Hacker News Reader

Comment by derevaunseraun | Hacker News Reader

> e.g. the labour market, often revolves around free markets being good -- because it favors this typical HN's user position.

Care to explain? I'd imagine that something along the lines of unionization wouldn't hurt the salaries of tech workers.

> Thinking the imbalance is unfair is a mark of expected privilege as they have in other space

I find it interesting to refer to labor exchange value as a "privilege", as if it were something arbitrarily bestowed from some higher authority. Wage is the result of adversarial relationships between demand and supply and not one of some arbitrary authority doling out favors left and right with strings attached

View on HN

> Wage is the result of adversarial relationships between demand and supply and not one of some arbitrary authority doling out favors left and right with strings attached

Except there are:

- systematic biases in access to the skills needed for this contest - systematic asymmetries of information/social capital/access which skew access to high earning professions - outright discrimination against minority groups and women in payment

All of which means current remuneration is in part (not wholly) a reflection of privilege.

> systematic biases > outright discrimination against minority groups and women in payment

How do you know that demographic differences are significantly linked to wage differences and there aren't other factors at play? For example, a mother may want to spend time with her children and work part time instead of full time. Would you consider this discrimination? Do you think the mother should be paid a full time salary for working only part time? If the husband of the mother works full time and earns more because of it, would you consider this difference in compensation to be a product of privilege? I'd love to hear your thoughts

Yeah it makes perfect sense for a woman to maximise their time and resources to their fertile years, and not shift that over to older age.

Funny also how nobody is looking at the expense gap, if women are making the same money as men, then obviously they should share expenses 50/50 as well. How many couples actually do that?

Women are underrepresented in the top level of society, but always turn a blind eye to the fact that they are underrepresented in the bottom of society as well.

Women should get the same share of rewards as men, but not take any of the risks? How does that make any sense?

If women are taking place in the boardrooms, are they also going to increase their share in prisons? Among homeless? Premature death?

And self actualisation is having children anyway, so women are already at endgame. The reason why men work so hard with careers, is because it enables them to have children and start a family, not because it's just fun to play around with money and power.

The fertility thing is far worse than that. Modern society is actively teaching women that their value as a partner comes from things which they would normally select men for. Ambition, money, etc. So women are gaining things men don't really care for, while losing the things men do select for. On top, their higher socioeconomic status generally translates into a smaller dating pool, as they select equal or higher socioeconomic men. The surface of the bell curve only grows smaller as you go further.

And the answer to this? Trying to shame men into liking something else instead of being honest and admitting women are sabotaging themselves listening to the "work is life" mantra.

> So women are gaining things men don't really care for, while losing the things men do select for. On top, their higher socioeconomic status generally translates into a smaller dating pool, as they select equal or higher socioeconomic men.

Yeah it's as if it's been decided suddenly that men are attracted to highly educated high earning women, which really doesn't work. Men are attracted to the prospect of having children, which means youth and health, and there are very real practical matters that have limits to their flexibility.

> - outright discrimination against minority groups and women in payment

No there isn’t.

Purported wage gaps for women have never been on a peer basis and always about aggregate earnings — which fail to reflect the realities (such as the fact men die 10x as often in the workplace).

You’re spreading myths.

Agreed on pay gaps but There is plenty of evidence that women and minorities are interviewed at different rates and differently In Practice. That’s enough for my statement to be true (in the sense that they end up being paid different amounts because they do different jobs because of the discrimination)

> (in the sense that they end up being paid different amounts because they do different jobs because of the discrimination)

Or maybe there's the idea that some groups of people are more willing to do certain jobs than other groups of people and money isn't the only factor? Take investment banking for example: it's incredibly stressful and also predominantly male. Is it possible that more men than women choose to do investment banking because they value the money more than having low stress? Money isn't the only factor in evaluating inequality.

Your line of reasoning assumes that there are no other factors at play and each person is just a bag of demographic categories and nothing more. Also (more importantly) it assumes that everyone prioritizes money to the same degree, but we both know that this is wrong and certain demographics are more money-obsessed than others. But hey, maybe we can fix things by guilt tripping everyone to worship the dollar in equal quantities, maybe that will fix our ails as a society?

Unionizing indeed wouldn't hurt for a vast majority of workers. However, people on HN seems to generally be anti-union because, by virtue of their career position, they do not experience the instability that a lot of people suffer under. Moreover there is also this idea that unions would reduce their career/salary prospects. i.e. HN people tend to enjoy a comfy position on the labour market that makes them removed from and sometimes disdainful of the plight of a majority of workers.

When I say privilege, it is less about the value of the work itself, and more about the overall stability (and of course wealth) that CS jobs have guaranteed over the past 20 years. As you mentioned it, adversarial is a good term here. A lot of HN people have not experienced how adversarial and imbalanced the labour market really is (think people stuck in the poverty trap working retail jobs in the US for instance).

So you have a lot of people here that seem to apply the labour market logic they're accustomed to, to a social relationship setup they ultimately see as a market -- which is a bad thing in my opinion.

Hoping this clarifies my point.

> Moreover there is also this idea that unions would reduce their career/salary prospects.

I don't know why it would, but you did also say it was just an idea. I have a hard time believing that an SWE union wouldn't be able to improve compensation and wlb

> So you have a lot of people here that seem to apply the labour market logic they're accustomed to, to a social relationship setup they ultimately see as a market -- which is a bad thing in my opinion.

Yeah I wholeheartedly agree with this because it's essentially the commodification of relationships, which makes me sick to my stomach

The idea that a union would lead to a loss of revenue is a recurring anti-union rhetorical point because unions usually involve membership "fees" (which are more organisational cost payment). There is also the idea that unions are corrupt, but it's more of a tu quoque than anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com