Learning a new skill or trade doesn't give you access to the "means of production", capital does. And inequality is as bad as it's ever been over the past 50 years. A few tech startup darlings doesn't change that.
To forstall the next likely objection, no, of course it is not the only form of capital. And "less so" != "completely the opposite of". And further, obviously, learning a trade isn't millions and millions of dollars worth of capital, nor does it instantly catapault you into the leagues of the wealthy, just because you learned how to fix plumbing or write code. And it obviously isn't liquid.
But it is a form of capital.
If you don't understand this, you can't understand unions. If labor doesn't have this capital, then unions can't work, because if labor really are just interchangable cogs that bring nothing but mere clock time to the equation, then labor has no bargaining position whatsoever. Unions only work because labor has this illiquid capital to bargain with.
(There are some obvious further elaborations on this theme, such as the way the capital gets devalued by increasing the supply by globalization, and the continuous importation of cheap labor via illegal immigration. IMHO there's a certain amount of contradiction in being shocked at how labor is devalued in the market place and being pro-"open borders". It may not be the only cause and effect, but it's certainly involved.)
It feels like you're going with the "Everything is capital" route, which devalues the word in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital#Background
The improved dexterity of a workman may be considered in the same light as a machine or instrument of trade which facilitates and abridges labor
Sort of yes, sort of no. It's important to understand that "physical capital" isn't some sort of magic pathway to wealth, either. If by some weird turn of events I suddenly came into possession of a 20-ton press, it isn't going to do me any good, and just about my only avenue to producing money from it is to sell it to some entity that does know what to do with it.
A great deal of "capital" in the industrial world is relationships, organization, and the ability to apply human capital. Simplifying that to "physical goods" leads to weak thinking and bad policy.
This is interesting, in terms of debate. Where we're talking about "means of production", refuting the claim that workers don't have "capital" by referring to the broader use of the term capital does dip a toe into the fallacy of ambiguity. However, as a stand alone point, a related argument stating that the workers are more powerful than you'd think due to human capital they hold, yeah, I think it's a reasonable thing to point out.
Both the academic and business worlds acknowledge that skills in the brain are capital. Like the other poster mentioned, the academic world labels it "human capital". The business world also acknowledges it by investing in people and not necessarily factories. This business behavior refutes the other poster's point that it is "ultimately is traded on the market for wages". Wages are not the only endgame.
YCombinator is an example of investing in brains, not factories. What is the "means of production" of a YC2016 company?!? The amazon AWS credits? The laptop that the programmer types on? No. The "means of production" is the programmer's brain. This is why the YC application has questions probing the founders' backgrounds and has zero questions about what gigahertz+RAM+disk of the laptops the programmers use.
What is the songwriter's "means of production"? (It's not the pencil and paper.) What is the dentist's "means of production"? (It's not the reclining chair or drill.)
He was lucky in hearing about the need for the bracket at the right time. But he was not lucky in being able to go to votec or to secure a minor loan for the machine shop. Everyone else around him could have done that.
I'd go out on a limb and suggest that most people on HN have never been in situations like that, where losing a minimum-wage job meant not being able to pay rent and ending up homeless. That's why success stories like the one parent told are common here.
Decided I was sick of it. Went back to school, took out some loans, but worked my ASS off, trying to get as many hours as possible so as to take out as few loans as possible. Kept communication open with my bosses and with my professors: I'm not making shit, I have to keep this job, but I want to make a better life for myself.
It was hard. Hardest thing I've ever done. Realized that I couldn't rely on the cook income, so I started a side business JUST IN CASE they decided to fire me (building websites, took one class that had a week long section on HTML in college). Hustled. Replaced my income. Kept the two jobs, took a full course load. Awful. Hated my life, always tired. I graduated with $10,000 in debt from my bachelors and a post-bacc certificate program. Could have been a lot more, but I saw what happened if I went down that route.
But you know what? I did it. It is possible. I am not a millionaire, but I have a great job, and am working on launching another company, so that I and my family can have an even better life.
Everything we put in front of ourselves is an excuse. It IS possible. If I would have lost my job, I would have found a new one. Kids add difficulty to the situation (trust me, I know), but it is still possible.