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Comment by gutnor | Hacker News Reader

There is a "Fight club" feel to this crisis. All the "key worker", necessary job that need to be done regardless the catastrophe society is facing are literally the least desirable job on the market and often the least paid too.

Hopefully there is going to be wake up call in society. Surely a large scale demonstration like this would convince people that your "free market capitalistic assigned worth, i.e. your salary" is not a sufficient measure of your value in society and external adjustment (eg: government regulation or welfare or ...) is actually quite reasonable.

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It's like the opposite of the Galt's Gulch strike by the titans of industry in Atlas Shrugged. Unfortunately for the workers, the sudden spike in unemployment might make them easily replaceable, though there will be a training cost incurred by the companies. Their best hope is that enough unemployed people are comfortable with their government checks (stimulus and unemployment) combined with hope that their jobs will come back in a month or two, to not bother picking up jobs at Whole Foods or Amazon.

Only on Hacker News could you find some describing strikes, which were invented by workers, predate everything Rand wrote to cynically invert history and reality, as the “opposite of Galt’s Gulch.”

HN and any other place software developer types gather. If we didn't exist Rand would have had to invent us. We're practically perfect consumers of her work. We do a very cushy job for which a small amount of labor can produce a vast amount of value. It's easy to believe that it's a level playing field, so we're being rewarded purely for our own skill and hard work. We've changed the world on scales not seen since the age of the railroad tycoon.

We read Atlas Shrugged and see ourselves. Let us run the world and everybody will do great. We don't read The Jungle or Nickel and Dimed, and if we do we don't see ourselves. We enjoy the benefits of the labor movement as natural rights -- or even dismiss things like weekends and sick leave as unnecessary.

That's not everybody on HN; in fact HN seems to be better than many. Slashdotters, last I saw, seemed quite convinced Rand had written scripture.

I've read both The Jungle and Nickel and Dimed, but not Atlas Shrugged. To this day I have never hired anyone to clean my house or fetch and carry for me, it's a direct influence of that book. One day when I'm old and infirm, maybe. On my last 20-ish visits to Wholefoods, I saw more and more gig shoppers. In the beginning I didn't think much of it, but as the number of gig shoppers approach regular shoppers, I have become convinced that we are living in Brave New World, there's a whole class of people who we will never come in contact with, other than through these arms-length service exchange. I hazard to think that this stratification of tasks will shape us, shape me in how I think of my place in the world. And this is the stuff I do see, I hate to think what I'm blind to.

Is our world now more like 1984 or Brave New World?

https://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/brave-new-world-v...

Edited: I've just re-watched that Intelligence Squared debate and, my God, it is bang on and more relevant now than ever!

Those gig shoppers are having a moment right now, and I hope people (especially people like us) are listening. They work hard; hard enough to merit a living wage. There are lots of ways to accomplish that, with different merits, but it is more apparent now than ever that they're literally risking their lives and deserve better than "I'm sorry your job shut down but you haven't earned enough to eat while carrying me my food."

Rand gave us a picture of a just world where everybody earned what they got, and where misfortune was your own fault. The Invisible Hand self-corrects. It's easy to support that when you come in the top 1% of the world and therefore must have earned it, and conversely everybody else didn't.

At the very least, if one is sending a gig shopper to Whole Foods... tip like crazy. (Or don't break the strike at all.)

Why would it be reasonable? If you're not willing to perform a job at the current pay grade, just quit your job. Either you get replaced immediately or you've got yourself a chip in your salary negotiation.

Switching jobs right now would cost you: a) Income you need to provide yourself food and shelter in a time of insecurity. b) Healthcare loss during one of the worst global health crises ever.

The switching cost is near infinite and not reflected in the pay.

> Why would it be reasonable? If you're not willing to perform a job at the current pay grade, just quit your job.

That is not an option for those living paycheck to paycheck, or not in the prime of their life.

Human beings are not a resource, and managers need to understand that there is a social cost they pay and thus need to comply with a social contract.

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