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The Brief Origins of May Day

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Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#231

Post by keybored »

constantcrying wrote: post #121
bsnnkv wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making the generous assumption that there is a gap in your cultural knowledge and sharing the source of these two lines with background context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_Forever

I have clear conflicts of interest with the working class, who work in factories. If I were in a union it should advocate for factory workers working more.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43857741

> Sure. And that is why protesting looks so ridiculous. The oppressed working class, making six figures typing away in a well furnished office.

You’re pulling out all the stops.

1. Developers are too privileged to care about the working class

2. But actually, the working class (or at least the unions) are my enemies, and they anecdotally come across as bad people[1]

There’s more.[2]

> Easily the worst holiday. More hilarious is that it celebrated by those who hate work and working the most.

So add that to the eclectic mix: people who celebrate it hate to work. Of course if you think about what it is for two seconds you realize that it has nothing to do with “celebrating work” or the fact that you have to work as a wage laborer, a completely farcical assumption.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43858309

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43857106

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#232

Post by ramesh31 »

flmontpetit wrote: post #139
dragonwriter wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers? Because many tech workers don't see themselves as workers, with some justification, many having substantial capital investments alongside labor income, making them, in class terms, petit bourgeois or at least close enough to it to perceive their own interests in more bourgeois than proletarian terms. And even the tech workers that are clearly part of the prole…

It's crazy how we've abstracted financial serfdom out of the status of being a property owner. Contrasted with renting it surely seems like independence, but whether the bank squeezes extra value out of you directly or through the proxy of a landlord, the end result is similar.

>Contrasted with renting it surely seems like independence, but whether the bank squeezes extra value out of you directly or through the proxy of a landlord, the end result is similar.

The difference is public policy. Owning property in the US absolutely elevates you to a higher privileged status above renters. How many homeowners were being evicted from their homes after missing a couple mortgage payments during the pandemic? Precisely zero. While thousands of renters in red states had the sheriff at their throats within 60 days. That's all you need to know about class in this country.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#233

Post by DrillShopper »

gibspaulding wrote: post #54
DrillShopper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of tech workers I know come from comfortable middle class suburban backgrounds, so I'm not surprised they're anti-union and anti-labor.

Not even anti-union, but comfy enough not to feel the need for the effort/risk involved in unionizing. When you work in a trade where you could easily be killed or injured on the job the calculus is a bit different.

It's never ceases to amaze me how much software folks think that their job cannot easily injure or kill them. All of the devs I know have no work/life balance, skip doctor's appointments because of work commitments, and several I know have had strokes or heart attacks at their desk while pushing to meet a deadline.

Just because you likely won't be killed in a crane collapse or someone dropping a hammer doesn't mean that the workplace is safe and that working conditions are good.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#234

Post by reillyse »

bee_rider wrote: post #208
reillyse wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think the "middle class" idea is just a fallacy. It feels like it's used by people to distance themselves from "working class" because they feel that working class is somehow beneath them. All of the middle class in todays parlance are just slightly more affluent working class. If you sell your time for money you are working class. If you make money from having money you are bourgeoisie. If you have to thi…

What is it about the owner of a small tech company that potentially bumps them into the middle class, in your view? I like the definition I provided because it seems functional to me; it describes classes with labor-capital relationships, and describes how the incentives influence their behavior.

honestly the tech company person is probably not - I was just thinking of someone who started a what would be derisively called a "lifestyle business" and has basically retired earning a couple of million a year. Most small tech founders are still working for their crust.

What I don't like about the middle class definition is that it is to my mind just a subset of the working class but designed to drive a wedge between people who should be looking out for each other. It has the effect of attempting to align working class people with super rich capitalists. Interesting that "middle class" was the original name for the capitalists who were between the working class and the nobility, now we pretend that the middle class are working class adjacent.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#235

Post by matkoniecz »

9rx wrote: post #212
matkoniecz wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Workers in professional sports and entertainment, for example, which fully embrace labor unions, make software developers look like they work for peanuts. I am pretty sure that union is not the most significant part why pay is high here.

We're all pretty sure of that. How did you come to conclude that others might have thought differently?

Sports and entertainment have super-star effect where vast majority is paid nothing or meager sums, while few stars pull massive piles of money.

I suspect that this drives wages high for highly paid individuals in sport and entertainment.

Note that stars in entertainment, in fields without unions also earn a lot.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#236

Post by 9rx »

matkoniecz wrote: post #235
9rx wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all pretty sure of that. How did you come to conclude that others might have thought differently?

Sports and entertainment have super-star effect where vast majority is paid nothing or meager sums, while few stars pull massive piles of money. I suspect that this drives wages high for highly paid individuals in sport and entertainment. Note that stars in entertainment, in fields without unions also earn a lot.

My question, as originally phrased, apparently was going to cause world war three or something like that according to another commenter, so at their behest I reworded it. Maybe something got lost in that effort, but I was trying to ask where you got the idea that anyone thinks that entertainment/sports stars make as much money as they do because of unions? I've never heard of such a thing and it violates everything we know about economics, so where you find fit in this 'revelation' you keep repeating is curious.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#237

Post by john-h-k »

reillyse wrote: post #196
bee_rider wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always thought of it in these terms: Working class: you are sustained by your current labor. Upper class: you can sustain yourself based on the returns from your investments more-or-less indefinitely. Middle class, between the two: you can sustain yourself off your investments for so long that you can’t practically be threatened by unemployment. It is a labor relations issue explicitly, you need a union if you a…

I honestly think the "middle class" idea is just a fallacy. It feels like it's used by people to distance themselves from "working class" because they feel that working class is somehow beneath them. All of the middle class in todays parlance are just slightly more affluent working class. If you sell your time for money you are working class. If you make money from having money you are bourgeoisie. If you have to thi…

> If you sell your time for money you are working class.

This would put a trader earning $3m/yr as working class. That’s fine I guess, but then we need another distinction, for the difference between that person and a minimum wage worker.

Now in all the conversations where we would say “working class” we use this new term, because we almost always mean things relating to income level rather than labour vs owner.

And so all we’ve done is changed the name for “working class”

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#238

Post by TimTheTinker »

pessimizer wrote: post #182
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 argument…

Sometimes the "middle" just means avoiding either of two incorrect and diametrically opposed viewpoints.

I.e. justice for all, not just for the rich or the poor.

People often react to something wrong in society with another wrong that is diametrically opposed. In that case, the term "balance" is appropriate - it's about correcting what's wrong without overreacting.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#239

Post by mikrl »

zackmorris wrote: post #189
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 av…

>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

Is this true?

I thought senior engineers were expected to push back as a matter of course, and staff engineers were expected to think in broad, business needs and translate that down to the code.

An engineer who just shuts up and writes code, is so we are told, the first casualty in the age of AI.

Re: The Brief Origins of May Day

#240

Post by hilsdev »

citadel_melon wrote: post #99
dgrin91 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech workers tend to get paid very well. That limits incentivization for unionization. Also there is a stigma that unions tend to be for the middle of the road workers with modest salaries. All the senior leaders with big salaries are not union, and everyone wants the big salary.

It’s silly. MLB players are unionized and they make more money than tech workers. The reason why management don’t need a union is because they have much more say in determining their own wages.

Apples and oranges
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