Privileged is too generic of a word that does not accurately describe the cohorts. There is the capital class. Occupy was after the Capital class but im not sure if they accurately zeroed in on that. Its been too long since then.
Engineers were never part of that class. They work for a living while capital owns assets that work for them.
Engineers were part of the "Intellectual Elite" class that made good money but were super socially progressive. (Think putting BLM signs in their yards while at the same time pricing out the people they claim to help).
They ended up becoming a lot of the Elizabeth Warren cohort after being the Hillary and Obama cohorts(before it fractured into part Bernie part MAGA with the rest going to Hillary).
Extremely socially progressive but don't you dare touch economics.
Having talked to Occupy Wall Street people at the time I don't think many on the ground differentiated as much as you think they did. I used a generic word because from my experience that is how they saw the world. I got told I deserved to have everything I own set on fire for saying I spent $100 on a nice dinner once. That was on the more extreme side but the sentiment seemed to not differentiate.
You missed what I said in my first paragraph. Occupy was after the capital class but they did not express it well. Looking back, a common criticism was that the movement was leaderless and thus unorganized. It was the early days of a new generation (Millennials) getting a first taste of the coming disaster their lives were going to be.
The last time there was really a movement like that was the 1999 WTO protests...more than a decade separated from Occupy and it being a pivotal moment for Gen X to realize the same lessons millennials learned in Occupy.
Since Occupy, a movement consisting of many of the same people who were disorganized in 2011 started to learn the ropes and become organized, first in the realignment of Labor (SEIU starting a "Fight for 15$" in 2012/2013), then the emergence of BLM in 2013(Yes they started back in 2013) as a result of death of Eric Garner and the Ferguson rallies among other events, to finally Sanders running in 2015 and the emergence of a semi organized movement combining various progressives groups (economic & social progressives).
This led to the whole saga in 2016 which there is plenty of youtube documentaries about to the wave election in 2018 (of which there is an amazing netflix movie about) to the showdown in 2020 between Bernie and Biden, to winding up wandering the political woods for years after Biden managed to hold on to now finally electing Mamdani as a Democratic Socialist in the largest city and the financial capital where Occupy started. From 2011 starting as a completely unorganized group to running the finance capital of America in just 15 years. Amazing!
White washing history doesn't change the reality of what the people actually making up the movement wanted. Not what the self-elected spokespeople who had no actual power since there were no leaders said to make it all sound less threatening.
> From 2011 starting as a completely unorganized group to running the finance capital of America in just 15 years.
Always interesting how both the left and right forget democracy and checks and balanced and just assume the executive branch is a dictator when it's their wannabe dictator in power. :)
I don't even know what argument you are even trying to make anymore. Occupy had demands, they were not clear. I explained one reason why.
>Always interesting how both the left and right forget democracy and checks and balanced and just assume the executive branch is a dictator when it's their wannabe dictator in power. :)
Where did I assume that? Mamdani was elected with an amazing margin bringing out people who had given up on voting and many who had never felt to vote before. Essentially he began his term with a strong mandate. This is while everyone clearly knew he was a Democratic Socialist. He didn't become a dictator, the actual overton window of what is considered mainstream has shifted in just 15 years. Thats whats extraordinary.
They are closer but they are not part of the class so does it really matter how close they are? Engineer still has to trade their time for wealth in the form of work. Capital class has assets that work for them.
To me the only question is if there's a hypothetical revolution who will end up swinging in the wind by their neck and I have no doubt many engineers working for big tech would have been in that group. There's always nice rhetoric and focused rhetoric to not make too many enemies but the people on the ground differentiate a lot less and have in every revolution.
By the time there is a revolution, i'd imagine that most engineers will have fallen to the working classes where they are technically a part of.
Again, they are not part of the capital class. They were lucky to come across a special moment in time where there was a paradigm shift bringing with it enormous wealth and the capital class did not part with some of their wealth out of charity but out of greed because they realized that in order to capture this new found fountain of wealth they needed engineers...at least for the time being.
This allowed one generation (maybe two) to live a dignified solid upper middle class life but since the beginning there has always been a push to eliminate them.
Things such as low/no code, "learn to code", bootcamps, and now AI are attempts to destroy this avenue for people to rise above anything more than just worker class.
