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The truth is reversed. Software eliminates work; that is, it makes people more productive by making the boring parts of their jobs automated, which as a side ef

The truth is reversed. Software eliminates work; that is, it makes people more productive by making the boring parts of their jobs automated, which as a side effect can increase capital (and profit everyone, not just startup founders). The diatribe against capitalism is thus unnecessary.

_oghd 4y ago
> The diatribe against capitalism is thus unnecessary that would be true if you had no understanding surplus value. i highly recommend you at least try and read the first few chapters of Marx's Capital, which was quoted directly in the article. notice profits are skyrocketing while wages are dead? "rising tide raises all ships" economics is dead.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bobleeswagger 4y ago
  Just wait a few more years, it'll trickle down soon ;)
- chefandy 4y ago
  What they didn't tell you is that there's not nearly enough ships.
- cowl 4y ago
  The diatribe against capitalism is unnecessary because there is no better system. You can quote Marx's Capital all you want. I have lived the system build upon it's premises and it's the worst system possible. It destroys the human Initiative and intrinsic motivation bringing all the people to an equal poverty and apathy not an equal prosperity while the Ruling class still remains even better than the richest capitalist. And no what is often touted as it was never implemented properly is not true either. Half the world tried several forms of it's implementation, in all forms it goes against the human nature and is always destined to fail. There is no redistribution of the Surplus value simply because the surplus vanishes whenever you try that system. While the rising tide is not raising all ships you at least have a chance to fight to jump to another ship and not being forced to navigate the ocean using rafts.
  - modo_mario 4y ago
    I'd say it's still true that it was never implemented properly. The fact that you mention a ruling class should signify that. There was still a state, etc so it was never achieved. That said I think it's a utopia and as such (just like many other anarchistic strains) in line with some of 'utopia's defintions it is impractical/impossible bs.
    - cowl 4y ago
      A ruling class will come out no matter what. Who "redistributes" the wealth? even the most passionate advocates of this form have recognized this and now propose an overruling "AI" and the postponing of this organisation until we can have a "fair AI", Can you predict how even that form will go? And what's more important it does not change the equation that if my contribution results in the same reward as the person X contribution why should I strive to contribute more? It's the inevitable race to the least effort possible that is the doom of Marxist theories. If they say to you "Max you can achieve is X because that is the "Equality" of this society and you achieve X with Effort 2 you will not give effort 10.
      - sgu999 4y ago
        > if my contribution results in the same reward as the person X contribution why should I strive to contribute more? The nature of the reward matters, not everything is about wealth and money. Many geniuses are still willingly working in public labs for a fraction of what they'd earn in a corporate or startup.
        namaria 4y ago
        Wealth is way more complex than 'take home money'. Geniuses in developed countries with highly functional infrastructure and high expectations of security are willing to forego cash income to work on ideals.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
SQueeeeeL 4y ago
>which as a side effect can increase capital (and profit everyone, not just startup founders) We haven't seen any meaningful increase in real earnings in the last 50 years, despite massive increases in productivity. In America, go to any city and you'll see a massive number of homeless people, those individuals have not magically captured any of the productivity gains of the 21st century, in fact they're probably unemployed because the low skill job that would've existed now has been automated. Trickle down economics is such a farcical scam made by those who benefit from it, it makes me unironically proud of my country's propaganda machine that people are drinking the neoliberal gospel so hard, it'll make the next few decades a lot funnier.
- baandang 4y ago
  The irony is that the pejorative phrase "Trickle down economics" was pure propaganda. Incredibly effective propaganda considering you are repeating it back like a stochastic parrot decades later.
- subradios 4y ago
  "Real" earnings staying stagnant are a byproduct of inflation artifacts and certain non pay employee expenditures rising astronomically, notably the employer paid portion of health insurance. There's also the socialist or conservative refusal to build houses (depending on where you live). Assuming you are US based, you will notice that the nationalized health services are slowly going bankrupt or worse, losing all their doctors. Even still, the per capita expenditure on health care in Western countries is an exponential. Giving credit to the nationalized systems, they managed to constrain it to perhaps n^1.6 instead of n^2, but it's still not a problem with "capitalism" directly, as it affects health systems with no meaningful concept of private business. How does progressive thought deal with people wanting to spend enormous amounts of money on increasingly more advanced Healthcare as they age, and those costs being hidden such that nobody realizes how much money that is? It appears that the American system has replicated the failures of communist planning - nobody know how much anything should cost! Perhaps the nationalized systems were able to perform better, for a time due to having very smart people trying their best to work it out - but this even is starting to become unglued. A proper progressive answer to this cannot be to nationalize more Healthcare, as that is failing the metric used to criticize the private system. More slowly, admittedly - but still failing. If all talk about the way capital markets improve the world is the "neoliberal gospel", there needs to be an answer for these problems that don't rely on sovereign wealth funds or extremely creative central bank manipulation.
galaxyLogic 4y ago
I don't think software is capitalist or communist is it? Software is like steam-engines. Like you say it eliminates work, like steam-engines did. Software is just a technology, which can be used for good and bad, like most things.
- namaria 4y ago
  To nitpick, steam engine and software are products of technique. Technology is the exercise of understanding technique, i.e. this conversation is about technology. But I think we impoverish our language by calling everything related to technical development 'technology'.
  - galaxyLogic 4y ago
    Good point about terminology. But then what makes software special is that you can also encode "techniques" in it. Thus the exercise of trying to understand a program is also "technology"? :-)
    - namaria 4y ago
      Sure and biology is just wet physics. Vocabulary is not about set theory, it's about nuance.

