Tech Workers Are Fighting Against Silicon Valley's AI Push | Hacker News Reader

Tech Workers Are Fighting Against Silicon Valley's AI Push

techpolicy.press

My experience of working in the industry is that many of my peers have had great animosity and little sympathy for blue collar workers who lost their livelihood to globalization.

In the English speaking capitalistic countries, it is traditional for a good portion of the working class to take on the outlook of their masters/boss/landlord a time honored tradition.

My experience is that the sympathy and animosity was purely performative.

Most tech workers will readily drop all of their ideals for a fatter paycheck. And don't even get me started on all the leftist friends i have in the tech circle that have been profiting off the rise of stock prices from palantir, tesla, spacex and many more similar companies (non-trivial example: rheinmetall).

> Most tech workers will readily drop all of their ideals for a fatter paycheck. And don't even get me started on all the leftist friends i have in the tech circle that have been profiting off the rise of stock prices

This is a completely disingenuous critique. Not only is it possible to advocate for a more just and equitable system of wealth distribution while simultaneously striving to maximize resources under the current system, it's absolutely the correct thing to do.

In the current US political and economic environment (as well as most other places, to greater or lesser degree), to be poor is to be powerless.

Relative to inflation, wages have been mostly stagnant for decades now all while asset values have skyrocketed. The fact that leftists are aware of this (and act to secure their financial well-being accordingly, despite firmly-held beliefs that our pro-capital system is an engine of inequality) is not hypocritical because the alternative would be voluntary self-disenfranchisement. The poor have scarce means and time with which to engage in political activism, and conversely, the only groups which do are those with stable financial prospects and predictable/reasonable working hours.

found another one!

Yep

And they expect to be the last ones standing. If they lose their jobs to AI they will not understand why no one has any sympathy for them

Remember when the technologists and the media told blue collar workers to "learn to code" [to adapt to the digital economy] and then when layoffs hit media and other white collar jobs those blue collar workers turned the phrase against those people?

That has been one of the most unkind retorts used to suppress discussion around improving the lives of blue collar workers in the 2010s in relation to the US.

When you're doing 12+ hours of back breaking work, and potentially some commute, etc. doing anything else other than resting and consuming some "easy" entertainment is all that you have energy for.

I think they will understand, but it will be a new perspective.

> In Marxist and anarchist theories, the labor aristocracy is the segment of the working class which has better wages and working conditions compared to the broader proletariat, often enabled by their specialized skills, by membership in trade unions or guilds, and in a global context by the exploitation of colonized or underdeveloped countries. Due to their better-off condition, such workers are more likely to align with the bourgeoisie to maintain capitalism instead of advocating for broader working-class solidarity

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

Sound familiar at all?

Are you actually seriously trying to imply Silicon Valley tech workers are NOT globalised? Do you even know who who actually works in the Valley?

A grain of sand from the era, when it falls on an individual, becomes a mountain. "Computer" used to be a job.

The median tech workers in Silicon Valley have given themselves completely to lifestyle creep. If they don't receive RSU refresh in a single year, they won't be able to cover their nut.

This will never work.

Well a large cohort of us are unemployed yet these companies are still making billions in revenue. Management in Silicon Valley tech is ass

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