Comment by kirse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kirse | Hacker News Reader

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the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation.

Ugh, I know, being "economically exploited" is so rough -- making six figs in a top-tier profession with low single-digit unemployment that provides for a home/apt, family, regular health insurance, a warm bed and heating for the winter, cooling for the summer, multiple cars and a motorcycle (and maybe even a home for those too), an entire closet full of clothes, multiple pairs of shoes, regular healthy meals, spontaneous travel and vacations, hobbies, movies, TV, games, and entertainment nearly to our hearts' desire.

Worse, at work I have to deal with shiny new gadgets, laptops, desktops, servers, giant monitors, a desk and chair to my liking, HVAC, plumbing, and free filtered water. And wait a second, did you say you get paid while taking a bathroom break!? Life really does suck being exploited like this.

What's dead is not God, nor work, and the elephant might just be painted on the mirror on your wall.

But you have literally zero time to enjoy any of those things. You live in the office 80% of the time, your entire life is sitting pretending to be busy, then going "home", where you spend less time than you do at the office, getting a few hours of sleep and eating whatever you can get delivered, which is never really good, then trying to get a few hours of sleep and entering another day of meaningless toil. Your entire life is subjugated. You're practically a serf, with no real control of your own life, owned by a huge corporation that will discard you like wet tissue paper the moment you ask for the privilege of having a human life.

Nobody is holding a gun to your head and making you do the job or live in the bay area, move and do something else if you don't like it. Trust me, the service worker who commutes on public transit for three hours a day and makes 1/5th a tech salary would love to swap spots with the tech "serfs" if they had a chance.

Of course, but that doesn't mean both aren't being economically exploited.

I mean, if you perceive "lack of free time with which to enjoy six figure salary" as economic exploitation, you have a pretty awesome life. The plight of the service worker and the plight of the software engineer aren't in the same galaxy, it's silly to group them together.

If the software engineer and the (American) service worker aren't in the same galaxy, then the service worker and the average global worker aren't in the same supercluster.

And those foreign workers have their very own governments to talk to about that. Who woulda thunk it?!

It's hardly 1/5th the tech salary. in the bay area, a BART worker can earn more than a Software engineer. Crate operators in new york earn 150K+, approaching 500K with overtime and benefits. And 120K isn't 4 times more than 30K, it's more like 2.5 times more when you factor in federal and CA taxes.

What is the crane operator on-job mortality rate compared with a software engineer?

Why limit yourself to on-job?

You might be 1% likely to die working software, but 20% more likely to lose 1 year of life due to inactivity. Different people might choose differently.

You cherry-picked two of the most overpaid union jobs.

Cherry picking aside, minimum wage in CA is $10.50, or about $21,000/yr with the (very large) assumption of 40 hour weeks.

Okay, okay, let's discard the tangential argument, and stay on track shall we? We're talking principles here, and in principle we are all serfs. Some are much better compensated than others, but it doesn't change the underlying principle that spending your life consumed with working is asinine. And yes, life is much more comfortable for all serfs than in ages past. Even those in poverty often have big screen TVs, smart phones, Netflix, cable, game consoles, etc. Of course you have to do what you have to do to survive, but many of us are pissed that there's this arbitrary minimum of 40 hours. You can work a lot more than that, or make a lot more for your 40, but you're pretty much required to work at least 40. Ironically, for many service jobs it's actually hard to get full-time, which necessitates getting multiple part-time jobs (I've been there).

So yes, we are all serfs living in various degrees of comfort, but without that which we really crave: freedom. Sure, we could start a business, but most of the capital for doing so (past and present) is held by a very small number of people. Wealth perpetuates wealth, you've got to have money to make money. And you have to have a lot of money to earn your freedom.

No, we are not all serfs in principle, that argument is absolutely ridiculous. If you're so oppressed by your employer and committed to your own sense of victimhood, move into the woods, start homesteading, and "never work again." At that point you'd probably start calling nature despotic because the resources for you to survive in the woods don't just bring themselves to you. We are nothing like serfs. The thing that's holding you back is your expectations on quality of life, not the hours you work.

> You're practically a serf, with no real control of your own life, owned by a huge corporation that will discard you like wet tissue paper the moment you ask for the privilege of having a human life.

To be fair, if you're willing to move somewhere cheap you could easily retire after 15 years as a software engineer in the Bay Area. So it's just ~20% of your life.

> To be fair, if you're willing to move somewhere cheap you could easily retire after 15 years as a software engineer in the Bay Area. So it's just ~20% of your life.

I don't know if this is true. I think my savings would have ended up much larger had i NOT moved to the Bay Area due to the cost of living difference. I make about 1.5X here what I used to in Nowheresville, USA, but my cost of living is 5X. My savings rate here is close to zero whereas I used to actually fund my retirement accounts. It's a complicated problem.

Did you buy a house or move into SF? At $2k/mo rent and the mistaken purchase of a new $19k car, I've paid off all my debt and am saving pretty well around here.

> eating whatever you can get delivered, which is never really good

Do you need some restaurant recommendations? Everything I get delivered is great.

>provides for a home/apt, family,

I live in Boston and what is this? We can only afford rent with multiple professionals in the house working.

He's not complaining that life is so tough, he's saying that there's a sense of meaninglessness is his work.

Other people having it worse is absolutely no reason to chastise others for trying to better their lot in life. Doing so is absolutely despicable.

It's the "race to the bottom" mentality and that's a big reason we got here. I heard it a lot when politicians were giving away jobs by embracing offshoring and union busting.

"Your pay cut in half? That's nothing, so and so has it much worse."

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