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> But there will never be any solidarity between say US and African workers Why not? If post-covid economics has a theme, it's that things are more interconne

> But there will never be any solidarity between say US and African workers Why not? If post-covid economics has a theme, it's that things are more interconnected and more fragile than we expected. That fragility is also opportunity. I can imagine scenarios where overpaid tech workers in the US--rather than striking themselves--instead pay underpaid miners (in Africa, say) to strike, which cascades to hold up manufacturing, which cascades to harm their eventual target.

anonylizard 4y ago
Why would tech workers pay miners to strike (Lets ignore the insane difficulty of organising that for now)? Making hardware more expensive, directly and negatively harms software developers. Software devs benefit from cheaper hardware, in the same way car companies benefit from cheaper oil. Car workers don't get paid better because oil prices go up, they get laid off. Also, most rare earth minerals are mined in China, China does not look kindly to foreign 'interference', such as labour organisation.
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  I'd happily earn less knowing that the people working in literal mines to support my success felt less soul destroyed.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    Yes, there are altruistic reasons too. I'd like to say the same for myself, but it's not like I've put in the effort to find out how to actually help such people--and presumably those ways exist. But it even makes sense according to a colder, less human logic (which, regrettably, is often what matters). Like maybe I want to pressure the makers of a VR headset into letting me root it so that I can prevent it from streaming biometrics to the vendor. If I can delay the release of the latest headset versionin a way that causes the news about the delay to focus on how poorly certain workers are treated, I can later threaten to do it again if they don't give me what I want.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    How much less? 10% 50% 80%?
    - AlecSchueler 4y ago
      That would depend on my absolute income and my overall situation at any given time, just like the tax I pay to support society in my own country.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- jtr1 4y ago
  This is an interesting idea. I honestly hadn’t considered that we could contribute to strike funds in these countries. Seems like a thing worth organizing
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    I believe there are some Nigerian princes who would be willing to help you set up such a fund.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    I feel like a network of that sort would have applications all over the place. Perhaps this is a petty example, but whenever I'm asked to input a tip in a place where tipping isn't appropriate (like a drive-through fast-food restaurant), I'd like to tip $0.05 as a hint that I've contributed $5 to their strike fund (which they could use an app to later verify).
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      Why not just boycott the places with abusive labor practices instead of some convoluted scheme that only signals your virtuous nature to the exploited employees. You know, like back in the day when people boycotted goods produced in Apartheid South Africa. Today, unless there’s an app for that…
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        Abusive labor practices are the norm in the food industry.
      - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
        It's not about virtue signaling, do you think that giving them strings-attached money is going to make them like me? It's kind of a jerk move. It's about establishing communication directly with the workers so that you can circumvent potentially corrupt unions. As for general purpose boycotts, I don't think they're as effective as they used to be. Modern supply chains are too convoluted. It's easy to see somebody doing something that you don't like and engage with them directly about how you can help them stop. Mapping an evil to a change in your spending habits that prevents it... I'm sure there are cases where that's still possible, but I don't think it's the majority of them.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  Well it wouldn't be any old mine, it would be chosen in a way that deferentially impacts the operations of the company that you want to harm. Yeah, it's a negative sum game, but that's how threats usually work. Even though it might hurt their hand, people sometime punch other people if they're convinced that it'll hurt their target more than it hurts them. Income disparity would also be part of the calculation: 1) If there are V people with W average income each willing to pay X% of their their income to support Y other people while they strike and forgo their income of Z, then maybe you get more disruption for your buck by targeting part of the supply chain in a country where wages are lower. 2) If you're looking to make your target look scummy, targeting a more direct dependency might not be the right thing. You'd want to be funding a strike that should've happened anyway if only the people could afford it, not one that isn't justified. As for the "China does not look kindly" thing... don't get caught? We're disrupting here, of course we're going to upset people. That's the point.
  - anonylizard 4y ago
    Lets just say you need to understand a bit more about the difficulties about 'organizing people' You are sounding like those businessmen who think building a facebook or programmer just requires hiring some contracted programmer for a few months. And organizing people across national/linguistic borders is instantly 10x harder. Across long causality chains, 1000x harder. Its like trying to build an app that can run on hardware from the 90s to modern iOS to windows XP. The only company on the planet that can do that is Palantir, and they aren't very profitable.
