by komali2 | 2026-02-15 02:34:16+00:00
> you're entirely held hostage by the 51%

Yes, we live in society. You're correct, society has in many ways enslaved you, mostly in ways you aren't aware.

The language you speak, the values you hold, the way you see the world and the people in it, your bone density coming out of childhood, your literacy rate, your vaccination schedule, your perception of normalcy, and so much more, were determined for you when you were born.

Some of these things you can adjust after the fact - learn new languages, adjust your values, learn to read, but you'll then forever be the "native xyz speaker that learned abc," or, "former Christian, now Zoroastrianist" or whatever. You can't really ever leave behind the impact a society had on you.

Everything is deeply interconnected. So this idea that 51% of people are holding you hostage but somehow if you can change jobs then the corporate world is different is fallacious. First, that same 51% must also have determined the legal business environment you're operating in, right? Second, you're enslaved to a much smaller proportion, 1%, the capital holders who hold the majority of the power in a neoliberal democracy through lobbying. They're the reason it's getting more and more difficult for you to engage in collective bargaining with your colleagues, a far more effective strategy to change how much profit is skimmed off your labor than changing jobs.

You think you're enslaved to the 51%? What about your "market rate?" They call it a "labor market," after all, so changing jobs just means getting paid roughly the same amount by someone else, which means the same profit margin being extracted. Unless you think a 10% raise is a meaningful impact when the value extracted from your labor could be as high as 500% or higher, depending on industry and profession?

Just because companies don't collude in writing doesn't mean they aren't colluding when it comes to the topic of our discussion. All are competing to extract more value from your labor, not to try to win you to their side so as to get the happiest workers (barring extreme outliers such as Valve). They don't call it a "race to the bottom" for nothing. The profit motive is a shared fundamental value of all these companies, job hunt all you want, it's the same as changing churches but not the religion, in the end the result will be mostly the same. Works even better as a metaphor if you're Catholic, since in the end the collection tray money always goes to the same place in Italy regardless of the church you attend.

Furthermore, if you're a chemical engineer working in oil and gas, the margin on the profit of your labor is always spent on the same lobbyists who influence your government to let the same 5 companies devastate your natural environment for their profit. The CEO and board is made up of the former or current executive team of other oil and gas companies. If you're a software engineer, that margin is used to get a return on investment for the same 20 something investment firms and accelerators kicking startups back and forth between them.

Now, for petitioning: see if you can convince Bain to stop putting the pressure on your boss to seek hockey stick growth, instead targeting a sustainable gentle linear that'll pay off their investment a few years later, just not 1000x. See if you can even get the phone number of someone there from your boss. Try to convince your boss. Or quit and go work for some other company - see if you can find one Bain hasn't invested in, or a drop in replacement for same with the exact same goals.

If you dislike the way the government is working, you have many options beyond leaving: you can walk into the office of your congressperson, or make a phone call, or attend a town hall meeting (for various levels of government). You can, as mentioned, vote. If you feel held hostage by 51%, you can go try to convince other people on the other side to your way of thinking - much easier than convincing your boss, in my personal experience! You're not even held hostage by 51% anyway, more like 30%, so really you can be more effective by convincing people who already agree with you to actually get out and vote; this is what canvassers do, not try to convince opposition to vote for their candidate, but rather to convince amicable voters to make it to the polls, and help them plan how to do so.

Tax is an easy enemy to pick because you see a number on your tax statement at the end of the year of exactly how much money you gave to the government that year. If you want, you can easily then download a pdf of the budget and see how they spent it. That's the most transparent visibility you'll ever see for a dollar that leaves your pocket - you'll see who collected it, who determined how much should be collected, how it was divided to be spent on exactly what, who divided it that way, and when it gets spent, exactly to whom it finally ended up, and usually how they spent it (such as a construction company for a public works project having strict reporting requirements), and who decided to choose that person too!

Your boss gives you a paycheck and if you're lucky might tell you a little something of the company finances - startups are an outlier here, most people get 0 visibility or insight. If the company is public, you get a little more insight, but no more than anyone else, and it's not as transparent as how your taxes are spent.

Something tells me that if at the end of the year everyone got a form from their employers demonstrating the dollar value extracted from their labor, minus their salary, people wouldn't blink an eye at taxes.