> Unless the bosses at Intel just hate older people (unlikely as they are almost all older people) they are doing this for economic reasons alone. This is the

> Unless the bosses at Intel just hate older people (unlikely as they are almost all older people) they are doing this for economic reasons alone. This is the most exemplary statement of naive (very probably American) class unconsciousness I’ve ever seen on HN. The distinction is between owners/managers and workers. First, an older member of the petty bourgeoisie is “bought in” as an effective part of the machinery of control. An older worker is viewed as an expensive and worn out “human” resource by that machinery. Managers don’t have to hate old managers to fire old workers. Second, “hate” is a hopelessly blunt instrument to use to understand systemic age discrimination. It’s not “hate” that drives older workers out; it’s a race to the bottom that needs to be regulated and penalized out of existence. Third, and finally, the “economic reasons alone” are exactly the pressures toward discrimination. To let them off for that would be like letting a slasher off on the grounds that they liked to spill blood. We really need people to think in a more nuanced way if we’re to have any hope of avoiding a global race to the botttom with a maximally impoverished populace. I don’t hold out much hope.