Re: <nettime> How Silicon Valley’s CEOs

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On 02/01/2014 03:02 PM, Michael H Goldhaber wrote:

> Sadly, Brian misspoke (or miswrote)

Indeed I misspoke - or deluded myself? A moment of wish-fulfillment?

The interesting thing is that the neighboring airport town of SeaTac 
passed a 15-dollar minimum wage law. It was challenged and a judge ruled 
it couldn't apply to some 4000+ airport employees, but only to about 
1600 hotel and parking lot workers. However the momentum then got going 
for similar campaigns such as the one you can see at 15now.org, which 
Kshama Sawant supports. Well, huge numbers of people in the US support 
it and every experience of victory builds that support.

I too was struck by the idea in Orsan's post, that we may see the rise 
of a new kind of ruling class, based on sheer coercive power rather than 
money. Certainly we are already seeing a new kind of money-power: both 
transnational corporations and billionaires have gained agency since 
2008, in a situation where there are almost no remaining barriers to the 
movement and investment of capital. You can see them going wild all over 
the planet, especially outside the former core countries. However, dark 
predictions about the future are by this point, just boring. If nothing 
changes the future is obviously dark.

The conclusion from the Occupy movement was that we need organization. 
Corporate earnings are at an all-time high, and wages are immobile. I 
can't imagine that Silicon Valley engineers will unionize in any 
progressive way that would go beyond their specific interests. I can 
imagine that some of them would get radicalized joining a cross-class 
coalition that would also further their own interests. These minimum 
wage campaigns are not negligible. They are one of the few chances out 
there to make left politics real again. All other progressive causes can 
only benefit.


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