71–80 of 99 posts
Media tries to blame brexit and trump on fb instead of realising that a large portion of the population actually want trump, brexit, no immigration, muslim bans etc. Hey, but it is easier to think that the people were tricked into voting like that.
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You might have had a chance at making an argument if the first and only laborer you exemplified wasn't "basketball player".
Okay, babygoat, you're not familiar with Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, which is the allusion here. Granted it's an obscure one... but one many who have been introduced to this question (wage and price controls) academically would be familiar. Nozick made a classic argument about how naive concepts of social justice are incompatible with a system in which everyday economic transactions made by free will can be ho…
I was trying to make an argument that in capitalist countries without worker protection laws like minimum wage, holidays, worker safety regulations, retirement etc (think China, industrialization-aera Europe), workers tend to be exploited by their employers, rather than receiving part of the wealth they help generate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might have had a chance at making an argument if the first and only laborer you exemplified wasn't "basketball player".
Okay, babygoat, you're not familiar with Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, which is the allusion here. Granted it's an obscure one... but one many who have been introduced to this question (wage and price controls) academically would be familiar. Nozick made a classic argument about how naive concepts of social justice are incompatible with a system in which everyday economic transactions made by free will can be ho…
As long as we can define capitalism as the freedom to buy and sell legal goods and one services on whatever prices/terms one wishes, my own conclusion has been the when companies are in a position to exploit workers it's typically because of a lack of free enterprise and not the other way around. I can see why people who think the cause is free enterprise would want to further regulate.
But inevitably when you find powerful exploitative corporations you can dig a little and find that it's usually because they are not operating on a level playing field... the huge exploitative entity is only possible because someone's economic freedom is being restricted somewhere. Typically by writing regulation in their favor -- both in industry-specific ways and with corporate law in general.
The thing to do is to strip away their unfair advantages, not to allow the beasts to exist and "regulate". Because small businesses have a hard time coping with the cost of even well-intended regulation you can end up having the opposite effect. And the regulators end up becoming complicit.
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You were talking about people who work at Palantir and Uber. They are in a position of power relative to 99% of the population. These are not the “forgotten men” of Trumpist rhetoric. Making fun of their self-victimization is not bullying either. Do you really think Palantir employees are a group that needs to be protected from semianonymous Internet comments?
I regret using the word "bullying" in my comment now. I do think that it is a correct word, but it's not what I wanted to argue about, and it completely derailed the conversation to a realm of value judgements. Can we talk about it without value judgements whatsoever, please? I don't think that we'll come to terms about who's a victim, who needs protection, and so on - but most of all, I think that these questions ar…
Your original comment calls HN an echo chamber and suggests that people who work at Apple, Uber and Palantir are afraid to express their political views. That's entirely about feelings. What specifically was it that you wanted to discuss there?
Maybe it's not helpful to make a joke of it. But I honestly think it's a ridiculous notion that people with six-figure salaries and stock options are somehow being discriminated against — in a society that's built to support them at every step.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might have had a chance at making an argument if the first and only laborer you exemplified wasn't "basketball player".
Okay, babygoat, you're not familiar with Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, which is the allusion here. Granted it's an obscure one... but one many who have been introduced to this question (wage and price controls) academically would be familiar. Nozick made a classic argument about how naive concepts of social justice are incompatible with a system in which everyday economic transactions made by free will can be ho…
That's not to say the income distribution aspect is not important, it's another side of the same issue of class relations. But I don't think a claim can be made that capitalism itself is a strong factor of income redistribution. And in the short run, distribution is the only thing that maters to workers.
Crucially, capitalist redistribution, to the degree it works without state intervention, is strongly related to the value of the human capital each person is born with or can acquire in life - it's no coincidence that massive public investments in education were strongly related to increasing equality. Once human capital becomes relatively devalued by thinking machines that can do more and more complex things ever cheaper and faster, we will pass biological limit when workers no longer have anything to bring to the negotiating table: they need the products of capitalism but can no longer capture a meaningful fraction of the income in relation to capital, nor can they amass significant capital due to diseconomies of scale.
The feudal model is thus appropriate: all-powerful lords waging war over turf, a cast of mercenaries fighting the war (knowledge workers and specialized professionals) and a vast mass of peons.
This whole big data thing along with all these related jobs (big data engineer, machine learning engineer, data scientist, etc) - what do people this was all about? Why do we have all this data now that we didn't before - it's because everyone is tracking stuff. So where should we all work if we don't want to be part of this? If you're not doing this directly, you're probably paid by someone who is.
So far no Facebook employee has answered this thread (unless they did so between the lines). Considering that Facebook has 25k employees, this must mean they have some very harsh policy on keeping quiet. Either that, or a strong culture that brainwashes them to actually believe they are working towards the naive mission of connecting the world. Or all of the above.
I think the way this problem is framed succumbs to an outdated world view, an image of the samurai computer hackers that put themselves in the service of the corporate lords - but are ultimately responsible for their actions against society and can choose to rebel. They are rare and prized and thus their collaboration is valued by the lords. This is a romantic vision that the companies themselves like to perpetuate,…
This is a mistake I've seen made by government officials before: The idea that a tech worker is a tech worker is a tech worker.
A Java developer with expertise in Shibboleth is not going to fit right in like a replaceable cog as an iOS game developer.
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I regret using the word "bullying" in my comment now. I do think that it is a correct word, but it's not what I wanted to argue about, and it completely derailed the conversation to a realm of value judgements. Can we talk about it without value judgements whatsoever, please? I don't think that we'll come to terms about who's a victim, who needs protection, and so on - but most of all, I think that these questions ar…
I'm genuinely not sure what you want to talk about if values and feelings are excluded. Your original comment calls HN an echo chamber and suggests that people who work at Apple, Uber and Palantir are afraid to express their political views. That's entirely about feelings. What specifically was it that you wanted to discuss there? Maybe it's not helpful to make a joke of it. But I honestly think it's a ridiculous not…