4 ms·

Before I checked HN today, I was thinking: There are 2 kinds of people in the world today. The first class is constantly rent seeking. They want to be in charg

Before I checked HN today, I was thinking: There are 2 kinds of people in the world today. The first class is constantly rent seeking. They want to be in charge and want something for nothing. They do not care if the person they are contracting with looses on the deal, in fact they prefer it that way. This class is mostly MBAs and welfare recipients. High frequency traders fall into this category. The second class is people who want to work and only ask for a fair deal. They strive to increase the size of the pie for everyone. Our situation today is very similar to Germany's Weimar republic, where an elite class that knew how to manipulate the workers could take advantage of a predictable economic collapse and predictable hyper-inflation to gain power. I hope our correction does not follow the NAZI German example. We could go that way. Many of the working class realize that if someone plays negative-sum-games at work, society is better off putting them in a labor cap and teaching them to do manual labor. I suggest that US federal law should require that workers compensation be linked to how much they increase the well-being of the human race. Leave a loophole that says you are exempt if you work for yourself. The rent seekers will be so busy squabbling over pennies and clauses in contracts that they will have little time left to screw the rest of us.

shreyshnaccount 3y ago
I don't really fully agree with this but that's not the point. What worries me is that even if you are right, the first class makes the rules and wouldn't lead the transition into the system you describe
- MarkMarine 3y ago
  Correct. Read Animal House for a fairly accurate portrayal of what happens.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    Yeah, fraternity members have drunken toga parties. Shivers I wasn't aware it was novelized, though. Only saw the film.
    - MarkMarine 3y ago
      I’m a moron. Should have been Animal Farm
  - aziaziazi 3y ago
    Are you talking about “animal farm - a fair story” (loves the subtitle) by George Orwell ? A great read indeed, brings both brain food and entertainment. Mostly became a vegan anarchist after reading it. It directly criticize revolutions and totalitarianism but the parallel with any regimes is logical. The roots of injustice is in power and control, which happens in any regime even the most democratic and liberal ones. Not saying we should abandon laws and governments, but let’s not defend them in the sake of justice and fairness.
    - MarkMarine 3y ago
      Hahahaha. Yup I was. My brain is broken from lack of sleep.
dist-epoch 3y ago
That was quick, going from HFT to NAZI in a few sentences.
MarkMarine 3y ago
This is a pretty novel application of horseshoe theory, where somehow MBAs and the poorest among us are in the same bucket? Stalin would be proud. Send them all to the salt mines. Hahaha. Pretty awesome to read this on HN, the juxtaposition is quite funny.
- MrOwen 3y ago
  I didn't get "poorest" out of gp's mention of welfare recipients. I took it to mean corporations who rely on government subsidies to make a profit, a good example being the huge percentage of Walmart workers on gov food assistance. I think you also get tax breaks for hiring people on welfare programs so it's almost like double dipping welfare on Walmart's end.
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    By "welfare recipients," I mean poor people on welfare who could work if they had a better attitude. I mean the kind of people that were offended when I offered them each a cheap flashlight during a power outage. (We were all standing outside.) One of them said he would take what he wanted. He demanded the very best flashlights that money could buy. I declined, and I guess he thought I was tougher than him, so he eventually left after some more posturing. I never got his name. I mean the kind of people who fake injury claims and collect disability for the rest of their lives, under 8 different identities. Their names were Tony and Theon.
    - MarkMarine 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - toofy 3y ago
      do you also see, as the parent brought up with “… huge percentage of Walmart workers on gov food assistance.” and i’ll stick with walmart here for the sake of continuity, the other well know instance where walmart has a significant drain on local police departments. target brand stores, in the same neighborhoods don’t have this problem. target stores have significantly more people employed, which leads to a significant reduction in theft—would be thieves see an employee organizing, cleaning, stocking, etc… in just about every direction they look which discourages them from stealing. walmart just externalizes the cost onto the local police departments allowing walmart to bring in more profits. do you consider what the parent pointed out, intentionally hiring below poverty wages, and the externalizing basic business costs onto local, often small town, police to be “welfare leeching?” what about the companies who go out of their way to hire armies of accountants and lawyers to play games in order not to pay taxes? what about the companies who engage in wage theft? there has been a number of reputable studies which show that wage theft may absolutely dwarf other forms of theft such as shoplifting. if you consider these things leeching, then i think your point probably stands. but if one of those groups is not a leech, yet the other is, i don’t think your point stands at all. if you do consider the instances i brought up to be leeches, which do you think “leeches” more? companies across the board who go out of their way to avoid taxes, wage theft, and externalizing costs? or poor people on welfare?
foooorsyth 3y ago
>I suggest that US federal law should require that workers compensation be linked to how much they increase the well-being of the human race Ah yes, I can’t wait for our future Bureau of Labor Assessment that will magically and accurately measure every profession’s impact on human well-being, and then also magically enforce some kind of earnings grab from the baddies. Sounds like a great plan! You realize you can’t hand wave this stuff, right? Doesn’t work.
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  You have an excellent point. There needs to be some kind of fix for the amount of energy wasted on zero-sum and negative-sum games.
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  Right now it knows that teachers and nurses aren't sociopaths and it uses their empathy against them. The cliché about teachers buying school supplies with their own money is sadly true. And when COVID hit healthcare workers didn't strike for higher pay. Capitalism was never a values system and it doesn't reward nice guys.
AlbertCory 3y ago
I'm amused by the idea that HFT people are rent seekers, but I think they're more like plaintiff lawyers: gaming the system, rather than lobbying to change it (although they probably are doing that, too).
- euroderf 3y ago
  It's a mafia of skimmers.
kashunstva 3y ago
> US federal law should require that workers compensation be linked to how much they increase the well-being of the human race. Define “well-being” in a way that would satisfy the putative crowds of proletarians clamouring to send the unproductive to labour camps. I’m a musician who makes nothing tangible; would your requirement send me to the Gulag, or is art still a positive contribution to society?
malcolmgreaves 3y ago
Almost a great take, but how can you logically you lump poor people into this mix? How is a poor person a rent seeker?
pjc50 3y ago
> Germany's Weimar republic, where an elite class that knew how to manipulate the workers could take advantage of a predictable economic collapse and predictable hyper-inflation to gain power. Not sure it was "predictable" or "an elite class"; the Nazi party were to a great extent outsider-populists, and they won the middle class by pitching themselves as the less drastic change than the Bolsheviks. Certain markers of the old elite got banned under Nazism. "Mensur" fencing. Especially insanely: banning the old German font https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur The hyper-inflation was merely an incredibly stupid response to a forex crisis caused by the reparations. The country was legally obliged to hand over gold marks; it attempted to print Reichsmarks in unlimited quantities to buy goldmarks, which of course caused a forex collapse. There is, of course, no US forex crisis or inflation crisis, just a rather nasty transient bump caused by the war disrupting global natural gas prices. The US is doing rather well. It's Europe where we need to watch out for far-right parties who think they can solve the problems with mass murder (usually of refugees).
theyknowitsxmas 3y ago
Not true. The most effective thing against first class is not working a job or paying taxes, hilariously geared towards SKILL and these doctor/MBA hacks with all their education, state and media control can't stop it. The universe enjoys hilarious irony.
anigbrowl 3y ago
There's actually 4-5 if you believe the first paper in my bio, which I do. i think you'll get a lot out of it.

