A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I would appreciate hearing your thoughts about how this Canadian Truckers movement aligns with the international workers' ...
Class is determined by relationship to the means of production, not salary. So we need to establish that owner-operators own those means
Consensus seems to be that truckers' ownership of their own rigs constitute an ownership of the means of production. But given they are combination car, house, tools, what makes them any different than someone who owns a house and car and, say, does AirBNB and Uber+Lyft? Does the latter's ownership of their own capital (car, house) and their working for multiple people mean they're middle class (in current times likely what with affordability, but the question is general)?
I attempted to make clear that I'm not taking a position on the contingent specifics of this protest, rather am asking a general question about how we define these people's class. Looking like I did a bad job :kitty-cri-screm:
AirBNB is just landlordism, so it surely isn't working class.
Uber/Lyft would be non-alienated labour if they dealt directly with clients and didn't have to work on a schedule set by Uber under the threat of being fired while relying on software and organization from a higher authority that cost hundreds of millions to set up. That authority is a sign that the capital that Uber/Lyft has is predominant over the meager capital that a car represents - which they'd likely own anyways.
Now as far as big rigs being capital. I don't think the fact they're being used as house/car is relevant. They have an actual house where they can live in, and another car they use for personal transportation. As far as being tools, yes, that's what capital is. So it neatly does fit the position of capital.
As far as salary, I only mentioned it because you did, I agree it's not particularly relevant.
Okay I see, the crux of my misunderstanding is "predomination." I don't particularly like this soft gradient-cutoff, though. I'd much rather find the hard and fast rule I've been trying to sus out.
Obviously it can't be that "bringing any capital to the job makes you middle class" as (silly example) if you own your clothes (tools) and clothes are required for your job, you would be middle class.
You said one's car in the context of Uber also doesn't meet the middle class threshold because it's a meager node in a dominating system. This would be like the clothes-as-tools example, meager capital.
But I also don't see how the rig can be defined as something that's not also a node in a dominating system, assuming both are discretionary/unscheduled/externally organized.
Then separating that from the rig because it costs 5x more than the car or what have you is a question of degree/gradient, which is given to arbitrary cutoff.
Sure, it's pretty simple to establish that a rig isn't meager capital, while a car is (it's not entirely, either - the car is also capital, it's just that it's a small fraction of the relevant capital and the social relations are still of employment).
You have to ask yourself, what is the constant capital necessary to the job of a trucker? There is the truck, there is the road, and that's it. The load isn't constant capital, because it's perfectly fungible and it's not expended by use. The road is collectively owned, so it can be pushed away, and all that remains is the truck, so an owner operator owns essentially all of the capital necessary for their job.
On the other hand, if you take a ridesharing driver, what is the constant capital? The road, the car, and the ridesharing platform, right? The car itself may be worth 20000$, however not all of it is expended for the ride. Fortunately, we can piece out the depreciation and wear cost per ride, which for Uber with an average distance is around 10km. The cost per km to run a commercial car is around 0.3$/km, of which around 0.13$ is constant capital cost, which is depreciation and maintenance. So we have a car capital cost per ride of 2$ on average. That's on aggregate Uber-round 2 billion dollars of capital expended per year, so we could say in aggregate perhaps 10 billion dollars total. By comparison, Uber cost around 28 billion dollars in investment to build, so certainly there is simply a lot more capital in the ridesharing platform than the actual car.
This reflects the observed social dynamics, of ridesharing providing slightly more autonomy than the average job, but on the balance being essentially the same - in a similar way the car an Uber driver operates is around 1/4 of the total capital their job requires, so they are essentially working class still.
In this case, simply comparing the capital the worker owns to the total capital for their job is a pretty good metric to find which one dominates. Unsurprisingly, if one did actually have the lion's share of the capital, they wouldn't have to let themselves be dominated by a single other entity.
Okay my question here is
I attempted to make clear that I'm not taking a position on the contingent specifics of this protest, rather am asking a general question about how we define these people's class. Looking like I did a bad job :kitty-cri-screm:
AirBNB is just landlordism, so it surely isn't working class.
Uber/Lyft would be non-alienated labour if they dealt directly with clients and didn't have to work on a schedule set by Uber under the threat of being fired while relying on software and organization from a higher authority that cost hundreds of millions to set up. That authority is a sign that the capital that Uber/Lyft has is predominant over the meager capital that a car represents - which they'd likely own anyways.
Now as far as big rigs being capital. I don't think the fact they're being used as house/car is relevant. They have an actual house where they can live in, and another car they use for personal transportation. As far as being tools, yes, that's what capital is. So it neatly does fit the position of capital.
As far as salary, I only mentioned it because you did, I agree it's not particularly relevant.
Okay I see, the crux of my misunderstanding is "predomination." I don't particularly like this soft gradient-cutoff, though. I'd much rather find the hard and fast rule I've been trying to sus out.
Sure, it's pretty simple to establish that a rig isn't meager capital, while a car is (it's not entirely, either - the car is also capital, it's just that it's a small fraction of the relevant capital and the social relations are still of employment).
You have to ask yourself, what is the constant capital necessary to the job of a trucker? There is the truck, there is the road, and that's it. The load isn't constant capital, because it's perfectly fungible and it's not expended by use. The road is collectively owned, so it can be pushed away, and all that remains is the truck, so an owner operator owns essentially all of the capital necessary for their job.
On the other hand, if you take a ridesharing driver, what is the constant capital? The road, the car, and the ridesharing platform, right? The car itself may be worth 20000$, however not all of it is expended for the ride. Fortunately, we can piece out the depreciation and wear cost per ride, which for Uber with an average distance is around 10km. The cost per km to run a commercial car is around 0.3$/km, of which around 0.13$ is constant capital cost, which is depreciation and maintenance. So we have a car capital cost per ride of 2$ on average. That's on aggregate Uber-round 2 billion dollars of capital expended per year, so we could say in aggregate perhaps 10 billion dollars total. By comparison, Uber cost around 28 billion dollars in investment to build, so certainly there is simply a lot more capital in the ridesharing platform than the actual car.
This reflects the observed social dynamics, of ridesharing providing slightly more autonomy than the average job, but on the balance being essentially the same - in a similar way the car an Uber driver operates is around 1/4 of the total capital their job requires, so they are essentially working class still.
In this case, simply comparing the capital the worker owns to the total capital for their job is a pretty good metric to find which one dominates. Unsurprisingly, if one did actually have the lion's share of the capital, they wouldn't have to let themselves be dominated by a single other entity.
Oh my god I love this site, you’re all hella smart.