> Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
— Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
You are correct. OP is ridiculously short on both common sense and a healthy sense of perspective. The fact is, simply, that while the poor actually work more hours, they're just not compensated commensurate with their labors.
That's not what evidence shows. Surely you must realise that actual evidence is worth more than "common sense" and "healthy sense of perspective"? You just made up some assumption with nothing to back it up.
I did, and I found out for example that TV consumption is much higher in low income deciles compared with high income deciles. The claim that they do not have free 30 minutes a day is impossible to defend. Also under-compensation is completely tangent to this discussion, I don't know why would you bring it up. Do you think I'm talking that it's great to be poor? Because I'm not saying that.
Imagine two kids get the weekend off from school. One kid gets money to order pizza, ride a fast taxi to the movies, and pay someone else to clean their room. They get to spend the whole weekend just playing and having fun. The other kid has no extra money. They have to spend their weekend cleaning the house, cooking meals from scratch, walking a long way just to get anywhere, and babysitting their little sibling.
On a piece of paper, both kids had the exact same amount of "free time" away from school. But in real life, the second kid was actually working the whole time.
Wealthy people can buy back their time by paying for things like daycare, grocery delivery, takeout, and house cleaning. People with less money can't afford to buy these shortcuts, so they have to do all this unpaid work themselves. This eats up their free hours.
Jobs that pay less often change workers' schedules at the last minute, so they can never plan their days or get enough sleep. They also might have to ride slow public buses for a long time to get to work. This means their free time is broken into stressful little pieces, like waiting at a bus stop or waiting for an unexpected shift to start.
Even when they do get an hour to sit down, they are usually very stressed about paying bills. When your brain is constantly worrying about survival, taking a break doesn't feel relaxing, and can even make you feel more anxious.
So, while wealthy people might officially work more hours at their jobs, the money they make lets them buy real, relaxing rest. People with less money might have fewer official job hours, but their "free time" is entirely stolen by unpaid chores, unpredictable schedules, and the stressful work of just trying to survive.
The long and short of it is that poor people work longer hours; they simply receive less formal recognition for it.
Your attempts to hide these facts and paint poverty as enviable in this dimension are disgustingly inhumane.
> Your attempts to hide these facts and paint poverty as enviable in this dimension are disgustingly inhumane.
The report I'm citing is using residuals after paid work, unpaid work and personal care. I suggest you should actually look at evidence instead of using some made up stories. Do poor people like one in your scenario exist? Of course. Are they large group? There's absolutely no reason to believe that (unless your world view depends on that) because evidence shows something completely opposite.
It's surprising how gullible people here are - how can you actually believe that poor people do not have free 30 minutes a day? Please look at stats of time watching TV/day vs income. And if you want to have ACTUAL discussion I suggest you should focus on facts, not inventing tearjerker stories.
Your belief that "power structures can't be fixed" perfectly illustrates what educator Paulo Freire described as the oppressed having a "diffuse, magical belief in the invulnerability and power of the oppressor". Anthropologist David Graeber noted that modern capitalism has constructed a vast bureaucratic apparatus "designed, first and foremost, to destroy any sense of possible alternative futures" and to ensure that challenging existing power arrangements seems like an "idle fantasy". The idea that the platform holder holds all the cards is an ideological tool used to encourage passivity and convince you that your only option is to submit.
As James C. Scott demonstrates in his analysis of authoritarian systems, any formally organized, rigidly planned system is ultimately parasitic on the informal, unscripted practices (which he calls mētis) of the people within it. A closed system cannot survive on its own rigid rules; it requires the constant, active cooperation and practical know-how of its subjects to function.
Gene Sharp's foundational theory of power echoes this: no regime, corporation, or totalitarian system possesses inherent power. Their power derives entirely from the cooperation, obedience, and skills of the people they govern or employ. If blue-collar technologists, developers, and users collectively withdraw their skills, labor, and cooperation, even the most monolithic tech empire can be paralyzed. The power of the OEM is not absolute; it is entirely contingent on your continued participation.
You point to the GNU/FOSS movements as successful because they ignore corporate nemesis-building and instead focus their volunteer hours on creating "something wonderful."
