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The problem with this article is that one does not need capital to start a tech company. This very website, sneered at in the article, is littered with examples

The problem with this article is that one does not need capital to start a tech company. This very website, sneered at in the article, is littered with examples of people who have built something at the side. I'm not sure knowledge workers can make the same complaints about class struggle that mechanical labourers can. We tend to get more valuable with age and experience.

pdonis 4y ago
> The problem with this article is that one does not need capital to start a tech company Yes, one does. One needs tech skills. Those are capital. (You agree with this since you say tech workers get more valuable with age and experience.) They're just not capital in the form of a large pot of cash that can be used to throw money at problems.
- ameister14 4y ago
  Skills are not capital assets.
  - pdonis 4y ago
    Yes, they are. The people who own and run Google and Facebook and Amazon didn't magically get "capital" from nowhere. They used their skills, and turned those skills into huge amounts of money. In other words, they understood what capital they owned, and acted to maximize their return on that capital. If you insist on refusing to view your own skills as capital, you're just giving up the chance to maximize (or at least improve) your return on that capital.
    - dudzik 4y ago
      Following that, capital is potential energy. Skills are the ability to meet spec quicker than someone who has to learn as they go. Sounds like potential energy to me. Since capital acts like potential energy, it follows that skills are capital.
    - cratermoon 4y ago
      If I invest $100 dollars in very safe investments today, what will it be worth in 50 years? Now, invest in your skills for 50 years, what's that going to be worth?
    - ameister14 4y ago
      I get what you're saying, you're using the 'human capital' social science-y definition. I don't really get why you're using that definition, though. Was the person you responded to not clear as to what he meant by capital, so you misunderstood and thought it was human capital? Or did you just want to derail into a semantic discussion?
  - infamouscow 4y ago
    Okay, so what are skills if not capital assets?
    - SkyPuncher 4y ago
      Knowledge.
      - etothepii 4y ago
        And knowledge is power, comrades!
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  Skills are not capital in the communist vocabulary. Skills have an unlimited supply that can not be limited. If you want to mind-bend people into believing skills are capital, then all the workers in the world are bona-fide capitalists, since they are using their skills to get paid.
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > Skills are not capital in the communist vocabulary. I have no interest in the communist vocabulary. Communism killed more than a hundred million people in the 20th century. I would hope we have figured out by now that communism doesn't work. > all the workers in the world are bona-fide capitalists, since they are using their skills to get paid. In the sense that most of their pay is return on capital, not "labor", yes, that is exactly right. However, the extent to which workers realize this, and act accordingly, in order to maximize the return on the capital they own (their skills), varies extremely widely.
    - malermeister 4y ago
      > Communism killed more than a hundred million people in the 20th century. I would hope we have figured out by now that communism doesn't work. So did Capitalism [0]. Now what? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Livre_noir_du_capitalisme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Livre_noir_du_capitalisme
      - carlosjobim 4y ago
        Communism and capitalism are allies, and frankly two sides of the same coin. Marx repeatedly makes it clear in his communistic manifesto, that a society first needs to become capitalist in order to break down traditions and family, before it is ready for a communist revolution. He states that communists should side with capitalists against traditional society, and then get rid off the capitalists after that. Smart capitalist politicians switch coats and become loyal party functionaries when that happens, corporate leaders keep their nice jobs and report to the party instead of to the shareholders. Bankers remain untouchable in both systems. Just the fact that people think the world is left/right, socialist/capitalist proves that these two allied ideologies have been extremely successful in the last century.
- jojobas 4y ago
  If that's the way to look at it, there is no proletariat in software engineering, just different scale bourgeoisie dealing with each other, and it sort of checks out. There is still bargaining and possible bargaining power disbalance, but software engineering supply and demand are such that rates only went up for many years.
teucris 4y ago
Sure, there exists a path towards success in tech without significant capital. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, or that it will be that way forever. At some point in the past a car mechanic could build a new engine from stock parts and make improvements they could monetize.
- etothepii 4y ago
  This is a new argument I have not heard before I am deeply curious about it but don't know how to interrogate it further. Is this original thinking or something you found in a book?
  - teucris 4y ago
    I don’t know if I’d call it original thought, but rather a synthesis of a few ideas I’ve been exposed to. Every innovation is eventually commodotized, so being a worker in a new space pays well because we haven’t figured out how to do it at scale. In addition, the space is not saturated, so there are more low-hanging fruit for innovation. Eventually though, things get automated and the cost of disruption goes way up, limiting significant returns to those that have sufficient capital to work at gigantic scales.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
brightstep 4y ago
The only difference is our capital is digital, not physical. Binaries, not machines. As such we can build it without expensive raw materials and components, as those which form an assembly robot for example. Once one owns those binaries and other non-physical capital, one takes on the economic interests and incentives of that capitalist class, including the reduction of labor costs.
- etothepii 4y ago
  And yet, huge tracts of code are released under MIT licence.
foverzar 4y ago
Well that is definitely not true. Even if you have a team of various skill that is ready to work for free (including finance, legal and design), you still need funds for marketing, hosting, etc.
navane 4y ago
One doesn't need capital to win the lottery either, but it sure helps.
wpwpwpw 4y ago
depending on the scale of what you want to do, you might not need to have a lot of capital to get some online service up and running. however, you might find it difficult to have access to the same advertisement resources, you can be cloned right away, you can be blackmail-bought, you may find limitations put in place by hardware makers or by the ecosystem owners and you might have to share your revenues with those guys. so, although you can start with nothing, others start with a lot more - and capital reproduction and primitive accumulation keeps happening, whether you like it or not.
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  Yet you have much better chances and much higher freedom than in any other sector. Try starting a logging business, when other people have already laid claim to the forests. Try agriculture when other people have laid claim to the land. Try contracting with the government, when the rules say you need to prove previous government contracts to be eligible. That's real world issues. Cloning and blackmailing of online businesses are not such big threats that they can effectively stop somebody from making a good online business. If you're honest, have a good idea, and put in some hard work you have a fair chance of success. In some other sectors, those factors can amount to nothing - and all the threats you listed apply to offline businesses as well.
leshow 4y ago
That's just not true. Costs may be lower (in some cases) if the thing produced is digital, but you absolutely need capital. Knowledge workers are still workers at the end of the day. You have nothing to live off of but your own labor, it is along these lines that your interests align with other workers.

