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We can't. Labor and capital need each other, but they are forever at odds. Good wages and working conditions can only be won through negotiating from strength
by rectang 9y ago
We can't. Labor and capital need each other, but they are forever at odds. Good wages and working conditions can only be won through negotiating from strength. Modern America favors capital. Elections have consequences.
- nordsieck 9y ago> Modern America favors capital The universe favors capital because capital is more mobile than labor.
- vm 9y agoThis is changing in the software world. Software gives "labor" more scalability and leverage than ever before.
- rectang 9y agoThis is one of the reasons I feel good about contributing to open source. It boosts the prospects of at least some workers, while at the same time offering great value for employers, for industry, and for society at large.
- vm 9y agoI was referring to software developers having greater leverage in the labor market. Writing useful software gives developers higher economic output for their labor than we’ve had in history. It also creates unique mobility opportunities for remote developers. It is changing the capital vs labor dynamic. This is true for a narrow part of the labor market, which is why I put quotes around the word labor. Can’t edit my earlier comment but felt I should clarify.
- rectang 9y agoThat sounds like a king justifying the divine right of kings... The effect of mobility is offset by there being more workers than owners. These outcomes are not inevitable.
- nordsieck 9y ago> The effect of mobility is offset by there being more workers than owners. It's actually the opposite. The more workers there are the more likely some of them will defect for whatever capital offers.
- rectang 9y agoIn the labor market, that's true. ("We offer unmatched benefits, including your choice of wide-mouthed bottles or adult diapers!") But in politics, the defections must be measured as a proportion of the total population.
- mmagin 9y agoSome of the relatively higher mobility of capital is due to the policies which capital has persuaded politicians to enact.
- evanlivingston 9y agoThe universe has a preference for mobility?
- nordsieck 9y agoCapital can choose which jurisdiction it wants to be under much more easily than labor. This "forces" laws to be more favorable to capital than labor.
- baxtr 9y agoThe difference is that physical material need to be transported. I don’t think you can move warehouse overseas to save capital
- squarefoot 9y agoOr maybe because capital buys people (->votes->power->more capital).
- bezosisevil 9y agoI assume you’re talking about the election of people like Obama, who visited and praised Amazon in 2013?
- hutzlibu 9y agoI don't think it is a problem that can be changed with different politics or labour unions. The main problem is the extreme unbalance in the world. Highly develepoed robotic societys meet hungry, poor masses who cam only offer their physical labour. Mst of them in countrys far away, bu also a lot in the industrilized states. Demand and supply. The demand for unskilled labour goes down, yet the supply of it goes up. Most politic "solutions" only work by favoring the current residents and walling yourself in. So some better conditions for those in the country. I doubt that this is a longterm solution, when we want to live in an open global world. So the solution I see is rather ... educating the unskilled masses, instead of fighting for better conditions for the unskilled.
- Karishma1234 9y agoLabour unions are like leeches they suck productivity and promote mediocrity. If people are unhappy with the job they should simply resign and take up another.
- blindwatchmaker 9y agoA cursory glance at the history of the industrial revolution, or even conditions today in several places including Amazon, will tell you what happens when labor's right to organize is crushed.
- Karishma1234 9y agoPeople tend to get better services and more efficient industries ?
- lotyrin 9y agoIt's entirely power imbalance, and that can be addressed by policy. Fundamentally, Capital needs Labor as much as Labor needs Capital. There's no economic reason a capitalist contributing nothing should not expect to starve, but a laborer who contributes nothing should expect to, it's just the current market climate and political policy that these are the case such that the imbalance of power perpetuates itself. It seems you could have the opposite case from today, with Labor concentrated into large unions which lobby for and win things like overly (but not disastrously) high Basic Income or slightly too relaxed intellectual property law, strong-arming a capital class made of small mom-and-pop firms and individual retiree-investors, avoiding providing the returns that would be seen in a more efficient and balanced market.
- jacquesm 9y agoOf course you can. Modern America may favor capital but there is no reason why it can't change to some reasonable middle ground.
- conanbatt 9y agoLabor and capital are on the same side, they are both producers of wealth. You are barking at the wrong tree.
- rectang 9y agoI look forward to capital peeing in a bottle in solidarity with labor. :) Naturally capital and labor collaborate and both produce wealth. That doesn't mean their interests are 100% aligned.
- conanbatt 9y ago> I look forward to capital peeing in a bottle in solidarity with labor. :) It does. Capital evaporates in risky endeavors all the time. It rusts by itself as well. Sure interests arent perfectly aligned, but fighting capital is like fighting your brother for inheritance. Meanwhile, landowners see all that from afar, evict people into the streets, and those same people go pay taxes to get their food. Capital is not the opressive.
- bahmboo 9y agoCostco? A bit apples and oranges.
- degenerate 9y agoCostco is a good example of a happy medium. At least they treat their workers like humans, and have proper amount of staff & checkout lines.
- dang 9y agoPlease don't post generic ideological rhetoric to Hacker News. The more generic it is, the less information it contains, and the more off-topic and predictable the discussion gets. That's not a disagreement with your politics; we just know from long experience what these tangents turn into, and they're all the same. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16851723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16851723 and marked it off-topic.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]