this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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Generational labeling...
I see it as a way to divide the working class, same as the "lower class"/"middle class" and "unskilled labor"/"skilled labor".
Lower vs middle class maybe sure, there is discussion there. Skilled vs unskilled labor: you don't know how to read even Wikipedia. It has nothing to do with skill (you can watch a guy dice an onion in his hand in 4.2 seconds and it's still "unskilled labor") and everything to do with choosing the right vocabulary to express a point: some jobs require college or trade school and some do not.
All skilled labor is compressed unskilled labor, or in other words, all unskilled labor is skilled labor.
Training and raising someone to do a job contributes to the value produced by their labor, it matters more in comparison to the aggregate whole than anything else.
I don't know how to respond to this? I mean yes you are right but the compression is not situation agnostic which is the whole point: some jobs ("skilled labor") require a particular degree or pretraining as a point of entry, and others ("unskilled labor") do not. It doesn't mean it's not valuable or not worth pursuing, but it's a mincing of words that are poorly chosen in the first place.
At the end of the day yes both varieties are worth pursuing and are necessary but one has a zero knowledge entry point and the other does not. I don't agree with "skilled vs unskilled" as vocab goes, but this is the point.
A line chef isn't considered an unskilled laborer. Unskilled labor is like flipping burgers, digging ditches, and that sort of thing.
Unskilled labor is a bullshit term used to diminish the work done by people in low paying jobs. Many people would say that a line cook is unskilled, slightly above flipping burgers or digging ditches. It's nebulous and useless for productive conversation
There are definitely jobs that don't really require any specific skills. If you can learn all of your duties after 1 minute of instructions, what would you call that? It doesn't need to be interpreted as a derogatory term, but it's accurate for a lot of positions.
No you've missed the point. It has nothing at all to do with value or pay scale as you can easily see by comparing a B.S. grad in engineering with a trained plumber who will definitely make more money. All "unskilled" means is that you didn't go to school to start. Period. It doesn't mean it's not valuable or doesn't require skill, it means whoever started the discussion picked shitty words.
No youre conflating how you define the word "skill" with the actual definition. It's absolutely unfortunate but just means you didn't go to school to get the job.
Do you mean to say line cook? Because it goes without saying that a chef is a skilled labourer but a cook also has to chop onions fast.
I'd be inclined to believe you if the boomers weren't literally the ruling class.
Even the poor ones are still land owners, and meanwhile the rest of us have to fight uphill both ways to get a single measly Congress seat!
This is very far from the truth. There has been an explosion of senior homelessness over the last 4 years because the poor baby boomers can't afford the rising cost of rent on a fixed income, and are too old to go get jobs.
Let me tell you, then... Boomers are NOT the ruling class. A small group of rich people control most of the wealth in the world. Those people are the ruling class.
Really? Because when I see the folks that hold the line against anything positive getting done, I don't see rich people, I see wannabe rich boomers. Blocking legislation, packing courts, gerrymandering, keeping the electoral college, introducing politics of spite, it's all the fucking boomers and I refuse to be gaslit that they aren't at the core of the problem.
I'd say the core of the jawbreaker of fucked upness is the elite wealthy. However boomers aren't too many layers away though imo
And who are those boomers protecting? The owning class.
That's really far from the truth. For every article talking about boomers contributing to inflation by spending fat 401k's, there's another saying boomers didn't manage to save anything and either have to work until they die or end up part of the homelessness problem.
Lol why are people here on lemmy so obsessed with classes?
Edit: Great question, thanks for asking!
Division of the working class keeps us fighting ourselves, while the people with money and power keep the status quo.
Great activists in US history have tried to unite the working class, but sadly they tend to get assasinated...
I thought this video would explain where some of us have learned how the class system works.
How Class Works -- by Richard Wolff [12:36]
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=euH3pAuLuko
Lemmy is a FOSS answer to the failings of Capitalist Reddit. Everyone who doesn't care enough is on Reddit, leaving Lemmy with tons of leftists who do care enough.
There's also Linux, Privacy, and other FOSS things, but FOSS in general aligns with leftist views.
FOSS also aligns with free market capitalist views.
I'm not here because Reddit is capitalist, I'm here because Reddit sucks. I don't like new Reddit or the Reddit app, and I certainly don't like the tracking they do. Lemmy seems to be the closest alternative and is good enough, so I'm here.
