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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.
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.
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.
to fill out the workforce in Silicon Valley and put in 60+ hour weeks every week.
Batan death march (look it up) projects were for the first 10 years after college. The following years were for 40 to 45 hour workweeks and kids.
Switching later to consulting paid by the hour fixed the unpaid overtime problem.
It'd be just when the minimum salary you could pay per fed regulation is $250,000 or above will the unpaid overtime and other problems fall away. The current fed regulated minimum salary is $50k.
A 80% federal excise tax on pay paid to h1b would also fix many labor issues in the technology and engineering fields. H1B is for someone the company "can't just find anyone qualified" to work at the job at the price the company is willing to under pay. If it's a labor shortage and a H1B is the only answer, then cost should not be a high consideration and the company should be fortunate to pay salary + 80% tax on top.
H1B, fake skills shortage, failure to train existing employees in the desired skill area should not all fall on and be detrimental to the workers.
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 understand the historical connection of unions to leftist politics, but I've always wondered why no one tried to re-engineer and rebrand them as something that really embodies the free market stuff that the right-wingers are always going on about.
There's no particular reason to think of a union as fundamentally any different from the corporation that employs its members. In other words, just make it one corporation employing another corporation to do a job. More than a contractor, with the framework laid out so that it's effectively as if the union members (which is also the union's employees--the union's name would be on all of the paychecks) are working for the original employer. I've actually worked at a company that did this trick for liability reasons (not unionization), so I'm pretty sure it's legally possible.
So why don't union organizers use this technique as a loophole in "right to work" states that forbid membership dues? This bypasses those laws entirely. Your old employer pays the union and the union cuts the check to you with pass-through taxation (LLC or nonprofit or something.) You show up for work at the same place, the employees are all owners the union-corporation and the union-corporation negotiates with the employer for all of the things unions traditionally negotiate for, with all of the bargaining power that unions typically have, even if it's a right to work state.
That's interesting on its own to think about. But then I wonder about taking it a step further... first, you imagine for a moment if telecommuting can be more widely accepted, so that you could have a union of white collar workers who all telecommuted. Just for the sake of this thought experiment, imagine that. Then, imagine there are guildlike union-corporations built on meritocracy and whatever other shared values and positive vibes that you think makes workers effective and pleasant to be around. If one employer starts giving you too much shit, well, the union starts shopping its collective resume around at other employers. Obviously it isn't feasible without telecommuting (you can't expect the whole union to pick up and physically move around), but just imagine for a moment if that was a given. Imagine if you had an identity as a union-corporation, as a collection of self-selected workers. You provide a certain set of skills, you have a certain kind of people working there with a certain kind of workflow and workplace vibe, and as a union-corporation you have a certain reputation in the marketplace. And if you have a good reputation and your employer starts screwing you over, you have the option of moving to greener pastures, taking all of your coworkers with you without having to slog through the interview process yourself. Or the union can simply threaten to do this as part of the bargaining process. This all could be as cutthroat or as reasonable as you want it to be--different unions could have different philosophies. A union might have a reputation for stability and loyalty to its employer even in tough times (some of that loyalty might be written into the contracts as well), and some prospective employers might find that loyal stability attractive. Larger unions might have multiple partners they provide workers for.
It probably sounds like I'm describing a consulting firm or something, but this would be for real long term employment purposes, with "pass through" benefits paid for by the employer (and also hopefully pass through taxation via nonprofit or LLC status) and you'd interact with the employer's supervisors as you normally would. Employers would still have the ability to fire specific individuals, subject to whatever dispute resolution stuff the union has agreed to with them.
I know there are major hurdles preventing this from ever happening but as far as pipe dreams go, it feels like a pretty nice one. And I like it as a thought experiment because it really puts the question to anti-union conservatives: how is this hybrid corporate-union-firm setup in any way u
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.
I will refer you to this fragment which argues against the notion that stock ownership is equivalent to democratic ownership of the means of production:
http://www.carlbeijer.com/2017...
For an example of worker ownership which has saved factories that would have otherwise been shut down (not for being unprofitable, but for not being profitable *enough*), look into Argentina's "recovered factory" movement, specifically FaSinPat ("Factory Without Bosses", formerly Zanon). In the latter case, the factory and the jobs were about to disappear, but the workers refused to stop coming to work; the factory is now more productive than ever, its worker-owners are better compensated, and enough surplus product is produced to be given freely to local community development projects.
There are many ways to run a co-op. As with any innovation, there is more risk when you have few templates from history to work from. But even a worker-owned enterprise must contend with the ordinary concerns of business cycles. It's not as though a worker-owned enterprise spends every dime of surplus on paychecks and other benefits. Surplus can be reserved to keep everyone fed during hard times. The thing is, workers have a say in what is done with the surplus. To contrast, the typical way a private (or publicly-traded but with decision-making power effectively concentrated in the hands of a CEO or board) enterprise handles recessions is to lay off huge numbers of workers. So yes, there are certainly trade-offs between the arrangements.
>"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...
It shows how far the US has gone that attempting to dial back from insane working hours and illegal hourly rates might be seen as socialism! I guess those ingrates will be asking for 'weekends' next!
Workers would be like temporary shareholders, gaining voting rights while joining a company That sounds great until the company has a bad quarter and your paycheck is $0. Ownership has a negative side as well.
If in doubt, make shit up based on how you want the world to be. Worker cooperatives are actually a thing and don't simply stop paying workers the instant profits are down. They are still companies so they still pay salaries.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
Really? You're using the spectacularly dysfunctional American healthcare system as an example of capitalism _working well_? Really?!
Not really.
On principle, the goal of libertarianism is simply to preserve individual choice wherever possible. Smaller government that provides less direct interference or control over people's lives is the result, but it's certainly not a call for no government and there's no point at which it ceases to work...because it's simply a goal to preserve where possible. Any hint of "purism" would remove the "where possible" with "everywhere"...which is closer to anarchy.
Simple examples:
Schools. Preservation of choice would allow parents to decide that a particular school is a better fit for their child than another and have the choice to send them there. The schools can still be public schools, accessible to everyone...but the individual or the family has a choice rather than the location being forced on them.
Basic Income. Rather than welfare, food stamps and many different programs that have specific restrictions on what you can and can't do with the money a basic income actually fits libertarian philosophy because it puts the money in the hands of the individual and allows them to choose how to use it themselves.
Government. Federal laws essentially remove individuals from having any say in how they are governed. Having the law exist primarily at more localized levels (state, county and city) rather than federally allows for the maximum degree of freedom of governance for individuals. They have the ability to choose to move when legal objections are strong and the ability to contact politicians, run for local seats, etc to influence things directly. The state of California has a higher population than Canada...there's very little reason that California should primarily be legislating itself. There's also very little reason that California policy should be pushed in Nebraska.
These are clear, simple and straightforward principles that work in literally all scenarios because they are goals and not hard lines. Sometimes those things will not be possible, but as long as the respect for individual choices is a core tenant the results become better for everyone. The only place where these ideals don't work is for people who quite literally want to determine how other people should be forced to live their lives.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson