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Are Silicon Valley Workers Abandoning Libertarianism For Socialism? (salon.com)
Salon writes that Silicon Valley tech workers are "defying their overlords," arguing that recent unionization attempts by Kickstarter employees may be only the beginning:
The workers' Kickstarter campaign is not the first attempt, though, or even the first time rumblings of unionization, have circulated among programmers. In 2018, software engineers at the startup Lanetix announced their intent to unionize -- and were promptly fired by management (It is illegal to fire employees for trying to unionize). The National Labor Relations Board intervened, and ultimately forced Lanetix to pay the 15 fired engineers a total of $775,000. The show of worker power at Lanetix may have paved the way for Kickstarter's workers. Similarly, workers across the video game industry -- generally among the most overworked, underpaid workers within the tech industry -- have been making steps towards unionization. Game Workers Unite, profiled by Salon last year, is building a grassroots movement to organize the ranks of video game makers.
Together, this suggests that a small but visible movement for white-collar software engineers unionizing has been gaining steam in the Valley over the past few years -- suggesting that the people who make up the tech industry, once a bastion of libertarianism, are starting to understand the often subtle ways that their employers exploit them... For decades, libertarianism was part and parcel to the tech industry. Despite a grueling work culture and a high-profile collusion scandal among major tech corporations to suppress software engineers' wages, tech workers were more likely to see themselves as future founders than an exploited underclass -- a point of view encouraged by employers through high wages and generous, often absurd office perks. Recent developments suggest such endearing tactics are no longer working.
Together, this suggests that a small but visible movement for white-collar software engineers unionizing has been gaining steam in the Valley over the past few years -- suggesting that the people who make up the tech industry, once a bastion of libertarianism, are starting to understand the often subtle ways that their employers exploit them... For decades, libertarianism was part and parcel to the tech industry. Despite a grueling work culture and a high-profile collusion scandal among major tech corporations to suppress software engineers' wages, tech workers were more likely to see themselves as future founders than an exploited underclass -- a point of view encouraged by employers through high wages and generous, often absurd office perks. Recent developments suggest such endearing tactics are no longer working.
So much that Silicon Valley (and tech companies in general) rely on is because of things produced by the government. If you really take the time to look at it, Libertarianism is a joke and built on contradiction and lies.
Suggestion : Before we yell at each other in the comments about this possible ideological shift, perhaps we should have a meeting of the minds as to what libertarianism, liberalism, socialism, conservatism, fascism, et all mean (or have multiple meanings) before moving on to the topic at hand.
Is it a surprise that people want to be able to live somewhere, maybe have a family they can provide for, and otherwise not need visit food banks to live off the snacks available at work? The valley is so horrifically expensive, the salaries are not great compared to the cost of living elsewhere, and yet they make these companies billions of dollars. The idea of take this shit work and after 5 years you will get some stock that will only matter if the company still exists, actually has a liquidity event, is not reverse acquired, or that you are not fired for not being as productive as you used to be is a tall order.
Thirty four characters live here.
Who cares?
Slashdot's owners, apparently, as they are quickly throwing that "socalism" label onto unionization. Trying to pounce on this grenade early and make sure the serfs remain libertarian, are you Slashdot?
white collar needs unions!
In fact, labor unions were probably the only thing that saved many Western countries, including the US, from having full-blown socialist revolutions.
Labor unions are in many important ways the very opposite of socialism. Under capitalism, a corporation is the aggregation of capital for the benefit of a business. Labor unions are the aggregation of labor for the benefit of workers. They are two sides of the same coin. They cannot exist for very long without each other. You can chart the decline of capitalism and the rise of socialism in the US by the suppression of labor unions, which really got rolling in the early 1980s under Ronald Reagan and his "supply-side economics". That's when wages stagnated and middle class began to decline. Now it's gone so far the other way that a lot of young people see socialism as a reasonable way out of a completely corrupt system which is tilted against them.
In a way, the same impulses led to Donald Trump. People saw the utter destruction of democratic institutions as the best solution to a corrupt system that was tilted against them, and they were convinced Trump was just the chaos agent to make that destruction happen. They decided to burn the house down because the roof had been allowed to rot, and in this way they were led to proto-fascism.
You are welcome on my lawn.
First rampant Libertarianism and Tech Utopianism, then Socialism and ... Progressive Tech Utopianism.
I think everyone in the Bay Area would do well to spend time in the rest of the country -- like, several years of time -- where it's blindingly obvious in day-to-day life that neither approach will work.
We've spent so much time and energy in this industry catering to the residents of, and solving problems that basically only exist in, the Bay Area. Imagine if some of this had been crafted by those with more sense.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
"Libertarianism" and "Socialism" mean what?
Whatever you want them to mean. Watch how many comments will define them for us. There will be hundreds of variations. It's like those old ladies that make quilts, but at least they end up with a quilt.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm a socialist so I'll have a go at defining it.
Socialism is "democratic ownership of the means of production". What that would look like in reality is a pretty radical departure to corporate governance.