shreyshnaccount 3y ago

I don't really fully agree with this but that's not the point. What worries me is that even if you are right, the first class makes the rules and wouldn't lead the transition into the system you describe

MarkMarine 3y ago
Correct. Read Animal House for a fairly accurate portrayal of what happens.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Yeah, fraternity members have drunken toga parties. Shivers I wasn't aware it was novelized, though. Only saw the film.
  - MarkMarine 3y ago
    I’m a moron. Should have been Animal Farm
- aziaziazi 3y ago
  Are you talking about “animal farm - a fair story” (loves the subtitle) by George Orwell ? A great read indeed, brings both brain food and entertainment. Mostly became a vegan anarchist after reading it. It directly criticize revolutions and totalitarianism but the parallel with any regimes is logical. The roots of injustice is in power and control, which happens in any regime even the most democratic and liberal ones. Not saying we should abandon laws and governments, but let’s not defend them in the sake of justice and fairness.
  - MarkMarine 3y ago
    Hahahaha. Yup I was. My brain is broken from lack of sleep.

dist-epoch 3y ago

That was quick, going from HFT to NAZI in a few sentences.

MarkMarine 3y ago

This is a pretty novel application of horseshoe theory, where somehow MBAs and the poorest among us are in the same bucket? Stalin would be proud. Send them all to the salt mines. Hahaha. Pretty awesome to read this on HN, the juxtaposition is quite funny.

