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Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

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Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#231

Post by umeshunni »

luckylion wrote: post #203
fsckboy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not what he's saying. He's saying higher overall income, and it comes with lower risk than startups.

But that's also expected, isn't it? Startups are like playing the lottery, those that win will suddenly have much, much, much more than your average person that puts their money into savings instead. But a big part of those playing the lottery will never win, and on average those who just invest their money will be better off than those who play the lottery.

> Startups are like playing the lottery

Sure, what has changed over the last 10 or so years is that winning the startup lottery pays close to nothing incremental over working at a large company since most of the equity is now held by founders and late stage investors and most of the stock growth happens before a company goes public.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#232

Post by gnicholas »

cvlasdkv wrote: post #188
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah usually the more fun job pays less. That’s just basic economics. Life is all about trade offs.

There is nothing inherent in "basic economics" that postulates that fulfilling or fun jobs pay less. I also find the idea of "basic economics" laughable given how impossible economics is in the first place. I mean, yes, if you assume spherical cows...

> There is nothing inherent in "basic economics" that postulates that fulfilling or fun jobs pay less

It's called 'psychic income', and it is something that people will accept, to some extent, as a substitute for cash comp.

This is widely cited as the reason that teachers earn less than other professions, and why garbage collectors earn more. There are a lot of people who enjoy teaching, and not a lot who enjoy garbage collecting.

https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_econstat_wp_5...

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#233

Post by thrwaway69 »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #40
whatshisface wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so if there were some elites in charge of everything, and if they felt personally threatened, you are suggesting that their response would be to decrease the power of their security forces? Wouldn't they want to make the police even more powerful?

> Wouldn't they want to make the police even more powerful Civilians outnumber police 500-1. The people who were lead to the guillotines also wanted more police power but you have to throw a bone to the civilians to make them think 'you care'. Here's $2 extra to come to work and risk coronavirus and we totally won't cancel your insurance when you get sick.

Military outnumber people on tanks/drones/helicopers/missiles/secret weapons by 1:0.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#234

Post by thayne »

I'm suprised there isn't any mention of the relation between monopoly power and declining worker power. I'm not an economist, but it seems like if a company gets a monopoly on an industry, it most likely also has a monopsony on workers in that industry, thus reducing the negotiating power of those workers, since they can't go work for another company if their employer treats them badly. At least, not without having to be re-trained to work in a different industry.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#235

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

markus_zhang wrote: post #168
lanevorockz wrote: post #59

Trying to break the conditioning here but government should always tax in a way that it incentive WORK. The way things are Wealth is no longer being produced, so those who have it will be on top because income will never be enough to prop you up. Therefore we should want a Growth market so that more wealth is produced and risk averse people will still be rich but more people will become as rich as them. To resolve In…

You can't solve the problem in conventional ways because rich people as well as large funds and corporations control legislation. You can vote 100 tines and be guaranteed that the outcome won't be different in that perspective. I'm not sure if ycombinators like the alternative way. BTW I agree to your idea in general, just want to say that I'd substitute WORK with anything that benefits human being.

The underlying problem is that money buys policy. That's not how democracy is supposed to work.

But as long as that's true, you're going to get increasing disparities of both wealth and power - because you have a nice tight political and economic engine that cycles by turning one into the other, and back again.

Redefining value as "social value" - of some kind - won't change this on its own, because that process is just the on-ramp to the main cycle.

And unfortunately it's not the only on-ramp - it's just the most obvious one.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#236

Post by nickff »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #198
kebman wrote: post #113

To me it's pretty easy to understand. It's far easier for state organs to control large corporations, than many small and independent businesses. Meanwhile, it's far easier for coroporations with means to lobby for legislation that makes it difficult for smaller, i.e. competing, businesses to thrive. They can do this, because they can afford the armies of lawyers and lobbyists needed to uphold and exploit all those r…

I'd argue it's simpler for governments to foster a free and competitive market than try to work against massive vertically integrated companies with tons of lobbyists and power. Are you suggesting the US has any control over the tech giants? It's clearly not the case, most politicians talk the talk, but they take massive donations in private events and then craft legislation to favor big tech. What we need is more co…

Bureaucracies don't like working with a bunch of small companies; they want to work with a few large companies with specialized departments that make it easy to get what they want. The rules and regulations are all written for large corporations with inside counsel and compliance departments, not small independent companies.

source: I work at a small company, and have dealt with such bureaucrats

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#237

Post by alexose »

htormey wrote: post #148
alexose wrote: post #142

I find it very disappointing that the most reliably lucrative career arc for a programmer nowadays is to get hired by a tech giant and stay there as long as possible. And the second most is probably to go to work for a company that could get gobbled up by a tech giant. I've made a career out of small startups, and I wouldn't trade it for a thing. On the other hand, if I'd gone to work for Amazon straight out of colle…

Was this ever not the case for the majority of software engineers?

I'm not a historian or anything, but I've seen it ebb and flow over the years. There have definitely been periods where the best opportunities were at small, innovative businesses.

I think we've reached a point in the industry where innovation has slowed enough to allow the biggest companies to catch up. Combined with the natural advantages that big companies have (monopoly, regulatory capture, etc.), it's just really hard to go toe-to-toe with them these days.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#238

Post by gnicholas »

rfulop wrote: post #76
lanevorockz wrote: post #59

Trying to break the conditioning here but government should always tax in a way that it incentive WORK. The way things are Wealth is no longer being produced, so those who have it will be on top because income will never be enough to prop you up. Therefore we should want a Growth market so that more wealth is produced and risk averse people will still be rich but more people will become as rich as them. To resolve In…

I'm with this argument. Capital gains should at least be taxed as much as earned income.

Should social security and medicare taxes apply to capital gains? Should these taxes apply beyond the current caps, which are a bit over $100k? If not, there would be very little impact since most investment income is earned by people who also have six figures of wage income. And if so, then we'd have to levy these 'taxes' (they're not quite taxes, to the extent that these are paid in exchange for later services/payments that the taxpayer receive) on all wage income.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#239

Post by chillacy »

burrows wrote: post #206
chillacy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you but substitute WORK for Value Creation. It's way to easy to "create jobs" which are essentially busy-work with 0 to negative productivity. In the coming decades, economic productivity will become more and more important as gains from elsewhere start to taper out.

> It's way to easy to "create jobs" which are essentially busy-work with 0 to negative productivity. If firms have workers with negative productivity, aren't executives incentivized to fire them? And if so, why are there negative-productivity workers?

I can think of a number of reasons:

1. The firm has enough growth to cover it up (downturns can finally bring about layoffs here)

2. Measurement is difficult or not practiced at certain firms vs others

3. Subsidies or contracts from the government specifically cancel out negative productivity and so make it worth it

etc

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#240

Post by tenebrisalietum »

burrows wrote: post #206
chillacy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you but substitute WORK for Value Creation. It's way to easy to "create jobs" which are essentially busy-work with 0 to negative productivity. In the coming decades, economic productivity will become more and more important as gains from elsewhere start to taper out.

> It's way to easy to "create jobs" which are essentially busy-work with 0 to negative productivity. If firms have workers with negative productivity, aren't executives incentivized to fire them? And if so, why are there negative-productivity workers?

Another word for negative productivity is overhead.

Many administrative, HR and IT workers are overhead, but still needed.

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