Sometimes I worry that all the stories about unions helping to end the most extreme exploitation and fix deadly working conditions has made them unrelatable.

If you make a cushy salary and the biggest physical risk is carpal tunnel, you might think ”I dont have it THAT bad. It’d be greedy and disrespectful of the sacrifices that were made to use unions in my situation”

What made unions unrelatable for me was them obviously pushing the interest of factory workers over the interests of engineers. Thanks for trying to get my job outsourced I guess.

There's nothing stopping us from creating an engineers union. Each field should have their own organisation.

Yes there is. I hate unions and I hate union work and I love doing my job.

Then I will take that insult with a pride. My parents were also called such by Russian occupiers.

Just do not be surprised that people run away from ideas (even reasonable ones) when associated with such beautiful terms as "class traitor".

My class is the middle class and for generations we have profited from the extremely productive corporations here in Germany. Never in my life have I felt being "exploited" if anything these corporations have been excessively kind.

I don't know or care which class I am betraying.

There's no middle class - only working class, peasants and bourgeoisie.

Just because you don't feel it, doesn't mean the exploitation doesn't exist.

Factory workers clearly do not see themselves as the same class as me.

I do not see them as the same class as me.

I have never felt exploited, but I HAVE enormously benefited from German corporations.

Quite interesting pattern. Insisting that everyone is a member of your imagined group, whether they like it or not. Then, when they reiterate why they don't want to be part of your group they never signed up for, you label them a traitor. No wonder communism has such a bloody history.

The threat of violence is the only way social progress has ever been made.

Since the poster above seems to be German, he especially should know.

The only reason the conservative Bismarck established the German welfare state was to stave off revolution.

The only means through which capitalists give even an inch is through that threat. That's why worker rights are being rolled back in a lot of places right now - because workers have become soft.

> The threat of violence is the only way social progress has ever been made.

This is a lie.

Poland and many areas occupied by Russia managed to end Russian control without this.

In other words, the rest of of us should just wait until some foreign powers dissolve our oppressors for us?

People in Poland (and other areas under control of Russia) put a lot of effort into kicking out Russians and their puppets.

It was not a case of waiting until foreign powers did it. (though there was a bit of external help)

I wouldn't call the fall of the only socialist superpower at the time social progress.

I would call kicking out corrupt occupier oppressing workers and pretending to be socialist superpower as a great success.

Doing it with no bloodshed typically accompanying such events was even better.

Russia was not friend to workers, it was oppressive evil state and kicking it out (what started steps toward collapse of USSR) was one of greatest successes in the history of Poland.

It was no accident that largest strikes in the history of country taken place during PRL and capitalism is so well regarded in Poland.

As a German I know that German corporations, like Bosch and Zeiss have always been at the forefront of making sure their workers were taken care of. Realizing that worker happiness and productivity aren't opposites but only come together.

As a German I know that the only attempt at an anti-communist uprising was met with swift brutality by the troops of the pro-capitalist social democratic government.

As a German I know how a country divided between anti-capitalism and capitalism looks like after many decades. I have seen the ruins of anti-communism with my own eyes, they are hard to hide and so are the crimes of the anti-communist government.

As a German I know that besides national socialism, anti-capitalism is also an illegal ideology in Germany.

Did you miss that we asked you to stop breaking the site guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43857426

You posted 19 comments since then, most of which are perpetuating this flamewar. No matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are, this is abusive, and we ban accounts that do it.

Fortunately, it looks like your comment history is mostly fine (at least the parts of it that I skimmed back through) so this should be easy to fix.

Got it. So you advocate violence in order to advance your political agenda. Most people call that terrorism.

Everybody does. Some however only object when the violence is extralegal.

> All political agendas are violence.

if treated seriously, that just makes "violence" a meaningless term

for start, there is a difference between threats of violence and actual violent acts for example

None of those things are violence, and redefining words to dilute their meaning in order to justify actual violence is pathetic sophistry.

How is it not violence if people get hurt or die as the direct result of ones actions?

Just because you don't like being made aware of the violence committed by your preferred system doesn't make it less violent.

Here's the definition according to the Cambridge dictionary:

> actions that are intended or likely to hurt people or cause damage

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/violence

Please enlighten me as to why it doesn't apply.

Starvation has historically been used as one of the most effective ways to commit violence on populations and is often used by militaries.

If you do not think that is violence, I'd love to hear what qualifies in your mind.

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle and flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you'd please stop creating accounts to abuse HN like this, we'd appreciate it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sure. And that is why protesting looks so ridiculous. The oppressed working class, making six figures typing away in a well furnished office.

The top-end of the working class shares more with the low-end of the working class, than the top-end of the working class shares with the low-end of the upper class.

I have never been to a politician's dinner. I have never changed a law. If I were fired, which can be done at any time for no reason, I would have no source of income. Money is the weakest form of power, and a well-paid job is the weakest form of money.

the labor movement really needs to get beyond this stereotype that it is to lift all these hunched poor little downtrodden suppliants out of poverty. workers who have successfully organized are not pitiful schlubs, and their affluence is a testament to the success of their organizing, not its triviality. political interests of the labor class just are not the same as those of capital, and therefore its methods and aims should be different as well.

one thing that i've been repeating for years now is that if you want tech to organize, unions need to sell themselves differently.

unions in the past are portrayed as remove physical dangers, limiting to reasonable hours and fair wages. but tech workers already have that stuff, so they don't see an upside.

codetermination (getting workers on the board), four day work weeks, full-time remote, sabbaticals, open source support, rethinking startup equity, ... there's all sorts of things we could be pushing for that would make our jobs better that we could to push for if we worked together.

great list. another thing to add, credentialing so we can stop the leetcode gating at the interview stage.

> making six figures typing away in a well furnished office

I don't know about you but I don't make anything even remotely close to six figures...

The average US software dev does.

We are what is called the labor aristocracy in socialist discourse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_aristocracy

It is still labor and we are still exploited - most the revenue we generate goes to capitalist interests, not us, the laborers, which are the creators of all revenue.

It's just that we have it comparatively good and so are less inclined to seek out systemic change - a less favorable reading would be that we are bought off to split us off from the rest of the proletariat.

Uhm, my revenue goes to the shareholders of my company. Among those shareholders are me, my colleagues and the state.

Most of the shareholders are random rich people that have never lifted a finger in their life, yet get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

More likely software developers are, for the most part, middle class – deriving their income from a combination of labor and land/capital.

While software developers just starting out are apt to be working class, when you receive a comparatively high income for your labor it soon becomes hard to find things to do with it if you don't start investing in land/capital, so one in that position doesn't stay working class for long.