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I'm surprised it's taken this long for some tech enabled labor platform to emerge. Power is gained by coordinating some portion of the value chain into a singl

I'm surprised it's taken this long for some tech enabled labor platform to emerge. Power is gained by coordinating some portion of the value chain into a single node. Amazon is powerful because they can centralize demand into a single node (Amazon.com) and then force suppliers to play their game. Saudi Arabia is powerful because they can centralize the supply of oil into a single node (AramCo) and then force buyers to pay their price via OPEC. Labor doesn't have a centralizing node, and is consequently powerless. Even engineers, relatively well paid as they are, are somewhat powerless. The high salary commanded here is due to autonomous market forces, not a coordinated strategy. Unions used to be strong before the 70s but they've gotten successfully defanged by political parties. There's definitely room for building MASSIVE and powerful without the political corruption of yesteryear's unions.

cced 6y ago
Do you recommend any resources that I can read regarding the defanging of unions?
- DevX101 6y ago
  I don't study this academically so don't have any good sources offhand. But the history of union busting has a long history in this country. In the 1890s steel workers tried to unionize and strike and Andrew Carnergie sent in the Pinkerton's (private precursor to today's FBI) to spy on the unions and break up strikes. They'd do this violently and many people got killed. Today it's less physically violent, but if you get a job as a floor worker at a big company like Walmart, you've got mandatory videos about how terrible unions are. And yes, you will be fired if the word 'union' comes out your mouth on company property.
  - mountainboot 6y ago
    Not just floor workers.
- _jal 6y ago
  It isn't quite what you're asking for, but _A History of America in Ten Strikes_ by Eric Loomis is a great book of the general history of American labor. The telling of the stories includes a lot of the strategy and tactics, legal and otherwise, of busting unions down to where they are now. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078XKHSSB https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078XKHSSB
nickff 6y ago
Well, one problem that unions have had is that almost every non-monopoly whose workers they successfully organize seems to fall apart. It may just be a correlation, but it is also possible that the unions are causing the failures.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  There is an obvious causal chain there. Companies in non-monopoly markets have to price competitively or lose customers. If unions are actually getting anything for their workers then they would be extracting more from the company than companies with non-union workers, but companies in competitive markets don't have thick margins to pay the difference with so they would have to raise prices, which makes them uncompetitive. This is not an argument in favor of monopolies, however, because unions can extract more from a monopoly but so can capitalists, and it all comes at the expense of the consumer, which is also you. It's better to make $2 and spend $2 than to make $3 and then have to spend $4 just to get the same stuff.
  - Klinky 6y ago
    Typically it's not make $3 and spend $4, it could even be, make $3 and spend $2.01. Labor rate going up $1 doesn't mean unit price goes up $1.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      The entire price paid either goes to labor or capital, and most of it already goes to labor. If you pay 1% of the workers $3 instead of $2 then the price may only need to rise by $0.01, but then you're just taking $0.01 each from a hundred workers and giving it all to 1% of them. And what happens after you do that a hundred times? Meanwhile, again, introducing a monopoly increases the money that can be extracted from customers by labor but also by capital. So if you introduce a monopoly and it raises prices by $0.01 or $100 or whatever amount, and you're very lucky and labor gets 90% of the increase and capital only 10%, then on average workers have lost 10% of that amount. Because you still pay 100% of the price increase and then get less than 100% of it back. There are also taxes, which make it even worse -- you get paid $1 more, the government takes 25%, you go to buy the thing that costs $1 more (so capital is getting 0% of the money) but then you owe 8% of the $1 in sales tax, and you've now lost a third of the money you used to have to Uncle Sam so they can give it to Bank of America and Halliburton.
mycall 6y ago
I always said if sysadmins all banned together, they could change the world overnight. Let your imagination fill in the gaps.
- DenisM 6y ago
  Write a movie script, make a fortune! Ah but then you might lose the interest in the revolution...
- artificial 6y ago
  Banning as a group? Such as deplatforming everyone as if they're dictators even though they don't own the network?
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    I believe it was meant to be "banded together". My apologies if you were aware and trying to make a joke. :)
    - artificial 6y ago
      I was making a joke, I wish tone was able to come across better, have a good weekend!
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > I always said if sysadmins all banned together, they could change the world overnight. What do you think they could all agree on though?
  - tenpies 6y ago
    That Lotus and all associated products should be purged from the planet.
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      Yes. Also Oracle licensing.
CrackpotGonzo 6y ago
Isn't this kind of what Frank (https://getfrank.com/ https://getfrank.com/) is trying to achieve?
clairity 6y ago
that's not the only option. you can strengthen the unions and amass power in yet another organization, or you can disperse the power of corporations to better equalize the footings of the various constituencies. while not against unions prima facie, i'd encourage moderating power structures as the first-order solution over building new ones. societies should be people-first and power structures second (or third, or whatever).
- mdkrkeo9 6y ago