I consider myself libertarian (not US libertarian party, but ideologically libertarian, like Penn Jillette) and I've been a FOSS enthusiast for decades. I contribute to FOSS because I enjoy it and honestly think FOSS projects work better than their alternatives. I don't do it out if some social obligation or whatever, I do it because it just seems to work better. I disagree politically with the creators of this project, yet I've contributed code and enjoy the work they've done.
Just an alternative perspective.
FOSS does not align with Free Market Capitalist views, because it's a rejection of individual ownership of property, and a rejection of the profit motive. That's like saying being kind to your neighbor aligns with Free Market Capitalist views, I'm sure Free Market Capitalists think that's a good idea but it in no way aligns with their ideology on the basis of Free Market Capitalism, it's unrelated.
The reasons you described hating Reddit, notably the forced usage of new Reddit and the Reddit App, as well as the tracking they do, is because Reddit is a Capitalist entity. The reason for all of this is so Reddit can make money off of owning the IP.
Believing honestly that FOSS works better than the alternatives is a leftist stance. Leftism isn't about social obligation, but a belief that individual ownership and thus enforced hierarchy is a bad thing.
You should probably do some introspection.
That's just not true. FOSS is an explicit grant of rights to my property to the public at large. There's no compulsion to make my work public, and I can even keep my modifications to a FOSS project to myself and not share it. FOSS leaves me, the contributor, in control of what I want to do with my work. If I'm the sole contributor, I can even change the license that my work is in, I just can't revoke previously released versions of the software.
In many cases, it makes more sense for companies to collaborate on a project than to build everything themselves. Look at Linux, most development comes from for-profit companies because distributing the burden of maintenance happens to be good for business. We see rival orgs like Huawei/Samsung, Intel/AMD, and RedHat/SUSE among the top contributors. They could keep those changes to themselves, but maintaining those changes long-term would cost more than the benefit they'd get from keeping them to themselves.
That's just not true. I liked Reddit for years, but they slowly changed their model away from what worked for years. There were two directions they could've gone:
They picked the latter, so I left because that wasn't the direction I wanted the platform to go. They can still make money off the IP and I have no problem with that, and if they chose a privacy-oriented approach, I would still be there. But they didn't.
I'm also totally fine with them charging for API access, I'm not okay with the amount they charged (which was way more than they'd get from ads through their app).
Maybe if taking it to the extreme (i.e. FOSS always works better than the alternatives). But if taken situationally, I think it is totally a free capitalist mindset. For example, video games make a ton of sense being proprietary software, whereas game engines make a lot of sense being free software (or at least source-available, like Unreal Engine). In general, platforms are better as FOSS, whereas products are better as proprietary software. FOSS generally sucks for making products, proprietary software generally sucks for platforms because maintenance costs are so high.
You can absolutely take advantage of an explicitly leftist structure and use it for Capitalist gain in Capitalism, but that doesn't make the structure Capitalist. It's a rejection of Capitalism.
The enshittification of Reddit is precisely because it's a Capitalist entity. It wasn't as profitable to do what worked, so they made it worse and upped their profit margins. Not sure why you struggle to see that.
Thinking FOSS is better in some situations is devoid of being a Free-Market Capitalist stance, and is more leftist. Markets themselves are not Capitalist, by siding with FOSS, even in certain instances, you are saying leftist structures are better than Capitalist structures in certain instances. That's more of a pro-market stance than a pro-Capitalism stance.
You're tying Capitalism to a rejection of Capitalism, when that doesn't make sense. You should just accept that you have some leftist views with regards to how the economy should be structured, rather than contort your worldview to make illogical connections. I'm not asking you to change your views, just accept correct labeling of them.
But it's not leftist. Stallman certainly wanted it to be when he created the GPL, but it has worked incredibly well (and perhaps better) as a capitalist structure. It turns out, things like standards reduce costs overall, so you'll get a better return on your capital by cooperating with others than keeping everything to yourself.
You can see this across the board. Most products are a derivative of other works, and being able to focus on your unique value proposition dramatically reduces costs and thus increases return on capital.
The whole notion of intellectual property is anti-capitalist, it's government protectionism. Before IP laws were a thing, people built on each other's innovations without restraint. Sometimes that lead to copycat works, and sometimes it lead to new works. IP law restricts derivative works, FOSS allows it, but puts limitations on them. I personally believe IP laws are one of the biggest hurdles to innovation and believe we should have much shorter patent and copyright duration to encourage more derivative works. FOSS is but one way to get around the current system.
No, it's because the leadership is stupid.
