Elon Musk says the ‘laptop class’ needs to ‘get off their moral high horse’ | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk says the ‘laptop class’ needs to ‘get off their moral high horse’

finance.yahoo.com

7 pointssherlockxu5 comments

“People should get off their goddamn moral high horse with the work-from-home bullshit,” he said. "They're asking everyone else to not work from home while they do."

This seems like a misdirection to me. The "laptop class" isn't making the decision for "normal workers ", the bosses are. In some cases this is necessary, in others not.

But this is just a cheap attempt to pit different kinds of workers against each othe. Musk wants to obscure the fact that the guy behind the McDonald's counter is still way closer to the average silicon valley developer, than the developer is to Musk when it comes to wealth.

But what do you expect from someone who thinks it is easier to settle Mars and make it livable, than to stop making our own planet - on which we have evolved and are therefore perfectly suited for - not livable.

You are exactly right. With a phrase like "laptop class", he is obscuring the concept of social class. In reality, "laptop workers" and e.g. construction workers do not belong to a different social class. Both are part of the working class. It is of course an unsubstantiated claim that "they are asking everyone else to not work from home while they do". People are asking for better working conditions for themselves, making sure that other workers don't get the same benefits is obviously not part of what is being asked for.

What is the "laptop class," I wonder?

And I think: It's people who are earning nearly as much as one can earn.

I forget who his name of, but one of the German industry bigwigs said in an interview that the earnings scale ended at 600,000DM, which I guess is €400k nowadays considering inflation, or €500k. "You can't really spend more than that," he explained. A lot of software developers are less than two doublings away from that level and four or more doublings away from minimum wage, and I suppose behaviour depends on where one is on that scale.

So I think the statement means something else. "the laptop class needs" doesn't mean that they need something, it means the speaker needs or wants something from them. "Get off their moral high horse" means that they should behave differently: They should behave more like the people at the bottom of the pay scale.

The "laptop class" knew fully well that the cheapest PSF could be found in residential real estate, and that the food truck on the edge of the industrial park was the best place to meet friends and influence people-not an overpriced monument to oneself with a glass phallus in the lobby.

Classic deflection and scapegoating. He’s not to blame for shitty work situations: it’s the laptop class!

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