[booleandilemma]

It's whether you have hire/fire powers and you make money off of other people's labour

I think creating a hierarchy of managers and workers is just another tool that the people with power use to control everyone else.

Surely my direct manager has more in common with me than the CEO? Am I wrong to think this? Wouldn't the CEO see both managers and their teams as mere workers?

[digdugdirk]

100% correct. That was the gist of my original point. In Corporate America, unless you're in the C-suite or sitting on the board, you're not in the club. The corporate ladder makes it seem as though the middle management levels are on the path to being upper class, but they're in the same position as everyone else. They just drive a nicer car while doing so.

[tormeh]

Technically CEOs are also working class, since they mostly live off of their salary. A lot of this is voluntary, since with a bit less spending I'd imagine most BigCo CEOs could easily cope on capital income from the investments their salaries have afforded them. I wonder how that affects their classification...

[RecycledEle]

I see the divide as being between those of us who created wealth by working vs. those who do not create wealth and instead play zero sum and negative sum games.

[AnthonyMouse]

That's something else entirely.

You could have someone who is solidly in the investment class and only works three hours a year, but during those three hours they tell their pet executives to put the capital into energy storage tech and new housing construction and do a lot of good in the world.

You could have a low-level white collar worker who isn't making very much money at all, all of it in wages, who decides to screw over the company's customers with something economically inefficient because it gives them some advantage in internal corporate politics.

[lmm]

> You could have someone who is solidly in the investment class and only works three hours a year, but during those three hours they tell their pet executives to put the capital into energy storage tech and new housing construction and do a lot of good in the world.

If they're making skilled capital-allocation decisions that most people couldn't, that's work. If they're being charitable in the allocation of their ill-gotten gains, that doesn't make them any less ill-gotten.

Rentiers inherently make their money in a zero-sum way; it's perhaps not the only way to be zero-sum, but it is a major one.

[AnthonyMouse]

> If they're making skilled capital-allocation decisions that most people couldn't, that's work. If they're being charitable in the allocation of their ill-gotten gains, that doesn't make them any less ill-gotten.

Why do they have to be ill-gotten gains? Someone could invest money they've earned through productive work.

And could invest it in something charitably while still making money, e.g. you have the option to make 10% doing something anti-social or 5% doing something socially beneficial and you consciously choose the latter knowing you could make more by being less charitable.

> Rentiers inherently make their money in a zero-sum way; it's perhaps not the only way to be zero-sum, but it is a major one.

Do they? Suppose you have some money and you put it in some investment fund and then live off the earnings while having no real involvement with how the fund is managed. Meanwhile the businesses you invested in are off doing productive net-positive things with your money that wouldn't have been possible had you stuffed it in your mattress, while yielding you a positive return which is nonetheless smaller than the total amount of net good created by the business.

The best you can say is that the returns are zero-sum, even if the act of investing is positive sum. But isn't that true of anything? If you get a raise, that's zero sum. Someone else would have had the money in the alternative.

[lmm]

> Why do they have to be ill-gotten gains? Someone could invest money they've earned through productive work.

Because your hypothetical was specifically about someone who doesn't do productive work?

> Suppose you have some money and you put it in some investment fund and then live off the earnings while having no real involvement with how the fund is managed. Meanwhile the businesses you invested in are off doing productive net-positive things with your money that wouldn't have been possible had you stuffed it in your mattress, while yielding you a positive return which is nonetheless smaller than the total amount of net good created by the business.

You're begging the question - why was it your money in the first place?

If it's value you've produced, yes you can partner with someone else to compound it. But if it's just privilege that you had, then you don't get any credit for allowing it to be used productively.

> The best you can say is that the returns are zero-sum, even if the act of investing is positive sum. But isn't that true of anything? If you get a raise, that's zero sum. Someone else would have had the money in the alternative.

If you do something that produces real value in the world then that's positive sum - if you turn some planks and nails into a table, that table is more valuable than the stuff that went into it, the world is better off.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Because your hypothetical was specifically about someone who doesn't do productive work?

That's anybody who has enough money that they don't have to work. It doesn't tell you anything about where they got it.

> You're begging the question - why was it your money in the first place?

What if you found it in the street? Would that affect whether or not the business you invest it in produces a net positive as a result?

> But if it's just privilege that you had, then you don't get any credit for allowing it to be used productively.

That doesn't seem right. You could have spent it on drugs and sex. Your choices matter.

> If you do something that produces real value in the world then that's positive sum - if you turn some planks and nails into a table, that table is more valuable than the stuff that went into it, the world is better off.

Suppose the planks are the status quo. You're getting paid $10/hour to make tables. Now you get a raise and get paid $12/hour to make tables, but you still only make exactly the same number of exactly the same tables as you did for $10/hour. The extra $2/hour is zero sum, isn't it? Why should you get it instead of the boss or the customer?