Do they? Try making a case that we don't need more than two sets of gendered pronouns in your tech job.

Like it or not, it matters why you believe things are "going a little to far", and why you're willing to be vocal about it

In fact, even debating whether I should be able to debate it could damage my career. I believe this widespread use of silencing tactics, by implicit threat, has gone too far.

If the position is "I should be able to question and debate anything about my colleagues" then the position is obviously absurd and I would ask a person holding such a view to reevaluate what they think society is. I don't think you would hold such a position.

So, why are you troubled that you can't debate this particular thing, when I'm sure there are things you shouldn't debate about your colleagues?

I'm troubled by the top-down nature of what is decided to be beyond debate vs not: it feels like it is leading to a scary kind of authoritarianism I don't want.

For fun, I'll throw you a specific plausible hypothetical. If an app has a gender identity field, and a user enters "Apache Helicopter", should this be treated as valid data or not?

Depends on what the data is being used for? This is irrelevant, unless you're an app that collects statistics on its colleagues.

Which set do you think would suffice?

"It said it would come tomorrow" means "He/She/It said he/she/it would come tomorrow" and it somehow works :) You're to infer the gender from context.

Royal We was forced, but in widespread use. This pronoun is an offshoot thereof. And other languages have even better pronouns than English. Check Chinese and Japanese.

Pride? Character? Respect from colleagues?

Sometime in your mid-30s you stop caring what "everyone else" thinks and work to build a life that makes you happy. For many of us, it's going through the motions at work and spending our real energy on friends and family. I actually feel bad for my colleagues who put in maximum effort and stay late every day.

I'm not sure how the world got so fucked up where we expect people making poor wages to behave "better" than multi billion dollar businesses.

The person making everyone else look bad and who is receiving no incentives for doing so likely isn't getting the sort of respect you are envisioning.

i know this is sounds like a snarky and low-effort response, but it is not intentional. it's just the way things are, and there isn't really a diplomatic way of saying it.

I can name several dozen colleagues I've worked for over the years who will vouch for me and help me get a job if I should ever need it and that does pay the bills.

People who say things like the above quote, can't.

sure, they can get you a job, but it will be a horizontal move for you if you are currently employed, and certainly no step up from your prior employment if you're suddenly unemployed.

consider that for many young people outside of the software and finance worlds, this is precisely the situation. all the good reputation in the world doesn't much matter if it doesn't get you any further than where you are.

Horizontal moves are acceptable and sometimes even optimal.

“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.

We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

-CS Lewis

If you want those, excel as moral human being overall and you will receive plenty. Being the best paper-pusher, bullshitter or excel in office politics won't give you any of those.

When that construction site started to wind down, he was the last carpenter to be laid off, and had many job offers at other places because of his conscientious work ethic.

I'd take any employee with that ethic in a heartbeat at my manufacturing business.

And you think that would improve under socialism or communism?

Yes, people are proposing "bestowing collective ownership of private capital to the proletariat", or something very close to it.

Mandating that some large corporations award some stock to their employees may be socialism in your eyes, but that's not actually socialism, it's just a FUD talking point.

Or at least which it very clearly is quite close to. It's bestowing collective ownership of half of private capital to the part of the proletariat that works at that business.

It is clear the current economic system is dysfunctional and requires refactoring (50% of bankruptices are from medical debt, and this occurs in no other developed country, for example), I'm unsure how that would even be up for debate. So if we can come to the conclusion (from objective data based on income levels, household wealth, debt, well being) that the current system isn't working, why would anyone advocate for it to continue as is?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United...

It's literally just a cash-equivalent (in that nearly every employer is going to provide a plan, and you'll need to pay for health coverage somehow, whether it be in taxes or in premiums) part of your compensation that is also coincidentally an enormous arbitrary sticking point that makes moving jobs that much more of a pain and danger. But only for the employee, of course.

Markets can be regulated to make them more free as well - if we pass a law to enforce mutually agreed upon contracts, some people (those that would go against the contract) have their freedom restricted but the market as a whole now has a trust mechanism allowing them to actually hold others accountable and thus overall it improves society.

“Free market” still implies certain restrictions, like “no stealing the other person’s stuff”.

It sounds like you are saying that having your physical well-being tied to employment is good for efficient allocation of labor/capital, but I have some problems with this claim and I’d like to check that this is what you’re actually saying.

