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That’s still arguing worker benefits. I am asking as a consumer, what is in it for me to cancel services I use and are happy with to be in solidarity? I don’t

That’s still arguing worker benefits. I am asking as a consumer, what is in it for me to cancel services I use and are happy with to be in solidarity? I don’t see any benefit, only sacrifice. So the only reason I see for acting in solidarity is if you are specifically politically inclined toward them.

kennywinker 5y ago
Again you’re separating your worker identity and your consumer identity. You can’t consume if you don’t work. They are intrinsically linked, but you’re choosing to see them as separated. Yes, Maybe you give up your prime for a few months, but next year when you’re negotiating your salary, you have a stronger collective bargain position (unionized or non)
- kcplate 5y ago
  Your argument relies on an assumption. You make the assumption that my employer exploits me. They don’t. Perhaps Amazon exploits some of their workers (local drivers, warehouse workers, but tech…hardly). I’d argue that in 2022 with US labor laws…most workers aren’t exploited. Some think they are—some perhaps politically think this soft Marxism you are alluding to is a good thing. So what we have again is a situation where a consumer like me is not in the position of a unionizing Amazon worker so we can’t identify with their labor situation. I don’t have a dogmatic political stance on them unionizing. In their current non-unionized work situation, I’m content to be a customer. In a unionized situation, I’m content to be a customer as long as the product they provide meets my needs. I don’t have a dog in their fight, so there is zero need to me to stop using a product I want to be in solidarity with them.
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    I don’t want to make assumptions about your specific work, so let’s talk about tech workers in general. As an example, Facebook made over $9 billion in profit in 2021. If you work for facebook, you were exploited to the tune of around 9bil/63k employees, so an average of 142k and change. If you distributed that according to current salaries, most tech workers at fb would probably be due a few 100k more per year. Without the labour of their workers, facebook does not exist. From the people who serve lunch to the accountants to the coders. Yet that 9bil did not go to them, it went to the shareholders. That’s exploitation, pure and simple. You can support it, if you think it’s a good system, but it is exploitation. Tech companies know that their workers are underpaid for their value - they wouldn’t have had to collude to fix wages if it wasn’t the case. Just because you think you’re very well paid, doesn’t mean you’re not being exploited. All that is setting aside the very obvious reason you should have solidarity with amazon warehouse workers: they are human beings and they provide a service you enjoy, you should not want them to suffer.
    - chii 5y ago
      > most tech workers at fb would probably be due a few 100k more per year. so what happened to the providers of the capital that facebook was built with? How come they don't get anything from those profits? I think your ideology is clouding your judgement on what counts as "fair", and this is making you think that workers who don't get 100% of the profit of the work they produce, must be underpaid or somehow is being exploited. The idea that capital provided upfront (to pay those workers, as well as plant and equipment) isn't in your line of argument at all. > Without the labour of their workers, facebook does not exist. without the upfront capital paid by the shareholders, facebook would not exist as well. It's both, together, that makes it work. The deal the workers accepted was to be paid upfront, at a fixed amount, for a fixed amount of work (counted by time, usually). Then, the shareholders gets the profit from the difference in sale price of the work. They take on the risk that the work is worthless in a changing world, a risk that the workers do not take (unless the worker chooses to accept payments in shares). I don't see this as exploitation.
      - kennywinker 5y ago
