Joseph Stack manifesto

Thanks to a commenter for pointing me to the Joseph Stack suicide manifesto.

I guess you can call it "producerist," Which means that it will baffle liberals, because they find it hard to understand how someone who's not a liberal can hate corporations more than liberals do.

I also think that Stack has a point: for decades now, the government has been working to lower the wages of computer workers, who are value creators, by changing the tax code and labor laws to give more power to employers and less to computer workers, and by giving out H-1B visas to increase the number of computer workers and thus lower their wages.

Comments

[ironrailsironweights.wordpress.com]

If Amy Bishop ends up getting the Big Needle, maybe she and Joey Stack can Hide the Salami in hell.

Peter

[ron b]

very insightful stuff. i admit i was shocked to read the manifesto a day after reading about the producerist theory.

i also agree that the specific tax focus on technical trades is strange.

my question is: cui bono?

was there a rash of computer programmers making "too much profit" with tax arbitrage as independent contractors?

did some big tech outsourcer like Accenture lobby to put this in place, to protect their turf? remove leverage from the individual?

[Steve Johnson]

H1Bs are pure class warefare.

Computer programmers are the wrong class.

Lawyers and bankers are the right class.

In the 90s it looked as if having technical skills would pay better than having connections. This had to be stopped. H1Bs solve this problem quite well.

[Sheila Tone]

I must have missed his H-1B opposition. It appeared as if he'd come up with one or more schemes to evade taxes, possibly something modeled on a religious nonprofit at some point, and gotten angry when it didn't work.

How are computer employees screwed taxwise more than any other employees? Plus, I thought he had his own business and was an independent contractor.

[Aspic sentence]

I honestly had a existential nausea moment last night after reading his manifesto. Something has gone wrong when I agree more with what that man wrote than with anything I've heard out of either major party for as long as I can remember. He may be crazy, and his actions may be wrong, but he's not the only thing rotten to the core...

[nothing]

So, why did he target the IRS and the government in general? Shouldn't he be attacking the companies and the people behind the companies who lobbied long and hard for H1Bs VISAS? It's not as if policy makers woke up one night and decided to screw computer programmers by issuing H1B Visas. The policy makers are influenced by outside forces.

[HS: Because he's what Yiddish-speaking people would call "meshugana."]

[sabril]

"Computer programmers are the wrong class.

Lawyers and bankers are the right class."

FWIW a lot of legal work is being outsourced to India. This started a few years ago.

[CC01]

Sorry to get off topic HS, but can you address "Epic Bearded Man" situation?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1ZsSuUxpqs

[Sheila Tone]

"FWIW a lot of legal work is being outsourced to India. This started a few years ago."

I hadn't heard about this. Who's doing it?

[concerned netizen]

Stack was absolutely right about the law being against him. Here's an oddly sympathetic article in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19tax.html

There was nothing he or any professional organization could do about it. Read the article. The situation was completely fucked.

[Virginat50]

Exactly how much legal work is outsourced to India is unclear. Many law firms and companies are rumored to do it, but just having an overseas legal division doesn't mean it's doing US legal work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/business/worldbusiness/21iht-law.4.7199252.html

[Sheila Tone]

CN, I read the article. It only gives a vague description of the law, so I can't tell if or how he was screwed. My first question: Why single out technology workers from other types of workers a company might choose to hire independently?

Second: Usually companies are *against* laws that make workers be employees instead of independent contractors, because the company has to assume greater liability, and has to comply with labor laws. This is usually seen as a benefit, not a detriment, to the worker.

Third: Most of the programmers I know work as independent contractors. How come they're able to do it while Stack had so much trouble? Or is what they're doing something different than what he was trying to do?

What exactly was Stack trying to do that was so difficult, aside from weaseling out of his fair share of taxes?

