That’s just the divine right of kings with extra steps.
They may tolerate (and even enjoy) your personal quirks and causes, but they are paying you to get things done that they don't have the time or skill to do themselves.
[Edit: Accidentally left ou a letter]
It's pretty clear that capital is running away with the game right now. Until that's rectified, your argument about exchanging labor and skills for money makes your parent's point rather than negating it.
That is, the exchange is only free among parties with relatively equal power (at least collectively). And, if it's not a free exchange then your point is moot.
"Your labour and skills are not owed because they got lucky, they are owed because that is what you are exchanging with the owner to pay back your debt and earn your freedom"
You can use that logic to justify any oppression as long as you frame it in the language of property. It's not a valid argument - you don't have a choice but to exchange for money because you're in a position where you have no choice but to engage in oppressive social structures or face the violence of the state if you want to survive.
It's not a choice. You have a (metaphorical) pistol to your head to engage with the system as it is, die, or be killed.
Its really not so different from what your ancestors as serf or as debt slaves in antiquity might have lived.
As long as you live in a society where private property in absentia (ultimately based on theft, might I add) exists, the "choice" to exchange is colored by violence and is far from truly free.
In our economy, you can go work for anyone, or for yourself, or to some degree even not work at all and collect various social benefits.
Comparing programmers in 2021 to medieval serfs or ancient debt-slaves is literally absurd.
Programmers don't even really need any substantial capital to do their own thing. You can start a business with a laptop costing under $1,000.
The capital for a programmer's startup is not the laptop, its the intellectual property. That costs way more than a 1000$, typically the equivalent of at least a few tens of thousands of dollars in IP. But beyond that programmers are very far from the average.
The average person in the 2021 worldwide economy cannot live off social benefits on a whim.
So to compare these things is not equivalent.
It's not true that all white collar workers can switch jobs every few years. Some white collar workers in the US can, and even then with asterisks (non-competes, wage fixing, etc...)
The biggest reason why serfs would stop moving is to have children and a wife.
But yeah, I do agree that a direct comparison of programmers to serfs is a bit overboard. However, I am also seeing it in the sense that things don't really change much, even in a few centuries. The world is probably getting better for the people, but that doesn't mean that the same old tactics by the rich and powerful don't appear in new clothes.
This is ridiculous. In the US people constantly quit to start small businesses, work for other businesses, or just not work at all. There is zero threat of violence if you choose not to work.
Additionally, there is no concept of debt slavery at all outside of the military (which is probably the most successful socialist institution in the US). There is no forced labor to pay down debt.
> private property in absentia (ultimately based on theft, might I add)
Based on theft from who? If I grow some cucumbers in my garden, who have I stolen them from?
The cucumbers aren't stolen, but the land is. Ultimately almost all private property in land was dispossesed of common ownership or previous inhabitants. Not that you need to feel guilty about it, but you do need to pay your taxes.
SOME people. Median savings are ~$4k, realistically the average person needs access to credit (which they may not have), a strong support network, or some other way of surviving longer than 2 months without work.
And whether or not you do have the wealth or support network needed to choose not to work is determined mostly by who your parents are. This isn't a fair system.
There is no threat of violence if you choose not to work. The violence is if you try to subsist to your means without engaging with the economic system. So you are forced to engage in the economic system as it is.
As for debt slavery, I'm simply saying that the arguments used to justified exploitative labour relations are exactly the same as were used to justify debt slavery.
If you grow cucumbers in your garden, your first need to buy the land for the garden, which was ultimately stolen from someone else. But growing a cucumber in your garden is not private property in absentia, it's private property in present use.
Division of labor is the foundation of civilization, and how we have become so incredibly wealthy.
In a division of labor system, everyone needs to contribute as much as they benefit, on average, and the system of mostly voluntary trade is how we keep track of that. You trade your labor for money, that you in turn trade with others for the result of their labor.
Demanding to share the fruits of that system - which come from the work of countless other people - without being willing to contribute to it with your own work is both selfish and antisocial.
Taxation is stealing money from your citizens and we don’t describe it that way because it makes the term somewhat meaningless.
And yes they are owed your skills because they are paying you for them, that is how any exchange of services work. If you don't provide them you are not giving them what they are paying you for.
In practically every job I've ever had, some of the conversations that folks are advocating to continue would have gotten me first warned and then fired. But I've never worked for a 'tech' company per se, just in technology. I guess it could be different in SV but then that's probably the issue. Most of the country just doesn't operate this way and finds this kinda weird.
