The problem is that history shows there is no such thing as humans banding together and taking things back. As a group. The group has new “benevolent leaders” emerge, then they take everything and stop being benevolent very quickly, if not instantly. Animal Farm anyone? Animal Farm. Still relevant.

That sounds to me like you're repeating dogma, but even if it's true, that's fine by me. I'd rather my union steward was getting rich (for some low value of 'rich') than my CEO. Only one of them is on my side.

It’s interesting, because this is how your response sounded to me. Is there no dogma about how everyone should group together and take back the means of production? There is a very large, prominent movement about this response to capitalism.

My point is, that theory and practice differ, and when they differ it’s not the practice that is wrong, but the theory.

Every time people banded together to take the means of production, it resulted simply in destruction, instant corruption and a new autocratic regime built around the toughest thugs. The utopia does not occur. So clearly this is not the solution for solving our problems. There are problems. And there are solutions. But you need to search elsewhere.

Your union leader is not necessarily on your side. Even if they are, not for long. The system decides how they act, and power corrupts. Watch the strike in Hollywood. Watch how the previous strike in 2007 caused the present situation in 2023, and watch how the union will end up dissolving itself as more and more people will start leaving it. I’m not happy about this. I think workers need to be able to band together in groups and negotiate in groups (called companies, for example). I’m not convinced it should be one all encompassing mob-like group with no alternatives, but that’s just me.

Ok, well, as long as we're on the subject of the distinction between theory and practice I'm not worried that unionizing Amazon warehouses will bring about a new USSR.

I've worked union jobs and I've worked non-union jobs: the union jobs paid better and came with better benefits than their non-union equivalents. QED.

Unionized Amazon warehouses are the strongest kick in the butt that Amazon needs to automate this entire union out of existence. Once again. See Hollywood. Strike. “No AI” said the signs. Result? Studios amping up AI hiring like crazy.

Humans are into humans. But capitalism isn’t, that much. It doesn’t care about what substrate it’s made of. Its soul is made of money.

Unions make things better for workers in the short term because a business can’t adapt that quick. It’s like a racket. Same like when a lone worker faces few gigantic corporations and they all offer bad jobs. It’s like a racket. But rackets don’t last. Adaptation kicks and the layers shift. And AI is the biggest adaptation ever. It adapts us out of being necessary. Human leverage drops to near zero and with it the union leverage, also.

“Humans are into humans. But capitalism isn’t, that much.”

I wish more people on HN would understand this. Capitalism isn’t your friend. It give you short term wins but in the end, the negative externalities can add up hurt everyone including the vast majority of those who were winning initially.

At first, in all transactions, A and B win at the expense of C. Ancaps only look at A and B being better off. But in the end, almost everyone is a C, and the externalized costs add up for them all.

We need to switch to a more sustainable system before it’s too late. Capitalism’s negative externalities are also destroying the environment and running up an ecological credit card that future generations will have to pay.

“The bill always comes due!” - Mordo (great philosopher)

I wouldn't count your AI chickens yet. Path dependence is real and SAG/WGA are smart to pick this fight today not in 5 years' time. If they play their cards right now, while they have leverage, then they will gain additional legal/contractual leverage for the future.

Slavery and child labor were once common and economically lucrative, today they're very rare in the developed world. It's simply not true that humans can never choose to collectively reject an economically compelling option.

But don’t you know that organizing labor and giving safety nets like universal health insurance to people leads directly to shortages, breadlines, massive government repression and the entire population eating their cats?

Everyone should be aware of the TTV of these activities (“Time to Venezuela”) and refrain from unionizing.

</sarcasm>

> My point is, that theory and practice differ, and when they differ it’s not the practice that is wrong, but the theory.

Your socio-economic theory is at odds with what happened in the so-called western world over the last three centuries, but to understand why, one would need to step away from over-generalizing just the most dramatic parts of history, and study the boring bits as well.

Would’ve been nice if your comment had any specific argument except a verbose take on “you’re wrong, because reasons”.

It's more like "you're wrong, because your theory does not even correspond to evidence we have around us." The reasons why your doom-laden prognostications did not inevitably come to pass are not, however, reducible to a paragraph or two.

Once again you forgot to even hint what evidence you’re talking about.

It’s like you’re eager to win an argument, you want that reward, so you’re posting, but you’re too lazy to actually make an argument. So you kind of keep posting half way and declaring yourself a winner because “everything around” proves you right about… something. It’s kind of funny.

For example, your claim that “Every time people banded together to take the means of production, it resulted simply in destruction, instant corruption and a new autocratic regime built around the toughest thugs” is falsified by the history of Western Europe. If it actually were the case, Western Europe would now resemble North Korea, but instead, the means of production is well-regulated by democratic governments.

