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>2, the idea is that your incentives are the same: you'll be upholding bourgeoisie society. The whole point of the 'petite bourgeois' designation refers to the awkwardness of a group of people who _should_ be proletariat, but have juuuust enough incentive to act against that interest, because they're almost bourgeoise

It's more complex than that. And the explanation I always got was that the petit bourgeois acted against their own interest because they aspired to be and thought of themselves as likely to become part of the capitalist class, not that they shared real interest with the capitalist class.

Management actively steals from the capitalist class. The last thing that management wants, for instance, is shareholder rights. In fact, they side with labour more often than they side with capital, as far as I can see. Look at Yahoo in 2008. Any fool could have seen that the Microsoft buyout offer was the best yahoo could do. And Yahoo shareholders clamoured to make the deal. But management killed the deal, siding with the employees, and destroying a great deal of value for the capitalists.

One can argue, in fact, that labour rights (which is to say, making it more complex and legally dangerous to hire or fire someone) is in the best interest of management, as it means that a Capitalist would have to learn significantly more before they could take an active role in managing what they own.

Owner-operators... culturally, you see that same aspiring up against our own interest. Our interests are aligned with the capitalists on labour issues, certainly; Much like the capitalists and unlike management, we want to be able to hire and fire without complexity, and as a class, we generally don't value job security, or really even comprehend why job security is such a huge deal to the workers. But otherwise? We have radically different interests. Owner operators are just as likely, if not more likely to need 'safety net' type social services than similarly skilled workers. One can make a good argument that owner-operators benefited more than any other class from the affordable care act.

In fact, on one of the biggest issues of the day, owner-operators have interests aligned with the workers against the capitalists: Capital gains taxes. Nearly all owner operators, outside of real-estate, pay full income taxes on most of their income; We'd be better off if the government taxed all income as income and just lowered the income tax rate to make up for it. And the difference in what you pay is huge. Like more than 50%. This is the primary reason why everyone thinks that an exit strategy is so important; building up a company that can be sold to a capitalist is the most realistic way for an owner operator to pay that lower capital gains rate. It's hugely damaging, too; it makes us act like management; like our customers are the capitalists rather than the people who buy our products or services.

Capitalists and management (through stock grants/options) get to pay the (much lower) capital gains rate on most of their income.



I agree with what you have written, and shouldn't have simplified after reading your first post. Thank you for correcting me.




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