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Comment by supernihil | Hacker News Reader

More quotes:

"During the 20th century, and up to this day, workers in large capitalist oligopolistic firms (like General Electric, Exxon-Mobil, or General Motors) received approximately 80% of the company’s income. Big Tech’s workers do not even collect 1% of their employer’s revenues. This is because paid labour performs only a fraction of the work that Big Tech benefits from. Who performs the bulk of the work? Most of the rest of us! For the first time in history, almost everyone produces for free (often enthusiastically), adding to Big Tech’s capital stock (that is what it means to upload stuff on Facebook or move around while linked to Google Maps). And, moreover, this capital takes a new, far more powerful form"

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Does this really make sense in terms of actual dollars? There is just no way that google spends less than 1% of its income on employees, right? Even 10% is way way too low. It’s probably closer to to 35% with another 25% or so going to keeping the lights on (data centers are expensive).

What am I supposed to make of the rest of the argument when it’s predicated on a number that is probably off by 50x?

You are 99% misreading/misunderstanding the quote.

They said WORKERS not EMPLOYEES

Sure, Google puts a lot of its revenue to its EMPLOYEES. But most of the WORK is done by the rest of the public giving Google all the content and data via the way the products utilize the searching and driving around and so on.

The claim is not what's internal to Google's business accounting. The claim is that they have externalized almost all the work to the unpaid users of the systems who actually produce the value overall.

(the quote is a tad confusing because they said "employer's revenues", that seems like an error in speaking/writing; the next part makes it clear what they are aiming to say)

> paid labour performs only a fraction of the work that Big Tech benefits from

Thank you.

> almost everyone produces for free

From that perspective the quote above is a lie: workers receive service in exchange for data they generate. It is in his own Google Maps example.

We can nitpick the hyperbole of particular wordings. Did peasants on traditional feudalism work for free? I mean, they ostensibly got the military protection of the lords.

What if everyone gave their data to Open Street Map instead?

But sure, there's a point about users that generate the value in these tech platforms do also get value from the services. Whether the value is worth the cost is another matter. What's clear is that users don't have much say in the arrangement. The corporations have the organized power, the users are divided and disorganized. There's no users' union.

Who is doing hyperbole here?

Any Google Maps user can switch to Open Street Map on a whim unlike feudalism peasants. Arguably, the current best economic theory basically says that because exchange takes place assuming users are rational enough, the exchanged value is identical.

One would need a stronger argument than calling it "work for free" here, when it is obviously not free.

Varoufakis was doing the hyperbole by saying "work for free" when he knows that people get some value. We can nit-pick the hyperbole, but the gist is still a fine enough point about the value being mainly from the users and extracted for profit by the platforms.

> Arguably, the current best economic theory basically says that because exchange takes place assuming users are rational enough, the exchanged value is identical.

I'll take that argument. If that's the best economic theory, it just validates my assertion that the field of economics is mostly a farce.

That "theory" is nothing but a say-so assertion that doesn't even try to look for evidence. It's unfalsifiable BS.

Some platforms provide great value. But the world is full of cases of middle-men and gatekeepers that have worked their way into that position and are little more than extractive. They might as well not exist. The reason people choose to go through them is for the value they get from the end exchange, not because they prefer to go through the middle-man. It all depends on the particular cases. The phenomenon of rent-seeking middle-men is not some myth.

What is the problem exactly with extracting value from easily available content created by many others? This is exactly what public education does, reading books, etc

Are you arguing about techno-feudalism or just being defensive about anyone criticizing businesses?

The whole discussion here is about the idea of power dynamics. It isn't about the boring waste-of-time topic of just attributing "value" conceptually. If you enjoy playing Mozart's music on the piano, that has "value" to you, but "extraction" is a poor metaphor, and there's no power dynamics at play, it's just life.

The only thing interesting in this topic is the question of concentrated power and who has power to control decisions about how things are set up in society. Google has set up an arrangement where they are extremely profitable and a relatively small number of people get to decide how their platforms work, and the divided users only have the choice to take-it-or-leave-it (and network effects push them into it, schools and businesses and others use the systems, you better also, and the mere fact of all the value captured there makes it hard for competition to arise).

This is a question of organizing, collective action etc. The executives at Google can make decisions and they have a whole organizational system to carry out their will. There's no organized power for the users. The label "techno-feudalism" doesn't argue that value doesn't exist or that the serfs are literal slaves.

Again, the Google Maps vs OSM shows that the majority prefers the value provided for them by Google over control over "how their platforms work".

Perhaps they are being tricked into this, but that is a separate problem, which article does not address.

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