Hacker News Reader

Comment by piva00 | Hacker News Reader

> Tech progress and GDP growth has meant that the world's poor live better lives, decade after decade, for many centuries now.

Every single time during the leaps of technology that brought tech progress and GDP growth there needed to be some kind of workers' revolt or the threat of it to actualise poors living better lives. Every leap in progress of systemic quality of life for workers came through class war: revolts, general strikes, mass protest, organized labour, etc.

Why do you think now it's different?

View on HN

There was no workers' revolt in the 19th century US, but the lives of the poor across the board pulled scores of millions in poverty into the middle class and beyond.

The common thread of workers' lives improving is free markets, not revolts.

There was the Homestead Strike in 1892, during which 9 people died. The Pinkerton Detective Agency, which "handled" the strike for Carnegie, is notorious for violently busting strikes in the 19th century US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike

And how many workers did that affect vs the population of the country?

It was the beginning of a movement which affects all workers in the US today, so... 100%.

Today is 125 years after the close of the 19th century.

Err, "today" today? Today looks more like May 15 to me.

The 19th century closed on December 31, 1900, right? Do you disagree with that? That the 20th century began on 1/1/1901? Not in dispute?

I would say we're at 124.5 years after its close today, if you really mean today. I suppose if you want to be sloppy and round up we could achieve 125, but technically, we're still, like, 7.5 months away from December 31st.

There were plenty of worker revolts in the 19th century which laid the groundwork for the modern labor movement.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/themine...

The overwhelming majority of workers in the 19th century were not part of unions, yet they moved into the middle class anyway.

That is not accurate. There were many strikes in the industrial part of the US during the 1800's. That's how working conditions were improved in the mills. The free market would have crushed the working people had they not banded together and revolted to improve safety, reduce working hours, and increase pay.

Wikipedia has articles on the larger actions like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1835_Philadelphia_general_stri...

The rest of the US was primarily agricultural, and did not have major strikes until later, but the improvement in the lives of those people who lived there was not because of free markets. Their lives improved because of the immense natural resources that were literally being given away free to people to cultivate and exploit, after the Native Americans were subjugated and removed.

Strikes are not revolts.

> The rest of the US was primarily agricultural, and did not have major strikes until later, but the improvement in the lives of those people who lived there was not because of free markets. Their lives improved because of the immense natural resources that were literally being given away free to people to cultivate and exploit, after the Native Americans were subjugated and removed.

The same thing at the same time happened in Central and South America, yet prosperity and uplift never happened.

What's the difference? Free markets in the US. Unfree markets in Central and South America.

Japan, S Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong have no natural resources, but when they turned to free markets, it's boom time for their economies.

That is not accurate again. Not only did North America have much more available and abundant natural resources than Central America and South America, the immigration to North America was much higher, so there was a more able labor force to cultivate and exploit the land. Your reductionist stance about free markets is misleading. A free market is only one component of why these places prospered, and may be the least important. Civil liberties and political stability, in addition to the natural abundance already mentioned, were probably much more responsible for the prosperity of North America. Likewise, with post-war Asia you miss the mark. For example, you overlook Japan's pre-war industrial development as well as their embrace of defeat after the war to development their economy and civil society. I'm not arguing for planned economies (quite the opposite), but the lack of nuance in your argument means that you miss the mark.

Do you really believe that lack of resources in S America meant lack of prosperity? It's still composed of third world countries.

> and may be the least important

It's the only common thread. I provided numerous examples that refute the requirements you listed.

> Japan

Japan's pre-war industrial economy was not an economic powerhouse. Their soldiers were very lightly equipped. They built a handful of capital ships, and when those where sunk they couldn't be replaced. Curtis LeMay resorted to area bombing of Japan because their heavy industry was a collection of homes with drill presses (LeMays' characterization) so there weren't concentrated industrial targets.

What's the excuse for S Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong?

Have you noticed that when China gave up on collectivism and turned to free markets, suddenly they became a very prosperous world power?

Yes, people preferred to immigrate to the US. Why would that be? Because it is free market and hence a land of opportunity, unlike any place else at the time.

China has an enormous population, but did not become prosperous until, again, free markets.

Hi, you are a long way off from your initial comment that there were no workers revolts in the US in the 19th century. That claim is easily disproven unless you then claim strikes are not workers revolts (which makes discussion with you unproductive if you redefine terms instead of accepting reality-based nuance). Strikes are worker revolts, even if they were not always trying to overturn the whole economy. They could become incredibly violent, especially in the 19th century, when the authorities repressed them. Regardless, these strikes improved the lives and working conditions of countless people and we owe all of their participants gratitude for what they did for us.

Likewise, your claim that China's economy is practically synonomous with free markets is laughable. Yes, they have capital markets and allow entrepeneurship, but it is still one of the most heavily planned economies with the most government intervention in the world.

Drop the "free market" sloganeering and you might touch on reality.

There were quite a few slave revolts in the 19th century.

All the ones in the US were quite unsuccessful. Prosperity didn't happen in the slave states, either.

The war has never stopped https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_violence_in_the_United_S...

> The common thread of workers' lives improving is free markets, not revolts.

The common thread is both, not one or the other.

How did that French Revolution work out? The Communist revolution in Russia? The Cuban revolution?

Free markets always result in prosperity. Worker revolts never have.

I feel I need to repeat myself so you can properly read: I clearly mentioned both were required to bring forth better quality of life to workers. Without workers' revolt there is only ever increasing exploitation, every single perk the poorer have got after advances brought forward by free markets was through a revolt, a mass protest, general strike, without those there would still be slavery, legalised child labour, 16h workdays, etc.

Yet again you are lost in ideology, Walter, it gets very tiring after a while, you only got a hammer and you gotta nail everything with that hammer. It's comically myopic.

> Yet again you are lost in ideology

I could say the same about your arguments. Labor unions simply did not affect a high enough percentage of the population to attribute American prosperity to them.

> without those there would still be slavery

Slavery was abolished due to the Union Army, not unions. I've never heard any mention of labor unions being part of the abolishonist movement.

> legalised child labour

The abolition of child labor was not the result of labor unions.

> 16h workdays

Were only made possible by productivity improvements brought about by free markets.

> It's comically myopic

What's funny is all these learned academics who overlook the glaringly obvious and consistent correlation of free markets with prosperity, and keep coming up with other reasons for prosperity that aren't consistent at all.

Unionizing and voting for Saturdays off and the politics of the underdog hardly counts as "warfare".

It's when we regard one another as evil that we start to pursue ideology over pragmatism and end up cutting off our noses to spite our faces.

I object to my original parent comment's characterizing of everyone with any form of wealth and power as being a sociopath. It's not only untrue (which is disqualification enough), but this kind of attitude doesn't serve anyone.

> Unionizing and voting for Saturdays off and the politics of the underdog hardly counts as "warfare".

Yes, the workers' demands were reasonable, but they were met with warfare by the upper class who did not want to accept reasonable demands. The most extreme example is the Battle of Blair Mountain, but there are countless records of strike breakers beating and killing workers for striking and unionizing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com