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      I'm not saying I can pull it off, I'm just saying that "solidarity between these groups will never happen" is hard to justify. We've only been doing this whole widespread-global-communication thing for a few decades, who knows what'll happen in the next few.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  > Making hardware more expensive, directly and negatively harms software developers. Global solidarity has more benefits than drawbacks. Plus strikes only last so long, then if successful the workers get better pay. But this is unlikely to lead to higher hardware costs - instead it will just be lower profits for the capital owners. The cost of raw materials is not determined by labor costs, but by global markets - owners just collect the difference between costs and prices for themselves.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  > Why would tech workers pay miners to strike (Lets ignore the insane difficulty of organizing that for now)? Why would anyone donate to help anyone else? I've contributed to strike and organized labor funds because it can help others improve and make meaningful changes in their lives. > Making hardware more expensive, directly and negatively harms software developers. I doubt many people are pro-miner brutality and exploitation because it might make electronics a bit cheaper.
- RugnirViking 4y ago
  > Software devs benefit from cheaper hardware No they don't? For a start hardware is a miniscule cost at most software companies, but even asides from that, its not like programmers would be paid more if that cost was lower. They are paid exactly as little as the boss can get away with. If the company you or I work for literally doubled its profits we'd walk away with like a small bonus at most, maybe some small improvement in options if you're lucky enough to get those
pyuser583 4y ago
American unions avoid Mexican unions like the plague. Mexican unions are very corrupt, and even being near them would expose American unions to insane legal liability. I see the same problem with regards to Africa. Corruption is … an issue.
- zx8080 4y ago
  Seems that the old one "Divide them to conquer separately" always works.
  - anonylizard 4y ago
    Its because often unity is worse than division. Unity allows easy spreading of disease and corruption, cancer cannot spread between different people. If a union in one country is corrupt, it won't automatically affect the unions in another country. China was a united entity against the mongol invasion, didn't work out very well, because you take out the center, the rest collapses. Europe was deeply divided, and just because your neighbouring castle surrendered, doesn't mean you will. Because you are the local noble who owns the land, rather than some bureaucrat employed by a distant emperor.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      > China was a united entity against the mongol invasion, didn't work out very well, because you take out the center, the rest collapses I am sorry, is this like troll logic? The entire history of war is large and powerfull empires bullying smaller ones. This is so silly I am not even sure how you can argue this. Like did USA fight world war 2 as 50 seperate armies, one for every state?
      - anonylizard 4y ago
        I'm not sure what 'entire history of war' you are reading. Did you only read 19th century history or something? If large empires always had an advantage, then you would see endless snowballing, and only end up with mega-empire-blobs, and one-world-government. That is not the case. You have period of imperial blobbing, and also period of intense fracturing. Europe fractured after Rome, because smaller polities were much easier to maintain, with fewer layers of bureaucracy to feed. The small Frank kingdom (that only owned half of France) was able to fend off the great Jihad from the Umayyads that had crushed the Visigothic Spain. Whereas if you took out Rome, or the Chang-An of China, the rest of the empire would be paralyzed and unable to act.
htag 4y ago
Why not? Language barriers. Cultural differences. Exploitative history. Low trust. Geographic distances. I think words like Never and Any are too strong, but I don't think we'll see high enough levels of solidarity to form an international labor union for at least 30 years. We seem closer to commercial nuclear fusion power plant.s.
Aunche 4y ago
>I can imagine scenarios where overpaid tech workers in the US--rather than striking themselves--instead pay underpaid miners (in Africa, say) to strike, which cascades to hold up manufacturing, which cascades to harm their eventual target. I don't think you've considered the logistical difficulties of what you're describing. It's not like Panasonic has a list of all of the cobalt miners that were part of their supply chain. They themselves have no idea where their cobalt comes from, as they get it through several layers of middlemen. At the root of this supply chain are people like an man who feeds orphans, but forces them to collect peculiar-looking rocks, which he sells to the local warlord's nephew for $2 per hundred pounds. It's not exactly a place that's ripe for unionization. Even could pay somebody to strike, they really have no incentive to do so, as they'd rather earn even more money by not striking and you have no way to keep any individual person accountable. Also I struggle to see how a worker revolution in Tanzania is going to spread to China, which then trickles down to tech workers. Keep in mind that the GDP per capita of the world is only a 1/10th of what an entry level SWE makes at a FAANG. At some point where workers in developing countries get richer, that's going to affect the quality of life of tech workers.

anonylizard 4y ago

Why would tech workers pay miners to strike (Lets ignore the insane difficulty of organising that for now)? Making hardware more expensive, directly and negatively harms software developers. Software devs benefit from cheaper hardware, in the same way car companies benefit from cheaper oil. Car workers don't get paid better because oil prices go up, they get laid off. Also, most rare earth minerals are mined in China, China does not look kindly to foreign 'interference', such as labour organisation.