  You mean have them pay taxes It doesn’t need to be wrapped in technical jargon, y’all Aristotle wrote about this shit 2,000 years ago This isn’t new territory to society Look at tax rates between WW2 & Reagan and the growth in the wealth of the middle class during the same period Ffs just accept it: you’ve been lied to so long you’ve come to believe the lie about taxes Political unrest at every point along the path of building human society is centered around gross material inequality Stop bloviating at your screen as mom & dad did when Dan Rather would say something stupid and get to work solving these problems All I see is people creating a market for more of the same prioritizing rich grandpas demands Rather than follow Andreessen, the next generation should have what he had as a kid: higher taxes funneling shit tons of resources into local communities to evolve as the people need, not as finance market speculators dictate Pitter patter
  - johndubchak 6y ago
    Let's get 'atter.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    > Look at tax rates between WW2 & Reagan and the growth in the wealth of the middle class during the same period Are you talking about income taxes? Because, yes you're right that Federal income taxes are nowhere near what they were post-WW2, but... > and the growth in the wealth of the middle class during the same period ...the wealth of the upper class has grown to historic levels because the vast VAST majority of upper-class wealth right now (top 0.1%) is 1) in unrealized capital gains, and 2) once capital gains are realized, they are taxed at the same rate that they were all the way up until the 70's, where it spent a brief decade moderately higher than it is today. Bezos doesn't have $100B+ sitting around in a checking account, and a WW2-era marginal tax rate wouldn't really raise as much as you think it would. Most of the richest billionaires have a salary of $1.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> Labor doesn't have a centralizing node Why doesn’t the US have a Labour Party? That’s what we have in the UK. (But it’s not very popular!)
- ketzo 6y ago
  The U.S. only has two parties with meaningful amounts of support -- Republican and Democrat -- and it has been this way (with few notable exceptions) since the 1800s. I've been told this seems very weird coming from countries with multi-party governments. Ostensibly, the Democrats are the "party of the working people," but a lot of modern leftists (myself included) would argue that the vast majority are barely more worker-friendly than the Republican party.
  - tenpies 6y ago
    It's important to note that while there are only two parties, the parties clearly have sub-factions. Trump for example is not what the GOP Republicans would be. He was his own thing and Trumpism fits within the Republicans, but has pushed out the GOP to the sides of the Republican party. Things like the Trade War would probably never have fit in with regular GOP Republicans. The brand of nationalism that Trump uses is very different from the traditional Republican nationalist rhetoric, which was generally okay with illegal immigration as long as it served the economic engine. You have similar efforts in the Democrats - although no one has been successful like Trump has been. There is the traditional institutional Democrat (e.g. Pelosi, Obama, Clinton, now Biden) who operates with Wallstreet backing and largely benefits the neo-liberal agenda. You have the Sanders supports, who are not really Democrats at all, but Sanders implanted himself with the Democrats so now they're competing for control. Then you have the "Progressive" Democrats who are very pro-reform, identitarians, pro-socialism, bordering on very strong statism, possibly of the totalitarian variety. These are the AOCs, the Ilhan Omars, the "Squad". All of the factions in the Democrats are trying to do what Trump achieved with the Republicans, but none have been able to dethrone the institutional Democrats so far. A lot of that is because they lack the impetus, but also because the DNC is extremely corrupt and openly aligned with the institutional Democrats. So in short, while there are "only two parties", these parties are highly maleable and only really retain their names. If you go even further in history there are times where the parties essentially "flipped" in their entire positions on everything. Republicans, who are accused of being racist by the media were the anti-slavery party, while Democrats were pro-slavery.
elicash 6y ago
The tool most prominently featured in this article, coworker.org, launched in 2013. One thing labor has plenty of is apps. It makes things more efficient for us, but what's needed more than anything to organize is workers willing to take risks and stand together.
solatic 6y ago
The platform that needed to do this, if it were to happen, was LinkedIn. It is naturally a centralizing node, as you put it, that aggregates a lot of recruiting / talent search. If LinkedIn had used its position to charge subscription fees of its users, not its recruiters, then it could have used that to effectively unionize its entire userbase, across a variety of employers and industries. But Microsoft owns them now. Never going to happen. For what it's worth, I don't think it's a good idea (Israel has it's country-wide union, Histadrut, and it's one of the poorer examples of unions), so I'm just pointing this out.
- zone411 6y ago
  If LinkedIn charged subscription fees to its users, it wouldn't ever become popular. Unionizing users seems very different from their business model.
  - solatic 6y ago
    > If LinkedIn charged subscription fees to its users, it wouldn't ever become popular. I wonder how unions, charging union dues, ever become popular?
esoterica 6y ago
> Even engineers, relatively well paid as they are, are somewhat powerless. They have plenty of power, not to force their companies to do what they want, but to vote with their feet and choose to work for companies that suit their preferences. A robust job market is much more empowering than collective bargaining. With a union you only get 1/10000th of a say in what your union does, whereas you have 100% autonomy over your personal employment choices.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

cced 6y ago

Do you recommend any resources that I can read regarding the defanging of unions?

