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Occupy Wall Street (wikipedia.org)
25 points by vinnyglennon 9 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments



Or as I like to call it, the reason identity politics got so heavily astroturfed in the 2010s


Truth. Splitting labor by race, sex, and whatever other box you can draw.

A trick as American as apple pie and, well, hiring weirdos to screw with unions.

Something fun to think about: the explosion in preposterously complicated documentation systems mirrors the degradation of union representation in skilled trades[0]. That's when capital should maybe stop and think about what, exactly, a union really is: bolshevik, or guild?

If a union cost you fifty million dollars, but your new slam bang doc system is costing you three hundred million, by itself, and your production times are 10x worse[1], it might be time to go back and re-examine your assumptions about the world. Because - surprise! - it's not bolshevism, it's f#&$ing compliance*.

[0] You're going to be tempted to say computing is sole cause here, but that's not quite correct. Scientific Management tried to do the same thing for US shipyards in the later 1890s, but it largely failed, because papered (skilled) labor knew what it was doing.

[1] Not to mention there's some things - complex welds, to take one example - that you are literally incapable of doing anymore.


The CEO of the union doesn't give your kid a cushy job though, the document system vendor can and probably lives in your neighbourhood.


You think the Union boss can’t get your kid a job if it greases the wheels for something greater?

This is the first time I’ve seen someone accuse unions of not being corrupt enough.




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