AlecSchueler 4y ago
I'd happily earn less knowing that the people working in literal mines to support my success felt less soul destroyed.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  Yes, there are altruistic reasons too. I'd like to say the same for myself, but it's not like I've put in the effort to find out how to actually help such people--and presumably those ways exist. But it even makes sense according to a colder, less human logic (which, regrettably, is often what matters). Like maybe I want to pressure the makers of a VR headset into letting me root it so that I can prevent it from streaming biometrics to the vendor. If I can delay the release of the latest headset versionin a way that causes the news about the delay to focus on how poorly certain workers are treated, I can later threaten to do it again if they don't give me what I want.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  How much less? 10% 50% 80%?
  - AlecSchueler 4y ago
    That would depend on my absolute income and my overall situation at any given time, just like the tax I pay to support society in my own country.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jtr1 4y ago
This is an interesting idea. I honestly hadn’t considered that we could contribute to strike funds in these countries. Seems like a thing worth organizing
- zdragnar 4y ago
  I believe there are some Nigerian princes who would be willing to help you set up such a fund.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  I feel like a network of that sort would have applications all over the place. Perhaps this is a petty example, but whenever I'm asked to input a tip in a place where tipping isn't appropriate (like a drive-through fast-food restaurant), I'd like to tip $0.05 as a hint that I've contributed $5 to their strike fund (which they could use an app to later verify).
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    Why not just boycott the places with abusive labor practices instead of some convoluted scheme that only signals your virtuous nature to the exploited employees. You know, like back in the day when people boycotted goods produced in Apartheid South Africa. Today, unless there’s an app for that…
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      Abusive labor practices are the norm in the food industry.
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      It's not about virtue signaling, do you think that giving them strings-attached money is going to make them like me? It's kind of a jerk move. It's about establishing communication directly with the workers so that you can circumvent potentially corrupt unions. As for general purpose boycotts, I don't think they're as effective as they used to be. Modern supply chains are too convoluted. It's easy to see somebody doing something that you don't like and engage with them directly about how you can help them stop. Mapping an evil to a change in your spending habits that prevents it... I'm sure there are cases where that's still possible, but I don't think it's the majority of them.
__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
Well it wouldn't be any old mine, it would be chosen in a way that deferentially impacts the operations of the company that you want to harm. Yeah, it's a negative sum game, but that's how threats usually work. Even though it might hurt their hand, people sometime punch other people if they're convinced that it'll hurt their target more than it hurts them. Income disparity would also be part of the calculation: 1) If there are V people with W average income each willing to pay X% of their their income to support Y other people while they strike and forgo their income of Z, then maybe you get more disruption for your buck by targeting part of the supply chain in a country where wages are lower. 2) If you're looking to make your target look scummy, targeting a more direct dependency might not be the right thing. You'd want to be funding a strike that should've happened anyway if only the people could afford it, not one that isn't justified. As for the "China does not look kindly" thing... don't get caught? We're disrupting here, of course we're going to upset people. That's the point.
- anonylizard 4y ago
  Lets just say you need to understand a bit more about the difficulties about 'organizing people' You are sounding like those businessmen who think building a facebook or programmer just requires hiring some contracted programmer for a few months. And organizing people across national/linguistic borders is instantly 10x harder. Across long causality chains, 1000x harder. Its like trying to build an app that can run on hardware from the 90s to modern iOS to windows XP. The only company on the planet that can do that is Palantir, and they aren't very profitable.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    I'm not saying I can pull it off, I'm just saying that "solidarity between these groups will never happen" is hard to justify. We've only been doing this whole widespread-global-communication thing for a few decades, who knows what'll happen in the next few.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
> Making hardware more expensive, directly and negatively harms software developers. Global solidarity has more benefits than drawbacks. Plus strikes only last so long, then if successful the workers get better pay. But this is unlikely to lead to higher hardware costs - instead it will just be lower profits for the capital owners. The cost of raw materials is not determined by labor costs, but by global markets - owners just collect the difference between costs and prices for themselves.
heavyset_go 4y ago
> Why would tech workers pay miners to strike (Lets ignore the insane difficulty of organizing that for now)? Why would anyone donate to help anyone else? I've contributed to strike and organized labor funds because it can help others improve and make meaningful changes in their lives. > Making hardware more expensive, directly and negatively harms software developers. I doubt many people are pro-miner brutality and exploitation because it might make electronics a bit cheaper.
RugnirViking 4y ago
> Software devs benefit from cheaper hardware No they don't? For a start hardware is a miniscule cost at most software companies, but even asides from that, its not like programmers would be paid more if that cost was lower. They are paid exactly as little as the boss can get away with. If the company you or I work for literally doubled its profits we'd walk away with like a small bonus at most, maybe some small improvement in options if you're lucky enough to get those

