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▲ paimapi an hour ago

Right. People don't understand the difference between labor and value. The job of a corporation is to extract as much surplus value from its workers as possible while making it as opaque as possible to individual workers the actual revenue they bring in.

It's very normal to think that the extra revenue growth you bring in should mean you have either 1) a larger share of the pie for every efficiency increase that grows revenue or 2) less expectation from you, as a worker, to labor as intensively since you are continuing to bring in surplus value that is being actively skimmed from.

▲coldtea an hour ago | parent | next [-]

>It's very normal to think that the extra revenue growth you bring in should mean you have either 1) a larger share of the pie for every efficiency increase that grows revenue or 2) less expectation from you, as a worker, to labor as intensively since you are continue to bring in surplus value that is being actively skimmed from.

It's also very normal to force businesses by law to either or both. But it's not happening these days.

▲singpolyma3 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

By law or by collective bargaining

▲oblio an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That's what happens when people think the government should be run like a business.

▲paimapi an hour ago | parent [-]

Arguably, I would say this has been a 50+ year-long project starting in the Reagan/Thatcher era that Clinton/Blair fully realized by ushering in de-regulatory, labor-disempowering neoliberal policies as part of the left political flank. There's been a lot written about this:

https://jacobin.com/2026/09/labour-callaghan-neoliberalism-m...

https://dissentmagazine.org/article/the-legacy-of-the-clinto...

https://sk.sagepub.com/hnbk/edvol/the-sage-handbook-of-neoli...

▲oceanplexian 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Whenever I read comments like these I feel like people are living in a completely different reality.

Most of the tech companies I have worked at are ridiculously easy and generous, I get to work with smart people, and the entire job can be done in a few hours per week. It's not like we're doing manual labor and digging ditches; half the people on this website are laptop-class workers who occasionally use the slightest bit of energy to write a few lines of code or participate in a meeting.

I show up to work and I often do extra because I like it.

The company isn't "extracting" anything from me except the extremely consentual labor I want to give back simply out of the love of the game. If you don't feel that way, the problem isn't the capitalist system it's probably your own life choices.

▲snapcaster 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

None of this changes the facts of the comment you're responding to. Every business must extract surplus value from their employee's work to be profitable. Nobody said every business has to be miserable, or not mask this extraction in fluffy terms. Doesn't mean it isn't happening though

▲halfmatthalfcat 15 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I completely agree and I think smart companies also understand this. There is still a lot of leverage employees have, especially in tech. Tech as "adult daycare" isn't a meme for no reason.

▲ 13 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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▲singpolyma3 5 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

And yet even while you indolently phone it in, if you're any good they make a lot more off you than they pay you.