There are other privacy-respecting, "capitalist" companies that do just fine, they just have a different profit model. However, it just so happens that the masses seem to prefer paying with data and ad time over money for services. I don't, so I avoid ad-supported services, mostly because I think that runs counter to the type of content I want to see. Sometimes that means I use FOSS, and sometimes that means I use privacy-respecting proprietary software.
When I used Reddit, I paid for an ad-free, proprietary mobile app. I'd do the same today if Reddit allowed fair competition with its app. But they have decided that ads, data collection, and mass appeal are the direction they want to go.
I certainly believe that's true, I just don't think FOSS is inherently leftist. It's a tool that works well both for capitalist and socialist interests, it has no economic or political bias.
Here are some areas where I think leftist structures are superior:
I absolutely do have some leftist views, in fact I'm probably more left than both major US parties, on net. The left/right spectrum isn't as interesting to me as the liberty/authoritarian spectrum. I want government to be less involved in my life, and I don't really care if the solutions that make that happen come from the left or the right. But to me, FOSS isn't either, it's just a way for me to decide how I want my work to be used by others.
Oh, but it is. Leftism is a rejection of hierarchy and individual ownership of the Means of Production, while FOSS is a rejection of ownertship. Again, you're incorrectly tying Capitalist entities taking advantage of leftist products as a way to call the leftist products Capitalist. FOSS itself is leftist, regardless of who uses it.
IP is absolutely Capitalist, Capitalism is all about profiting off of ownership of property, as opposed to creating Value. Rent-seeking is built into Capitalism, that's why it still exists, it consolidates power and influences the state. Believing Capitalism contains within itself the contradictions that work against itself is a leftist belief, after all!
Capitalist companies can certainly choose to make a better product, but that does not mean Reddit's choice to pursue profit over a better product was not caused by Capitalism.
All in all, I really do think you need to understand that structures themselves can be left and used by right wing entities. FOSS is leftist itself and does not care who uses it, that does not make it Capitalistic if a Capitalist uses it.
But it's not. If it was, I could relicense any GPL project to whatever I want because nobody owns it. The GPL is very interested in ownership, to the point where all contributors must agree to a license change or those contributions must be removed.
No, it's about profiting off of capital. Property is one form of capital, though I reject the idea that IP is valid, I don't believe anyone has an exclusive right to ideas. So my support of IP law in any form is purely pragmatic.
Basically, I derive rights from whatever could morally exist w/o a government w/o an initiation of force. In order for someone to take my real property, they would need to initiate force against me to deprive me of using it. In order for someone to use my intellectual property, they just need to see/hear it, and their use does not deprive me of using it, therefore no force.
So no, I reject the idea that IP has any moral foundation, it's merely a structure governments use to encourage sharing of IP. FOSS is a community-driven way of achieving the same thing, just without the period of exclusivity. So IP law is a corruption of capitalism, not a feature of capitalism.
Sure, but it wasn't inevitable. There are multiple ways to profit from a given class of product, and Reddit chose the one they thought would appeal to investors. I think that's short-sighted and probably an indication that /u/spez is looking for an exist, not to build a quality product.
So I left. Reddit no longer appealed to me as a user, so I found something that works better for me. I actually started building my own, but Lemmy was "good enough," so here I am. I'm still working on that project in my spare time, but not with the energy I once did. I don't want to run a SM app, I just want something that works reasonably well. I left Facebook for Reddit for the same reasons.
I agree, I just disagree that it applies to FOSS.
For example, many co-ops are leftist because the structure is all about spreading out the ownership of the organization among the workers. Perhaps the most relevant is an HOA, is owned by the residents of the community, who elect representatives to make decisions for the whole. A lot of right-wing people develop and live in areas with an HOA as evidenced by the way suburbs tend to vote. So I agree with the premise, I just disagree that it applies to FOSS.
I have no problem using leftist or right-wing structures, neither is a particularly dirty word, provided it's not a top-down structure. I reject authoritarianism, and I don't particularly care about which economic systems are used to solve problems (e.g. I think georgism has a lot of value for real property, socialism is great for certain types of orgs, and capitalism should be the way our markets work in general). FOSS doesn't really fall on that spectrum for me, it's just a way to structure a contract between individuals for mutual gain.
But it is. FOSS is free and open source software, not Capitalist owned IP. Simple as.
Capitalism is many things, but primarily is rent-seeking off of owning Capital. I used the term property instead of Capital because we are talking about IP, but it's nearly interchangeable.
You can't support Capitalism without being a statist. Capitalism requires a monopoly on violence to exist.
