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if you haven't read… Surely you can answer my question why the wages went up and then down. oscilloscope posted a part of Marx's theory that's hopefully topic

if you haven't read… Surely you can answer my question why the wages went up and then down. oscilloscope posted a part of Marx's theory that's hopefully topical and has some insight to share with those of us who haven't yet set aside the time to read something long. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to want to discuss that. harvey Thanks for the references, I will keep them in mind. I love video lectures. There is no 'middle class' or even 'upper class,' these are vulgar economists' terms. OK, all I intended was rough percentiles. Let's say the 30th–60th percentiles are "all house", 60th–99th are "house and equities", and >99th may be invested in a hedge fund. Speaking of the USA. I don't mean to imply some unified psychology to a social class, or anything like that.

steveklabnik 14y ago
> Surely you can answer my question why the wages went up and then down. You wouldn't even understand an answer I'd give you, because it'd be in Marxist terminology. Maybe Oscilliscope will be willing to explain their comment, I don't care to at this time. > Thanks for the references, I will keep them in mind for the future. No problem. Glad to be of help. I think that understanding Marx is really important, but I don't think that he has correct answers for today, exactly. > all I intended was rough percentiles. Right, this is fundamentally wrong. The only thing that matters is your relationship to the means of production: 'middle class' people are proletariat just like 'lower class' people are. It has absolutely nothing to do with your positioning in the table of income. This is an example of the terminology issue. It's common to most philosophers.
- crasshopper 14y ago
  The only thing that matters is your relationship to the means of production: 'middle class' people are proletariat just like 'lower class' people are. It has absolutely nothing to do with your positioning in the table of income. I understand what you mean. I can see how that relationship might be important to the theory. But what I said about "classes" (bad word: s/classes/quantiles/) is actually true. So if we're going to discuss whether, in fact, workers lost more wealth than capitalists (or, s/capitalists/correct terminology/), those empirical issues should still be addressed. For example, I may be a "worker bee" consultant at IBM, but holding stock factually altered my exposure to wealth shocks. You wouldn't even understand an answer I'd give you, because it'd be in Marxist terminology. Maybe Oscilliscope will be willing to explain their comment, I don't care to at this time. Fair enough.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    > But what I said about "classes" (bad word, s/classes/quantiles/) is actually true. It is true within the framework you have set up to analyze the situation. One of Marx's theses is that that analysis is not adequate to explain capitalism's tendancy towards crisis, the falling rate of profit, the alienation of the worker, and many of its other features. You're saying "but no, it's true that you can measure things in degrees" and Marx is saying "my theories and equations are all using radians."
    - crasshopper 14y ago
      I don't understand your radians/degrees analogy. I'm saying that richer people hold more equity. It has nothing to do with a framework of analysis.
      - steveklabnik 14y ago
        Right, but you have a chart that only takes into account wages which ignores things like 'wars' and 'embargoes' and 'happiness index' and doesn't even cite its numbers, and a vague hunch about relative values of securities. Really, all of this is far too muddy on both of our sides, combined with said terminology gap. I really should be coding, not typing on HN, so I'm going to gracefully bow out of this conversation, but thank you for continuing it, you've been great. Two thoughts as I leave you: 1. the fact that many people have things like stocks in their 401Ks is one of the reasons that I think Marxist theories need updated, though I think of them as generally sound. Luckily, many people have since Marx's time (First Lenin, then Mao, and many, many others) and 2. Marxism is really about a methodology than a strict set of answers: you use the tools of dialectics and historical materialism to produce a scientific analysis. That applies to Marxism itself as well, and like any science, its theories will come and go, be made stronger or weaker as history marches on. That's not a flaw, it's a strength, and it's why Marxist analyses have been used across a variety of fields, not just economics. Thank you for this break as I work on the documentation for the impending Rails 4 release.
