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Meanwhile tech workers in the US spend all day online defending billionaires who wouldn't piss on them to put out a fire and arguing about why we can't have uni
by bayarearefugee 5mo ago
Meanwhile tech workers in the US spend all day online defending billionaires who wouldn't piss on them to put out a fire and arguing about why we can't have unions because blah blah blah rugged individualism.
- sanxiyn 5mo agoThe union makes us strong. -- A proud programming union worker in South Korea since 2018.
- Swizec 5mo ago> Meanwhile tech workers in the US spend all day online defending billionaires Tech pulled a great trick here: equity. America as a whole pulled a similar trick: 401k It’s hard to fight the billionaires when all your money depends on not fighting them.
- anon291 5mo agoWell yeah America has achieved what the communists sought: public ownership of the means of production . Today most of the American public owns the largest means of production in government advantaged accounts. Marx ought to be proud
- yogthos 5mo agohttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-93-033623827.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-9...
- foxglacier 5mo agoSo basically most older professionals, and today's young professionals will step into their shoes as they grow their wealth over time too. Which means probably far more than 10% of the population will at some point in their life belong to that group which owns 90% of the means of production.
- Swizec 5mo ago> will at some point in their life belong to that group which owns 90% of the means of production Would love to but I'm afraid you grossly misunderstand how the power law distribution works. Unfortunately the billionaires are running away from us exponentially faster than we are catching up. Speaking as someone who will almost certainly become a multi millionaire in the next decade or two. (even if I stop adding more savings manually) But crucially this only happens if there _isnt_ a big revolution in USA. If there is, I'm fucked.
- lIl-IIIl 5mo ago>Unfortunately the billionaires are running away from us exponentially faster than we are catching up. Why does that matter? Who is trying to catch up with a billionaire? They are not even playing the same game as the rest of us.
- anon291 5mo agoThe idea that communism means that everyone owns everything equally is retarded. Communes themselves don't do this. People with more stake get more ownership This corresponds to the first stage of Marxs theorized progession from capitalism too communism Done hate the messenger. I'm just taking what I read and applying it to observed reality and telling you it fit. Self described commies are dumb because they are incapable of enacting the very system they claim to idealize.
- vasco 5mo agoCan you show a commune that has lasted 3 generations? So like people move in, they stay and have kids and their kids stay long enough to have kids themselves. So at least about ~50 years? My impression of all these communes is: - idealistic people move in - they realize 90% of the people that moved in are lazy and don't want to work - the rest of the 10% run the show and the commune either breaks down here or kicks out many people - kids are born, they grow up and by the time they get to university age they find the whole thing cringy and leave to go have normal lives - commune ends Other than some that also degenerate into sexual abuse between members and other weird power games. My impression of these outsider hippie / communist groups is that their failure rate is very high.
- anon291 5mo agoThe United States, since most of our means of production is owned by the public. That was the point. The United States has the highest equity ownership rate in the world. We all have a stake in this.
- yogthos 5mo agoThat's just an infantile straw man though which has nothing to do with how communism works. Communism simply means that workers own their workplace and are the primary beneficiaries of their labor. In practice this means a mix of state ownership for cross-cutting concerns such as energy production or infrastructure and cooperative ownership for things like light industry. Cooperatives operate exactly the same way as companies owned by capitalists, except workers are in charge of running the company. Huawei is an example of how this works in the real world. Maybe avoid opining on topics you have no idea in the future as not to make an ass of yourself in public.
- nielsbot 5mo agoI want to smoke what you’re smoking!
- anon291 5mo agoI'm just starting from first principles on a debate that has ended up being more about neurological orientation rather than anything substantive.
- Danox 5mo agoActually, it’s the other way around in America the government and the people get to pay for the debt and the Robber Baron insiders get to scuttle away with the profit.
- anon291 5mo agoYou can argue it's poorly managed, but the ownership structure is whatever it is.
- nielsbot 5mo agoAre you saying taxing billionaires out of existence would be bad for equity and 401ks? How, exactly?
- winter_blue 5mo agoI don't think it would be bad for equity in any way. It might actually be good instead actually. First, the general public would have more disposable income if we shift more of the tax burden on the ultra rich. Second, people like Elon Musk won't be able to give themselves massive bonuses that are essentially paid by diluting common stock. Also, with regard to the U.S., the U.S. could wipe out its national debt with a one-time wealth tax, and also pass a balanced budget const. amendment so it never ends up deep in debt again. Lastly, perverse and extremely greed-based exploitative businesses might become less common, since there aren't ultra fat executive paychecks. Although it might still happen if a large group of people are able to make a somewhat high salary off such schemes.