The fact that Capitalism ruined Reddit yet that could have been avoided does not mean it isn't the fault of Capitalism. That's like saying someone shooting someone else to desth isn't their fault, because the gun could have misfired.
Again, I really think you're misunderstanding FOSS as a concept being different from FOSS as used by people.
That's just not true. Capitalism is what happens when there is no force. Human nature is such that society would probably devolve into despotic states, but the economic system would likely still be capitalist.
Government prevents degrading into anarchy, and is a useful tool to prevent the worst of the bad outcomes (e.g. slavery, murder, etc).
You'll even see capitalism existing within authoritarian situations, like prison, dictatorships, etc. It's the default economic system people reach for.
But it does. Capitalism didn't cause /u/spez to choose ads over a subscription model, that was his free choice. There are multiple viable profit models, and he chose one that I didn't like.
Don't blame the economic system, blame the CEO.
And I think you're putting politics where it doesn't belong.
FOSS isn't inherently socialist, just like a tractor isn't. It's a tool, and it can be used to socialist and capitalist ends.
For example, the AGPL is frequently used to prevent competitors from effectively using a service, while also getting free contributions from the community. Those orgs often require signing over copyright for any contributions as well, so the work becomes the property of the company. At all points, the corporation has sole ownership of the source code. So who owns the "means of production" in this case? The corporation.
On the flipside, you have projects like Linux where contributors retain their own copyright and the software is essentially communally owned. So who owns the "means of production" in this case? The community as a whole.
It's not the license that's socialist, but the project management. FOSS is merely a grant to use, modify, and redistribute changes to a work owned by someone else. It's not a grant to share in ownership, otherwise you wouldn't have the limitations specified in the license.
Oh, you're genuinely one of those people.
No, Capitalism isn't what happens when there's no force, that's absurd. Capitalism requires a divide between Workers and Owners, which itself is forced hierarchy, and is upheld by a state. Government can be useful, yes, but Capitalism as an economic system is built on force.
You're also twisting the quote around its original meaning, "don't hate the player, hate the game," when it would've been more accurate to keep it as is. "Don't hate spez, hate Capitalism," as Capitalism is what created the conditions and incentives for spez to make money via making Reddit shit.
FOSS is a tool with expressed non-ownership and a rejection of taking profit. If a hammer was free for everyone to use and anyone could clone it, that would be a leftist hammer too.
You're trying really hard here, but given that you somehow think Capitalism is when you don't have force means you really do need to go back to the drawing board.
I am amazed by your patience with this obvious troll.
How is that NOT rejecting ownership (in this context meaning private property)? Public ownership is by definition leftist.
A grant of rights is not ownership. If you own something, you can do whatever you want with it. If you're granted rights to something, you are limited by the terms of the agreement.
For example, with the GPL, you are not allowed to use any (substantial) portion of the work in a propriety product. However, if you're the author of that portion, you can.
Common ownership means everyone has the same rights related to the software. And that's just not true for FOSS, though it can effectively be true for certain projects, provided there are enough authors. Linux is effectively commonly owned because getting every author to reassign ownership is infeasible, whereas that's exactly not the case with MongoDB, where you sign over all copyright interest, so they completely own the work.
FOSS doesn't require shared ownership, only shared rights, so it's not socialist.
I am sorry for you.
Short answer is a person's class, and the class they serve, is the single most important factor for the amount of power an individual is capable of gaining in society. Class in this context is how you get the money you need to live. The owning class get that money by owning businesses, land, buildings, or intellectual property. The working class gets it by working.
Because the principle struggle is the class struggle between the working class and the owning classes, all other strugles are either secondary, incidental, or made up in order to distract us from the principle strugle, or a combination of the above. Once one learns this, the world starts to lock into a better prospective and we can start working to our ultimate goal, making a stew from the Rich
I've heard this from syndicalists so many times as an excuse for disinvesting from any other contemporary struggle. They end up alienating everyone who cares for more than one issue.
First, I am not a syndicalist, I know that is not important but I feel I should mention it, because as the meme goes, there is no one a leftist hates more than a sligtly difrent leftist.
I also never said "do not care about other issues" or "other strugles do not exist" I would also be wrong to say to disinvest from the suffering from others, however it is important to remember that 1) the primary struggle is that of class, and second most of those secondary and tertiary struggles, atleast under the status quo, can be traced back to the primary struggle, and that we cannot get a true and proper fix for them, or atleast it is significatly harder to do, if we do not work on fixing the primary struggle