The economic problem is that having well-being tied to employment pushes people towards employment short-term rather than value long-term.

Then there’s the moral problems, which can’t be ignored.

Also, having your health care, retirement and general well-being tied to a particular job reduces employee "freedom", which in his point of view is not efficient.

You literally cannot have comfortable life for the majority of society under a free-market system because it relies on the threat of being outcast from safety. The most socialist era of this country (1930-1980) is widely regarded as the American "Golden Era". I don't think that's a coincidence.

That means our garbage would never get collected or our toilets cleaned, because I don't think anybody's intended purpose is doing sanitation.

If you're just assigning jobs to give a purpose, you're forcing labor. If not you have dirty living quarters and a glut of artists.

"Based on family background, education, and IQ tests, we estimate that your best job is electrical technician."

vs two sentences later.

> And, yeah, at that point you have a bit of coercion

Which is it? Can you compel a poor peasant farmer to stay on the farmer and grow food because that's what society needs as a right?

> If a home doesn't, they're probably going to be in violation of some kind of law.

Law itself is coercion. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. The only reason we pay taxes for stuff we might not use, like the public education system and libraries, is forced by the threat of violence and imprisonment. Would you be going to jail if you didn't pay the portion of them that went to the military? What do you think happens when you refuse to go to prison?

> Which is it? Can you compel a poor peasant farmer to stay on the farmer and grow food because that's what society needs as a right?

Of course not. You can, however, compel people to pay taxes. And you can compel people to not just throw their garbage out into the street.

If you think taxes are equal to slavery, you've never been a real slave.

You cannot compel people to pay taxes, as New York discovered to its chagrin. [0] These are no longer Oregon Trail days, where to move you have to sell property and buy a stagecoach and oxen and spare axles. You just sort of buy another house in Arizona or Florida to ride out winters and don't spend more than 179 days a year in New York.

> If you think taxes are equal to slavery, you've never been a real slave.

Slavery is just an extreme form of taxation. Not only do you give up all fruits of your labor, but also give up your children from you.

If you don't believe me, you face fines for taking your kids out of public school in the US and the UK for taking your kids on vacation while school is in session. Probably because because they know better than you do what your child needs. How's that non-slavery working out for you? [1] [2]

[0] https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/State-facing-unexpec...

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Travel/taking-kids-school-travel/stor...

[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/family-holidays/term-time...

How much of your labor is absolutely necessary, and how much of it consists in generating surplus wealth for the benefit of your capitalist overlords?

Do you need broadband, the new mobile, or a car and insurance? Will 3 days working as a garbageman make you reasonably happy?

If so, please go ahead and do that and spend the rest of your time doing art.

If you really feel as though you need amazon prime and new shoes every 3 months, you better to out and make that money.

You have no right demanding that other people work to make things you're entitled to. Instead, you have to get it yourself. Learn to be a RN and figure out how to get the money, or stop complaining.

If those who feel entitled to the work of others enrage you, then perhaps you should point your anger at the parasitic bourgeoisie who siphon wealth away from society for doing absolutely nothing useful.

Congratulations for your situation in life and happiness. Many people will never know that.

> I am a white, male software developer. I have absolutely nothing to complain about or envy others.

Then you must feel very privileged because of your ethnicity, your country of citizenship, and education.

> Find something more solid to lean on than a straw man.

You're the one that raised the example of the garbageman/artist and just because I point out some flaws in that example, your personal situation makes this a strawman?

> If those who feel entitled to the work of others enrage you, then perhaps you should point your anger at the parasitic bourgeoisie who siphon wealth away from society for doing absolutely nothing useful.

Like, maybe sit at a screen all day and tap at a keyboard once in a while? Does that count as "the parasitic bourgeoisie"?

You realize that there are people in your age group which because of differing backgrounds, live in unimaginable squalor, get paid piddling amounts of money, and fight for those jobs. Also, mess their country up with pollution because we can't do that here.

> Congratulations for your situation in life and happiness. Many people will never know that.

Correct.

> Then you must feel very privileged because of your ethnicity, your country of citizenship, and education.

That's the point. My political ideology is not self-serving. I am part of those who benefit from the status quo. I recognize all of that.

> You're the one that raised the example of the garbageman/artist and just because I point out some flaws in that example, your personal situation makes this a strawman?

You did not even allude to the "garbageman/artist" example. You insinuated that I was "complaining" and "feeling entitled to other people's money", which is trite conservative bullshit.

If we keep "sanitation work" and other difficult, menial tasks to their minimum rather than putting people to work for profit first and foremost, then the people who DO clean toilets and collect garbage will have more time in their week to find purpose and actualization elsewhere. Currently they are overworked and alienated and you would have us believe that's a necessary thing.

See how trippingly accusations flow out of you. Seems like you're misinterpreting everything I'm saying, almost deliberately.

> This will be my last attempt at interfacing with you.

Can I have a written signed contract to that effect?

> You did not even allude to the "garbageman/artist" example. You insinuated that I was "complaining" and "feeling entitled to other people's money", which is trite conservative bullshit.

You misread that change "You have no right demanding that other people work to make things you're entitled to. Instead, you have to get it yourself. Learn to be a RN and figure out how to get the money, or stop complaining." I didn't think I had to clarify thatto "Nobody has a right...to make things one is entitled to." That doesn't flow as well.

Even though you're (I'm referring to you personally now) a white male (why does that matter) software engineer (which is a well paid professional job), you personally cannot demand a lear jet, just as a starving artist cannot demand that society supply him with supplies.

> If we keep "sanitation work" and other difficult, menial tasks to their minimum rather than putting people to work for profit first and foremost, then the people who DO clean toilets and collect garbage will have more time in their week to find purpose and actualization elsewhere.

If one (see how that works) keeps those tasks to a minimum, lots of people can't get the only job they're qualified to do. Either qualify for another job and demand more money, or make do.

They increased minimum wage at Target to 15 an hour. People are actually making less now because they cut hours, and they're absolutely dumbfounded. Or they'll automate more things.

Suggesting two binary extremes and ignoring the possibility of a spectrum of outcomes in a multifaceted problem

We aren’t toddlers so try not use juvenile logic

Its impossible to talk nuances of resource appropriation with an evocative term used inaccurately

One time tested way is nationalization, explicit by making the owner officials or by making the company leadership national government. (Slightly different effects.) Authoritarian governments prefer former, market based ones the later. (Second example is Korean Chaebols and their big influence.)

The other is directly bestowing workers with ownership or equity, in the extreme converting companies into cooperatives. This is not socialism, but communism. (Not to be mistaken with stalinism or maoism.)

I'm not saying "therefore capitalism is the right answer" (though I still think it is). I'm not saying that people shouldn't be interested in other systems. But I am saying that it matters a great deal that the "other system" be better, not just different. As my co-worker Steve Hanka used to say, "There's lots of ways to do it that don't work". There's lots of ways to structure the economy that work out worse; let's not make things worse by trying to make them better.

You have the thing where the government is trying to control, or at least closely guide, the economy. You have the thing where those who are close to power subvert that to line their own pockets. You have the thing where people are being discincentivized to work hard because they see that hard work benefits others more than themselves. Interestingly, in the USA, you even have the mass incarceration, which otherwise only shows up in the versions of socialism that hail from the other side of the historical iron curtain and from (yes, I realize what I'm about to do here, but please remain calm, but I'm only wanting to draw a parallel to some very specific things here, and to call attention to the fact that not all forms of socialism are leftist) Germany starting in the 1930s.

To poke at the USA a bit more, yes, there are still plenty of salient differences between the USA and nominally socialist societies. But it strikes me that the most salient one is that, in the USA, you have units in the grade school curriculum devoted to indoctrinating kids on the idea that they are most definitely NOT a socialist country. Moreso as an article of faith than as a matter of fact.

You have to make a really strong argument why it would be suboptimal - and without spherical cow level microeconomic lies.

Crony capitalism only causes problems because it is not transparent who rules, while generating waste from those that don't and fail.

But corporatism isn't the answer, on even a superficial look. Crony capitalism generates waste from those who fail because they are locked out. But corporatism is wasteful, too, of those who in an open system could have tried and succeeded, but in corporatism are locked out and know it, and therefore don't even bother to try.

Well, that, and that there's really only so much practical difference between de facto intermingling of the public and private sectors and de jure intermingling of the public and private sectors. Both invite rampant corruption and abuse.