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Comment by profunctor | Hacker News Reader

Yet again the workers suffer from the incompetence of the ownership class.

Yes that's always the case, but it's naive to assume in any employment relationship that the ownership class has any other agenda than enriching themselves through the labor of the working class, same how the working class working for these major companies and enabling them to do what they do (including automating other peoples jobs to make them redundant and save their bosses money) have any other agenda than enriching themselves as well in the process.

At least until they themselves eventually find their place on the chopping block as well either through management decisions or automation hits them too. But SW devs never though of this as the market always favored them and they saw themselves as irreplaceable godlike figures at the top of the food chain, so maybe it's time to reconsider that mindset, gain some empathy about other people's jobs and think about unions to push back on certain industry trends that screw over the little guy, since what goes around comes around.

Whenever I sign a new employment contract, I'm aware it's not a charity, I'm there because they need me, as I make more money for them than they pay me, and I'm also aware that the moment that math stops being true, they won't hesitate to let me go and replace me with someone who can do the same work cheaper. Such is capitalism.

This isn't a feature of capitalism as much as it's a feature of an environment with a lack of worker protections and no balance of power between workers and employers.

On the other hand, places with strong worker protections almost always have higher unemployment rates, especially among new entrants to the labor marketplace (i.e. young adults). So one must pick one's poison.

source?

Hate to break it to you but "zero workers' rights" absolutely IS a feature of capitalism, as you maximize profit and minimize costs at the expense of everything else.

Workers' rights are social policies which didn't come out of nowhere but sprung up mostly in post-WW1 and post-WW2 times when communist and socialist moves were becoming more and more popular with the labor class due to poor living and working conditions following the destructive wars, so the owner class, in Europe at least, along with governments, had to make concessions on working time, vacation days, sick pay, and implement public pensions, public healthcare, stuff which didn't really exists before, in order to prevent more riots and strikes and have the social stability to start rebuilding the nation.

The US didn't, firstly because of strong anti-communist movements and the red scare propaganda, despite socialist-labor movements existing there as well(see Oppenheimer), and secondly because the post-WW2 US workers had it way better than European workers meaning US workers were less incentivized to strike and riot for better living standards when they already had the best living standards in the world at that time, see the baby boomer generation.

Only the US workers of today, not counting tech workers, have it (largely) worse than their predecessors in terms of wages, purchasing power, debt, healthcare, education and housing affordability.

So time to unionize and strike maybe? Especially that before mass industrialization and urbanization, the US was basically a socialist country due to the way its communities were organized and worked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkO63lMyAhE

Most workers do have an agenda other than enriching themselves though:

* Self-satisfaction

* Sense of identity

* Belief in the company

* Desire to improve the world

* Puritanical work ethic

* etc

I'd be surprised if that's "most workers". Some workers sure, especially those who already have some wealth like an already paid for house and can afford to be picky with their careers, but most workers who do not, are chasing wealth building and financial security first before being picky about the ethics and other aspects of their career.

Perhaps I worded it a bit poorly - I don't think most workers have a purely non-financial agenda. But most workers have multiple agendas for working, the financial agenda probably being the strongest.

But it's not a purely transactional agreement like you make it out to be.

Workers are free to start and run better companies.

They would if there was less tolerance for monopolies and fair rules. It would appear that the only way to achieve that is through radical political change. Essentially we need to revert back to capitalism and end the ongoing gilded age.

> Essentially we need to revert back to capitalism and end the ongoing gilded age.

For what it's worth, government spending as a fraction of GDP was single-digit percent in the actual Gilded Age, compared to almost 40% today.

No they are not.. worker owned companies don't have the same legal structures as capital owned companies, at least in the US. Which is why you see almost no co-ops or other worker/employee owned business here.

Why can't 100 employees incorporate and get 1% of the shares each?

Most of these smaller companies that get bought out and eviscerated start out as mildly profitable stable founder run small companies. If they had kept going like that everyone would basically have the best of both worlds.

worker owned companies don't have the same legal structures as capital owned companies, at least in the US.

This is false. In the U.S., worker-owned coops are just corporations. Or partnerships. Or LLPs. or LLCs. Or a variety of other business entity types. (The point is, in the U.S., the ownership structure does not necessarily determine the legal entity type.)

For example: every law firm in the U.S. is employee-owned, by law. Most accounting firms are employee-owned, also by law.

For specific examples of employee-owned businesses that aren't law firms or accounting firms: Publix Super Markets, WinCo, Brookshire, WL Gore, Gensler, HAC.

Companies can be employee owned, but there is no (and there should be) laws specific for them that make them attractive to start. The fact that 2 of your examples are required by law to be that way and the other examples are so few that it really drives the point home that our laws discourage employee ownership instead of encouraging it.

To put it another way, according to a brief internet search, there are around 1.3mil companies in the US with >10 employees and there are around 6000 employee owned companies. As such employee owned companies make up around 0.005% of businesses in the US and, IMHO, this shows that the legal system isn't there for them or there would be more (a lot more) of them.

They can only do this if they're starting from a decent financing scenario, which they hardly ever are. Most of the companies founded this way have to do work-for-hire projects, and that relies on a "Goldilocks" work pipeline where there isn't too much or too little, because either extreme threatens payroll or creates staffing pressure.

A company that gets a fat check to go conquer the world is one that is engaged with the demands of the investment market to seek maximal growth or ROI or whatever metric the investors are looking for. This is derived from the overall investment landscape, which went from "easy money" to "infinite money" during the pandemic. When you are in an infinite money environment your goal is, essentially, to consolidate everything you see into your org. The only thing small players can do is try to get acquired.

As long as the brakes are on the dollar, the trend will stay reversed and companies will downsize to fit a smaller capital structure.

Workers aren't entitled to profit off other's risks indefinitely.

I see the hacker mindset has become a 'pro-profit' enterprise!

Perhaps consider a worldview where the many talented people who actually write the code can be properly compensated for the fruits of their labor, rather than someone far-removed from the process simply holding a paper that says they own the deed to the company.

Among the riskiest economic decisions you can make is to hire a software developer. A bunch of things have to line up just right to even break even on a developer's output.

But managers are?

Fortunately owners will forever remain entitled to the profits of others' work.

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