[Yawner]

From the NYT:

In 1998 Senator William V. Roth Jr., the Delaware Republican who was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said through an aide that he believed the law should be repealed, but that he would not take any action because it would “open a Pandora’s box of other independent contractor issues.”

(Meaning that all the other people that the tax laws are screwing will also complain, and we can't have that, can we?)

[C]

1. There was nothing about H1Bs in that article.

Section 1706 is very surprising. I'm not sure what effect has on wages, but my intuition is that long term it greatly depresses them. Basically, software engineers can only be employees and not consultants, so they can only ask for a fixed income and not a piece of the value they add. Working for a start-up is a way to go around this, since the engineer is payed in shares.

[wreaver]

I read his letter, and I don't know if it is clear that he is "left", "right", or "producerist".

He just started to realize what government actually is. (Like when someone raised with religion starts having agnostic or atheist realizations.)

[Gene]

Finger wagging at the expense of the press is old hat, but ...

Prediction: the prestige press will spill more ink over the Stack murders than the Bishop ones even though the Bishop murders had a bigger body count. Details of the Stack murders make the right look bad. Details of the Bishop murders make the left look bad.

In four weeks, I will be happy to do Google News searchs for "Joe Stack" and "Amy Bishop", and post a comparison of the number of mentions in this comment thread (if it is still open.)

[David Alexander]

*Basically, software engineers can only be employees and not consultants*

I am merely a low IQ twit, but couldn't a software engineer incorporate, create a shell corporation instead, and become an employee of said corporation?

[Julian Fondren]

With 'value creation' and 'value transference' you've reinvented Marx's exploitation theory of interest (Boehm-Bawerk's term, not his), without all of the sloppy attempts at an economic defense of it. Which isn't a merit for you. Please consider a basic economic education before you go much farther with this.

Here is an approachable textbook: http://mises.org/rothbard/mes.asp

The production chapters (5-9) with give you a hardy immunity to your own recent ideas, and at least a resistance to the syndicalism and 'economic democracy' that you're probably presently sliding into.

Cheers.

[concerned.netizen]

"I am merely a low IQ twit, but couldn't a software engineer incorporate, create a shell corporation instead, and become an employee of said corporation?"

Yeah, they could, but then IBM won't give them a contract.

Did you read the article?

Sheila Tone:

Did you actually read the article?

It did not give a "vague description" of the law, it gave a brief but accurate description of how this law was drafted and who it benefits.

If you had actually read the article you'd see that the law was never meant to be economically efficient but to pay a favor to a specific powerful company (IBM) for a specific reason. The bill was passed by a powerful senator with tenure. It passed because a lot of Senators owed favors to Moynihan.

That's the way it works in DC, and that's what enraged Stack. I don't defend what he did. But this is why increasing numbers of people say, "Washington doesn't work anymore."

Because it goddam doesn't - at least, not for a person unconnected with power. It's a huge greasy favor bank with powerful people paying favors to powerful people.

[seeitnow]

I am not completely knowledgable about section 1706. In as much it appears to be a result of an IBM connection and software related issues, could it have resulted from the IBM - Microsoft connection from 1980 when Bill Gates managed to outsmart IBM and retain ownership of PC-DOS which led to Microsoft becoming the giant it is and IBM smarting over the biggest corporate mistake in history ?

[KingM]

Notice anything funny about this article?

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=9893714

[Sheila Tone]

Snippy Netizen: Did you actually read my comment? Apparently not. Nothing in your comments or the article answers my questions about why independent contracting is better for programmers than other workers, or why so many computer programmers seem to work as independent contractors anyway if it's so hard.

I remember HS at one point stating he was an independent contractor. He seemed kind of down on it.

[concerned netizen]

seeitnow -

That's an interesting conjecture.

One aside that doesn't invalidate your premise: Gates admitted that he wasn't trying to outsmart IBM, they gave him the game because they were idiots and didn't realize what was valuable: the software, not the boxes. It's hard to remember back that far, but that's the way people USED to think.