alt Hacker NewsIt’s not limited to young people, unfortunately. About fifty years ago, executive leadership became far more visible in the public eye and combative with workers, all to juice share prices for their own compensation bumps. Conglomerates built on monstrous estates of interconnected business lines were gradually gutted and slashed to promote price bumps on shares, at the expense of profitable lines of business.
The net result is a (mostly) American business model predicated on Celebrity C-Suites doing highly visible things while those doing the hard work of creating value are shunted into offices and paid less compared to productivity gains over time. It shouldn’t be a surprise that social media and the internet have supercharged this, especially with groups like YC, Softbank, a16z, and other VCs splashing out Capital on flash over substance, exploitation over business fundamentals, “disruption” over societal benefit and symbiosis.
The net result is a growing schism of resentment by those who do the work towards those who get the credit, glory, and reward, versus those who bask in stardom and truly believe they can replace the perceived entitlement of labor wholesale with an instant gratification machine and somehow survive the resulting societal collapse such a device would bring about.
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> Those who control capital use their political and economic power to systematically enrich themselves at the expense of those who actually perform useful labor
Huh, I think I read a book about that once. I forget who wrote it. Carl something, I think?
> About fifty years ago
Many things changed around that specific time, and I think it does deserve scrutiny. Implied cultural factors seem to be merely correlates of greater historical tide, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Nixon_sho...
My take here is a monetarist.
>The net result is a growing schism of resentment by those who do the work towards those who get the credit, glory, and reward, versus those who bask in stardom and truly believe they can replace the perceived entitlement of labor wholesale with an instant gratification machine and somehow survive the resulting societal collapse such a device would bring about.
Naturally, unmentioned are those shut out of reasonable opportunities for meaningful productivity, regardless of technical potential (but largely in line with (lack of) social capital). A few years of this maybe encourages an entrepreneurial spirit. Two decades is quite convincing that there's no place for them in the current order.
The upwardly-mobile opportunity hoarders need to understand, much as the wealth hoarders ought to, that the whole thing falls apart without buy-in from the "losers".
Tang ping bai lan.
It's charitable to frame this as resentment towards capital who gets the "credit". I'm sure people would grumble about this regardless, but the real resentment stems from them systematically eroding our ability to afford housing, healthcare, and retirement.