> By the time there is a revolution, i'd imagine that most engineers will have fallen to the working classes where they are technically a part of.
"Working class" isn't an adjective+noun that refers to anyone who works, it's a compound noun that specifically refers to physical labor. Knowledge workers of any sort are not part of it, despite both using the word "work".
"The working class is a group of people in a social hierarchy, typically defined by earning wages or salaries through their ability to work. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most common definitions of "working class" in use in the United States limit its membership to workers who hold blue-collar and pink-collar jobs, or whose income is insufficiently high to place them in the middle class, or both. However, socialists define "working class" to include all workers who fall into the category of requiring income from wage labour to subsist; thus, this definition can include almost all of the working population of industrialized economies."
Since I am referring to a hypothetical in the future, let me be more clear: I believe software developers will be relegated to blue collar or worse roles given enough time because it is in the interest of the capital class to find a way to make this happen. I gave examples in my prior comment.
Well on a positive note, it may eventually lead to a union or works council for technologists. Will coders be a part of that or will that skill set go the way of carpenter? Remains to be seen. But there is still other roles in tech that could take the place of coders (infrastructure, security etc.).
Also remains to be seen how long this process will take. Could take a decade or two but hopefully it will happen. Its just so nice to see little wins like a Democratic Socialist like Mamdani getting elected in the finance capital of America. It shows that people are slowly chipping away at the capital class and sooner or later they will have to throw us some breadcrumbs.
>Well on a positive note, it may eventually lead to a union or works council for technologists.
Good luck fighting offshoring.
> It shows that people are slowly chipping away at the capital class and sooner or later they will have to throw us some breadcrumbs.
That means nothing.
I'd be surprised if he can implement 10% of what he promised in his campaign or if he's just gonna be another plant of the capital class that promises impossible things but then ends up doing nothing when the finances hit the road.
I always wondered why they don't try tariffs on this? American companies that produce overseas get tariffed regardless of origin. It changes incentives and forces production closer to areas of consumption. I suspect we are going to get there eventually, leadership needs to become more left progressive like Mamdani.
>That means nothing. I'd be surprised if he can implement 10% of what he promised in his campaign or if he's just gonna be another plant of the capital class that promises impossible things but then ends up doing nothing when the finances hit the road.
His ideas were not that radical. The fast and free busses came on the heel of a successful pilot they did with one line in each borough so its not like they are starting from scratch. They have an existing model and data from that trial to build on top of.
The grocery stores consist of one store in each borough. That is not an impossible task and it does not risk really affecting bodegas since the majority of income from most bodegas are lotto tickets and cigarettes/vapes.
Universal child care...well that have already passed this in his first week.
> that have already passed this in his first week.
It's always easy to pass laws to give people free stuff and it works well initially ... until you run out of money of course. That's how Venezuelan leadership also got popular. Who doesn't want more free stuff? It's how elections are won is most of Eastern/Southern Europe too. Until the bill is due and the next generation has to pay.
I do agree that the bill has to be paid. I don't what we are going to do with the trillions of dollars of debt as a result of tax cuts for the rich, handouts to countries like Israel and so much more that does not directly help regular people. The US has been a piggybank for all the world to just loot and take advantage of. Given that this is the environment we are in, I am all for providing these breadcrumbs that Mamdani is proposing to regular people.
Sooner or later there will be a reckoning with all the money that has been stolen by the upper class. Without these small programs, that help people that reckoning will come faster but it will come either way.
Except the new perks of New Yorkers voted for, will not come from the pockets of the super wealthy elite, but from debt and taxes paid by working class new yorkers themselves. Mandani won't tax the super wealthy more to pay for it.
Mamdani plans to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers less than they spent on propaganda to try and defeat him but him not taxing the super wealthy at all is not true.
I vaguely remember reading something recently, probably by Branko Milanović, about how there is a class of workers in the tech sector who earn so much money that they are gradually starting to become capitalists. When you have so much money left over that you can start putting your capital to work for you, you cross that very line. I don't mean a home savings plan or ETFs or anything like that, but if you have seven figures and can skim off returns that you could live well on, then you're definitely no longer working class.
i disagree. i also disagree that most people developing tech solutions for startups are engineers or are applying an engineering discipline. but i would agree that the majority of people in valley tech firms are closer to the rentier class than they are to working engineers.