In the study of nonviolent struggle, building alternative social institutions and alternative communication systems are indeed recognized and highly effective methods of intervention. Furthermore, creating "commons" (like open-source software) is crucial because it provides a practical model for a non-commercial way of life.
However, building alternative commons is not a substitute for directly challenging power. As Silvia Federici argues, creating commons must be seen as a complement to the struggle against capital, not an alternative to it. If you only build wonderful alternatives without contesting the power of private capital, your creations remain vulnerable to being enclosed, commodified, or crushed by the very monopolies you are trying to ignore.
Ignoring the oppressor does not make them disappear. If technologists want to reclaim power, the first step is to reject the neoliberal fatalism that views the current corporate dominance as an unchangeable law of nature. Power concedes nothing without a demand, and the limits of tech monopolies are prescribed entirely by the endurance of the people who build and use them.
Oppressors are not a monoculture. Sometimes they are extremely entrenched, sometimes they are fragile like a teacup. Sometimes they seek decelerationist and traditionalist narratives, while others seek accelerationist and neoliberal ideals. Outlining "oppression" as a dialectical certainty is why revolutionary politics die in the cradle while capitalism has Billions Served written under the sign. Reality is convoluted, and politics are not a computer that transist from "populist" to "authoritarian" depending on the program you run. Plenty of revolutionary history has taught us that.
Framing Apple, Google or Microsoft in this manner is counterproductive and does not produce any serious roadmap to undermine their behavior. The will to change has to come from the top, or else it will never be conclusively realized or codified. Change has to be genuine and desirable, or else someone else will come along to copy FAANG and take their place. This is why regulation provoked such a strong anti-intervention sentiment from businesses; it works. A USB-C iPhone was inevitable, but only once you changed incentive to punish lock-in.
On oppression's flip side, one could argue that the continued success of businesses like IBM provides precedent for private capital to aid and abet mass atrocities without ever facing real punishment. Internal revolution has never produced results in these circumstances, and I don't think it ever will. You can't rely on mushy-gushy feelings to make people do what's right, you have to lay down the law in black-and-white.
Capitalist realism is the most mushy gushy, vibes-based ideological cowardice at large, today.
Sure, oppressive power structures are not a static monolith, and they constantly morph and reinvent themselves to survive. However, the conclusion that change must therefore come strictly from the "top" via "black-and-white" regulation (or that that bottom-up revolution relies on "mushy-gushy feelings"!!) misses how both state regulation and nonviolent resistance actually function in reality.
While top-down regulation (like the EU mandating USB-C) can force specific consumer changes, relying on the "top" to conclusively lay down the law ignores the reality of regulatory capture. The state is not a neutral, objective arbiter; it is heavily influenced by the very private capital you wish to regulate.
Or is regulatory capture just a mushy gushy delusion?
If you rely exclusively on top-down regulations to protect humanity's best interests, you are relying on a legal apparatus that is constantly being bought, rewritten, and defanged by the very entities it is supposed to regulate.
Again, you correctly point out that if FAANG falls, someone else will just copy them and take their place. Sociologist Beverly Silver describes this exact dynamic as the core survival mechanism of capitalism. When corporations face intense pressure, regulation, or labor unrest, they do not simply accept defeat; they implement fixes. They relocate to regions with cheaper labor and fewer regulations (as previously discussed in this thread), and they automate or restructure the workplace to disempower workers.
Furthermore, they abandon heavily regulated or highly competitive industries altogether and move their capital into entirely new, unregulated product lines (like moving from manufacturing to tech and finance). This endless shell game guarantees that playing "whack-a-mole" with individual companies via regulation will never conclusively end exploitative behavior. Capital will simply shift to a new product cycle or a new geography to escape the new laws.
On the other hand, nonviolent struggle relies on coercion. It does not rely on converting the opponent or appealing to their morality—in fact, conversion is the rarest mechanism of success as you may already surmise.
Political power requires constant, active cooperation: it needs human resources, skills, knowledge, and administrative compliance to function. By systematically withdrawing labor, obedience, and technical skills, the working class does not appeal to a CEO's conscience; it cuts off the very sources of the ruler's power, paralyzing the system. To nonviolently coerce an opponent means to create a situation where, despite their resolution not to give in, they are physically and economically unable to defend their policies because the system can no longer operate.
