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Comment by say_it_as_it_is | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget what happened to Walnut when it priced its moving services for fairness and equity: https://medium.com/@nickbkim/why-were-closing-walnut-a452225...

Everyone wants fairness and equity until the time comes for each to pay for it.

I'm saying this in a disappointed tone as I really would like platform cooperatives to work but they're going to fail to compete in a relatively open market of a capitalist society. Also, everyone working in IT for these platforms becomes the exploited. It's inverted exploitation. Programmer: you're being paid less than what you'd make in a free market. If you're not getting your flat cleaned twice a week as a member of this cooperative, you're doing it wrong. You, my friend, are being taken to the proverbial cleaners.

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There's more to life then money. Being able to provide others with a fair and better platform would make me accept a paycut.

It's easy to give up what you don't have. A web dev in Sweden has a social safety net to maintain a quality of life that is unobtainable in the U.S. without earning as much as possible. It is never at someone else's loss but at the discretion of managers based on the value each gives to the organization.

I'm sorry, I don't really follow your comment.

> It is never at someone else's loss but at the discretion of managers based on the value each gives to the organization

Can you expand on this?

I couldn't disagree more.

Walnut is an example of what happens when amateurs move into an industry without understanding the fundamentals or doing sufficient dillagence.

There is no reason that Co-op workers and IT can't be paid market rates.

Yeah exactly, anyone can make a good expensive product. It takes true require entrepreneurial skill(= the ability to screw over your employees as much as possible) to deliver a product that everyone hates but buys anyways.

The problem is that they are already paid market rates. The claim is that market rates are not fair.

I'm not sure I understand how IT workers would be exploited?

2010–2012 Instagram launches on the iPhone and grows to 13 employees and to 30 million users (closing at $50 million at a $500 million valuation). It eventually gets acquired by Facebook in 2012.

Seems like if you scaled like that you could still pay devs pretty well with minimal costs per transactions.

"exploited" is a subjective judgement that means some earns less than the speaker thinks they deserve.

Flat cleaners and programmers have different notions of how much each deserves.

Travis K is a billionaire. Statistically, almost everyone agrees that most of his wealth should be distributed to Uber workers. There is much less consensus regarding how much of consumers' money should be likewise distributed.

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