alt Hacker NewsIt's almost as if... laborers in every field (the proletariat) have to unionize as a class against the ownership class (the bourgeoisie), seize the means of production, and reorganize society to their own benefit because the bourgeoisie surely will not!
Replies
mghackerlady • yesterday at 5:52 PM
but that's communism, which is bad because the Department of Education said so while making us read fiction
➕ show 1 reply
I don't think "the means of production" hits the mark. Most of us programmers have the means of production: a 20-year-old laptop with a new battery is sufficient for most serious webdev and appdev work. What we lack is permission to labour. If I do what I think needs to be done, instead of what my employer tells me to do, then I don't get paid by my now-former employer (which is fair), and then I don't eat (less fair) or keep my house (truly baffling). This despite the fact that the work I would choose to do is much more valuable to society at large than most of the work I can get paid for.
I've seen this idea discussed by others, but I don't know any pithy slogans for it. (Unfortunately, it's the ideologies with the catchiest sound-bites which tend to dominate in the "marketplace of ideas".)
Gamedev is different, since even games from 20 years ago (e.g. Half-Life 2) require a higher-spec computer to develop than to target. The games you can make on a 20-year-old potato are limited: for those, I can see how the "means of production" idea might be more applicable.