settle on a compromise which is a VAT. On the other hand, if you start with a VAT, the compromise will be nothing

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

#233

What a surprise. I'd love to be a billionaire, but I like Sanders opinions about whether they should exist. I'd love to be worth enough for it to hurt me, but I like Warren's wealth tax idea. I'd love to pay lower taxes, or less progressive taxes, but I'm happy to support those less fortunate. As a matter of fact, I'm not even a single-issue voter! Perhaps most controversially, I think altruism is good for society. S…

Wealth taxes are actually bad for society, and especially bad for altruistic people who care about the less fortunate. A wealth tax is a tax on capital, period - and making capital more expensive hurts everyone, but it hugely hurts those who need capital the most. If you care about lowering inequality without hurting folks more than you have to, what you want is a mildly-progressive consumption tax. (I.e. an income t…

> Wealth taxes are actually bad for society

> get rid of assorted insanity such as Prop 13 in CA

Aren't these slightly contradictory views?

Property tax is a form of wealth tax (in that it's a tax on assets rather than income) and Prop 13 puts a cap on it.

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

#234

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…

I have no idea what you just said. I personally, have lived in Denmark, Netherlands, and Germany - quite socialist, and big government places, with public healthcare, education, childcare, strong safety nets, unions, worker protections, so on and so forth. And life was freaking great. In fact, in Netherlands, you only needed to work for 36 hours. Those were the happiest times of my life.

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

#235
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What part of my statement is misleading? Here's the history of Sanders' campaign underpayment: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/labor-fight-roils-be...

it's "misleading" because it challenges the other users preconceptions on warren :)

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

#236
post #86

Pretty telling that the idea of voting against one's own financial self-interest, even as a single part of a large platform, is a wild idea to these business journalists.

Having a few large companies that have colluded to keep salaries down by having no poaching agreements doesn’t seem it’s good for tech workers. Having a bunch of companies and a competitive labor market is much better for tech workers.

"salaries down"

if anything, all IT salaries need to come back to earth. i assume via massive taxation from the likes of warren and sanders.

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

#237

I'm not entirely convinced breaking up Big Tech will be a net benefit, in fact that position weakened my support for Warren. But then again, I also don't work for a FAANG (I do work for a big corporation, and they don't need broken up, they're imploding just fine on their own), so I wouldn't be included in that statistic anyway.

breaking up big tech (sanders, warren):

- US short sellers dream: will truly and finally cripple the US and its dominant IT companies; long overdue as US is at most a medium level country

- huge rise in Chinese IT companies; left without competitors assume the Chinese giants will simply control everything and everyone; a new era of Chinese world dominance begins

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

#238
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of my statement is misleading? Here's the history of Sanders' campaign underpayment: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/labor-fight-roils-be...

it's "misleading" because it challenges the other users preconceptions on warren :)

It doesn't say anything on Warren (who I happen to dislike intensely). It's on Sanders, and it's misleading because the article itself notes that Sanders is trying to make it right, and that it's on a technicality that it happened in the first place.

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a purely technical matter socialism--especially when juxtaposed with capitalism, as in the Pew Gallup poll--means government ownership of businesses and central planning of economic activity. The DSA, which Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are affiliated with, do advocate for public ownership of businesses: https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-is-democratic-socialism... > Social ownership could take many forms, such as w…

You moved from describing the Democrats to describing the Democratic Socialists of America. Those are two very different groups. As a Democrat, I find the DSA rather obnoxious, because they perpetually run NIMBY candidates here in San Francisco who favor the interests of rich homeowners over renters. (Even in SF, the DSA finds itself unable to win anything more than supervisor seats; the mayor and state representativ…

> wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Democrats are saying yes to the question about "socialism" really to express their support for Democratic policies that have been smeared as "socialist", rather than anything having to do with central planning.

While most democrats aren't actually supporting socialism, interestingly enough, socialism doesn't necessarily have something to do with social planning either: socialism is about getting rid of capitalism, an economic system where a few people owns the means of production and “steal” the work of the working class (note that this has nothing to do with free market). You can achieve socialism by different mean. The Marxist-Leninist way, with all-powerful state and central planning is one, but the anarchist way with workers self-managing is another. The first kind dominated the 20th century (and they slayed thousands of anarchists in the process) but nowadays most socialists (in the western world at least) belong to the second category. Noam Chomsky is a good example of these people.

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

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You moved from describing the Democrats to describing the Democratic Socialists of America. Those are two very different groups. As a Democrat, I find the DSA rather obnoxious, because they perpetually run NIMBY candidates here in San Francisco who favor the interests of rich homeowners over renters. (Even in SF, the DSA finds itself unable to win anything more than supervisor seats; the mayor and state representativ…

> wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Democrats are saying yes to the question about "socialism" really to express their support for Democratic policies that have been smeared as "socialist", rather than anything having to do with central planning. While most democrats aren't actually supporting socialism, interestingly enough, socialism doesn't necessarily have something to do with social planning either: socialism is…

You can't "get rid" of capitalism without involving some sort of central planning. If anything, the original proponents of socialism including Marx never supposed that capitalism would be something to "get rid of" in any way; they thought socialism would only become viable when capitalism had reached its highest stage of development, and then the "transition" into socialism would be relatively natural and painless.

"Workers self-managing" industries works really well if the industries have low capital intensity. Law firms might be one example of that. Not so much otherwise, because workers at any one firm don't really want to deal with highly-uncertain capital investments in the first place (that would mean keeping all their eggs in one basket!); they'd much rather shed that risk to outsiders.

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