[win311fwg]

That NeoLiberal shift did not take place in a vacuum. It was a product of the world around it. It absolutely was caused by tech.

If we — those with the power to build the productivity creators — took a stand and said "we refuse to create tech for the interests of the few" it would have never happened. But, instead, we welcomed it and are responsible for it.

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The corollary of “if we took a stand” is that Capital took a stand and collectively undid a lot of the gains of the post-WWII social democratic order.

So no. It wasn’t caused by tech beyond the uninteresting factors like modern society being complex and, of course, that tech developments influence things (pretty much all things).

[win311fwg]

The productivity gains we've seen above the capacity of human productivity would have been impossible without tech. It absolutely was caused by tech.

The benefactor of those gains was also entirely decided by those who created the tech. We could have given use of that tech to everyone. In some cases we actually did (e.g. open source), but in most cases we gained (at least partial) ownership of the capital so it was in our best personal economic interest to keep it for ourselves and our close friends.

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> The productivity gains we've seen above the capacity of human productivity would have been impossible without tech. It absolutely was caused by tech.

Would have been impossible without and being caused by are different things.

The sense of being “caused by” in a political context are the people who have the power to direct things. Which are not necessarily the people who implement something.

> The benefactor of those gains was also entirely decided by those who created the tech.

You assert that they were decided by. Based on what?

The vast majority of tech work was done in employment, either for some government or for private entities. The private entitites were controlled by Capital. The governments were controlled by democratic forces and Capital.

> We could have given use of that tech to everyone. In some cases we actually did (e.g. open source),

Again I reference the meme of Overworked Nebraska OSS Maintainer.

The impressive work done on OSS by tech workers directly have been done in their free time. The bulk of OSS work done by people as a living is probably through corporations like e.g. Intel working on the Linux Kernel.[1]

That impressive free time work has gotten the reputation as a treasure trove for the highly motivated and tech literate. In contrast to something that regular people can plug-and-play as an alternative to Big Tech dominance.

> , but in most cases we gained (at least partial) ownership of the capital so it was in our best personal economic interest to keep it for ourselves and our close friends.

Yes, well played. For those that got away with their financial-independence millions. For the rest, well, I guess they never managed to learn the moral lesson of Monopoly.

[1] Or am I wrong here? I could be off-base.

[win311fwg]

> in a political context

While you are right to recognize that there was some attempt to inject political context, it was not there originally, and is not the main discussion taking place. The fact that wages and productivity have become decoupled is not inherently political. It is but simple mathematics. Tech is the cause for the decoupling; it is why we have been able to become continually more productive and at an accelerating rate.

> The vast majority of tech work was done in employment

Yes, but generally even where employment is present tech workers also demand a share in ownership (e.g. stock). Tech doesn't invent itself. At least not yet. The workers have held the cards. Even those who haven't won the lottery are still in a pretty good economic position, relatively speaking.

[keybored]

> While you are right to recognize that there was some attempt to inject political context, it was not there originally, and is not the main discussion taking place.

I don’t care if anyone wants political context to be there or not. Political context is not some subjective choice that the participants in a discussion can choose to be the case or not, like some alternative history exercise.

This political context (i.e. reality) called NeoLiberalism is so well-researched and argued that I can just call it NeoLiberalism and even a forum full of techheads don’t bat an eye. Which is more than can be said for your incoherent nuh-uh where both:

- Technology just determines things by itself

- And (also) the rank and file peons who implement technology could have forced something better on the world (than the pile of shit that we have)