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musk, ableism, racism, immigration, 
@rysiek@mstdn.socialA while ago I did a short thread on "expats", "economic migrants" and immigration:
https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/109931921984437190
I said:
> [Anti-immigration rhetoric is] not about making refugees not come. It's about making sure they never get the protections the local labor force already has.
> Because then they become super cheap labor. And a way to dismantle labor protections for everyone!
The problem for Musk with hiring Americans isn't that they're under-qualified, it's that they cannot be easily exploited.
Trump MAGA voters hoping that his administration would stop immigration and thus "make more jobs available" to US citizens are now learning the hard way that it was never about that.
It was never about availability of jobs. It was always about availability of exploitable labour.
An immigrant on an H-1B visa – or better yet an illegal one! – will accept way lower wages and way more abuse than a US citizen.
The money for those $50bln Tesla pay-offs to Musk need to come from somewhere, right?
So MAGA supporters are having a "wait we thought we all agreed it's about racism and keeping these Black and Brown people out!" moment. 
Perhaps some of them will figure out that it has always been the other way around – that racism has always been a tool to divide and conquer the working class so that it can be exploited by the obscenely rich.
I am not holding my breath though. Racism is a powerful drug.
This whole H-1B visa kerfuffle shows one more important thing.
Namely, that the interests of a techie wage worker, even with their lofty salary, are way more closely aligned with other wage workers (yes, the so-called "blue-collar" labour, factory workers, etc) than with Musks and Bezoses of this world.
Both the techie and the factory worker are likely a small number of paychecks away from homelessness, for example. Both risk financial ruin if they lose their health benefits.
The amount on the paycheck of the techie might be an order of magnitude higher than for the factory worker. But the power dynamic is pretty much the same.
Anyone fired recently by a Big Tech company has been very painfully made aware of that.
Musk (an immigrant himself!) calling US workers the r-word and insisting on bringing in easier to exploit, thus cheaper, immigrant labour – instead of hiring from the thousands of tech workers recently laid off in the USA – puts this in stark relief.
There is a great talk about exactly that, by the way, given by Guy Standing at the #35C3 in 2018:
https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-10021-the_precariat_a_disruptive_class_for_disruptive_times
Well worth a watch.
@rysiek Ironically, Melon could probably get away with it if he spun it like "You see, making America great again is a lot of work, so we're putting dirty foreigners to do it for cheap, almost like they're slaves!". But he sucks at that aspecft of fascism.
Boost with CW: uspol, xenophobia, labor rights
https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/113747751203825754
"Vote this time, and you never need to vote again."
@rysiek thanks for all the sharing on this topic. I learned a lot that I never knew before.
@rysiek thank you! An inspiring presentation, but I fear that not enough people have listened
"the H-1B visa is the only true weapon against unionized tech labor" - the 5 wealthy fucks that decide such things
@rysiek in a way, a worker on H1-B visa from a non-crazy (health-care wise) country (like us - we started in US academia 2 months ago) is safer - they can go back and have semi-free health care, if things turn sour.
@rysiek as a techy non-wage earner i don't see how this isnt 100% a conversation about wage and job dilution
@rysiek i can even confirm this as a sr director. Im still relying on wages for survival. I have a good cushion most dont have for sure but that isnt years of cushion. Just buys me time to find another source of wages to survive and thrive off. (Yes i also have the privilege of thriving not just surviving. EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE THIS IMO)
i have far far more in common with poverty than i do with billionaires and wealth hoarders
@rysiek the divergence between what tech owners want and what tech workers want is huge. For example https://www.news18.com/amp/world/silicon-valley-strongly-supports-kamala-harris-tech-giants-employees-donate-heavily-to-vp-outpacing-trump-9044750.html
@rysiek there are only two classes: you either own capital and profit from the labour of others. Or you do not own capital and profit from your labour.
Programmers are the working class. Just like almost everyone else.
@rysiek All of the USA is one major health issue away from ruin.
@bakingsteele apart from the super-rich.
@rysiek Depending on how bad their health issues are, and how rich they are, it can still bankrupt people.
Are you a member of the owner class, or not?
"The Servile State" by Belloc remains one of the greatest examinations of capitalism, and it is both FAR shorter and a much easier read than Marx's magnum opus.
I have it in hardback, with a preface from some US libertarian type which TOTALLY misses the point. Complete whiff. Not unlike the edition of "For Socialism" (Aufruf zu Sozialismus) I have with a preface by an orthodox Marxist.
@rysiek Agreed. I'm a tech worker. I make a good salary but I'm still a worker that has bills and family to care about. I don't have a huge cushion. I have to have health care since I have a long term illness that would cost me thousands of dollars a month without insurance.
@freeformz @recourse @rysiek upper working class is still working class.
@freeformz @Colman @recourse @rysiek you actually make less than you should be making, companies steal the value of your labor, thats why they hire you, to exploit your labor, "fairly compensated" would be if you got the full value of your labor, not less
@darklight @Colman @recourse @rysiek
FWIW: I’m well aware of that.
Yep. I've long said that a real populist would make his first priority extending the same labour protections to ALL workers in the country. Promising mass deportations, and threatening to strip people of their citizenship for having parents who came from the "wrong" country, is the opposite of that.
But the patron-client model of society, though I hold it in abhorrence, maintains a strong grip on the human mind.