by stego-tech | 2025-10-10 14:38:24+00:00
Like always, people are missing the forest for the trees here. A swathe of commenters ardently defending the present status quo by nitpicking specifics in an interview and denying or distracting from their core premise by throwing out lines from Econ101 or something they read about Keynesian economics or game theory somewhere that one time. Heck, a few folks in here are really going down the rabbit hole and contorting themselves into knots desperately trying to avoid listening to what others have to say about something, and instead do everything in their power to dismiss the (non-)problem as one of lack of knowledge, than actual concern.

Let's ignore the nitty-gritty for a moment. Let's let Keynes rest for a day instead of putting words in his mouth. Let's all agree that everyone here on HN in the comments is not a billionaire, nor a Capitalist in the strictest definition of the term. We are - broadly - technologists, of different backgrounds and lived experiences that shape our perspectives. We're people, damnit, not key-value pairs in a dataset somewhere.

A large group of people have, for over half a century now, been increasingly concerned that the economic structure simply isn't working for them. In the wealthiest countries on the planet, the workforce has faced stagnant wages, rising asset values, increased precarity of employment, steeper necessity costs (and higher difficulties attaining them without assistance), and bigger boom-bust cycles. This is easily vetted through basic data analysis, and something even HN has let slip through time and again to the front page (we do love our FRED charts here on HN, myself included). These are problems that even the most ardent pro-Capital supporter agrees exist in some form.

Except instead of listening to the plight of their fellow man, so many people - here, on news media, in politics, in economic circles, in boardrooms, in VCs - immediately resort to "econosplaining", for lack of a better term. Rather than listen to the plight of the worker who cannot afford rent on minimum wage, these people will bluster about Keynesian theory and how regulation destroys markets and how, you know what, you are at fault for not owning enough assets to provide for your basic necessities or, better yet, finding a better paying job! How dare you be so poor, when there's so much ample opportunity out there if you just pulled yourself up by your bootstraps! It's not the market's fault that housing is so expensive, that's just basic supply and demand and there's nothing we can - or should - do about it. It's not Capital's fault you got laid off, it's just that cheaper labor existed abroad and we should work harder to import that labor here at that cost. It's not the fault of the market for functioning in this fashion, it's yours for refusing to play by its rules and not being a billionaire business founder with extensive assets.

Which always seems to ignore the plight of their fellow man in that they're asking for help, not seeking to blame - at least, not until fairly recently. The working class simply sought fairer working conditions and a paycheck that reflected the value they contribute to the revenue and profit of the organization. They want affordable housing, nutritious food, high quality education, functioning transport, and above all else, time to live their life as a human, not merely a cog in a greater machine.

In the context of the linked interview, what workers are saying is exactly what AI companies admit to doing: the last vestiges of the middle class are being attacked from above by AI in an effort to funnel as much money as possible into fewer and fewer hands, on purpose. Doctors, Developers, Technologists (hi!), Lawyers, Accountants, these are all the last of the middle class in Western societies, all careers that pay substantially above the median wage and provide the only remaining venue for asset-poor labor who must trade time for money a pathway into the comparatively modest comforts of homeownership and the odd vacation. AI companies don't hide this at all - it's their core advertising point that their LLMs (or whatever came before, and whatever comes next) will finally rid the business of all this expensive labor and allow business owners to hoard capital for themselves and their shareholders - a group that definitely excludes the working class in its entirety, as evidenced by how 93% of US securities are held by just the top 10% of Americans. When workers point this out in any capacity, we're bombarded by game theorists and economists and Keynesian-stans claiming that this is all somehow a good thing, because niche and specific (and often ideological) reasons, and that all of this will ultimately make life better for us despite all the suffering and misery it causes now. We're econosplained that the economy actually is doing great, and that life has never been better with all these streaming services and smartphones and apps and things, even though the plight of the worker was never bemoaning the existence of those things, rather that their necessities aren't affordable or attainable anymore, and that is a more pressing issue.

Workers continue to desperately scream that our lives are getting worse in the metrics that matter to us, yet are brow-beaten downward by pro-Capitalists and their loyalists with victim-blaming narratives and a constant gesticulation to the stock market as evidence that everything is fine and there's no need to worry. This is what I see time and time again in the comments sections, at rallies, at debates, on television, in media, and it shouldn't be any surprise that the narrative has gradually shifted over time from "I think workers need a helping hand with common sense interventions by the government" to "BURN DOWN THE CAPITALIST EMPIRES THAT ENSLAVE AND TORTURE US FOR PROFIT." If you didn't want populism, then you needed to listen to the people before it became populism. It's not that anti-Capitalists wanted to fabricate some great big boogeyman conspiracy theory about billionaires burning the planet and killing workers for profit, but more that after fifty years of reforms in their (Capital's) favor, well, there's kind of a lot of anecdata propping up that theory. Workers are told housing values are a matter of undersupply and overdemand, yet we can see with our own eyes the empty, dark apartments and condos in cities being leveraged for investment assets rather than housing. Workers are told AI will create more jobs, yet all we see are continued layoffs by highly profitable companies invested into AI - often of the most highly-paid workers in society. Workers are lectured that we must own assets in order to have comfort and security, at the simultaneous peak height of asset valuations and lows of wages and purchasing power.

That's the forest you're missing for the AI- or Capital-specific trees. Rather than trotting out the same tired (and often incorrectly attributed) talking points about industrial revolutions and asset markets and anti-regulation and bootstrapped-startups, please consider listening to what people are actually saying first: that this isn't working for us anymore, for a variety of reasons, and the advice parroted back to us over the past half-century hasn't actually improved the lives of the majority in a measurable way on core metrics (necessities).

Stop taking personal offense at the grievances of your fellow man and listen to them earnestly.