- cityofdelusion 5mo agoNo way wealth tax covers the debt. It would be more of an asset seizure and forced sale or nationalization of a bunch of businesses and illiquid asset classes. The rich don’t hold enough cash to make it happen. The other issue is the U.S. deficit is a feature not a bug. As long as the world buys the bonds, it’s “free” and no one will care until forced austerity happens. Look into the end of the Gilded Age to see how this really gets fixed.
- winter_blue 5mo agoNationalization is arbitrary and wrong. That's not what I'm proposing. We'd largely be transferring shares in companies to the treasury bond holders, ie the people and orgs who hold US debt. The federal government might for example force mega-sized private companies like Koch Industries to go public to get an accurate market valuation (or just sell it to private equity by starting a bidding war on it across many private equity investors). The wealth tax cutoff would be determined by the national debt. It might fall to a relatively harsh / low threshold like 99.9% of assets over $20 million. Or maybe 99% of assets between $20 million to $1 billion, and 99.9% on assets above $1 billion. Treasury bonds themselves would be subject to the wealth tax, so someone with $100 billion in T bonds might just see 99% of $80 million erased. So even the total number of T bonds payable will drop under this wealth tax. But someone with $100 million in shares in private and public companies will see their shares transferred to the federal government, and then eventually sold. Once every T bond has been paid off, Congress and the states could try to close the centuries-long chapter on debt by trying to pass a balanced budget constitutional amendment.
- Danox 5mo ago401(k) and IRA’s were not a gift. It was a way for the companies to end the company pension plans in the early to mid 1980s. Half of the people who did receive them squandered them by cashing out before retirement to pay bills. If Social Security goes the same way most would squander it paying for necessities. Most of the unionize workers still left in America get a better share of the pie than the non-Union workers not even close. It’s always good to work together in a union had to be footloose and fancy free by yourself.
- Swizec 5mo ago> 401(k) and IRA’s were not a gift No not a gift but they sure do align incentives
- xyzzy123 5mo agoI find this complaint hard to square when US developers earn "moon money" compared to both: a) fields requiring similar levels of expertise like EE or Mech-E and b) international developers in similar roles. Plus, equity. [GIF of Woody Harrelson wiping tears with money]
- bayarearefugee 5mo agoThe vast majority of tech workers in the US make nowhere near FAANG-money and have never had meaningful equity. Also the fact that people in group $X are getting screwed more than people in group $Y is no reason not to fight to not get screwed if you are in group $Y.
- LPisGood 5mo agoProfessional athletes and pilots have unions. They both make considerably more than your average programmer, even in FAANG and even with equity.
- xyzzy123 5mo agoThese "unions" in high paying fields behave more like guilds or cartels than worker's unions - they generally restrict supply. Athletes and Hollywood unions are sort of special cases too, IMHO. I don't think it's reasonable to claim that top earners in those fields earn so much because of their unions - they benefit from natural supply restriction of outliers. For unions to be as effective in tech as for say pilots or doctors, you'd have to agree on a way to restrict supply (H1B restrictions, more licensing and credentialling etc) to give the union leverage. You have to control the supply taps and rate limit entry to the field. I think it's hard to say if this would net out better for workers than the current arrangements, which are already the best in the world on nearly every metric. It also seems like there's a timing issue - if tech workers DID successfully unionise enough to withhold a meaningful fraction of labour, the gains might ultimately end up in the market cap of AI companies via substitution.
- LPisGood 5mo agoI don’t think pilots unions do much to restrict supply.
- phil21 5mo agoWhat’s an average nvidia “tech employee” worth today? How about compared to their base salary vs. Samsung line workers? You have a point. But on this precise topic it’s pretty hard to make. A tiny handful of companies who are winners beyond anyone’s expectations simply do not matter. There is exactly zero percent chance this profit sharing contract would have been negotiated by either party as it is if this had been remotely predicted in advance. Same as the retrospectively extremely lucrative RSUs granted to nvidia employees just five years ago. Tech folks employed by the top tech companies have been fine. I do not cry even a minute for them. The fun part of the Korean memory worker compensation is that blue collar folks finally are getting just a little bit of the taste the laptop class has been part of for so long. And it is likely to be comparatively very fleeting.
