> Owning a sewing machine and paying someone to use it on your behalf should absolutely bestow you the power to choose what that person makes for you Let's tak

> Owning a sewing machine and paying someone to use it on your behalf should absolutely bestow you the power to choose what that person makes for you Let's take a look at this. Your contributions to the end product are: - Owning a sewing machine - Paying someone to use it Their contributions are: - Making the thing (say, sewing a shirt) I think there is an inherent tension between thinking about which of these is more valuable. Of course the sewing machine owners and payers are all going “Hey, the sewing machine belongs to us. You got compensated for your work, that should end your involvement with it. You can't tell us kind of clothes we should be making!”; whereas the people who sew the shirts are going “Without our collective work, you're going to be able to sew maybe one shirt a day, and you don't even know how to sew. So listen to us!”. The increasing interest in unions (FAANG is hardly a good representative of jobs across the software industry, let alone the entire US) seems to indicate that the needle of society in general has moved more too far in advancing interests of the sewing machine, and the people who sew don't have enough of a say in how things are done.