I haven't seen any evidence in any of your comments. You try to persuade (which is not evidence), but I haven't been persuaded.

At least it's clear what I'm trying to persuade you about.

As for evidence, frankly like this other guy says "it's all around us" but you need to translate what happens to systems (species, civilizations, ecosystems, nations, companies, industries) in smaller scale, and translate it to a globalized economy. Indeed, by the time we have evidence that our entire species is potentially screwed... we'll no longer have use of the evidence.

It's the same story as climate change. I actually think it's quite poetic both of those are hitting us at the same time. COVID was a bit early and a bit weak, but I'm sure another will come, to make the perfect triple storm.

It is not entirely clear to me exactly what you are trying to persuade us about, though it is quite possible that we share a number of concerns. I am not, however, going to be persuaded of that on the basis of a socioeconomic theory that ignores, and attempts to contradict, the complexity of recent history.

Your theory, which you may find so evident to you that you won't bother saying it out loud, is that unions are bad for capitalism.

The real world during the 1900s, if anything proved the opposite. It's not that all unions by definition always are great, that could be said for anything and should be obvious. It's that treating workers as an integral part of the business, with the obligations that come with rights, wins in the marketplace every time.

All rich countries, at least in the western hemisphere, became rich because of worker's movements, not in spite of them. Other countries have been pushed into the businesses with the slimmest margins where there is no innovation.

The truth is that innovation and worker's rights won. When arguing that an ideological map is right despite real world data, at least make those arguments against the same reality as we live in, so everyone involved will have a chance to understand how the ideal system measures up against their experience.

This is easy to demonstrate as false. The US Revolution and many others that followed put far more power into the hands of the average person. And unionized workers earn more almost everywhere you go. Union leaders probably do take more than they deserve, but not as much as the company owners would if you were negotiating as an individual against their organized management and legal team. So yeah, you do have to pay someone to lead your organization. But going without an organization is kind of nuts when the other side pays for one.

And being efficient enough and providing a service that's valued enough that both the companies doing the shipping and the people receiving the packages are willing to absorb the labor costs. If residential delivery cost a lot more/was less convenient (as it generally used to be), people would be much more inclined to just go into stores.

Yes, we mostly agree. The part I disagree with is humans being obsolete. We don't manually weave cloth anymore. Which is why we can afford far more clothing than folks 100 years ago. The jobs are there. That most of the profit from that work goes to the uber wealthy is the problem.

The actual key being that they get paid somewhere around half that. No other industry calculates the overtime potential or benefits in the compensation figure but of course this gets clicks and misinformation spreads like wildfire.

I was using this article for my source [1] which says:

"By the end of the new contract, full-time UPS delivery drivers will make an average of $49 per hour, which works out to nearly $102,000 per year, assuming a 40-hour workweek, 52 weeks a year. Those employees are guaranteed an eight-hour workday, a UPS spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch.

Drivers also receive $50,000 in benefits that include health, welfare and pension contributions, the spokesperson said."

I think a base salary of $100k is a decent living for non-skilled labor. And the pension contributions, whatever they are, are reasonable to include. I'm also noting that the end of the new contract is in 5 years, so maybe it won't be as good of a living as I'm thinking, depending on inflation.

In any case the important point is that UPS cut earnings forecasts because of this which means that workers did capture more of the profits that would have gone to owners. I consider it a win. Could it have been a bigger win? If most other workers were organized, I think so. With so many workers negotiating as individuals in the US, companies still have the upper hand as a whole. Workers continue to underestimate their value to the economy both in terms of labor and as consumers. The rich need labor, the rich need consumers. We should be getting a bigger piece of the huge profit pie that productivity increases result in.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ups-drivers-170000-pay-benefits...

>which works out to nearly $102,000 per year, assuming a 40-hour workweek, 52 weeks a year. Those employees are guaranteed an eight-hour workday

Exactly the point I was making. They’re making $100K which is decidedly not almost $200K. This isn’t to say that it isn’t good, but every well paying job includes pension or 401k matching, paid time off, health insurance, sometimes education reimbursement, etc. It’s (intentionally, on the part of “journalists”) misleading to quote $170K when that is not how compensations are compared in the US. Rounding up a fudged number to $200K is even more misleading. Quoting a number including 5 years of merit increases and inflation is even more misleading. The numbers are good and impressive on their own, there is no need for this fudgery except to drive clicks.

I would rather use TC because health plans and pensions vary from company to company. So the number I'd go with is around $150,000.

Right of you to call out the rounding up though. The article was exaggerating with $170k, and to remember that number I had mentally noted almost $200k. I looked for the article later to refresh my memory. You're right that any discussion on this deserves more accuracy than I started with.

The important thing to me is for us workers to recognize how to get a fairer share of the increased productivity. Unions have delivered throughout history.