"Historically, human work patterns have taken the form of intense bursts of energy followed by rest. Farming, for instance, is generally an all-hands-on-deck mobilization around planting and harvest, with the off-seasons occupied by minor projects. Large projects such as building a house or preparing for a feast tend to take the same form. This is typical of how human beings have always worked. There is no reason to believe that acting otherwise would result in greater efficiency or productivity. Often it has precisely the opposite effect.
One reason that work was historically irregular is because it was largely unsupervised. This is true of medieval feudalism and of most labor arrangements until relatively recent times, even if the relationship between worker and boss was strikingly unequal. If those at the bottom produced what was required of them, those at the top couldn’t be bothered to know how the time was spent."
I'm unaware of any typical employer ever paying wages/salary in advance, it's always in arrears, so on that basis there's no point at which the employee owes the employer their skills.
I have work to do!
I think people bringing their politics into the workplace are more interested in attracting attention than anything else. But the obsequious worship of the boss is just gross.
When will we acknowledge that one of the most noble pursuits in human history is to provide paid employment for your fellow man??
Christ, this Superhero CEO bullshit has to stop. It is beyond absurd. Is the multi-hundred X income multiplier really insufficient, they need their egos stroked constantly, too?
I have co-founded a startup, and otherwise have worked at them for almost the entirety of my adult life. I know how much work, risk, and pain is involved.
But this apparent need for Glorification of the Supremely Worthy Job Creator nonsense is just cultish and gross.
Fundamentally, people don't start companies for social status reasons - if anything, social status is the reason not to quit your comfy executive job at a large tech company and instead have to work out of a co-working space.
And since your own description of your professional career implies that your startup didn't make you a billionaire, I really don't understand why it was necessary to bring up the "multi-hundred X income multiplier" fallacy.
Also most founders do not get a multi-hundred X income multiplier. Instead they fail and often go into debt. Yes there are some outsized winners, but the vast majority don’t. That’s why we should be elevating those individuals to promote a culture of risk-taking.
I don't think either is particularly worthy of "glorification". I'd reserve glory purely for people who help other people without much monetary reward.
Sure the latter is important, and we should talk about them too. But civilization progresses due to risk-takers like Ford who spot an opportunity and dogmatically pursue it.
Yeah that sounds about right to me. Ford got a ton of money, what's he need glory on top of that for?
I’d rather we had another newly minted billionaire employing 60k people with middle class jobs than one more man who helps old ladies cross the street for free.
A billionaire who employs 60k people hasn't done anything altruistic. It's a business, not a charity. The skills and time of those 60k people made the billionaire a billionaire. Why would I laud either side in a fair exchange?
I might praise the skill and foresight of the billionaire. I might praise the skill and hard work of the workers. But neither is "advancing society". They're pursuing their own interests.
The only people who don’t care about the economy are ones who haven’t lived through a truly bad one.
It’s not some thing that just happens in a vacuum to make people rich. It’s what drives 99% of the production of all goods and services in the US. The endowments for all of our top research universities depend on the economy, etc etc.
You call it “just a business transaction”, but employing 60k people with good paying jobs in a financially sustainable way is incredible because it means they are producing more than the value of all of those salaries to the wider society. Producing a surplus is how we advance.
You can argue that some businesses are leeches because externalities or whatever, but that can be fixed with taxation. When it comes down to it we need to operate at break even or a surplus as a society or we are fucked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew
So yeah, he shouldn't get glory, but instead only be looked at as an example of 'how to make a bunch of money'.
The accumulation of wealth only serves as an example of the accumulation of wealth; the opinions of those accumulating are quite often orthogonal to any other consideration.
How about that happens after they retire at 80? That would be a good balance. You glorify an entrepreneur and soon enough he'd be pushing BS vaporware products or using his cult of personality to raise endless equity at absurd valuation or outright scamming the government (Musk cough cough...conman cough cough)
Telling that you'd use that term.
Not all founders work hard. Not all founders are revolutionary. They are not lords and do not deserve worship. Altruism deserves praise. Employment deserves payment.
From a purely business perspective, every job created is an inefficiency. No one sets out to create jobs when they start a business. They set out to make money and create products or services of value - in that order. Employing people is an unfortunate side-effect of that.