MrOwen 3y ago
I didn't get "poorest" out of gp's mention of welfare recipients. I took it to mean corporations who rely on government subsidies to make a profit, a good example being the huge percentage of Walmart workers on gov food assistance. I think you also get tax breaks for hiring people on welfare programs so it's almost like double dipping welfare on Walmart's end.
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  By "welfare recipients," I mean poor people on welfare who could work if they had a better attitude. I mean the kind of people that were offended when I offered them each a cheap flashlight during a power outage. (We were all standing outside.) One of them said he would take what he wanted. He demanded the very best flashlights that money could buy. I declined, and I guess he thought I was tougher than him, so he eventually left after some more posturing. I never got his name. I mean the kind of people who fake injury claims and collect disability for the rest of their lives, under 8 different identities. Their names were Tony and Theon.
  - MarkMarine 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - toofy 3y ago
    do you also see, as the parent brought up with “… huge percentage of Walmart workers on gov food assistance.” and i’ll stick with walmart here for the sake of continuity, the other well know instance where walmart has a significant drain on local police departments. target brand stores, in the same neighborhoods don’t have this problem. target stores have significantly more people employed, which leads to a significant reduction in theft—would be thieves see an employee organizing, cleaning, stocking, etc… in just about every direction they look which discourages them from stealing. walmart just externalizes the cost onto the local police departments allowing walmart to bring in more profits. do you consider what the parent pointed out, intentionally hiring below poverty wages, and the externalizing basic business costs onto local, often small town, police to be “welfare leeching?” what about the companies who go out of their way to hire armies of accountants and lawyers to play games in order not to pay taxes? what about the companies who engage in wage theft? there has been a number of reputable studies which show that wage theft may absolutely dwarf other forms of theft such as shoplifting. if you consider these things leeching, then i think your point probably stands. but if one of those groups is not a leech, yet the other is, i don’t think your point stands at all. if you do consider the instances i brought up to be leeches, which do you think “leeches” more? companies across the board who go out of their way to avoid taxes, wage theft, and externalizing costs? or poor people on welfare?

foooorsyth 3y ago

>I suggest that US federal law should require that workers compensation be linked to how much they increase the well-being of the human race Ah yes, I can’t wait for our future Bureau of Labor Assessment that will magically and accurately measure every profession’s impact on human well-being, and then also magically enforce some kind of earnings grab from the baddies. Sounds like a great plan! You realize you can’t hand wave this stuff, right? Doesn’t work.

RecycledEle 3y ago
You have an excellent point. There needs to be some kind of fix for the amount of energy wasted on zero-sum and negative-sum games.
WeylandYutani 3y ago
Right now it knows that teachers and nurses aren't sociopaths and it uses their empathy against them. The cliché about teachers buying school supplies with their own money is sadly true. And when COVID hit healthcare workers didn't strike for higher pay. Capitalism was never a values system and it doesn't reward nice guys.

AlbertCory 3y ago

I'm amused by the idea that HFT people are rent seekers, but I think they're more like plaintiff lawyers: gaming the system, rather than lobbying to change it (although they probably are doing that, too).

euroderf 3y ago
It's a mafia of skimmers.

kashunstva 3y ago

> US federal law should require that workers compensation be linked to how much they increase the well-being of the human race. Define “well-being” in a way that would satisfy the putative crowds of proletarians clamouring to send the unproductive to labour camps. I’m a musician who makes nothing tangible; would your requirement send me to the Gulag, or is art still a positive contribution to society?

malcolmgreaves 3y ago

Almost a great take, but how can you logically you lump poor people into this mix? How is a poor person a rent seeker?

pjc50 3y ago

> Germany's Weimar republic, where an elite class that knew how to manipulate the workers could take advantage of a predictable economic collapse and predictable hyper-inflation to gain power. Not sure it was "predictable" or "an elite class"; the Nazi party were to a great extent outsider-populists, and they won the middle class by pitching themselves as the less drastic change than the Bolsheviks. Certain markers of the old elite got banned under Nazism. "Mensur" fencing. Especially insanely: banning the old German font https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur The hyper-inflation was merely an incredibly stupid response to a forex crisis caused by the reparations. The country was legally obliged to hand over gold marks; it attempted to print Reichsmarks in unlimited quantities to buy goldmarks, which of course caused a forex collapse. There is, of course, no US forex crisis or inflation crisis, just a rather nasty transient bump caused by the war disrupting global natural gas prices. The US is doing rather well. It's Europe where we need to watch out for far-right parties who think they can solve the problems with mass murder (usually of refugees).

theyknowitsxmas 3y ago

Not true. The most effective thing against first class is not working a job or paying taxes, hilariously geared towards SKILL and these doctor/MBA hacks with all their education, state and media control can't stop it. The universe enjoys hilarious irony.

anigbrowl 3y ago

There's actually 4-5 if you believe the first paper in my bio, which I do. i think you'll get a lot out of it.