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The vast majority of any labor force is of the unskilled variety. The "bourgeois capitalist" are still in full command, even at the largest and most profitable

by sacomo 7y ago

The vast majority of any labor force is of the unskilled variety. The "bourgeois capitalist" are still in full command, even at the largest and most profitable tech firms.

jstewartmobile 7y ago
We will always have proles. That wasn't part of the argument. Going by Marx, the "bourgeois capitalist" was an owner, and that owner had a very large say in how the enterprise was run. He had power. Tech companies remain one of the few cases that still adhere to the old formula--probably since they're not old enough to have fully diluted their ownership. For older companies, the owners tend to be pension funds and retirement accounts. And the ownership is often so diluted that replacing an obviously bad manager rarely happens. The mutual fund just sells the thing at a discount, puts "company X ceased to meet our investment criteria" in the next prospectus, and maybe, if things get bad enough, a hedge fund will pick it up on the cheap and fire the managers--who should have been axed years ago. With some of the newer companies, there are classes of share that are so restricted that--even if you owned a large percentage of them--you'd still have no say in how the company was run.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > And the ownership is often so diluted that replacing an obviously bad manager rarely happens. It can happen via a takeover bid - essentially, a bet that whoever is making a bid for control of the firm will be able to increase its value enough to profit from that investment.
  - jstewartmobile 7y ago
    Yes, and how often is that takeover bid entirely in the hands of one person spending his own money? More often than not, it is done by an organization--like a hedge fund, mutual fund, or pension system--that pools the money of several investors together (the owners) to make the bid. Yet the fund managers are the ones who make the call. In some cases, like the hedge fund, the compensation structure forces management to have the same priorities as the owners. In other compensation structures--like mutual funds, where they get a positive percentage whether the investments go up or down--not so much.
- sacomo 7y ago
  it's no longer the proletariat, it's the precariat.
  - jstewartmobile 7y ago
    “Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.” ― Norbert Weiner, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

by sacomo 7y ago

The vast majority of any labor force is of the unskilled variety. The "bourgeois capitalist" are still in full command, even at the largest and most profitable tech firms.

jstewartmobile 7y ago

We will always have proles. That wasn't part of the argument. Going by Marx, the "bourgeois capitalist" was an owner, and that owner had a very large say in how the enterprise was run. He had power. Tech companies remain one of the few cases that still adhere to the old formula--probably since they're not old enough to have fully diluted their ownership. For older companies, the owners tend to be pension funds and retirement accounts. And the ownership is often so diluted that replacing an obviously bad manager rarely happens. The mutual fund just sells the thing at a discount, puts "company X ceased to meet our investment criteria" in the next prospectus, and maybe, if things get bad enough, a hedge fund will pick it up on the cheap and fire the managers--who should have been axed years ago. With some of the newer companies, there are classes of share that are so restricted that--even if you owned a large percentage of them--you'd still have no say in how the company was run.

zozbot234 7y ago
> And the ownership is often so diluted that replacing an obviously bad manager rarely happens. It can happen via a takeover bid - essentially, a bet that whoever is making a bid for control of the firm will be able to increase its value enough to profit from that investment.
- jstewartmobile 7y ago
  Yes, and how often is that takeover bid entirely in the hands of one person spending his own money? More often than not, it is done by an organization--like a hedge fund, mutual fund, or pension system--that pools the money of several investors together (the owners) to make the bid. Yet the fund managers are the ones who make the call. In some cases, like the hedge fund, the compensation structure forces management to have the same priorities as the owners. In other compensation structures--like mutual funds, where they get a positive percentage whether the investments go up or down--not so much.
sacomo 7y ago
it's no longer the proletariat, it's the precariat.
- jstewartmobile 7y ago
  “Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.” ― Norbert Weiner, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine