Considering LLM work is done at a computer the only thing to make this exploitive would be a lack of AC/Heating in the office.
I still remember working retail, I'd love LLM work over having to stand up for 8 hours.
I still remember working retail, I'd love LLM work over having to stand up for 8 hours.
My retail job paid pretty well though, so that made up for a lot of the usual retail criticism.
For me, I’d say it depends heavily on what you have to sell.
I don’t think I’d be able to handle working a cheque-cashing place or a car dealership where you’re incentivized to sell what someone doesn’t need.
Are you being paid market rate for where you live, without coercion and without collusion? And does it meet local minimum wage laws? And are you fully informed of working conditions, and is physical safety properly regulated?
If so, it's hard to see what's exploitative about it.
And nothing in the article suggests that any of the things I described (coercion, collusion, etc.) are happening here.
EDIT: this is US-centric of course, but I am fairly certain that outside of the EU, the story is much the same.
1. I doubt the employees in question were being paid anywhere near minimum wage, so I don't see how this is relevant
2. That just moves the question around. If the minimum wage was adjusted for inflation, does it make it magically not exploitative? What makes the original minimum wage not exploitative?
>and continue to lobby Congress (at a state and federal level) for favorable laws to protect them. If that’s not collusion in spirit, I don’t know what is.
You're going to have to be more specific here. Not all lobbying is "collusion in spirit" (whatever that means). For instance arguing to weakening environmental regulations might not be great, but it's not exactly "collusion" either.
You implied that wages being above the local minimum wage was a mark against exploitation. I counter that if business leaders (via lobbying, campaign donations, etc.) have kept the minimum wage lower than it would otherwise be, this is de facto exploitation; they’re just able to hide behind the law (that they created).
As to where the magic line of exploitation is, I don’t know, but it seems to be along the lines of Justice Stewart’s definition of obscenity – I know when I see it. I don’t go so far as to say that paying anyone less than their output ultimately earns is exploitative, but my floor is substantially above minimum wage in any U.S. state.
> arguing to weakening environmental regulations… isn’t exactly collusion
If the EPA gets staffed by politicians eager to bend to the will of business, I don’t see how that isn’t collusion.
That's probably not the best thing to model your position off of, considering that was replaced with the Miller test in 1973, and he regrets saying it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
Moreover because it's opaque, arbitrary and inscrutable, it makes it impossible to have any constructive conversation about why exactly it's exploitative. For instance, you claim that the minimum wages in all US states are "exploitative", but provide no arguments in favor.
>If the EPA gets staffed by politicians eager to bend to the will of business, I don’t see how that isn’t collusion.
That's a subset of "lobbying" though. Recall my claim isn't that lobbying involves no collusion, it's that lobbying could involve no collusion.
OK then, _you_ define exploitation. And if you bust out the dictionary, "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work," then I request that you define unfair. That's the problem – this is all highly subjective, and it's unlikely that we're going to agree.
> That's a subset of "lobbying" though. Recall my claim isn't that lobbying involves no collusion, it's that lobbying could involve no collusion.
Sure, and ISPs could treat customers better, but they're not going to. Lobbying as the U.S. has it is essentially all a form of collusion and/or bribery. Donate $10K to my campaign fund, and maybe your desired verbiage winds up in the bill. Treat my industry how we'd like, and there's a sweet post-government job waiting for you on K Street.
I don't deny that the ability for a person to go lobby their representatives is a critical part of a functional democratic republic. And, it makes sense to have a centralized voice – for example, it wouldn't be efficient for every single farmer to go speak to their reps independently. But at some point along the line, it stops being actual people discussing their issues with their elected officials, and becomes corporations showering government in money to buy the future they want.
Unless your a full blown Marxist you need to accept you'll never be paid the full value of your labor.
It's a matter of what your other options.
Would you rather lay bricks in the hot sun, or sit at a computer for 8 hours a day ?
Have done so for 5 years now.
We pay all workers their fair share of the socially necessary production time. If the organization needs surplus to invest in equipment, we requisition it from the production with consensus from the workers.
I had to kick a number of capitalists to the curb to achieve this. Why? Cuz they wanted to exploit workers, and they wanted me to do it for them.
Get lost!
You can get paid the full value of your work, if you seize control of the business. Just don't be a wimp, and out maneuver the pudding headed capitalists who know no actual economics or category theory, lol. It's f*** easy.
What is a "fair share"? Suppose we're in a SaaS business. Does someone working in customer support earn more or less than a SWE? What makes the difference (or lack thereof) fair?
>If the organization needs surplus to invest in equipment, we requisition it from the production with consensus from the workers.
What is a "consensus"? What if 2/3rds of the people want to invest but the other 1/3rd doesn't? Would they forced to contribute? Are how are you going to "out maneuver the pudding headed capitalists" if you can only seek to raise capital from your employees?
Just calculate your opportunity costs, talk about it transparently, and negotiate socially necessary contribution factors for each department and each role. And sure, there will be departmental politics as each department tries to argue that it's much more critical to the business than another. But with openness, that's much better than that absolute f*ery we see in most companies. In most companies only the executives have access to that level of information, and everyone else is f*ed.
Consensus means everyone agrees or nothing happens. My team is four peeps, and we're pretty good at persuading each other into consensus, especially since we're open about our profit sharing and tend to make good cases for our initiatives. If we can't all agree then we don't do it, and just live with it.
And the pudding headed capitalists are gone. I took them to the curb with a number of maneuvers that I might want to write up one day, but may not have been strictly legal. And even with all of that, I tried very hard to accommodate them. But they burned me, and I went nuclear. Things were much better after then.
Once you no longer have any exploitative extractive sunnuvab**es around, you think they're going to make money just by having money, it's pretty easy to be open and honest, and reason through things.
>Just calculate your opportunity costs, talk about it transparently, and negotiate socially necessary contribution factors for each department and each role.
How does this work in practice? Going back to the SaaS company example, the company arguably wouldn't exist without SWEs, but could theoretically limp along by ignoring all customer support tickets (see: google). Does that mean the opportunity cost is 100% for SWEs and therefore they should get 100% of the revenue?
>Consensus means everyone agrees or nothing happens. My team is four peeps, and we're pretty good at persuading each other into consensus, especially since we're open about our profit sharing and tend to make good cases for our initiatives. If we can't all agree then we don't do it, and just live with it.
That works well with a small team where you're all friends, but how do you prevent bad actors from using their veto powers from sabotaging the group? eg. hungary and poland abusing their veto powers to block proposals that all other EU members support? As the group gets bigger the chance that you have a bad actor is going to increase.
>And the pudding headed capitalists are gone. I took them to the curb with a number of maneuvers that I might want to write up one day, but may not have been strictly legal.
That doesn't answer my question. You're at a capital disadvantage because you can only raise capital from employees and only if they all agree. That might be fine for a capital light companies like a consultancy, but you can't possibly expect the workers at a nuclear plant to stump up the entire construction cost of the plant.
I'll attempt to think of a model for
1) A fully open source saas that needs ethically sourced capital to build a data center
2) A community that needs capital for a nuclear power plant
I'm not entirely sure that we can't just obligate Capital holders to give the capital to the workers. So for example in the case of the nuclear power plant where the workers are to stump up the capital, they could visit the estates of the wealthy people living in the area, and requisition the capital. That's kind of like taxes. Or a protection racket.
In the interest of the conversation, I will try to think of strategies that don't involve violence or refactoring of the rule of law. But keep in mind that significantly limits things.
Even if only queer inclusivists join the movement, we can still win. But if anti-queers infiltrate the movement, then it's in trouble. So I aim to make anti-queers feel very unwelcome, and also see the movement as absurd. That's why I integrate the queer identify into my business theory and revolutionary theory.