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> whoever owns the means of production This 19th rhetoric century doesn't work in modern world, especially when you're talking about creating software. To "pro
by golergka 3y ago
> whoever owns the means of production
This 19th rhetoric century doesn't work in modern world, especially when you're talking about creating software. To "produce" most of what HN readers do, you don't need anything more than a laptop and some cloud services — which you would need to scale up proportionally to load, and, therefore, revenue. If you need capital to hire others, it's also never have been more easily available than in the last 10 years.
- goofy_goober 3y agoAn interesting development as cloud services become increasingly more important (if they aren't critical already for businesses looking to get big) would be cloud services providers structured as mutual companies, like we see in some insurance and financial services companies (Vanguard, State Farm, etc). This would create a fiduciary duty to not soak the customer for everything they've got (no more sky-high public internet egress charges!), but also a structure where the customers of the company are the company's legal owners, so both workers and external customers could technically own a piece of the means of production if they use the services for their hobby projects or business. I would not be surprised if this comes to exist in the future as people want downward pressure on public cloud prices, and it would be an interesting development seeing legal ownership of "the means of production" (public cloud infrastructure) and earnings from it titled to anyone who uses it.
- charlie0 3y agoYou are proving my point. Advances in productivity have led to a lowering to the barrier of entry. Anyone can code now. So why,(in theory) would a business owner let their workers work less when someone else is willing to work longer hours?
- latency-guy2 3y agoI think you'd take anything anyone says as proving your point just on the basis someone is responding to you at all.
- golergka 3y agoIf somebody else is willing to do the same job for less, it means your asking price for your services is too high. Americans love to complain about stagnation of wages, while in reality it just means that people in other parts of the world have reason out of poverty competing with them on a labour market. If you value a Chinese life just as much as an American one, the fact that American worker can now afford one car per family instead of two but a Chinese worker can now eat meat on a regular basis clearly is a benefit to humanity.
- charlie0 3y agoI fully agree, but what does this have to do with letting workers work less as productivity increases? Are you implying that stage would only occur if productivity gains are spread equally across the world?
- golergka 3y agoLetting? Nobody is forbidding workers from taking less shifts. It's workers themselves who decide that higher compensation is more important for them than leisure.