Comment by dpc_pw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpc_pw | Hacker News Reader

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> The current 40 hour workweek we enjoy and the weekends we have off are because of the organized labor movement in the US.

Arguably it was achieved first and foremost because increase in productivity caused by capital investments actually made it economically possible.

I mean, I don't deny that 19th century capitalists required a little bit of a "push" for it to actually happen, but it's debatable if it was actually necessary and wouldn't just happen naturally.

> class consciousness

That's a part of political opinion, that I just don't share. I was born in family of a blue collar family of a coal miner and school janitor, now I'm a intellectual worker, and in a way I already joined "evil capitalist class" and hope to entrench myself in it even more with time.

Thinking in people having assigned "classes" is just so a low-resolution way to look at complex reality, that it is just not helpful.

> If your choices are between working for one of several capital-owned tech conglomerates, or accepting their money for the runway to compete in the current business climate, can you really call that an even playing field?

I just don't think labor organizations help with anything. What helps is having more options (competition), better social mobility (access to education and knowledge) and general economic prosperity that allow entrepreneurship (taking risks). Labor unions typically work against all of it.

I do know that field is not level, but I just think naive ways to trying to level it make more harm than good.

> Arguably it was achieved first and foremost because increase in productivity caused by capital investments actually made it economically possible.

> I mean, I don't deny that 19th century capitalists required a little bit of a "push" for it to actually happen, but it's debatable if it was actually necessary and wouldn't just happen naturally.

Well, given that, with the subsequent increases in productivity since then, the work week could could easily be reduced by another day (32 hours work week), but no such change has yet happened naturally, I don't see why you would believe that it would have happened then either.

> I just don't think labor organizations help with anything. What helps is having more options (competition), better social mobility (access to education and knowledge) and general economic prosperity that allow entrepreneurship (taking risks). Labor unions typically work against all of it.

And yet, before mass labor organizations you had children being forced to work, and everyone working longer hours for 6 days a week, with no worker safety laws to speak of; and, with the hard struggles of labor unions (which included getting shot by US military forces!) you live in a world with worker safety regulations, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, etc.

Basically, I think your post shows exactly what class-consciousness does for you. Most working-class people can see very well how stacked the deck is against them, and have few illusions about how explicitly the current system is working to keep them down (their biggest illusion is that they can't do anything about it, or that it's foreign workers' fault - both of these the result of explicit propaganda/PR efforts). But if you manage to move into the capitalist class, your perspective often changes, as your seems to have, and you start believing the system as it is works well, and actually start to work for it - like you are here, trying to convince people that unions would be harmful for our own interests.

To be clear, I am in no way accusing you of not believing what you are saying! I am just pointing out that it is exactly an example of class-consciousness at work: since you are part of the capitalist class, you believe more in the good of the capitalist class as the one likely to bring the most benefit to everyone. Myself, part of the working class, believe that the good of the working class will bring more overall good in the world.

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