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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Capital isn't a group of people. What does this mean? People who own capital? Like there is some proxy sent to Blackrock about "should we shorten the work week to 4 days" and they vote on it. As someone with a 401k, I must have missed that one.

What's with this low quality comment. If you have nothing productive to add, don't comment.

Or try to make a change yourself. Start a business and try a 4 day work week. Everyone should love it according to your world view and you could just be slightly less "greedy" and hire immigrants and trans folks and every other 'misfortunate' soul.

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Capital is a group of people. It is a few shared dynasties, people who have hoovered up the majority of wealth, the folks running private equity, the shrinking number of real estate developers that own a larger and larger share of all apartments.

Your line about 'just start a business' is something people say but never actually execute on themselves. Try making a store to compete with Amazon, a or a grocer to compete with our consolidated giants. They can and will use the economy of massive scale they have to crush your business into oblivion, taking a short term loss to maintain a death grip on the market

That's capital.

>Capital is a group of people. It is a few shared dynasties, people who have hoovered up the majority of wealth, the folks running private equity, the shrinking number of real estate developers that own a larger and larger share of all apartments.

What about the average American with pensions and 401ks that are invested in stocks? Or the "FIRE" crowd on reddit with 6 figures invested in Vanguard ETFs? Is "Capital" just a slur to be used against owners of capital you don't like, or you think have too much?

> What about the average American with pensions and 401ks that are invested in stocks? Or the "FIRE" crowd on reddit with 6 figures invested in Vanguard ETFs?

Own capital or be owned by those who do. That's how it works.

We're trapped in a game that's taking the world to a bad place, but which we're doing really well at.

Pensions and 401ks are today's "people taking care of elders when they're too old to work" - an idea as old as humanity. It's just abstracted through markets.

>Own capital or be owned by those who do. That's how it works.

You didn't answer the question. Are those people "captial" or not? If it's just "own capital", then most Americans are "capital" because they at least have some sort of 401k or pension, but I suspect you wouldn't put them in the same group as "people who have hoovered up the majority of wealth" or whatever.

> I suspect you wouldn't put them in the same group as "people who have hoovered up the majority of wealth" or whatever.

59% of Americans have a 401k or other retirement account.[1] They accumulate capital so they don't need to work when they're old. A small fraction of them are the "Reddit FIRE" types.

The top 1% own more than 50% of all equity in private and public companies.[2] They and their kids and maybe grandkids don't need to work to live.

Would you put both in the same group? Other than "owns productive assets" they don't have that much in common.

1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/691202/percentage-americans-ret...

2. https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net...

From my original comment: >Is "Capital" just a slur to be used against owners of capital you don't like, or you think have too much?

I wasn't aware it was a "slur" as much as it was a statement of fact. A tiny minority has disproportionate control over our economy and everyone else's lives. Depending on your ideological leanings you may find that ok or not ok.

Others (retirement savers) using the same tools as that minority doesn't make them the same as that minority. Degree of control matters. That's what I was responding to.

"You know the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? About a billion dollars"

> 59% of Americans have a 401k or other retirement account

self-reported ? also, substantial numbers of adult people fall into various classifications that definitely do not have such a thing. Are those not counted at all ? also, how is it so precise with no caveats, callouts or error bars ?!

Gallup is pretty good at polling. If you have a better source, by all means show it.

Gallup doesn't poll capital but retirement accounts- a lot of those are invested in cash and cash equivalents - CDs, bonds, etc. That's not the capital-as-control which we're discussing here.

More importantly, the 401k-s invested in the stock market aren't capital either but they do provide intermediating third parties with controlling power without any assurance that it will be used in the interest of the account holders - pretty much like bank accounts work.

Thus, 401k holders are not holders of capital, they only notionally own a share of pooled assets which are controlled by third parties for those parties' own ends and connections - mutual funds, banks, etc.

> That's not the capital-as-control which we're discussing here.

I feel you. I'm saying the exact same thing all over this thread.

> 401k holders are not holders of capital

There's capital and Capital. All 401k holders own capital. But the run of the mill retirement saver has no outsize influence on politics or business beyond what's available to a private citizen. Capital, with a capital C (haha!) controls both.

> Are those people "capital" or not?

Probably not. In the sense it's being used in this discussion, capital are people whose majority of income comes from dividends and rents. So your typical 401k (likely - I am not American) isn't in that category, rather they are labor with some savings for an old age.

The main difference is whether you need to work for someone or not. That determines your social class and to a large extent, self-interests.

>capital are people whose majority of income comes from dividends and rents

So the average boomer after retirement?

Yes that's how retirement works. Other people work and take care of you. That's how it's always worked.

I also don't see too many boomers funding Super PACs and getting their favorite laws passed.

I think you're making a good point. I have an honest question for you.

Aren't you scared how American system pits retirees and their kids against each other? What you just said means, essentially, if workers want to improve their working conditions, they have to go against shareholder profits, and they're threatening their parents survival (which relies on these profits). Isn't it f'ed up?

Social security is the largest source of income for the median boomer (the median boomer has approximately $100k in financial assets, not nearly enough to generate substantial income)

I have a 401k and a decent amount invested in the stock market. I have almost no power because my capital cannot be meaningfully exercised in the same way other groups of capital can. My influence (as a middle class software engineer) has dwindled over the past 30+ years or so because more and more power (ie, capital) is being taken from the lower classes and being distributed to fewer hands at the upper end of society.

The market, emergent phenomena greater than the sum of their parts etc. I don't think it's unreasonable in 2025 to speak as if these things have agency beyond the level of individual humans living within the system.

Of course they could start their own business with better morals but they'd be outcompeted by businesses which didn't care, that's the whole reason we need regulations and all the rest of it.

> make a change yourself. Start a business and try a 4 day work week. Everyone should love it according to your world view...

Back to reality, we would have 16x6 workweeks if not for government regulation. That much is not up for debate. Moving to 4x8 workweek is just a logical next step demanded by the circumstances.

I'm pretty sure there's no law that says you can't require people to work 16x6 and plenty of bankers do that. We don't because someone else offers us better options (i.e. competition)

We also don't because the law mandates overtime pay. But then for some mysterious reason we specifically exempt quite a lot of (mostly white-collar) jobs from that.

"We need more sheep to fleece" cried the Wolf.

Fleecing sheep doesn’t hurt them. Especially during the summer they really love it.

so do the MAGAts apparently. Make Amerikkka GILDED Again!

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