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Comment by psadauskas | Hacker News Reader

During the industrial revolution, people thought that all these new machines and factories and electricity meant that everyone would only have to work 4 hours a week since it made everyone so much more productive.

That's not what happened, though. Everyone worked the same amount for the same pay, just in more miserable repetitive working conditions, while the factory owners kept all profits from the gains in productivity.

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Nope. The working week reduced hours.

Those factories were not producing luxury goods. They produced everyday items for the masses. Things like knives, spoons, tools, textiles, ketchup bottles, shoes, furniture, nails, bicycles, etc.

Standard Oil, for example, improved efficiency and reduced the consumer price of kerosene 70%.

There's no evidence of outsized profits.

Standard oil is the textbook example of an abusive monopoly and was broken up for that reason.

They improved efficiency by cutting exclusive deals with railroads and transport companies due to their size which froze out every other company.

Cutting consumer prices by 70% is not "abusive".

SO's market share never exceeded 90% and it declined during the years of the anti-trust trial.

By cutting launch prices 90%, is SpaceX also an abusive monopoly?

Defending standard oil is an all-timer hot take. They only had 90% market share? In a commodity?

SpaceX isn't a monopoly because they have domestic and international competition. Before they showed up, ULA was a deliberately constructed monopoly because Boeing and Lockheed didn't want to compete.

SpaceX has a 90% market share.

Numbers aside, SpaceX has a technological lead. They're not strangling competitors in a commodity business with monopoly practices. I wouldn't call ASMR or TSMC monopolies either, anyone can compete with them in theory. Standard oil, by contrast, would cut their competitors off from rail transit and selectively dump to drive them out of business.

The other reason they're not a monopoly is that they may do 90% of total launches, but most are for themselves to support starlink (another "nonopoly" with no competitors). They have 60% of the US government launch contracts, a small percentage of ESA when Ariane is flaky, amd of course 0% of China and Russia.

Before going any further, I suggest taking a deeper dive into Standard Oil and its so-called "monopoly".

Start with "Titan" by Chernow.

SO was basically convicted of "making too much money", and the government failed to convict SO of a monopoly.

" The central argument of Capital is that the motivating force of capitalism is in the exploitation of labour, whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value and profit. "

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

Marx's labour theory of value is only a theory of where profits come from and is largely rejected. Return on captial investment is not restricted to factory owners. All workers get a share of the surplus value and have the option to increase that by investing.

Sounds like you found a new way to write...

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

Marx entire solution is that quote. Hes a quack but people still reference his 'theory'.

"Capital stands as one of the most influential and controversial books ever written. Its legacy is multifaceted, shaping intellectual discourse, political movements, and the historical trajectory of the 20th and 21st centuries."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital#Legacy

My hypothesis is that if you go full socialism, you get stagnation, because no one is motivated to change anything. If you go full capitalism, you get Gilded Age, where wealth and political power is concentrated in the hands of few individuals, followed by Great Depression.

Healthy state is in the middle.

Old soviet joke:

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under socialism, it's the other way around!

Myself, I always exploited my employers by extracting money from them.

I learned to hate corpo jobs less by thinking of them as "farming gold out of a megacorp". Of course I'm losing my ability to do even that, as sloppotrons beat half-century-old grognards every damn time.

"while the factory owners kept all profits from the gains in productivity."

Because this is what drives continual risk-capital.. very few countries are willing to upset this. Get over it man - I hate hardended capitalists but stop crying. This is the system we have. Wanna beat it? Go ahead and start a firm. Then you'll find out how tough it is.

The thing I cant get over is enough software engineering folks collectively hold immense power. Whats wrong with you lot (im not a software engineer)? Get your sht together.

P.s. Im starting a firm who's central mission is to attack capitalists (ofc I won't say it out loud in that way). I will find out for myself how much of a backbone software engineers etc have when I employ them.

> I will find out for myself how much of a backbone software engineers etc have when I employ them.

You're in for a rude awakening.

Am I?

I’ve worked with them and did a comp sci degree years ago. I’ve got enough exposure.

However I want to see given what is happening in the world now - are they still weak and feeble?

Being an employer means you will find out. Employees are not weak and feeble. They quit all the time for more money elsewhere, or just don't want to work. And there's NOTHING you, as employer, can do about it.

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