DevX101 6y ago
I don't study this academically so don't have any good sources offhand. But the history of union busting has a long history in this country. In the 1890s steel workers tried to unionize and strike and Andrew Carnergie sent in the Pinkerton's (private precursor to today's FBI) to spy on the unions and break up strikes. They'd do this violently and many people got killed. Today it's less physically violent, but if you get a job as a floor worker at a big company like Walmart, you've got mandatory videos about how terrible unions are. And yes, you will be fired if the word 'union' comes out your mouth on company property.
- mountainboot 6y ago
  Not just floor workers.
_jal 6y ago
It isn't quite what you're asking for, but _A History of America in Ten Strikes_ by Eric Loomis is a great book of the general history of American labor. The telling of the stories includes a lot of the strategy and tactics, legal and otherwise, of busting unions down to where they are now. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078XKHSSB https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078XKHSSB

nickff 6y ago

Well, one problem that unions have had is that almost every non-monopoly whose workers they successfully organize seems to fall apart. It may just be a correlation, but it is also possible that the unions are causing the failures.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
There is an obvious causal chain there. Companies in non-monopoly markets have to price competitively or lose customers. If unions are actually getting anything for their workers then they would be extracting more from the company than companies with non-union workers, but companies in competitive markets don't have thick margins to pay the difference with so they would have to raise prices, which makes them uncompetitive. This is not an argument in favor of monopolies, however, because unions can extract more from a monopoly but so can capitalists, and it all comes at the expense of the consumer, which is also you. It's better to make $2 and spend $2 than to make $3 and then have to spend $4 just to get the same stuff.
- Klinky 6y ago
  Typically it's not make $3 and spend $4, it could even be, make $3 and spend $2.01. Labor rate going up $1 doesn't mean unit price goes up $1.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    The entire price paid either goes to labor or capital, and most of it already goes to labor. If you pay 1% of the workers $3 instead of $2 then the price may only need to rise by $0.01, but then you're just taking $0.01 each from a hundred workers and giving it all to 1% of them. And what happens after you do that a hundred times? Meanwhile, again, introducing a monopoly increases the money that can be extracted from customers by labor but also by capital. So if you introduce a monopoly and it raises prices by $0.01 or $100 or whatever amount, and you're very lucky and labor gets 90% of the increase and capital only 10%, then on average workers have lost 10% of that amount. Because you still pay 100% of the price increase and then get less than 100% of it back. There are also taxes, which make it even worse -- you get paid $1 more, the government takes 25%, you go to buy the thing that costs $1 more (so capital is getting 0% of the money) but then you owe 8% of the $1 in sales tax, and you've now lost a third of the money you used to have to Uncle Sam so they can give it to Bank of America and Halliburton.

mycall 6y ago

I always said if sysadmins all banned together, they could change the world overnight. Let your imagination fill in the gaps.

DenisM 6y ago
Write a movie script, make a fortune! Ah but then you might lose the interest in the revolution...
artificial 6y ago
Banning as a group? Such as deplatforming everyone as if they're dictators even though they don't own the network?
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  I believe it was meant to be "banded together". My apologies if you were aware and trying to make a joke. :)
  - artificial 6y ago
    I was making a joke, I wish tone was able to come across better, have a good weekend!
chrisseaton 6y ago
> I always said if sysadmins all banned together, they could change the world overnight. What do you think they could all agree on though?
- tenpies 6y ago
  That Lotus and all associated products should be purged from the planet.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Yes. Also Oracle licensing.

CrackpotGonzo 6y ago

Isn't this kind of what Frank (https://getfrank.com/ https://getfrank.com/) is trying to achieve?

clairity 6y ago

that's not the only option. you can strengthen the unions and amass power in yet another organization, or you can disperse the power of corporations to better equalize the footings of the various constituencies. while not against unions prima facie, i'd encourage moderating power structures as the first-order solution over building new ones. societies should be people-first and power structures second (or third, or whatever).