pyuser583 4y ago

American unions avoid Mexican unions like the plague. Mexican unions are very corrupt, and even being near them would expose American unions to insane legal liability. I see the same problem with regards to Africa. Corruption is … an issue.

zx8080 4y ago
Seems that the old one "Divide them to conquer separately" always works.
- anonylizard 4y ago
  Its because often unity is worse than division. Unity allows easy spreading of disease and corruption, cancer cannot spread between different people. If a union in one country is corrupt, it won't automatically affect the unions in another country. China was a united entity against the mongol invasion, didn't work out very well, because you take out the center, the rest collapses. Europe was deeply divided, and just because your neighbouring castle surrendered, doesn't mean you will. Because you are the local noble who owns the land, rather than some bureaucrat employed by a distant emperor.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > China was a united entity against the mongol invasion, didn't work out very well, because you take out the center, the rest collapses I am sorry, is this like troll logic? The entire history of war is large and powerfull empires bullying smaller ones. This is so silly I am not even sure how you can argue this. Like did USA fight world war 2 as 50 seperate armies, one for every state?
    - anonylizard 4y ago
      I'm not sure what 'entire history of war' you are reading. Did you only read 19th century history or something? If large empires always had an advantage, then you would see endless snowballing, and only end up with mega-empire-blobs, and one-world-government. That is not the case. You have period of imperial blobbing, and also period of intense fracturing. Europe fractured after Rome, because smaller polities were much easier to maintain, with fewer layers of bureaucracy to feed. The small Frank kingdom (that only owned half of France) was able to fend off the great Jihad from the Umayyads that had crushed the Visigothic Spain. Whereas if you took out Rome, or the Chang-An of China, the rest of the empire would be paralyzed and unable to act.

htag 4y ago

Why not? Language barriers. Cultural differences. Exploitative history. Low trust. Geographic distances. I think words like Never and Any are too strong, but I don't think we'll see high enough levels of solidarity to form an international labor union for at least 30 years. We seem closer to commercial nuclear fusion power plant.s.

Aunche 4y ago

>I can imagine scenarios where overpaid tech workers in the US--rather than striking themselves--instead pay underpaid miners (in Africa, say) to strike, which cascades to hold up manufacturing, which cascades to harm their eventual target. I don't think you've considered the logistical difficulties of what you're describing. It's not like Panasonic has a list of all of the cobalt miners that were part of their supply chain. They themselves have no idea where their cobalt comes from, as they get it through several layers of middlemen. At the root of this supply chain are people like an man who feeds orphans, but forces them to collect peculiar-looking rocks, which he sells to the local warlord's nephew for $2 per hundred pounds. It's not exactly a place that's ripe for unionization. Even could pay somebody to strike, they really have no incentive to do so, as they'd rather earn even more money by not striking and you have no way to keep any individual person accountable. Also I struggle to see how a worker revolution in Tanzania is going to spread to China, which then trickles down to tech workers. Keep in mind that the GDP per capita of the world is only a 1/10th of what an entry level SWE makes at a FAANG. At some point where workers in developing countries get richer, that's going to affect the quality of life of tech workers.