        > without the upfront capital paid by the shareholders, facebook would not exist It’s pretty debatable how much of the money they raised was critical. They needed a bit of seed money, no question - and without regular injections of cash they would have had a much slower growth curve, for sure. They might not have been able to buy out instagram and whatsapp - but that didn’t create much value - those things existed without facebook. We might even need to account for the value that facebook’s rise took away from other firms, if we’re trying to calculate how much net value facebook’s investors have created - rather than just how much value has been enveloped into the firm - but let’s stay on point. Overall, giving money to someone starting a business, well that sounds like you’re describing a loan. A loan entitles you to get paid back, with interest. The interest is there to cover the risk that you might not get paid back. What we have instead is “ownership”, which seems to entitle you to the profits of a company’s workers in perpetuity. Numbers are a little thin, but it seems like facebook took on something like $1bil in various investments before their ipo, and raised about 16bil with their ipo (tho unclear if that 16bil went to the company, or investors + the company). Facebook has posted profits in the billions for years now. If you only count earnings since their ipo, about $173bil cumulative going to investors. At what point is the loan paid back? How much interest are they entitled to? At 9 years post investment they’ve paid back 10x what was given to them - that’s well over a 100% interest rate - and that is set to never end.
  - ABCLAW 5y ago
    One of the key evolutionary characteristics of firms is that they must self-appropriate more value in their network of transactions than they dispense. Their engagement with labour is no different; if they paid labour more than the value they received for work, they would go out of business. Maybe you're an exception where the firm is losing value or going dead-equal on the deal, but given that firms who habitually do that go out of business, you'd be in a tiny minority. Accordingly the question isn't if you're exploited. It's how much. A firm is going to need to get SOME margin off you - that's fine. But how much is too much? What factors systemically result in them taking too much margin, etc. Having the discussion in those terms allows you to actually interface with the reality of worker/corporate transactions.
    - throwaway09223 5y ago
      Your analysis assumes a zero-sum situation but this simply isn't the case. The intersection of labor and capital is enormously mutually beneficial. Regarding fair allocations of proceeds, one could just as easily argue that labor is exploiting capital, and that capital should take a greater share of profits. In fact, both outcomes are certainly, demonstrably true in different scenarios. In a chapter 11 bankruptcy, capital is lost while wages remain protected. Your argument is in regard to the average outcome, and as such it glosses over the inherent give and take, risk and reward, present in a variable and chaotic -- but undeniably mutually beneficial -- system.
      - ABCLAW 5y ago
        You are mistaken, the analysis derives out of one of the core elements of firm theory. It doesn't assume a zero-sum situation at all. There's a lot of literature on 'the analysis', which happens to not be mine. It's actually one of the core elements of neoclassical economics. >one could just as easily argue that labor is exploiting capital No, one couldn't. >In a chapter 11 bankruptcy, capital is lost while wages remain protected. Depending on the jurisdiction, wages are provided a super-priority status. Other super-priority stakeholders are afforded equal protection amongst themselves. Priority stakeholders, such as lenders with security, are provided more protection than unsecured lenders, etc. Protection for missing wages exists solely due to rectifying legislation attempting to address of how disadvantaged a worker is when a business's assets are encumbered and they have no priority. However, when it comes to managing risk, workers have to hope they'll get paid, while a secured lender can request assurances that potential super-priority stakeholders have been paid to determine the amount of exposure they're willing to entertain, and call their loans due in the event covenants and other monitoring systems indicate financial duress. Workers have no equivalent protective system. Honestly most of these points feel like they're relatively uninformed and don't hold up to much scrutiny.

