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Twenty years ago, there were hundreds of Internet Service Providers, and each large (and most medium) one gave access to Usenet discussions. Then with increase
by obrero 11y ago
Twenty years ago, there were hundreds of Internet Service Providers, and each large (and most medium) one gave access to Usenet discussions.
Then with increased monopoly and commercialization, the ISP's shut down, and Verizon and AT&T gained a duopoly over the majority of the US's wired and wireless last mile. With this accomplished, they shut down their Usenet feeds.
A programmer I know calls it digging ditches with air conditioning. Programmers are wage slaves, just a slightly more exalted position than the people who come in at night to empty the waste baskets.
- afarrell 11y ago> programmers are wage slaves What pieces of the concept of slavery are you referring to here?
- integraton 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
- afarrell 11y agoYes, I am familiar with the general concept of wage slavery. How does it apply to software engineers without applying to...basically anyone whose main income is not investment?
- LesZedCB 11y agoWell, the honest answer is that it does apply to everybody whose main income is not investment or anybody who must remain employed in order to survive. We live in relative luxury and privilege, but many of us certainly might not work for their current company or as many hours as they do if they had the freedom not to.
- NoGravitas 11y agoAs LesZedCB points out, it does apply to everyone whose main income is the sale of their labor. Software engineers could be considered part of the [aristocracy of labor][0], but still part of the working class. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_aristocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_aristocracy
- sotojuan 11y ago> Programmers are wage slaves By this definition, anyone with a job is a wage slave unless they work for themselves. Unless you meant something else, because in the US programmers enjoy salaries and flexibility that many other professionals don't have.
- brc 11y agoEven if you work for yourself, you're still working for someone else. An employee has 1 boss. An entrepreneur has a thousand, a million, whatever the number is. Working for cash means exchanging value with someone who gives you the cash. The concept of wage slavery is a tad insulting to those stuck in real slavery.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago> The concept of wage slavery is a tad insulting to those stuck in real slavery. Most of the talk around "wage slavery" is about people who're going to spend the rest of their lives working hard for all their day on stuff that they don't like, for so little money that it barely allows them to stay fed and healthy. It's a different thing that the "real slavery"[0], but there are some important similarities - namely, people using up their whole lives to enrich somewhere else, with no capacity to opt out. The reason it's being brought up so often now is that in the past, "wage slavery" seemed a necessary component of survival of a society. People simply had to work. But today the necessary work is increasingly being automated, while we compensate with inventing new make-believe jobs living in closed loops that together have no useful output. So it's about time we should start aiming for freeing people from the need to work. -- I agree though that saying programmers are wage slaves is... weird. I suspect 'obrero meant something about lack of agency - as a programmer, you're to implement whatever stupid shit your boss envisions, and you have no say about it, even if it damages the environment you're working in. We may be getting paid more than a janitor, but that doesn't mean we have anything more to say about company's business than a janitor does. -- [0] - by "real slavery" we mostly think about a particularly brutal and dehumanizing enslavement of plantation workers in the United States; slavery in the past was often not unlike employment today.