- anon291 5mo agoI mean as someone who works in American AI chip firms , our compensation is larger. You can bitch about America as much as you want but it's pretty much the best in terms of monetary compensation Of course I'm late to the game. My colleagues who have been here ten years are either extremely wealthy and bored or sailing the Caribbean at this point. Every other week someone is taking a sabbatical
- nielsbot 5mo agoThat’s nice for the handful of people in the right place at the right time, I guess…
- nomel 5mo agoYes, just like the Samsung employees we're talking about.
- Danox 5mo agoVery true, but some are acting like it’s the end of the world if a few people in the middle to lower end who worked very hard get a bonus and when I say work hard, I would say they probably in South Korea worked a lot harder that many people in the west in the same position have relatively speaking.
- carabiner 5mo agoI don't think it's much larger when you adjust for Bay Area COL. Housing and healthcare especially.
- anon291 5mo agoI don't live in the Bay area. Left many years ago with my stock options and rsus.
- skybrian 5mo agoIt would be ungrateful to complain after earning enough in stock options and RSU's to retire early. (It sounds like the union got a great deal for these workers, though.)
- nielsbot 5mo agoare you saying workers should show gratitude to their employers?
- skybrian 5mo agoYes, if you're treated well. It was a fair deal. More than fair, generous. I can't point to anything I did that was worth so much. You seem surprised? Do you know how things (sometimes) work in Silicon Valley?
- LastTrain 5mo agoNo, despite working there and (apparently) making too much money to complain. Spell it out for us please.
- vrganj 5mo agoI feel the opposite. Looking at the yearly revenue of these companies and dividing them by the number of people that contributed, I clearly created much more value than my comp gave me. Labor is entitled to all it creates.
- skybrian 5mo agoI learned pretty quickly that money in Silicon Valley has nothing to do with getting what you "deserve" after a co-worker sold a domain name at the height of the dot-com bubble and retired on the proceeds. Sometimes people get lucky and there's no point in getting angry about it.
- vrganj 5mo ago
- yongjik 5mo agoI have a hard time understanding this complaint. A US tech worker earning $340k bonus wouldn't even make news, it happens every year all around the silicon valley. That is, a US tech worker is taking much more for their own from those billionaire employers, compared to what Samsung's workers managed to do after a lot of haggling.
- nielsbot 5mo agoWe’d need to see the payout distribution to know for sure… Just the average doesn’t say enough.
- usaar333 5mo agoTech workers get paid in equity and many in the semiconductor industry are making far far more than this a year with all the equity appreciation.
- arjie 5mo agoIn all honesty, I’d rather get paid the $500k/yr people make here than have a union negotiate a $350k one time bonus in a time of unprecedented success. Given these two options, I’m not that eager to have their system.
- Computer0 5mo ago$500k/yr? Do you think a lot of people make that much?
- dolebirchwood 5mo agoHe clearly has a very narrow definition of "here" in mind.
- virgildotcodes 5mo agoWhile we’re at it I, too, would rather be given $xx billion a month and a pony than be in a union and only get a $350k bonus. I think I am making a shrewd decision here if my math and equine knowledge holds.
- TheDong 5mo agoI mean, on levels.fyi the 90th percentile in San Francisco is 500k. Most of HN is tech workers in the bay area. The average person on hacker news is easily in the 90th percentile of software engineers, so yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the most people here make somewhere around there. The biggest confounding factor is the other fact that most HN users are startup founders living off ramen in Peter Thiel's garage, so that probably brings down the average some.
- Computer0 5mo agoIs this evidence based? I am not a software engineer, nor do I live in california. Nobody I know in real life that uses this site is.
- Sam6late 5mo agoBut no one should argue with this, it is as sound as physics;no unions no equality in salaries https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequality-rises/ https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequalit...
- cloverich 5mo agoDoesnt need to be tech. My blue collar UPS worker friend is all in on down with regulations, and claimed if anything we meed MORE billionaires. Many in America see regulation and taxes in all forms as bad, and the primary thing holding back prosperity for all. I remember thinking like this when i was younger (hes older than me). Then here i am working nearly half as many hours as this guy, for 5-10x the pay. This is a widespread, pervasive train of thought in America. Yet i wonder as the houses and healthcare stay expensive, food and fuel too... at some point this mental model breaks right?