        14y ago
- lsc 14y ago
  >Right, this is fundamentally wrong. The only thing that matters is your relationship to the means of production: 'middle class' people are proletariat just like 'lower class' people are. It has absolutely nothing to do with your positioning in the table of income. I do think it's interesting to look at class from the Marxist perspective, but eh, the Marxist terminology I know is sloppy and inexact at the intersections of class; where a whole lot of the action happens. Petite bourgeoisie refers both to me, the owner-operator of capital goods who must add his labour in order for those capital goods to produce value, as well as to those who own nothing but manage everything; managers of large companies who might not own any stock at all except for the options given as payment, people employed by the capitalist class to do the actual work of managing capital (and yes, it is complex and difficult (difficult in the sense of difficult to get right, not difficult in the sense of physical difficulty) work.) I can not imagine two classes of people who are more different. I mean, your owner-operators? The means of production we own? we know intimately and control absolutely. Sure, we might take on apprentices from time to time, and we might delegate some of the less critical work, but room for delegation is limited, mostly because any mistake or misfortune that decreases the value of the capital good we operate generally harms us directly. I still assemble all my servers, because nobody else cares about 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 errors introduced by improper ESD control. But me? I care because I'm the one who has to get up at 4am and deal with the problem. I'm the one who has to make apologies to the customers, and I'm the one who gets to watch my customer base shrink when those sorts of problems happen. So yeah; I'm sure I could pay some kid ten bucks an hour to assemble servers... but generally speaking? I don't. I have people I trust with root that I won't let touch hardware. It's better, sometimes, to do some things yourself. Your managers? Generally, they have much broader and shallower knowledge. They are all about delegation; not only delegating the decisions, and the work, but also delegating the risk. If a manager screws up, the worst thing that might happen is that they lose their job and any future compensation, usually not even that. Managers? Managers control the largest corporations around. Owner-operators, usually, control very small operations. Moreover, the Manager's customers are the owners. Really, the Manager only needs to be perceived as compitent by the capitalists that own the company; the perceptions of the employees and customers don't matter except in how they change the perceptions of the capitalist-class owners of the company. Personally, I would argue that this manager class; those hired by the owners to manage what the owners have no time, ability, or interest in managing, are now a more powerful class than the actual owners. Mutual funds and index funds are very popular. How many here actually vote the stock they own? Not many, I'd wager. The Managers control most corporations, really, to a greater extent than the owners do. I mean, yeah, every now and again, one of the capitalists tries to fight the managers; even when the capitalist is clearly right he often loses to the manager.
Tichy 14y ago
"Surely you can answer my question why the wages went up and then down." Pretty funny - explain some complicated topic that scientists have probably been debating for decades in a HN comment. While you're at it, could you also explain Quantum Mechanics to me, I always wanted to understand how that works.