pdonis 4y ago

> The problem with this article is that one does not need capital to start a tech company Yes, one does. One needs tech skills. Those are capital. (You agree with this since you say tech workers get more valuable with age and experience.) They're just not capital in the form of a large pot of cash that can be used to throw money at problems.

ameister14 4y ago
Skills are not capital assets.
- pdonis 4y ago
  Yes, they are. The people who own and run Google and Facebook and Amazon didn't magically get "capital" from nowhere. They used their skills, and turned those skills into huge amounts of money. In other words, they understood what capital they owned, and acted to maximize their return on that capital. If you insist on refusing to view your own skills as capital, you're just giving up the chance to maximize (or at least improve) your return on that capital.
  - dudzik 4y ago
    Following that, capital is potential energy. Skills are the ability to meet spec quicker than someone who has to learn as they go. Sounds like potential energy to me. Since capital acts like potential energy, it follows that skills are capital.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    If I invest $100 dollars in very safe investments today, what will it be worth in 50 years? Now, invest in your skills for 50 years, what's that going to be worth?
  - ameister14 4y ago
    I get what you're saying, you're using the 'human capital' social science-y definition. I don't really get why you're using that definition, though. Was the person you responded to not clear as to what he meant by capital, so you misunderstood and thought it was human capital? Or did you just want to derail into a semantic discussion?
- infamouscow 4y ago
  Okay, so what are skills if not capital assets?
  - SkyPuncher 4y ago
    Knowledge.
    - etothepii 4y ago
      And knowledge is power, comrades!
carlosjobim 4y ago
Skills are not capital in the communist vocabulary. Skills have an unlimited supply that can not be limited. If you want to mind-bend people into believing skills are capital, then all the workers in the world are bona-fide capitalists, since they are using their skills to get paid.
- pdonis 4y ago
  > Skills are not capital in the communist vocabulary. I have no interest in the communist vocabulary. Communism killed more than a hundred million people in the 20th century. I would hope we have figured out by now that communism doesn't work. > all the workers in the world are bona-fide capitalists, since they are using their skills to get paid. In the sense that most of their pay is return on capital, not "labor", yes, that is exactly right. However, the extent to which workers realize this, and act accordingly, in order to maximize the return on the capital they own (their skills), varies extremely widely.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    > Communism killed more than a hundred million people in the 20th century. I would hope we have figured out by now that communism doesn't work. So did Capitalism [0]. Now what? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Livre_noir_du_capitalisme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Livre_noir_du_capitalisme
    - carlosjobim 4y ago
      Communism and capitalism are allies, and frankly two sides of the same coin. Marx repeatedly makes it clear in his communistic manifesto, that a society first needs to become capitalist in order to break down traditions and family, before it is ready for a communist revolution. He states that communists should side with capitalists against traditional society, and then get rid off the capitalists after that. Smart capitalist politicians switch coats and become loyal party functionaries when that happens, corporate leaders keep their nice jobs and report to the party instead of to the shareholders. Bankers remain untouchable in both systems. Just the fact that people think the world is left/right, socialist/capitalist proves that these two allied ideologies have been extremely successful in the last century.
jojobas 4y ago
If that's the way to look at it, there is no proletariat in software engineering, just different scale bourgeoisie dealing with each other, and it sort of checks out. There is still bargaining and possible bargaining power disbalance, but software engineering supply and demand are such that rates only went up for many years.