kennywinker 5y ago

Again you’re separating your worker identity and your consumer identity. You can’t consume if you don’t work. They are intrinsically linked, but you’re choosing to see them as separated. Yes, Maybe you give up your prime for a few months, but next year when you’re negotiating your salary, you have a stronger collective bargain position (unionized or non)

kcplate 5y ago
Your argument relies on an assumption. You make the assumption that my employer exploits me. They don’t. Perhaps Amazon exploits some of their workers (local drivers, warehouse workers, but tech…hardly). I’d argue that in 2022 with US labor laws…most workers aren’t exploited. Some think they are—some perhaps politically think this soft Marxism you are alluding to is a good thing. So what we have again is a situation where a consumer like me is not in the position of a unionizing Amazon worker so we can’t identify with their labor situation. I don’t have a dogmatic political stance on them unionizing. In their current non-unionized work situation, I’m content to be a customer. In a unionized situation, I’m content to be a customer as long as the product they provide meets my needs. I don’t have a dog in their fight, so there is zero need to me to stop using a product I want to be in solidarity with them.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  I don’t want to make assumptions about your specific work, so let’s talk about tech workers in general. As an example, Facebook made over $9 billion in profit in 2021. If you work for facebook, you were exploited to the tune of around 9bil/63k employees, so an average of 142k and change. If you distributed that according to current salaries, most tech workers at fb would probably be due a few 100k more per year. Without the labour of their workers, facebook does not exist. From the people who serve lunch to the accountants to the coders. Yet that 9bil did not go to them, it went to the shareholders. That’s exploitation, pure and simple. You can support it, if you think it’s a good system, but it is exploitation. Tech companies know that their workers are underpaid for their value - they wouldn’t have had to collude to fix wages if it wasn’t the case. Just because you think you’re very well paid, doesn’t mean you’re not being exploited. All that is setting aside the very obvious reason you should have solidarity with amazon warehouse workers: they are human beings and they provide a service you enjoy, you should not want them to suffer.
  - chii 5y ago
    > most tech workers at fb would probably be due a few 100k more per year. so what happened to the providers of the capital that facebook was built with? How come they don't get anything from those profits? I think your ideology is clouding your judgement on what counts as "fair", and this is making you think that workers who don't get 100% of the profit of the work they produce, must be underpaid or somehow is being exploited. The idea that capital provided upfront (to pay those workers, as well as plant and equipment) isn't in your line of argument at all. > Without the labour of their workers, facebook does not exist. without the upfront capital paid by the shareholders, facebook would not exist as well. It's both, together, that makes it work. The deal the workers accepted was to be paid upfront, at a fixed amount, for a fixed amount of work (counted by time, usually). Then, the shareholders gets the profit from the difference in sale price of the work. They take on the risk that the work is worthless in a changing world, a risk that the workers do not take (unless the worker chooses to accept payments in shares). I don't see this as exploitation.
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      > without the upfront capital paid by the shareholders, facebook would not exist It’s pretty debatable how much of the money they raised was critical. They needed a bit of seed money, no question - and without regular injections of cash they would have had a much slower growth curve, for sure. They might not have been able to buy out instagram and whatsapp - but that didn’t create much value - those things existed without facebook. We might even need to account for the value that facebook’s rise took away from other firms, if we’re trying to calculate how much net value facebook’s investors have created - rather than just how much value has been enveloped into the firm - but let’s stay on point. Overall, giving money to someone starting a business, well that sounds like you’re describing a loan. A loan entitles you to get paid back, with interest. The interest is there to cover the risk that you might not get paid back. What we have instead is “ownership”, which seems to entitle you to the profits of a company’s workers in perpetuity. Numbers are a little thin, but it seems like facebook took on something like $1bil in various investments before their ipo, and raised about 16bil with their ipo (tho unclear if that 16bil went to the company, or investors + the company). Facebook has posted profits in the billions for years now. If you only count earnings since their ipo, about $173bil cumulative going to investors. At what point is the loan paid back? How much interest are they entitled to? At 9 years post investment they’ve paid back 10x what was given to them - that’s well over a 100% interest rate - and that is set to never end.
- ABCLAW 5y ago
  One of the key evolutionary characteristics of firms is that they must self-appropriate more value in their network of transactions than they dispense. Their engagement with labour is no different; if they paid labour more than the value they received for work, they would go out of business. Maybe you're an exception where the firm is losing value or going dead-equal on the deal, but given that firms who habitually do that go out of business, you'd be in a tiny minority. Accordingly the question isn't if you're exploited. It's how much. A firm is going to need to get SOME margin off you - that's fine. But how much is too much? What factors systemically result in them taking too much margin, etc. Having the discussion in those terms allows you to actually interface with the reality of worker/corporate transactions.
  - throwaway09223 5y ago
    Your analysis assumes a zero-sum situation but this simply isn't the case. The intersection of labor and capital is enormously mutually beneficial. Regarding fair allocations of proceeds, one could just as easily argue that labor is exploiting capital, and that capital should take a greater share of profits. In fact, both outcomes are certainly, demonstrably true in different scenarios. In a chapter 11 bankruptcy, capital is lost while wages remain protected. Your argument is in regard to the average outcome, and as such it glosses over the inherent give and take, risk and reward, present in a variable and chaotic -- but undeniably mutually beneficial -- system.
    - ABCLAW 5y ago
      You are mistaken, the analysis derives out of one of the core elements of firm theory. It doesn't assume a zero-sum situation at all. There's a lot of literature on 'the analysis', which happens to not be mine. It's actually one of the core elements of neoclassical economics. >one could just as easily argue that labor is exploiting capital No, one couldn't. >In a chapter 11 bankruptcy, capital is lost while wages remain protected. Depending on the jurisdiction, wages are provided a super-priority status. Other super-priority stakeholders are afforded equal protection amongst themselves. Priority stakeholders, such as lenders with security, are provided more protection than unsecured lenders, etc. Protection for missing wages exists solely due to rectifying legislation attempting to address of how disadvantaged a worker is when a business's assets are encumbered and they have no priority. However, when it comes to managing risk, workers have to hope they'll get paid, while a secured lender can request assurances that potential super-priority stakeholders have been paid to determine the amount of exposure they're willing to entertain, and call their loans due in the event covenants and other monitoring systems indicate financial duress. Workers have no equivalent protective system. Honestly most of these points feel like they're relatively uninformed and don't hold up to much scrutiny.