> changing of something from within is actually a good one.
Politics; yes. Corporations; no. Corporations have specific legal, cultural and practical mechanisms to keep control with the shareholders and board. The major purpose of shareholders and boards is to be the people who decide whether a company changes or not.
If shareholders and the board are happy taking on government work then Google will take on government work. Ditto military projects, ditto Chinese projects, ditto anything really. The workers don't have the right or privilege of influencing what compromises are made. The only influence they do have is to cause profits to go higher than people planned on; because that makes management happy.
By and large unions focus on pay and conditions, not corporate direction.
Insofar as unions do anything political it is usually inappropriate and better done through actual regulation so all companies obey in a coordinated fashion.
Hard disagree. A union is there solely to give employees a proper voice at the company. That this has by and large been to support working conditions historically is only because it was the issue of highest importance.
If the concern is corporate direction, the union has a seat at the table as well.
I have seen this fallacious notion expressed a thousand times over, in multiple disparate venues, and it exhausts me. I am even now questioning why I would bother to step into this conversation, and propose an alternative outlook. I do not expect you to enjoy my contesting statements. I do not expect you to thank me for them.
Truly, at this point I expect negative votes, and some off-hand comments about how I am ignorant (despite the sources I can cite), or brainwashed (despite my personal experiences affirming the perspective). One thing I know is that "well actually"ing individually misguided forum comments isn't a sustainable method of educating Tech Workers like yourself–and please, don't bother denying that appellation. This is a forum for tech workers. That's what Hacker means, as it's used here.
So, to the point: Politics are the mechanics of power.
It's that simple. There are explicit politics in government, e.g. wherein the Constitution delineates literal powers of particular offices, and then there are the implicit politics of families, nations, firms, interpersonal relationships, administrators, etc. There is no sense in denying that the decisions we make in the systems we inhabit influence the balances of power between actors within them. When you pass me the salt at the thanksgiving table, you grant me a power to arbitrate the passing of salt. When I show up to work, I submit myself to the powerful authority of the Jira system, and the managerial strategy it comprises. These are political acts.
> Corporations have specific legal, cultural and practical mechanisms to keep control with the shareholders and board.
This is true.
> The major purpose of shareholders and boards is to be the people who decide whether a company changes or not.
> is to be
This is weird. There is so much rhetorical work being done by this innocuous compound verb "is to be". In it, you imply a definitive truth. An inescapable logic. Something akin to a physics engine, if not a type of physics itself.
But I do not believe the Firm "is to be" as you say. It is as we will it. The Firm is a social construct. It's boundaries, methods, and behaviors are socially constructed. They're defined, as Searle observes, by collective intentions. Collective will. If we will it otherwise, the Firm will be otherwise. As XKCD's Randall Munroe puts it, "we're the adults now, and that means we get to decide what that means."
> The workers don't have the right or privilege of influencing what compromises are made.
I don't put much stock in rights. There is power, and there is motive, but rights are pure poetry. Do the workers have the power to influence the firm? Do we have the motive?
We certainly have the motive. The Firm shapes the conditions of our lives. The lighting. The furniture. The distance to the bathroom. The hours of the day. These are the material conditions of our sensable environment. They determine the quality of our life. The relationships we invest in, the food we eat, the financial resources we've available to furnish our habitats. These are all influenced by the firm.
The air we breathe. The water we drink. The development of the landscape around us. These are impacted, immensely, undeniably, by decisions made in pursuit of the Firm's strategies. These developments affect us.
So long as we are sensitive to our environments, we will have motive to influence the firm. Do we have the right? An immaterial question. Does a dog have a right to dig? Does a waterfall have a right to carve? Nonsense terms.
Do we have, then, the power to implement our motives? To bring about our goals–unceasing, corporeal, visceral goals stemming from our animal needs, our bodies desires, to be fed, sheltered, exercised?
You say we have only one power: to please the master. I would say we have another: to displease.
It's nonsensical to say we have the power to "do well" without also conceding we have the power to "do ill".
We have the power. We have the motive. Why talk of rights?
Politics; yes. Corporations; no. Corporations have specific legal, cultural and practical mechanisms to keep control with the shareholders and board. The major purpose of shareholders and boards is to be the people who decide whether a company changes or not.
If shareholders and the board are happy taking on government work then Google will take on government work. Ditto military projects, ditto Chinese projects, ditto anything really. The workers don't have the right or privilege of influencing what compromises are made. The only influence they do have is to cause profits to go higher than people planned on; because that makes management happy.