teucris 4y ago

Sure, there exists a path towards success in tech without significant capital. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, or that it will be that way forever. At some point in the past a car mechanic could build a new engine from stock parts and make improvements they could monetize.

etothepii 4y ago
This is a new argument I have not heard before I am deeply curious about it but don't know how to interrogate it further. Is this original thinking or something you found in a book?
- teucris 4y ago
  I don’t know if I’d call it original thought, but rather a synthesis of a few ideas I’ve been exposed to. Every innovation is eventually commodotized, so being a worker in a new space pays well because we haven’t figured out how to do it at scale. In addition, the space is not saturated, so there are more low-hanging fruit for innovation. Eventually though, things get automated and the cost of disruption goes way up, limiting significant returns to those that have sufficient capital to work at gigantic scales.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

brightstep 4y ago

The only difference is our capital is digital, not physical. Binaries, not machines. As such we can build it without expensive raw materials and components, as those which form an assembly robot for example. Once one owns those binaries and other non-physical capital, one takes on the economic interests and incentives of that capitalist class, including the reduction of labor costs.

etothepii 4y ago
And yet, huge tracts of code are released under MIT licence.

foverzar 4y ago

Well that is definitely not true. Even if you have a team of various skill that is ready to work for free (including finance, legal and design), you still need funds for marketing, hosting, etc.

navane 4y ago

One doesn't need capital to win the lottery either, but it sure helps.

wpwpwpw 4y ago

depending on the scale of what you want to do, you might not need to have a lot of capital to get some online service up and running. however, you might find it difficult to have access to the same advertisement resources, you can be cloned right away, you can be blackmail-bought, you may find limitations put in place by hardware makers or by the ecosystem owners and you might have to share your revenues with those guys. so, although you can start with nothing, others start with a lot more - and capital reproduction and primitive accumulation keeps happening, whether you like it or not.

carlosjobim 4y ago
Yet you have much better chances and much higher freedom than in any other sector. Try starting a logging business, when other people have already laid claim to the forests. Try agriculture when other people have laid claim to the land. Try contracting with the government, when the rules say you need to prove previous government contracts to be eligible. That's real world issues. Cloning and blackmailing of online businesses are not such big threats that they can effectively stop somebody from making a good online business. If you're honest, have a good idea, and put in some hard work you have a fair chance of success. In some other sectors, those factors can amount to nothing - and all the threats you listed apply to offline businesses as well.

leshow 4y ago

That's just not true. Costs may be lower (in some cases) if the thing produced is digital, but you absolutely need capital. Knowledge workers are still workers at the end of the day. You have nothing to live off of but your own labor, it is along these lines that your interests align with other workers.