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> Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers? Because many tech workers don't see themselves as workers, with some justification, many having subst

> Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers? Because many tech workers don't see themselves as workers, with some justification, many having substantial capital investments alongside labor income, making them, in class terms, petit bourgeois or at least close enough to it to perceive their own interests in more bourgeois than proletarian terms. And even the tech workers that are clearly part of the proletarian intelligentsia tend see themselves (rightly or wrongly) on a path that leads into the bourgeoisie, with bourgeois interests.

flmontpetit 2y ago
It's crazy how we've abstracted financial serfdom out of the status of being a property owner. Contrasted with renting it surely seems like independence, but whether the bank squeezes extra value out of you directly or through the proxy of a landlord, the end result is similar.
- ramesh31 2y ago
  >Contrasted with renting it surely seems like independence, but whether the bank squeezes extra value out of you directly or through the proxy of a landlord, the end result is similar. The difference is public policy. Owning property in the US absolutely elevates you to a higher privileged status above renters. How many homeowners were being evicted from their homes after missing a couple mortgage payments during the pandemic? Precisely zero. While thousands of renters in red states had the sheriff at their throats within 60 days. That's all you need to know about class in this country.
  - flmontpetit 2y ago
    Fair, and owning certainly puts you in charge of your own quality of life. My dishwasher has been broken for three months and I'm still having to fight to get it fixed. When I own my own place starting from next July I'm just going to fix things like this on my own time and dime.
  - nh23423fefe 2y ago
    People with equity in a home aren't the same as delinquent renters? different circumstances are treated differently?
    - ramesh31 2y ago
      >different circumstances are treated differently? Yes, exactly. My entire point is that owning a home is nothing like renting, even if you're spending the same amount, and is treated as a privileged status.
bee_rider 2y ago
I’ve always thought of it in these terms: Working class: you are sustained by your current labor. Upper class: you can sustain yourself based on the returns from your investments more-or-less indefinitely. Middle class, between the two: you can sustain yourself off your investments for so long that you can’t practically be threatened by unemployment. It is a labor relations issue explicitly, you need a union if you are in the first of the three classes, because otherwise you can be threatened by unemployment to do something dangerous or dehumanizing. In the middle class definition, practically there’s some element of the fact that our skills are in high demand, so you can become unthreatened by unemployment by having just, like, a 1 year buffer. But I do think we can overstate how in-demand our skills to satisfy our egos…
- reillyse 2y ago
  I honestly think the "middle class" idea is just a fallacy. It feels like it's used by people to distance themselves from "working class" because they feel that working class is somehow beneath them. All of the middle class in todays parlance are just slightly more affluent working class. If you sell your time for money you are working class. If you make money from having money you are bourgeoisie. If you have to think about which one you are you are working class. At a stretch you might consider the owner of a small tech company (say 5-10 employees) as petit bourgeoisie but the vast majority of small business owners (say mechanics, shop owners, small companies) are squarely in the working class. They may have employees but they still work, either for wages or as managers of those employees - which is work.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    The usual American idea of “middle class” is mostly (thoufh it tends to be defined more by income than actual means of relating to the economy) a mix of the upper income segment of the primarily labor-dependent class (working class/proletariat) and the lower (comparatively) income segment of the mixed labor/capital-dependent class (petit bourgeoisie). The middle class (petit bourgeoisie) is real, but its not centered around middle income (it is middle in the sense of being between the dominantly capital-dependent class and the dominantly labor-dependent class, primarily in how it relates to the economy, but in practice also on average, in income and wealth, but it is still an elite minority, just less so than the haut bourgeoisie that sits at the top.)

flmontpetit 2y ago

It's crazy how we've abstracted financial serfdom out of the status of being a property owner. Contrasted with renting it surely seems like independence, but whether the bank squeezes extra value out of you directly or through the proxy of a landlord, the end result is similar.

ramesh31 2y ago
>Contrasted with renting it surely seems like independence, but whether the bank squeezes extra value out of you directly or through the proxy of a landlord, the end result is similar. The difference is public policy. Owning property in the US absolutely elevates you to a higher privileged status above renters. How many homeowners were being evicted from their homes after missing a couple mortgage payments during the pandemic? Precisely zero. While thousands of renters in red states had the sheriff at their throats within 60 days. That's all you need to know about class in this country.
- flmontpetit 2y ago
  Fair, and owning certainly puts you in charge of your own quality of life. My dishwasher has been broken for three months and I'm still having to fight to get it fixed. When I own my own place starting from next July I'm just going to fix things like this on my own time and dime.
- nh23423fefe 2y ago
  People with equity in a home aren't the same as delinquent renters? different circumstances are treated differently?
  - ramesh31 2y ago
    >different circumstances are treated differently? Yes, exactly. My entire point is that owning a home is nothing like renting, even if you're spending the same amount, and is treated as a privileged status.

bee_rider 2y ago

I’ve always thought of it in these terms: Working class: you are sustained by your current labor. Upper class: you can sustain yourself based on the returns from your investments more-or-less indefinitely. Middle class, between the two: you can sustain yourself off your investments for so long that you can’t practically be threatened by unemployment. It is a labor relations issue explicitly, you need a union if you are in the first of the three classes, because otherwise you can be threatened by unemployment to do something dangerous or dehumanizing. In the middle class definition, practically there’s some element of the fact that our skills are in high demand, so you can become unthreatened by unemployment by having just, like, a 1 year buffer. But I do think we can overstate how in-demand our skills to satisfy our egos…

reillyse 2y ago
I honestly think the "middle class" idea is just a fallacy. It feels like it's used by people to distance themselves from "working class" because they feel that working class is somehow beneath them. All of the middle class in todays parlance are just slightly more affluent working class. If you sell your time for money you are working class. If you make money from having money you are bourgeoisie. If you have to think about which one you are you are working class. At a stretch you might consider the owner of a small tech company (say 5-10 employees) as petit bourgeoisie but the vast majority of small business owners (say mechanics, shop owners, small companies) are squarely in the working class. They may have employees but they still work, either for wages or as managers of those employees - which is work.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  The usual American idea of “middle class” is mostly (thoufh it tends to be defined more by income than actual means of relating to the economy) a mix of the upper income segment of the primarily labor-dependent class (working class/proletariat) and the lower (comparatively) income segment of the mixed labor/capital-dependent class (petit bourgeoisie). The middle class (petit bourgeoisie) is real, but its not centered around middle income (it is middle in the sense of being between the dominantly capital-dependent class and the dominantly labor-dependent class, primarily in how it relates to the economy, but in practice also on average, in income and wealth, but it is still an elite minority, just less so than the haut bourgeoisie that sits at the top.)