Oh, were you planning on visiting the scenic Hanford Nuclear Reservation?

It is not very hard to re-frame Marx in terms of the knowledge worker, where the owner of the means of production like the [e-tail site/online bank/search engine/social networking site] exploits the individual developers who produce the system but alone are insignificant and replaceable leading to a race to the bottom where providing the labor is greatly underpaid while stock owners and other capital holders make off with the profits. That does of course not exclude the possibility that capital owners will pay off unique individuals and start-ups that threaten to shift the competitive landscape or compete with the existing companies, but more of a global mutual interest among all companies to depress wages.

Even in the absence of formal collusion it's not hard to reach a form of unwritten understanding in direct and transparent competition of substitute goods. For example on the way to work there are two gas stations quite literally across the road from each other, if one drops the price of course the other will follow. So what makes them profit most, both high or both low prices? Now apply the same to store clerk wages, of course neither has an interest in raising the general wages. It is really the same when you see Google/Apple/Microsoft/whatever involved in anti-poaching agreements, surely they could just poach back but it'd raise the wage costs for everyone so better if they don't.

I do agree though that he thought the actual value lay with the labor, not the machinery but I guess you can equally apply this to software, doesn't really all value of the code stem from the one who developed it? Granted, he got paid for it but whether that pay is fair is another matter. Remember, Marx never claimed the workers were forced to work anywhere at gun point. What he said was that all the choices were bad ones and workers were exploited no matter who they worked for. It's not like market economists dispute that companies would lower labor costs if they could either, they just refuse to do something about it. If the supply and demand don't add up to a wage you're comfortable with do something else.

Of course we won't run out of jobs as such, but when there's more people wanting jobs than there are jobs, real wages start trending downwards as workers undercut each other. The relative wealth between those with capital and those who work for a living diverges and it becomes harder and harder to join them as their holdings increase faster than any savings you can make. As long as human labor remains essential to the function of society, we can still unite and strike for higher wages though. If we're no longer essential and the system runs on robotics, software and a few scabs until we go back to work, well then we're in deep shit.

There is nothing natural about a free market capitalist society allowing itself to be transformed from a society with more equitable distribution of capital into a society where very few people control most of the wealth and people are not really free to exchange goods, services and capital.

This is happening as the result of government regulations and because of public policies and not simply some sort of passive "deregulation" where the government steps back and does nothing. The government isn't deregulating. We have as much regulation as ever, it is just violently skewed towards protecting the vast and unbridled wealth of the rich while not diligently making sure that those without wealth have a level playing field in a free market.

That would be true only if current population levels are actually sustainable over a longer term and depends on what your definition of "just fine" is. The evidence so far is mixed. Yes, we have apparently been able to feed almost everyone and there is some additional arable land that could be put into production, but not too much more land, especially given the pressures of development for housing, industry and transportation. And we have seen some pretty massive wars and genocides in the last hundred years which are at least partly the result of temporary or perceived resource scarcity. Japan wanted to control its oil supply in World War II and Germany wanted to directly control its oil, coal and food supplies. Other wars have been about oil. The Rwandan Genocide certainly had a component that was caused by resource scarcity.

So far with a human population in the billions "just fine" has meant periodic wars and genocides which kill millions and millions of people.

I don't think "just fine" means what you think it means and we would be really much better off if we had worldwide birthrates somewhat below replacement population. When it comes to population and natural resource utilization you never want to think about getting anywhere close to 100% capacity. You should always aim for excess production capacity to account for natural disasters and wars.

You can infer the later from the quality and technical depth of the former. You can't routinely create highly technical programming responses without having the programming skills and experience to go with them.

If you are a team lead developer, you better have some project management skills. Once you start working with code masses beyond a certain size and complexity, you enter the realm of engineering, with coding being an important but not the only skill required. Management and organizational skills are paramount in such circumstances.

Crapware is created not just because of a lack of good coding skills, but also because of lack of organizational skills.

The point is that you should get some fucking perspective, and complain the most about abuse of authority and the efficiency (or lack thereof) of our security apparatus (important) and a lot less about issues of comfort (non-important, bullshit.) Former == have a conscience and a functioning brain. Later == Irrelevant Kim Kardashian bullcrap.

Your answer makes too much sense, and it was not marinated in bullshit sauce at all. That is not how we post replies in slashdot!(10+1)

Physicians tend to partner up with other professionals, like lawyers, bankers and CPAs when they start their own private practices. Many established physicians ARE going broke and filling for bankruptcy after getting drawn too deep into the business side of medicine. Instead of keeping focus on patient treatment, many physicians have their entire life savings linked to the profitability of their practice, which has more to do with negotiating the best deals for insurance reimbursement, malpractice insurance, building leases, utilities, and capital expenses such as X-ray, EKG, or sonogram machines. The bankers and lawyers structure things so they have the lion's share of ROI while the physician is personally exposed to the most liability. Then they have lawyers, bankers, limited partners, and shareholders pressuring them to be more "profitable", which means cutting face time with patients from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, prescribing drugs from suppliers that will pay back "incentives", referring to other specialists and facilities that offer kickbacks, separating physician fees from facility fees to juice more from insurance, performing more tests than necessary to defend against liability while receiving more reimbursement from insurance and medicare, performing sneaky out-of-network or uncovered services on unsuspecting patients with deep pockets, and more frequently flat-out defrauding medicare, medicaid, and private insurance companies.

Patients and physicians both would benefit from either a single-payer system like the UK and Canada have, or a maybe a public-private system like Australia has, where those willing to pay more direct or willing to buy commercial insurance can be treated by private physicians rather than publicly employed physicians, just like we have public and private schools in the US. In the US we actually have a shortage of physicians, especially if we are going to start covering care for more of our poor and working class. Yet many excellent candidates are not admitted to medical school because only the cream of the cream were selected. There are also many qualified physicians educated in Europe and Asia that cannot EVER practice in the US simply because they didn't get their degree here. Direct government investment in programs to train and certify physicians without forcing them into hundreds of thousands of dollars of unforgivable student loan debt would be a benefit to aspiring physicians and patients alike. Direct government assumption of financial liability and discipline of physicians would free physicians to earn an honest and comfortable living while providing patient care that serves the interest of the patient.

Gradually shortening the terms of pharmaceutical patents and finding more cures and treatments through non-profit, grant-funded, university research would help to substantially lower the family burden when it comes to the cost of care. At the end of the day it is the scientists putting in 80-120 hours each week that makes cures possible, and even those scientists working for Big Pharma are not raking in the dough compared to the executives, lawyers, and pharma sales reps. Scientists are not paid any less at the University level so the argument of profit incentive is rather mute.

The Russians will release the complete Snowden Archive.

LOL, the only reason C++ is tolerable is Qt and only if you avoid screwing with resources yourself and let QObjects handle the mess, it's still full of leftover ugly from the 70s that neither Java, C# nor Swift choose to handle the same way. The problem is that creating a good language, a good compiler and a comprehensive system library (practically a must today IMO) is a huge job and without a big company like Sun/Oracle (Java), Microsoft (C#) or Apple (Swift) backing it you'll never get off the ground.