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This is precisely the attitude that keeps us here. Crabs in a bucket. >Vested RSUs turn people into millionaires overnight. So do lottery tickets - your odds

This is precisely the attitude that keeps us here. Crabs in a bucket. >Vested RSUs turn people into millionaires overnight. So do lottery tickets - your odds are about the same too >The benefit of the tech industry is that there's always a market for it and there are low barriers to entry. Programmers can vote with their feet. This isn't the 1950s. There are millions of choices for tech workers today that aren't street-sweeping or working for Big Blue. "I have enough options so I do not feel any sense of responsibility to support my coworkers against a structurally imbalanced system" Not to put too fine of a point on it, but your response is almost precisely the point people make with the misquoted phrase: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires" More nuance to that quote here: https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/commonly-misquoted-socialism-never-took-root-in https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/com...

fdasfdafdasfdsa 4y ago
My poor immigrant Indian grandparents became millionaires as did many of their siblings and friends. They certainly wouldn't have done so with socialism.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  They wouldn’t have needed so. Being a millionaire is only “powerful” if there are people in poverty. If poverty didn’t exist, then being a millionaire wasn’t actually going to be that big of an increase in life quality. We should seek to cancel out rent seeking behavior. The thing I hate about our economy is the amount of momentum money gives others while actively holding others back. If our economy was truly based around your abilities it wouldn’t be so annoying. However, we should also remember that not everyone can work, but everyone deserves a high quality life in line with our powerful economy.
  - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
    Precisely right Everyone wants to decouple labor and life, when the actual way to do that is to merge capital and labor such that there are no people who aren't part owner. The existence of billionaires means that at some point there was an unethical decision made to hold onto power and wealth instead of distributing it to employees
  - nec4b 4y ago
    >> They wouldn’t have needed so. I guess you have never been to a socialist country?
    - aaomidi 4y ago
      No because they don’t exist.
      - nec4b 4y ago
        Unfortunately there are still a few of countries today. Not so long ago there were dozens of them. Their recent history is fairly well documented. You can read it your self how life there was nothing but a struggle with no chance of success unless you or your family belonged to red nobility.
        aaomidi 4y ago
        No, there isn't. Socialism literally requires the lack of a state. There hasn't been a single actual attempt at socialism. State capitalism != socialism.
        nec4b 4y ago
        By that logic we don't really have capitalism and there was never true fascism or national socialism. What a weird relativistic world view.
        AndrewKemendo 4y ago
        Nope. All you need for "Capitalism" is a legal system that will support organizational ownership without requiring employment or labor inputs to the organization
  - kamaal 4y ago
    >>Being a millionaire is only “powerful” if there are people in poverty. Isn't that whole point of being rich? You are better than the others? There is an always a stack rank, whether we like to agree with this or not. Any attempts to flatten the hierarchy only leads to the mess we saw in the last century. People like to get rewarded for being better than the rest.
sqlcommando 4y ago
I was curious about your claim about the lottery... This article has a quote from a California Lottery spokesman saying 138 people won a million+ in 2021: https://patch.com/california/orange-county/californias-top-12-lottery-winners-2021-making-millionaires https://patch.com/california/orange-county/californias-top-1.... This article also from 2021 estimates 7000+ millionaires from 35 bay area IPOs that year: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/technology/silicon-valley-techies-rich-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/technology/silicon-valley... When you factor in the number of lottery tickets sold each year vs the number of people working for startups, and the fact that at a startup you do have at least some degree of control over the outcome (that's part of the reason you would take the job), it seems like the lottery comparison is pretty far from correct in reality.
Dracophoenix 4y ago
> This is precisely the attitude that keeps us here. Crabs in a bucket. I'm doing the opposite of advocating for a crab bucket. What I'd like is for every capable individual to pursue their own self-interest to their highest ability, while still being able to preserve their individual liberty of contract. Unions are built on seniority systems and care little for quality or merit. Many go so far as deny non-unionized coworkers the right to individually represent themselves (see Janus v. AFSCME). The union does not value individual skill. In general, it values the will of the collective, and, in particular, it's most vocal and demanding representatives. I would have no issue with people choosing to be part of a union as an organization of like-minded compatriots willing to subject themselves and only themselves to said union's terms. After all, whether to one's advantage of detriment, every person has freedom of association. Such an arrangement is similar to a startup. However, unions in the US rely on the imposition of the government's police power. They're essentially state-backed special interest groups. That they are political institutions in their own right should have anyone who values his liberties concerned at the very least. > So do lottery tickets - your odds are about the same too The chances of winning 1 million dollars in a semi-weekly game of Powerball are 1 in 11,688,054. All things being equal, that's roughly 14 people for every employed person in the US. Meaning that in a given year ~5,824 Powerball winners (not including the Jackpot) can be expected to be millionaires before taxes. Compare that with the millions of tech workers with six figure salaries + RSUs. > "I have enough options so I do not feel any sense of responsibility to support my coworkers against a structurally imbalanced system" Firstly, I never made any personal claims about my own life. Whether I do or don't have options has no bearing on the fact the others do. This can be observed from the record low unemployment rate. And even where there are layoffs, the 3-month severance packages pay more than most American's annual incomes. Secondly, I don't know of any system that isn't structurally at some level. Economics is the science of satisfying unlimited wants with limited resources. Employment, in the same vein, are subject to supply and demand, not balance or equilibrium. The only way to achieve the latter is to limit individual rights and deny them from wanting more than is supplied. Thirdly, tech is where that Steinbeck quote breaks. Unlike the farmers and fruit-pickers in Grapes of Wrath, tech employees actually have a very good chance of becoming millionaires so long as they aren't spendthrifts. At a starting pay of ~3x the median income of the country, even before RSUs, I'd hesitate to call anyone in that position "poor" or "temporarily embarrassed" in a financial sense.