_oghd 4y ago

> The diatribe against capitalism is thus unnecessary that would be true if you had no understanding surplus value. i highly recommend you at least try and read the first few chapters of Marx's Capital, which was quoted directly in the article. notice profits are skyrocketing while wages are dead? "rising tide raises all ships" economics is dead.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bobleeswagger 4y ago
Just wait a few more years, it'll trickle down soon ;)
chefandy 4y ago
What they didn't tell you is that there's not nearly enough ships.
cowl 4y ago
The diatribe against capitalism is unnecessary because there is no better system. You can quote Marx's Capital all you want. I have lived the system build upon it's premises and it's the worst system possible. It destroys the human Initiative and intrinsic motivation bringing all the people to an equal poverty and apathy not an equal prosperity while the Ruling class still remains even better than the richest capitalist. And no what is often touted as it was never implemented properly is not true either. Half the world tried several forms of it's implementation, in all forms it goes against the human nature and is always destined to fail. There is no redistribution of the Surplus value simply because the surplus vanishes whenever you try that system. While the rising tide is not raising all ships you at least have a chance to fight to jump to another ship and not being forced to navigate the ocean using rafts.
- modo_mario 4y ago
  I'd say it's still true that it was never implemented properly. The fact that you mention a ruling class should signify that. There was still a state, etc so it was never achieved. That said I think it's a utopia and as such (just like many other anarchistic strains) in line with some of 'utopia's defintions it is impractical/impossible bs.
  - cowl 4y ago
    A ruling class will come out no matter what. Who "redistributes" the wealth? even the most passionate advocates of this form have recognized this and now propose an overruling "AI" and the postponing of this organisation until we can have a "fair AI", Can you predict how even that form will go? And what's more important it does not change the equation that if my contribution results in the same reward as the person X contribution why should I strive to contribute more? It's the inevitable race to the least effort possible that is the doom of Marxist theories. If they say to you "Max you can achieve is X because that is the "Equality" of this society and you achieve X with Effort 2 you will not give effort 10.
    - sgu999 4y ago
      > if my contribution results in the same reward as the person X contribution why should I strive to contribute more? The nature of the reward matters, not everything is about wealth and money. Many geniuses are still willingly working in public labs for a fraction of what they'd earn in a corporate or startup.
      - namaria 4y ago
        Wealth is way more complex than 'take home money'. Geniuses in developed countries with highly functional infrastructure and high expectations of security are willing to forego cash income to work on ideals.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

SQueeeeeL 4y ago

>which as a side effect can increase capital (and profit everyone, not just startup founders) We haven't seen any meaningful increase in real earnings in the last 50 years, despite massive increases in productivity. In America, go to any city and you'll see a massive number of homeless people, those individuals have not magically captured any of the productivity gains of the 21st century, in fact they're probably unemployed because the low skill job that would've existed now has been automated. Trickle down economics is such a farcical scam made by those who benefit from it, it makes me unironically proud of my country's propaganda machine that people are drinking the neoliberal gospel so hard, it'll make the next few decades a lot funnier.

baandang 4y ago
The irony is that the pejorative phrase "Trickle down economics" was pure propaganda. Incredibly effective propaganda considering you are repeating it back like a stochastic parrot decades later.
subradios 4y ago
"Real" earnings staying stagnant are a byproduct of inflation artifacts and certain non pay employee expenditures rising astronomically, notably the employer paid portion of health insurance. There's also the socialist or conservative refusal to build houses (depending on where you live). Assuming you are US based, you will notice that the nationalized health services are slowly going bankrupt or worse, losing all their doctors. Even still, the per capita expenditure on health care in Western countries is an exponential. Giving credit to the nationalized systems, they managed to constrain it to perhaps n^1.6 instead of n^2, but it's still not a problem with "capitalism" directly, as it affects health systems with no meaningful concept of private business. How does progressive thought deal with people wanting to spend enormous amounts of money on increasingly more advanced Healthcare as they age, and those costs being hidden such that nobody realizes how much money that is? It appears that the American system has replicated the failures of communist planning - nobody know how much anything should cost! Perhaps the nationalized systems were able to perform better, for a time due to having very smart people trying their best to work it out - but this even is starting to become unglued. A proper progressive answer to this cannot be to nationalize more Healthcare, as that is failing the metric used to criticize the private system. More slowly, admittedly - but still failing. If all talk about the way capital markets improve the world is the "neoliberal gospel", there needs to be an answer for these problems that don't rely on sovereign wealth funds or extremely creative central bank manipulation.

galaxyLogic 4y ago

I don't think software is capitalist or communist is it? Software is like steam-engines. Like you say it eliminates work, like steam-engines did. Software is just a technology, which can be used for good and bad, like most things.

namaria 4y ago
To nitpick, steam engine and software are products of technique. Technology is the exercise of understanding technique, i.e. this conversation is about technology. But I think we impoverish our language by calling everything related to technical development 'technology'.
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  Good point about terminology. But then what makes software special is that you can also encode "techniques" in it. Thus the exercise of trying to understand a program is also "technology"? :-)
  - namaria 4y ago
    Sure and biology is just wet physics. Vocabulary is not about set theory, it's about nuance.