When it stops getting politicians elected. No one wants to vote for the person who assures them they will do everything in their power to put them out of work and transfer their value directly to shareholders.
The failure of collective markets stems from nobody has figured out how to get people to stop acting selfishly.
The free market does not encourage pursuing action where the benefits accrue to people outside of the transaction, but it does encourage actions where the harms are so externalized.
A hypothetical optimally regulated market systems with Pigovian taxes and subsidies to internalize externalities would in theory have the effect that pursuit of private gain would at least not be adverse to the common interest, but that’s very far from a “free market”.
Pigovian taxes and subsidies are a market-based approach to regulation, not a free market one (which would be an oxymoron.)
Yes.
> Hence taxing externalities and using the revenue for the common good corrects for that
That's the argument for Pigovian taxes and subsidies. The typical “free market” counterargument is that the government taxing and spending for the common good to correct that:
(1) violates consent and does not take into account whether and how much the individual “beneficiaries” would be willing to pay when taxing the public and spending for Pigovian subsidies,
(2) does not compensate for lack of consent or compensate the individuals harmed what they would be willing to accept to consent to the inflicted harms when collecting and spending pigovian taxes.
And, therefore, that the correct policy is for individuals who would benefit to subsidize third party action in place of Pigovian subsidies, and seek individual remedy, e.g. via the courts, for unconsented negative externalities.
> Hence it is free market.
That it compensates for what sone people see as a problem in unregulated markets doesn’t make it “free market”.
We fail to acknowledge that "job creation" benefits the business, because it helps them earn revenue or reduce costs. Ain't nothing noble about hiring someone to do a job. It's a business, not a charity.
If you want some other area of your company strong you invest in that area. An lawyer during a period where the public is sueing you pays for itself.
Hiring a developer to fix a login issue saves refunds.
A lot of jobs seems less important but they provide support and are net positives. Having a server guy means you have a working server. Having a marketing guy means new leads are coming in. Having more sales people means converting more of those leads.
The ineffiency comes when you have too many people in one department waiting on an understaffed area in some other part of the business.
And that's my point. Every hire a business makes is to increase revenue or reduce costs. Employment benefits the worker, but it also benefits the business. If a business could get the work of that employee done without hiring that employee, it would happily do so.
If two parties partake in a trade that has mutual benefit, why is either of them "noble"? Why aren't we calling the worker "noble" for providing the business with their skills and time?
Even if you think this is the natural inclination of the public corporation, not all companies have to go public and not all investors in public companies care about nothing the company does besides make profit. It's a world of humans we operate in, not some kind of logical optimal point.
Perhaps you're thinking of the pressures on management of the fortune 500 or something, but that's a far cry from sweeping claims like "almost entirely" or "every job". If you want a job at a place with more of a conscience or whatever, they are all over the place. Especially among startups.
And if they could lower costs by employing fewer people, they'd have more money to spend on helping the blind see or connect the world. Alternatively, they employ more people because they believe it will allow them to help more blind people or connect the world better. The point is, they don't hire people for the sake of giving them a paycheck. There's something of equal value expected of those people in return.
> Or the many many small businesses who seek to...employ people
Which ones? Which business has "employ people" as an objective to be maximized? How does it even manage to stay in business working like that? (Note: I'm not talking about businesses that make serious sacrifices to minimize job losses in a downturn; that's praiseworthy. I'm talking about businesses that have headcount as a primary metric of success.)
And if pure job creation is soooo morally good, how do you feel about a government job guarantee? They have that under a number of communist or socialist systems. So is communism or socialism morally superior to capitalism?
Serious question: if you hire a babysitter for date night with your partner, do you feel virtuous about creating employment? Or do you see it as an exchange of some money for a service? If you do feel virtuous, you should re-think that.
Another serious question: is automation immoral? It puts people out of work, after all.
And my point is not to get drawn into an argument about economic systems or morality, but simply point out your lack of accuracy in describing reality.
If all you need is this hard work, surely the wealthy businesses would be distributed all around the world
youre profiting off their ingenuity and idea. If many other entrepreneurs didnt do this, you wouldnt have a job because they wouldnt be available. and most people dont have the risk appetite to do something like that.
so no youre not being exploited by them. youre leeching off their idea and should realize who depends on whom.
I have value and most people here probably do as well. How do I know that? Because I can make others earn money by solving their problems through different means (usually technological in nature).