mdkrkeo9 6y ago
You mean have them pay taxes It doesn’t need to be wrapped in technical jargon, y’all Aristotle wrote about this shit 2,000 years ago This isn’t new territory to society Look at tax rates between WW2 & Reagan and the growth in the wealth of the middle class during the same period Ffs just accept it: you’ve been lied to so long you’ve come to believe the lie about taxes Political unrest at every point along the path of building human society is centered around gross material inequality Stop bloviating at your screen as mom & dad did when Dan Rather would say something stupid and get to work solving these problems All I see is people creating a market for more of the same prioritizing rich grandpas demands Rather than follow Andreessen, the next generation should have what he had as a kid: higher taxes funneling shit tons of resources into local communities to evolve as the people need, not as finance market speculators dictate Pitter patter
- johndubchak 6y ago
  Let's get 'atter.
- bhupy 6y ago
  > Look at tax rates between WW2 & Reagan and the growth in the wealth of the middle class during the same period Are you talking about income taxes? Because, yes you're right that Federal income taxes are nowhere near what they were post-WW2, but... > and the growth in the wealth of the middle class during the same period ...the wealth of the upper class has grown to historic levels because the vast VAST majority of upper-class wealth right now (top 0.1%) is 1) in unrealized capital gains, and 2) once capital gains are realized, they are taxed at the same rate that they were all the way up until the 70's, where it spent a brief decade moderately higher than it is today. Bezos doesn't have $100B+ sitting around in a checking account, and a WW2-era marginal tax rate wouldn't really raise as much as you think it would. Most of the richest billionaires have a salary of $1.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> Labor doesn't have a centralizing node Why doesn’t the US have a Labour Party? That’s what we have in the UK. (But it’s not very popular!)

ketzo 6y ago
The U.S. only has two parties with meaningful amounts of support -- Republican and Democrat -- and it has been this way (with few notable exceptions) since the 1800s. I've been told this seems very weird coming from countries with multi-party governments. Ostensibly, the Democrats are the "party of the working people," but a lot of modern leftists (myself included) would argue that the vast majority are barely more worker-friendly than the Republican party.
- tenpies 6y ago
  It's important to note that while there are only two parties, the parties clearly have sub-factions. Trump for example is not what the GOP Republicans would be. He was his own thing and Trumpism fits within the Republicans, but has pushed out the GOP to the sides of the Republican party. Things like the Trade War would probably never have fit in with regular GOP Republicans. The brand of nationalism that Trump uses is very different from the traditional Republican nationalist rhetoric, which was generally okay with illegal immigration as long as it served the economic engine. You have similar efforts in the Democrats - although no one has been successful like Trump has been. There is the traditional institutional Democrat (e.g. Pelosi, Obama, Clinton, now Biden) who operates with Wallstreet backing and largely benefits the neo-liberal agenda. You have the Sanders supports, who are not really Democrats at all, but Sanders implanted himself with the Democrats so now they're competing for control. Then you have the "Progressive" Democrats who are very pro-reform, identitarians, pro-socialism, bordering on very strong statism, possibly of the totalitarian variety. These are the AOCs, the Ilhan Omars, the "Squad". All of the factions in the Democrats are trying to do what Trump achieved with the Republicans, but none have been able to dethrone the institutional Democrats so far. A lot of that is because they lack the impetus, but also because the DNC is extremely corrupt and openly aligned with the institutional Democrats. So in short, while there are "only two parties", these parties are highly maleable and only really retain their names. If you go even further in history there are times where the parties essentially "flipped" in their entire positions on everything. Republicans, who are accused of being racist by the media were the anti-slavery party, while Democrats were pro-slavery.

elicash 6y ago

The tool most prominently featured in this article, coworker.org, launched in 2013. One thing labor has plenty of is apps. It makes things more efficient for us, but what's needed more than anything to organize is workers willing to take risks and stand together.

solatic 6y ago

The platform that needed to do this, if it were to happen, was LinkedIn. It is naturally a centralizing node, as you put it, that aggregates a lot of recruiting / talent search. If LinkedIn had used its position to charge subscription fees of its users, not its recruiters, then it could have used that to effectively unionize its entire userbase, across a variety of employers and industries. But Microsoft owns them now. Never going to happen. For what it's worth, I don't think it's a good idea (Israel has it's country-wide union, Histadrut, and it's one of the poorer examples of unions), so I'm just pointing this out.

zone411 6y ago
If LinkedIn charged subscription fees to its users, it wouldn't ever become popular. Unionizing users seems very different from their business model.
- solatic 6y ago
  > If LinkedIn charged subscription fees to its users, it wouldn't ever become popular. I wonder how unions, charging union dues, ever become popular?

esoterica 6y ago

> Even engineers, relatively well paid as they are, are somewhat powerless. They have plenty of power, not to force their companies to do what they want, but to vote with their feet and choose to work for companies that suit their preferences. A robust job market is much more empowering than collective bargaining. With a union you only get 1/10000th of a say in what your union does, whereas you have 100% autonomy over your personal employment choices.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]