steveklabnik 14y ago

> Surely you can answer my question why the wages went up and then down. You wouldn't even understand an answer I'd give you, because it'd be in Marxist terminology. Maybe Oscilliscope will be willing to explain their comment, I don't care to at this time. > Thanks for the references, I will keep them in mind for the future. No problem. Glad to be of help. I think that understanding Marx is really important, but I don't think that he has correct answers for today, exactly. > all I intended was rough percentiles. Right, this is fundamentally wrong. The only thing that matters is your relationship to the means of production: 'middle class' people are proletariat just like 'lower class' people are. It has absolutely nothing to do with your positioning in the table of income. This is an example of the terminology issue. It's common to most philosophers.

crasshopper 14y ago
The only thing that matters is your relationship to the means of production: 'middle class' people are proletariat just like 'lower class' people are. It has absolutely nothing to do with your positioning in the table of income. I understand what you mean. I can see how that relationship might be important to the theory. But what I said about "classes" (bad word: s/classes/quantiles/) is actually true. So if we're going to discuss whether, in fact, workers lost more wealth than capitalists (or, s/capitalists/correct terminology/), those empirical issues should still be addressed. For example, I may be a "worker bee" consultant at IBM, but holding stock factually altered my exposure to wealth shocks. You wouldn't even understand an answer I'd give you, because it'd be in Marxist terminology. Maybe Oscilliscope will be willing to explain their comment, I don't care to at this time. Fair enough.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  > But what I said about "classes" (bad word, s/classes/quantiles/) is actually true. It is true within the framework you have set up to analyze the situation. One of Marx's theses is that that analysis is not adequate to explain capitalism's tendancy towards crisis, the falling rate of profit, the alienation of the worker, and many of its other features. You're saying "but no, it's true that you can measure things in degrees" and Marx is saying "my theories and equations are all using radians."
  - crasshopper 14y ago
    I don't understand your radians/degrees analogy. I'm saying that richer people hold more equity. It has nothing to do with a framework of analysis.
    - steveklabnik 14y ago
      Right, but you have a chart that only takes into account wages which ignores things like 'wars' and 'embargoes' and 'happiness index' and doesn't even cite its numbers, and a vague hunch about relative values of securities. Really, all of this is far too muddy on both of our sides, combined with said terminology gap. I really should be coding, not typing on HN, so I'm going to gracefully bow out of this conversation, but thank you for continuing it, you've been great. Two thoughts as I leave you: 1. the fact that many people have things like stocks in their 401Ks is one of the reasons that I think Marxist theories need updated, though I think of them as generally sound. Luckily, many people have since Marx's time (First Lenin, then Mao, and many, many others) and 2. Marxism is really about a methodology than a strict set of answers: you use the tools of dialectics and historical materialism to produce a scientific analysis. That applies to Marxism itself as well, and like any science, its theories will come and go, be made stronger or weaker as history marches on. That's not a flaw, it's a strength, and it's why Marxist analyses have been used across a variety of fields, not just economics. Thank you for this break as I work on the documentation for the impending Rails 4 release.
      - 14y ago
lsc 14y ago
>Right, this is fundamentally wrong. The only thing that matters is your relationship to the means of production: 'middle class' people are proletariat just like 'lower class' people are. It has absolutely nothing to do with your positioning in the table of income. I do think it's interesting to look at class from the Marxist perspective, but eh, the Marxist terminology I know is sloppy and inexact at the intersections of class; where a whole lot of the action happens. Petite bourgeoisie refers both to me, the owner-operator of capital goods who must add his labour in order for those capital goods to produce value, as well as to those who own nothing but manage everything; managers of large companies who might not own any stock at all except for the options given as payment, people employed by the capitalist class to do the actual work of managing capital (and yes, it is complex and difficult (difficult in the sense of difficult to get right, not difficult in the sense of physical difficulty) work.) I can not imagine two classes of people who are more different. I mean, your owner-operators? The means of production we own? we know intimately and control absolutely. Sure, we might take on apprentices from time to time, and we might delegate some of the less critical work, but room for delegation is limited, mostly because any mistake or misfortune that decreases the value of the capital good we operate generally harms us directly. I still assemble all my servers, because nobody else cares about 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 errors introduced by improper ESD control. But me? I care because I'm the one who has to get up at 4am and deal with the problem. I'm the one who has to make apologies to the customers, and I'm the one who gets to watch my customer base shrink when those sorts of problems happen. So yeah; I'm sure I could pay some kid ten bucks an hour to assemble servers... but generally speaking? I don't. I have people I trust with root that I won't let touch hardware. It's better, sometimes, to do some things yourself. Your managers? Generally, they have much broader and shallower knowledge. They are all about delegation; not only delegating the decisions, and the work, but also delegating the risk. If a manager screws up, the worst thing that might happen is that they lose their job and any future compensation, usually not even that. Managers? Managers control the largest corporations around. Owner-operators, usually, control very small operations. Moreover, the Manager's customers are the owners. Really, the Manager only needs to be perceived as compitent by the capitalists that own the company; the perceptions of the employees and customers don't matter except in how they change the perceptions of the capitalist-class owners of the company. Personally, I would argue that this manager class; those hired by the owners to manage what the owners have no time, ability, or interest in managing, are now a more powerful class than the actual owners. Mutual funds and index funds are very popular. How many here actually vote the stock they own? Not many, I'd wager. The Managers control most corporations, really, to a greater extent than the owners do. I mean, yeah, every now and again, one of the capitalists tries to fight the managers; even when the capitalist is clearly right he often loses to the manager.

Tichy 14y ago

"Surely you can answer my question why the wages went up and then down." Pretty funny - explain some complicated topic that scientists have probably been debating for decades in a HN comment. While you're at it, could you also explain Quantum Mechanics to me, I always wanted to understand how that works.