> They relocate to regions with cheaper labor and fewer regulations [...] and they automate or restructure the workplace to disempower workers.
That's a total, unqualified victory. If your regulation is intended to stop people exploiting your customers or labor base, the best possible outcome is that exploitative fuckbags pack up their stuff and leave. This is what we're seeing in California, where every single Fortune 500 company is writing about how awful their taxes are, without acknowledging the damage that private capital did.
Regulatory capture is always going to be a matter of perspective, but that doesn't stop me from advocating for it. This is a zero-sum argument and you wouldn't need to reach for it if revolution was a successful premise.
> Capital will simply shift to a new product cycle or a new geography to escape the new laws.
It's a free country, let them. Someone has to water-test reality, and I'm fine letting private capital waste money on terrible ideas that they can be fined for in the long run. I don't weep for the world we might live in if Microsoft was allowed to bully Netscape and Java. They made the terrible idea, and they earn their just desert.
> By systematically withdrawing labor, obedience, and technical skills, [...] it cuts off the very sources of the ruler's power, paralyzing the system.
You haven't cited a single instance of this working. I have cited four distinct counterexamples, now.
I'm glad that you're engaging with theory, but it's not my job to simulate the myriad reasons why this hasn't worked. We have 30 years of postmodern software capitalism to examine, and at the end it says "Palantir" in extra-bold typeface. Conscientious objection didn't seem to do much in WWII, didn't change after the Snowden revalations, and today we are deeper-entrenched in anti-human software than ever.
Appealing to workers isn't enough. You have to convince the top, and revolution is how you hand them consent to exercise their monopoly on violence.
The fatalistic view that "platform holders have all the cards" and that "programming as a skill has a future valuation that's heading to zero" is a common psychological barrier in labor struggles. Oppressed or subordinate groups often suffer from a "diffuse, magical belief in the invulnerability and power of the oppressor"[0].
However, theories of political and social power argue the exact opposite: the power of any ruling class or corporation is actually quite fragile because it depends entirely on the cooperation, obedience, and skills of its subordinates. If highly skilled individuals like blue-collar technologists and programmers collectively withdraw our human resources, skills, and knowledge, we can severely disrupt or paralyze the systems that enrich the platform holders.
> If highly skilled individuals like blue-collar technologists and programmers collectively withdraw our human resources
Individuals cannot convince the Subway app, Raycast or LastPass to defect from Apple or Google's platforms. Using those platforms is an executive decision, and Senior iOS/Android engineers will not voice this minority concern or risk their job to advocate for it. Similarly, Apple and Google's platform monopolies are not designed by individual engineers, but executives that will happily pay to replace you if you feel morally unjust.
The only place where this could work is indie development, since that's the scale where developers have authority to sabotage themselves. And sabotage themselves they would - it would be like Fortnite's removal from the App Store except with ~100,000 times less public outcry. You'd go bankrupt before ever inspiring change on the platform.
Nothing about the technology changed, indie developers have long warned users to not give their OEM control over what they can install. But users don't really care, businesses told them the App Store is "safer" before they ever got to see the alternative.
It doesn't make sense to talk about poverty in the US without talking about race (or, ok, for you libertarians in the audience: "geography"). It certainly doesn't make sense to average the economic standing of a population split between imperial core and colonized enclaves.
Claiming that Talmudic adulthood begins simply "after age 20" completely misses the profound philosophical depth of the Jewish tradition!
Judaism is fundamentally, as Levinas puts it a "religion of adults". It has nothing to do with biological age, but is instead a state where one rejects the immature desire to endlessly test the waters, keep a safe distance, and leave your options open without ever making a definitive choice.
Adulthood, in the Jewish perspective (according to me ;)), is a commitment to receiving the Law directly as an ethical obligation to "the other" without fully understanding what that means. It's a commitment to becoming "hostage" to the other, taking on an infinite, non-negotiable burden to answer for circumstances and suffering you did not even cause.
In every generation, the mountain of desolation hangs over us like an asteroid, and in every generation we must make the adult effort to accept the Law and commit unconditionally to the Good.
Or something like that. At any rate, it's not simply "starting after age 20."
reply