Corporations wouldn't be allowed to be dictatorships like they are today. Workers would be like temporary shareholders, gaining voting rights while joining a company, and losing those votes once they leave.Democracy would fill not only the political sphere but be fully infused into the economic sphere. Nothing would be shielded from democratic forces. Capital does not give anyone the right to dominate and enslave anyone else.
While worker co-ops exist on a small scale, they can't compete with massive tax-dodging transnationals that shit their externalities all over people in poorer countries damaging their health and environment. That makes socialism by definition an international project.
Socialism is not "social democratic policies", which are tax funded state-projects used to soften capitalism. To a socialist, welfare spending is not a solution, but the indication that a fundamental problem exists in society.
Immigrants, yes. Now do illegal aliens.
Ask six libertarians for their answer on something, get at least a dozen answers. Or even six socialists for that matter, much the same.
Hell, as me for something and I can generally come up with at least three myself. The philosophically ideal answer, the real world answer, the practical answer, the "corrective" answer, and the achievable answer. ;)
Ideal: The way it would be in my ideal libertarian society
Real World: Not everybody are libertarian gods. This adds controls for failings
Practical: No longer starting from a magical libertarian starting point. Even more failings, trends from the past
Corrective: Society has taken a very wrong turn. In order to reach a more libertarian ideal, corrective measures are needed for a time(fixing the welfare state. No, I'm not a madman who'd cut everybody off all at once)
Achievable: Libertarians are a minority. We'll take what we can get, like lowered amounts of regulation, legalized marijuana as opposed to all drugs, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
The suits get a base pay plus options and bonuses, why not the workers?
The "suits" are the managers, not the owners.
Shareholders don't get "base pay".
Ownership doesn't mean "free money from thin air".
Well, history proves you wrong. An oil man is in charge of the Dept of the Interior. Another oil man is in charge of the Dept of Energy. EPA, FDA, right down the line.
The working class has lost more ground in the past two years than at any time in the last 30. Did you know that the ranks of the permanently unemployed has grown by over 10 million since Trump has been president? More people have left the work force since January of 2017 than any two year period since the recession. Unemployment rate is down because so many people have stopped looking for work.
And working people still haven't gotten a raise.
The warmonger and rape apologist would have been a big upgrade over what we've got.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It is not so much that every generation has to learn unions are a good thing, it is every few generations has to learn that unions are ALSO a bad thing.
Left unchecked, capitalism leads to worker oppression and mismanagement of natural resources and disruption of the stable governments that provide stability that allowed them to foster in the first place. This many on slashdot know and understand deep in their bones.
Left unchecked, unions cause wages to grow to unsustainable levels. They do not seek balance or fair compensation in negations. They are forces to always get more. This is also unsustainable. Furthermore, unions tend to protect incompetence, since they make no distinction between good employee and bad. Management never has a fair point in the eyes of a union. This is something many on slashdot do not seem to know
The answer, I think like many issues of our day, lies in acknowledging the valid parts of both arguments. We need to get back to listening to each other, and understanding the truths that lie within. This constant demonizing is helping no one.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Socialist publication (Salon), says people like socialism, because a few people are "attempting". Yawn.
Wake us up when you want to discuss something other than obviously biased propaganda trying to further an agenda and create a narrative for the media to adopt where one doesn't already naturally exist.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
>"Are Silicon Valley Workers Abandoning Libertarianism For Socialism? Silicon Valley tech workers are "defying their overlords," arguing that recent unionization attempts by Kickstarter employees..."
Voluntary unionization is neither Socialism nor "abandoning Libertarianism." It would only be a move towards Socialism if they were calling for compulsory unionization and/or government control.
The Libertarian philosophy supports voluntary unions and right to work.
The Libertarians Party support unions even more strongly:
http://www.dehnbase.org/lpus/l...
If these workers' coops are really so wonderfully productive, then why can't they compete with capitalist companies? Why do they always seem to fail and fade away, rather than prospering?
Because you can't "compete" against someone who had your kneecaps broken before the race even started.
Start to get close to cutting into their business and suddenly capitalist companies become distinctly mafia oriented. You get buried under lawsuits, their agents inside the government start auditing/investigating you, they buy up all the raw materials so none is available to you or they give away their product until you collapse.
It's insane that you believe the right to self defense is dystopian.
Seems to me it's an example of what happens when you take the worst bits of socialism - unrestrained government funding - and combine them with the worst bits of capitalism - unrestrained free markets applied where consumers are not free. With that combination, no wonder it's a mess.
Centrists by their nature aren't inclined to think that screaming their lungs out with fellow believers changes anything. But if there was such a rally, I'm pretty sure their chant would be more like "Stop pandering with your transparently utopian bullshit". Or maybe, "No, if the one opposition politician that you've decided to hate beyond all rationality disappears tomorrow, the world's problems won't be solved instantly."
Or maybe just, "Grow the-fuck Up".
When you reach a certain age, you start to realize that mountains aren't climbed by leaping off a cliff and hoping you can fly; they're climbed by taking tens of thousands of little steps, each of which don't seem like they're accomplishing anything.