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Can we have the day off?

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Re: Can we have the day off?

#781

Post by Affenklang »

Aurornis wrote: post #80
terminalgravity wrote: post #56

Benefits for extra productivity filter up to the shareholders not to the workers producing the extra productivity. This reminds me of the Luddite movement in England. Industrial machines were disrupting the textile industry. The Luddites were not anti technology they were against technology allowing employers to suppress wages and working conditions and for increasing the quality of life and more humane working condi…

> The Luddites were not anti technology they were against technology allowing employers to suppress wages and working conditions and for increasing the quality of life and more humane working conditions for the extra productivity. I’m seeing this talking point circulated a lot recently but it’s not really the whole story. Luddites weren’t on a selfless crusade to steal from the rich and give to the poor. They wanted…

[dead]

Re: Can we have the day off?

#782

Post by class3shock »

paulddraper wrote: post #196
class3shock wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's also true, inclusively.

No, the average worker does not live to work. The average shareholder and executive lives to extract every ounce of work possible out of the average workers.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#783

Post by yunwal »

Aurornis wrote: post #710
Timon3 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be fair if the rules of the market were static, but companies are actively using their power and influence to affect the market rules so they can get away with paying workers less and less - that's not to mention collusion and corruption. Just because this has been normalized doesn't mean it's not evil. If a healthcare company introduces processes that deny people life-saving interventions just to funnel m…

> but companies are actively using their power and influence to affect the market rules so they can get away with paying workers less and less - that's not to mention collusion and corruption. What do you mean? Labor is a market. Companies can’t force anyone to work for them. If the pay gets too low, people leave for other companies or jobs.

Ah yes, the free labor market, where for some reason we’ve given one side a monopoly on whether you can see a doctor without going bankrupt.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#784

Post by Ifkaluva »

sibeliuss wrote: post #738
Ifkaluva wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like vibe coding for personal projects where the code is a throwaway, but I hate vibecoding at work when I later have to stake my reputation in validity of results, as well as maintain the resulting implementation.

Well the answer is easy, don't vibe code then?

I would love to, but in some companies these days that’s really not an option

Re: Can we have the day off?

#785

Post by pjmlp »

Tade0 wrote: post #645
throwaway63467 wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been like that for a while, economic gains went to a small fraction of people, before software developers were among those that were on the winning side, now they’re on the losing side. Think about how much the US economy is growing right now and who really profits from that growth. My guess is that 90 % of the growth goes to 10 % of people, with AI maybe 99 % might go to the 1 %. Or who do you think will gain f…

> And the funny thing is we developers did this to ourselves, by doing free open source work for the greater good, which now feeds AI models that are replacing many of us. Open source is not to blame here. AI companies used the code, in some cases against the license, to train their models. Nobody is actually getting replaced - it's just that layoffs are in vogue now. If there was productivity to gain here, it would…

They certainly are, CMS deployment projects are no longer relying on humans for translation and asset creation, at least not in the same amount.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#786

Post by pjmlp »

keybored wrote: post #668
bbor wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standing up for yourself and your peers is a virtue, not a weakness. Yes, it’s easy to crack down on individual dissent — but only if you stay quiet.

This is HN, where labor unions are considered nice-in-theory-evil-in-practice while we with eyes with open resign ourselves to doing nothing. Your livelihood has a price (duh, your wage). But making cynical remarks about how stupid it is to want things to improve? Priceless.

Only from the US HNers for the most part, I enjoy the benefits unions have brought to my work life.

Kind of ironic, given the way unions came to be in US during the 1930's.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#787

Post by Gareth321 »

topaz0 wrote: post #695
Gareth321 wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't want anti-capitalist reforms. Perhaps reforms like those we use in Denmark would make sense? We're ranked higher than the U.S. in ease of business. We love capitalism here. But we also have high taxes, universal healthcare, and great social safety nets. It allows us to lean into the great parts of capitalism while also protecting those for whom capitalism isn't working so well. It's a great compromise withou…

I don't know what starvation and gulags have to do with anti-capitalist reform. In this country (the USA), capitalism is what produces gulags and starvation.

On the contrary. The U.S. has so much food that 72% of Americans are fat. There is simply too much tasty food available. This happened in a very short space of time, historically speaking, thanks to capitalism. As for gulags, one would need to use a very cynical definition to believe that. Especially when we have real gulags around the world today.

I imply that the alternative to capitalism is starvation an gulags because that is roughly what happened the last 37 or so times humanity tried something else. That's just from the last century. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's infinitely better than everything else.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#788

Post by Gareth321 »

godelski wrote: post #760
Gareth321 wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't want anti-capitalist reforms. Perhaps reforms like those we use in Denmark would make sense? We're ranked higher than the U.S. in ease of business. We love capitalism here. But we also have high taxes, universal healthcare, and great social safety nets. It allows us to lean into the great parts of capitalism while also protecting those for whom capitalism isn't working so well. It's a great compromise withou…

> we also have high taxes In plenty of places in the US we have high taxes and none of those things. Since it's HN I'll mention San Jose has some of the hardest water I've seen in any city and I've seen glass on the street for 6 mo before being cleaned up. I can't figure out where the taxes are actually going. Other states I've lived in I've even paid less and gotten way more. I don't think people mind paying taxes,…

It really does seem like the U.S. gets the worst of both worlds: high taxes (well, not quite as high as Europe), and poor social services. Even worse: despite all this tax revenue and poor social services, the nation is borrowing trillions more every year. Where is it all going?? I suspect there is a lot of fraud baked into the structure of the system, and this makes the governance layer very resistant to change. I've seen many attempts to move to proportional representation over the decades and both major parties rise up to quash such attempts with fury.

I hope you guys find a better way forward. I have affinity for your people and culture and I think most of you have big hearts and mean well.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#789

Post by chrz »

munksbeer wrote: post #636
kylenessen wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My great grandfather supported a family of 7 making brooms. He didn’t own the broom factory. He was an employee, and was paid by the broom. My great grandmother stayed at home to raise 5 children. There was even enough to lend to the local grocery store, apparently. This was at the turn of the 20th century in Canada.

He would have probably worked 12+ hours a day, his children could have died of a toenail infection, their teeth would be falling out early, they could have been deformed by various diseases, many children died young or at birth, etc, etc. I would never choose to raise a family in that period.

sure, but lower jobs there were getting you further than engineering jobs now

Re: Can we have the day off?

#790

Post by sambuccid »

I read some time ago about the idea of "redistribution of work", which given the current low level of employment(at least for young people here in UK) and the introduction of AI, it seems to me probably a better strategy than "universal income". I'm worried the absolute absence of a job would have a big impact on the mental health of the average person (we need to feel useful somehow).
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