Hacker News Reader

Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

It's not a conspiracy theory, it's how the system works. You are taxed on pretty much all of your income either from the state, the landlord, the credit card company or the lifestyle obligations that stems from the area you are living in.

> And that's right where they want you.

This is the part where we diverge, and I think where people confuse emerging phenomena for conspiracy.

There is no one orchestrating this.

View on HN

This is absolutely being orchestrated, right out in the open. OP’s entire post is fundamentally about the balance of power between labor and capital. The Fed’s stated goal is to cool the labor market so that wage growth will calm down. In other words, the Fed thinks labor is too strong, calls too many of the shots in negotiations and so wants employees to be more desperate so that their employers will have the upper hand.

Note that this also aligns with incentives of the largest voting bloc, retirees and near retirees.

Obviously capital would prefer to pay lower wages, all else being equal, and in this case the Fed backs them up on that to prevent a wage-price spiral. What’s less obvious is how to keep even very-highly-paid employees from deciding they’ve made enough and checking out.

> There is no one orchestrating this.

Very true, and the reason why it's important to spell this out explicitly is because any solution that hinges on identifying and blaming a single or few orchestrators is dead on arrival.

> There is no one orchestrating this.

I think there are thousands of people orchestrating this, independently.

That's kinda what an emerging phenomena is.

My point is that it's still the result of human action, it's purposeful and intentional.

It's just not conspiracy.

It's not emergent out of nowhere. It's emergent out of shitty people being in positions of power and influence.

>it's still the result of human action, it's purposeful and intentional.

Orcheastras imply a conductor, a central figure with the score to direct their symphony to play.

1000 conductors means there is no conductor. Each one may have a purpose and intention, but a conspiracy implies... well, conspiring. That isn't a conspiracy, it's a mob. Even if somehow the symphony manages to make a melody out of the madness, it's not a result of a conspiracy because it never happened.

You are doing incredible mental contortions to avoid acknowledging the concept of a cartel.

When OPEC raises global oil prices, that's the result of a collective, negotiated action, and a conspiracy.

I'm simply invoking Hanlon's razor. I've seen enough of the sausage to acknowledge that 95% of these "top brass" are just making it up as they go along.

> 1000 conductors means there is no conductor.

1000 conductors means that there is 1000 conductors and 1000 orchestras.

They've all done their research, and they've all independently decided to have their orchestras play mostly the same songs as all the other orchestras.

They've arrived at this decision by copying what the most successful orchestras are doing, reading in orchestra magazines about best practice for orchestras, going to orchestra conferences, talking to other conductors over expensive meals and games of golf, etc

I agree it's not a conspiracy. There's no big room where all the conductors get together and all agree which songs to play.

But it's not accidental either. Each conductor is seeking the best song list, and by using the resources available to them they are all coming to similar conclusions.

I think I've tortured this metaphor enough.

I just do not want the human element to be abstracted from the equation here. Yes, I agree there's no conspiracy. Ultimately this crap is "emergent" from the systems in place. Those systems were built by humans, and then the "emergent" behavior is just humans concluding "based on this system in place this is the best set of actions I can take". Those humans then are successful so other humans try to copy them.

There is a word for it, stigmergy. It is just conspiracy minus the direct communication. A network where nodes each behave according to their observations rather than communicating. Termites don't conspire either.

Not if it’s being orchestrated on lines of class And wealth

> There is no one orchestrating this.

There wasn’t before.

There is now.

Lobbyists are pushing for it. Big investment firms like Vanguard and Blackrock that have a lot to lose if the commercial real estate market collapses are pushing companies to mandate RTO policies if they want to keep getting investments. Makes sense.

source?

It seems that everything is a tax to you. What would you like to spend your money on besides lifestyle?

they're not saying lifestyle expenses are a tax in themselves, but rather the inflation on the lifestyle expense is a tax (ie. "cost of living"), as well as the need for certain expenses to begin with (eg. the need for a nanny because both parents need to work long hours bc of high COL and commute times)

I still think "expense" is more appropriate than "tax".

The difference is that you get to blame someone else for a tax, but expenses are something you bring on yourself. Victim mentality.

So having to pay $1.2mil for a 3 bedroom home instead of $300k because I need to be near the office because RTO is an expense I choose?

Obviously no one would rather pay 4x as much for the same thing. In that sense no one chooses the price of their house as they'd clearly pay $1 if they could.

But yes, you choose to pay a lot to live near work (you value your time), in a place with great weather and public schools and natural beauty (since we seem to be talking Bay Area here). The $300k house in BFE Ohio does not have these properties.

At one point in my life I chose to live in a basement for about 10% of my monthly post tax income. Why don't you choose that? Turns out you do, in fact, have agency in choosing your living conditions.

We have agency in that we could choose to renounce careers in tech. That’s it.

There is a price/quality tradeoff in every housing market; all complaints about price can be interpreted as insufficient willingness to compromise on quality. A cardboard box under a bridge is free! “You’re actually obscenely wealthy because you don’t live in a basement and drive 6 hours to work” is not the argument you think it is. Tech workers are telling you how they feel about Bay Area weather, schools, and transportation every time they complain about RTO. We all want nothing more than to get the fuck away from here. Nothing more except, perhaps, to do the work we were meant to do.

You can easily find big tech jobs in Seattle, Austin, NY, Denver, Los Angeles, etc etc.

Actions speak louder than words, so no, they are not telling me they want to live elsewhere. They're telling me they like to complain.

That $1.2 mil figure wasn’t any of those cities, nor was it from SF. You seem to be detached from reality.

And btw, I spent a large portion of my life living out of a rack on a warship so don’t talk to me about compromise kiddo.

Moving to New York or Los Angeles for affordable housing is ridiculous on its face. Austin, Denver, and I would add Miami were basically flash-in-the-pan situations: first movers got some great deals, but the housing markets have priced it in by now & the forward-looking job market outlooks are uncertain.

Seattle is interesting in that it's clearly a durable tech job center and is meaningfully cheaper than San Francisco. It's still twice as expensive as a normal place ($862k vs. $400k) and its street conditions reflect a housing crisis every bit as severe as San Francisco's, but it's true that you could keep your career while paying ~30% less there. So I guess the delta between SF and SEA could be interpreted as a lifestyle splurge.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com