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The real answer, of course, is social class. Marx was right. Investors are the bourgeoisie, and you're a proletarian whose survival needs are an exploitable res
by 21723 4y ago
The real answer, of course, is social class. Marx was right. Investors are the bourgeoisie, and you're a proletarian whose survival needs are an exploitable resource. They don't follow the rules you do. Investors are like Ancient Greek gods (or Ancient Greek something else) to founders, and you and I are shit to these people, and the moment you stop making excuses for their behavior and see it as it really is, it all makes sense.
What even Marx didn't foresee was the effectiveness with which managerial bureaucrats (who might have been considered upper proletarian in the 1800s) would take the system over for their own purposes and merge into--and, arguably, become--the real elite... the same thing that happened in certain failed socialist experiments.
- bombcar 4y agoIt’s less class and a matter of who needs whom. Tell an investor to sign and NDA and he says pass. An employee or potential employee doesn’t have the bargaining chips.
- lovich 4y agoThat’s literally a class divide
- barrkel 4y agoIt's power derived from supply and demand, not class. It's possible for you to have knowledge and skills that give you power, rather than just some money.
- lovich 4y agoThis is like basic type theory man. It’s two classes.
- prewett 4y ago"Social class" is not the same as a class in a classifier. The plumber may have a lot of bargaining power when an ice-storm breaks all the pipes in a major city, but the plumber does not have a high social class. Typically high social class also has a fair amount of bargaining power, due to frequently having capital (usually politically or financially), but not always.
- lovich 4y agoThe fact that the social classes here happen to line up with political power does not change the fact that there are two social classes being treated differently as well. There are other posters in this comment section talking about how even when the engineers are domain experts that are needed by the business, there is a knee jerk reaction to deny requests for this sort of information when it is expected to be handed over to the investor class. If these weren't social classes then you wouldn't see resistance to changing the formula in the face of market pressures and you would see easy movement between investors and engineers instead of them being gatekept along connections and rituals.
- 21723 4y agoSo then it's exactly class. The number of bargaining chips you have is approximately the number you are born with. Sure, there's some Brownian motion, but it's basically insubstantial except for lottery winners and lightning victims. If you're born into connections, you make more connections. If you're stuck having to work to survive, you get assigned more drudgery and never advance. It's the same shitty system that's been around for thousands of years.
- barrkel 4y agoI think you're confusing social class with Marx's proletariat (working class) vs bourgeoisie (capitalists). Your bargaining chips are determined by supply and demand. If you have stuff - money, knowledge, skill, power by virtue of organizational position - you have leverage. If you don't, you don't. Eliminating social class doesn't change this much.
- 21723 4y agoYour analysis is wrong. The people with connections and serious money do not meaningfully compete against their own class (at least, they ensure that their intra-group competition does not benefit anyone outside their group). The people with skills, knowledge, and work ethic have to compete against the whole world. It is not a symmetric or fair exchange.
- urthor 4y agoYou're making a broad comparison between the Marxian classes. But within capitalists there is also always the noveau riche and the old money. You have to be self aware of that dynamic. Because playing off old money vs noveau riche is as essential tool of the proletariat.
- 8note 4y agoYour bargaining chips in terms of valueable knowledge and skills are still low class. You're still bargaining for your meal and shelter.