fdasfdafdasfdsa 4y ago

My poor immigrant Indian grandparents became millionaires as did many of their siblings and friends. They certainly wouldn't have done so with socialism.

aaomidi 4y ago
They wouldn’t have needed so. Being a millionaire is only “powerful” if there are people in poverty. If poverty didn’t exist, then being a millionaire wasn’t actually going to be that big of an increase in life quality. We should seek to cancel out rent seeking behavior. The thing I hate about our economy is the amount of momentum money gives others while actively holding others back. If our economy was truly based around your abilities it wouldn’t be so annoying. However, we should also remember that not everyone can work, but everyone deserves a high quality life in line with our powerful economy.
- AndrewKemendo 4y ago
  Precisely right Everyone wants to decouple labor and life, when the actual way to do that is to merge capital and labor such that there are no people who aren't part owner. The existence of billionaires means that at some point there was an unethical decision made to hold onto power and wealth instead of distributing it to employees
- nec4b 4y ago
  >> They wouldn’t have needed so. I guess you have never been to a socialist country?
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    No because they don’t exist.
    - nec4b 4y ago
      Unfortunately there are still a few of countries today. Not so long ago there were dozens of them. Their recent history is fairly well documented. You can read it your self how life there was nothing but a struggle with no chance of success unless you or your family belonged to red nobility.
      - aaomidi 4y ago
        No, there isn't. Socialism literally requires the lack of a state. There hasn't been a single actual attempt at socialism. State capitalism != socialism.
        nec4b 4y ago
        By that logic we don't really have capitalism and there was never true fascism or national socialism. What a weird relativistic world view.
        AndrewKemendo 4y ago
        Nope. All you need for "Capitalism" is a legal system that will support organizational ownership without requiring employment or labor inputs to the organization
- kamaal 4y ago
  >>Being a millionaire is only “powerful” if there are people in poverty. Isn't that whole point of being rich? You are better than the others? There is an always a stack rank, whether we like to agree with this or not. Any attempts to flatten the hierarchy only leads to the mess we saw in the last century. People like to get rewarded for being better than the rest.

sqlcommando 4y ago

I was curious about your claim about the lottery... This article has a quote from a California Lottery spokesman saying 138 people won a million+ in 2021: https://patch.com/california/orange-county/californias-top-12-lottery-winners-2021-making-millionaires https://patch.com/california/orange-county/californias-top-1.... This article also from 2021 estimates 7000+ millionaires from 35 bay area IPOs that year: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/technology/silicon-valley-techies-rich-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/technology/silicon-valley... When you factor in the number of lottery tickets sold each year vs the number of people working for startups, and the fact that at a startup you do have at least some degree of control over the outcome (that's part of the reason you would take the job), it seems like the lottery comparison is pretty far from correct in reality.

Dracophoenix 4y ago

> This is precisely the attitude that keeps us here. Crabs in a bucket. I'm doing the opposite of advocating for a crab bucket. What I'd like is for every capable individual to pursue their own self-interest to their highest ability, while still being able to preserve their individual liberty of contract. Unions are built on seniority systems and care little for quality or merit. Many go so far as deny non-unionized coworkers the right to individually represent themselves (see Janus v. AFSCME). The union does not value individual skill. In general, it values the will of the collective, and, in particular, it's most vocal and demanding representatives. I would have no issue with people choosing to be part of a union as an organization of like-minded compatriots willing to subject themselves and only themselves to said union's terms. After all, whether to one's advantage of detriment, every person has freedom of association. Such an arrangement is similar to a startup. However, unions in the US rely on the imposition of the government's police power. They're essentially state-backed special interest groups. That they are political institutions in their own right should have anyone who values his liberties concerned at the very least. > So do lottery tickets - your odds are about the same too The chances of winning 1 million dollars in a semi-weekly game of Powerball are 1 in 11,688,054. All things being equal, that's roughly 14 people for every employed person in the US. Meaning that in a given year ~5,824 Powerball winners (not including the Jackpot) can be expected to be millionaires before taxes. Compare that with the millions of tech workers with six figure salaries + RSUs. > "I have enough options so I do not feel any sense of responsibility to support my coworkers against a structurally imbalanced system" Firstly, I never made any personal claims about my own life. Whether I do or don't have options has no bearing on the fact the others do. This can be observed from the record low unemployment rate. And even where there are layoffs, the 3-month severance packages pay more than most American's annual incomes. Secondly, I don't know of any system that isn't structurally at some level. Economics is the science of satisfying unlimited wants with limited resources. Employment, in the same vein, are subject to supply and demand, not balance or equilibrium. The only way to achieve the latter is to limit individual rights and deny them from wanting more than is supplied. Thirdly, tech is where that Steinbeck quote breaks. Unlike the farmers and fruit-pickers in Grapes of Wrath, tech employees actually have a very good chance of becoming millionaires so long as they aren't spendthrifts. At a starting pay of ~3x the median income of the country, even before RSUs, I'd hesitate to call anyone in that position "poor" or "temporarily embarrassed" in a financial sense.