331–340 of 419 posts
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Demand curves have negative slopes. The esoteric reading of minimum wage is it is a accelerationist policy aimed at subsidizing automation.
The realistic reading is that it mainly just transfers money from profits to wages. Demand for minimum waged labor is very, very inelastic.
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I try to tip well. If you think I should tip better, make your case. If I disagree, I’ll make my case. I can guarantee you that if that happens, my argument won’t be that I’m tipping the market rate.
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The realistic reading is that it mainly just transfers money from profits to wages. Demand for minimum waged labor is very, very inelastic.
Is it? In countries with higher minimum wages, McDonald's uses kiosks for ordering. I'm guessing, but it feels like 1/3 of fast food staff mans the registers.
Though in support of your point, when I went to Korea last year there was a large number of automated kiosks, and I know the minimum wage there is fairly high as well. So, Japan's lack of those kiosks may have to do with a preference towards cash/human interaction in the culture.
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It's important to note this mentality has not worked out well in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite#Birth_of_the_movement With progress comes new opportunities. It may not happen fr everyone, immediately, but it will happen.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Blithely assuming that it is is dangerous. The fact that, in the past, the economy created new jobs and new sectors that the majority of people were capable of working in does not guarantee that it always will. Nor when it does is that any consolation to the people un(der)employed for years on end or sometimes for the rest of their life. In the long run, we are all…
The first wave was all about making people more efficient (higher output multipliers for effort); the next wave may very well make people redundant in the economic production equation. If one person is all that's required to scale infinitely (O(1)) OR people aren't required once the capital is built the share of gains to workers IMO erode substantially and mainly accrue to capital holders. Particularly if those gains result in a concentration of market power to one company.
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...aren't most exhibits/conferences like this? All my trade shows events are at least this grueling, and I no longer work in major IT.
Ew, no. That's horrible. The company I work for does a lot of shows. I generally do about 22/year. A common range is 9am to 5pm, but 10am to 4pm is not unheard of. 8am to 6pm happens from time to time and feels really bad. I think out of 60ish shows that I've done only one was 7am to 7pm.
7 am to 7 pm was terrible. everyone was sleepy in the morning (pre caffeine) and completely worn out by the happy hour/closing time.
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That's why hundreds of millions of smokers, smoked, after all. They carefully weighed up the evidence, using their medical training, avoided the lies from tobacco company advertising, used their " it's just common sense " know-everything superpower, and - in an almost unprecedented moment of human rational decision making - concluded that smoking was better than non-smoking. No, it didn't happen that way. People smok…
You’re not free unless you’re free to choose bad decisions as well as good ones. Freedom includes freedom to opt in to risk according to your personal risk tolerance.
You're not free to drive a vehicle on public roads without a license or in a state of disrepair - because you risk harming other drivers and pedestrians. You're not free to adulterate food with sawdust, because it will harm people who eat it. You're not free to put poisons in jars marked for food, because it will harm people who don't know you've done that. You're not free to booby-trap your house because it puts emergency services at risk as well as burglars. You're not free to enslave others or sexually assault them, or take their property or money, because most of society wouldn't like that done to them. You're not free to make industrial noise in a suburban area when most people are trying to sleep, or to make toxic fumes or pollute rivers or groundwater supplies or use carcinogenic insecticide, because more people's need for potable water and sleep and edible food outweighs your need for easy money.
OSHA is a continuation of this concept of "other people" who matter and are affected by what you do.
Exactly where the limits lie, is collectively determined and up for argument. But to disavow the idea of restricted freedoms at all is somewhere along the lines of self-interest to the point of sociopathy, cluelessness, or inviting someone to shoot you and take your stuff just because they can.
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You're talking about a company that makes its money on volume. They have more than 600K employees and thin margins. It's not just a matter of converting profits into wages, they don't have that much in profits in proportion to the number of employees. Take their average annual profit from retail divided by number of employees and see for yourself what the difference in hourly wage would be. To pay significantly more…
Amazon has a profit of over $11 billion last year. They can definitely afford to pay their warehouse workers better.
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So in your system, if I pay an employee to climb an unsafe ladder, OSHA has no right to slap me for that because the employee consented? That sounds awful. There would be many preventable deaths and injuries under a system that neuters OSHA; what you're proposing is deeply immoral.
The employee, and no one else, gets to decide what they want for their body. The fact is, OSHA has no moral basis to override or overrule that human being’s own decisions for their own body. What is deeply immoral is third parties using sticks and firearms to overrule that person’s choices. Their body, their choice.
OSHA couldn't care less if a CEO or Chairman climbed up on that dangerous ladder and got hurt.
Oh, it's so nice to see all these rich tech guys are concerned about the plight of Amazon workers. Suppose if one of these Amazon workers applied to be a programmer at your company even though they didn't go to a top twenty school or have 5-7 years experience with the trendiest stack, but merely did a bootcamp, and published some apps on their own, would you hire them and spend your money (as opposed to Jeff Bezo's m…