201–210 of 278 posts
I mean have a conversation about the wage gap sure but know that these numbers are not meaningful as it regards the US.
However, ~30% of all hourly, non-self-employed workers 18 and older in the U.S. are "near-minimum-wage" workers, who make more than the minimum wage in their state but less than $10.10 an hour. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/01/04/5-facts-a...
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Isn't putting this onto the consumer a little bit of a cop out? This enormous global system of powerful corporations and nation states crafted this system because it was in their best interest. Feels sort of tone deaf to say "well, you got what you deserved, you created this sytem by buying this specific computer and cheaper food!" Night/farmer's markets are quite popular here in NZ but we haven't toppled global inqu…
> Isn't putting this onto the consumer a little bit of a cop out? It is the other way around, consumers wanting to keep consuming and feeling good about it while blaming someone else.
Strong disagree. It feels like an attempt to convince the public at large that a) they still have significant agency and b) they should feel extremely guilty and/or empowered by that. This paradox is usually a polite fiction at best, and in the worst-case it's a well-orchestrated psy-op.
Like how "recycling" in many communities is just a different funnel that goes to the same dump, or how many good water-preserving citizens are encouraged to have short showers while we ignore the thirsty golf course next door. What are the real scenarios where the habits of the general consumer actually matter, if we stack them up against corporate consumption and those inefficiencies? Does it really make any sense for John Q. Public to feel bad about driving a gas-guzzler to work when the international shipping industry or the municipal/state government isn't looking to upgrade to electric? Or we could talk about the conspicuously missing mass-transit projects that would remove the need for the cars we're supposed to feel guilty about. Why are consumers who are already hard-pressed expected to lead the charge anyway?
> feeling good about it while blaming someone else
But we don't feel good! We feel bad because we got the wrong light bulbs and dishwashers. Every "drop in the bucket" matters, but going after drops in the first place is a paradox, so we won't feel good after we're living in dark rooms with dirty dishes either. I sure hope this actually matters and it isn't a scam to sell more dishwashers and light bulbs! Like come on, efficient appliances are great, but does it really matter when coal was still ~10% of total U.S. energy consumption in 2022? (source: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/use-of-coal.php )
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This kind of approach never works except for in the most egregious of situations. Just imagine what the state of car safety would be like if it was purely left up to the market. Regulations work.
>Just imagine what the state of car safety would be like if it was purely left up to the market. Regulations work. I think even diehard libertarians would admit that "regulations work" in the sense that using the government's monopoly on violence to force companies to do something will cause them to do said thing. The debate is whether the upsides outweigh the downsides (eg. due to regulatory capture). For a point of…
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True, and yet there's strenuous political opposition ot any proposal to increase it. Why is that?
Because you can just increase minimum wage at the state level
If we have an officially defined metric it should correlate with real conditions in some way, get updated to reflect inflation etc.
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That's true, but CEOs (in general) are also in a unique position to create the appearance of value for stockholders through financial engineering, acquisitions, buybacks and so forth. They're able to leverage the resources of the company in unusual ways that don't necessarily have anything to do with operations or direct revenue, including firing other workers to improve the balance sheet. And once they're retired or…
So what? The principal agent people has been understood by investors since the time of Adam Smith. Everyone is already aware of this.
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I would argue a 25 year old is still a kid too. I know every 20 something would vehemently disagree which is kind of proof in and of itself. I don't mean it in a disrespectful manner.
Your reply made me smile because it's dead on. I'm 22. Though, I don't agree. There's things to learn at all ages.
The true sign of a 20-something is thinking they know everything because they have the book learning fresh outta school. But having 20 years on the job experience teaches you so so many more things that is never so much taught as, ahem, experienced.
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> Isn't putting this onto the consumer a little bit of a cop out? It is the other way around, consumers wanting to keep consuming and feeling good about it while blaming someone else.
> consumers wanting to keep consuming and feeling good about it while blaming someone else Strong disagree. It feels like an attempt to convince the public at large that a) they still have significant agency and b) they should feel extremely guilty and/or empowered by that. This paradox is usually a polite fiction at best, and in the worst-case it's a well-orchestrated psy-op. Like how "recycling" in many communities…
Yes, recycling was a ruse to allow people to keep consuming and feeling good about it.
>or how many good water-preserving citizens are encouraged to have short showers while we ignore the thirsty golf course next door.
This one is a valid example, and it is very easy to solve. Marginal water prices. The more water you use, the more you pay. Same with electricity.
> Does it really make any sense for John Q. Public to feel bad about driving a gas-guzzler to work when the international shipping industry or the municipal/state government isn't looking to upgrade to electric?
Yes, because it’s John Q Public that will not vote for a politician to increase fossil fuel taxes high enough to curb excess consumption. In one fell swoop, the problem of carbon emissions and plastic degradation could be solved, but John Q Public WANTS cheap travel and cheap out of season fruits.
Also, in this specific example, John Q Public is literally opting to buy gas (and electric) guzzlers instead of more energy efficient vehicles. Nobody forced anyone to buy big SUVs and compact SUVs.
>Or we could talk about the conspicuously missing mass-transit projects that would remove the need for the cars we're supposed to feel guilty about.
Because John Q Public (at least those with kids) wants detached single family homes on a 0.1 to 0.25 acre lot with a 2 car garage and a front and back yard. And mass transit simply is not tenable at those low population densities.
There’s a few people out there willing to make the sacrifices, but by and large, the population will opt for short term comforts.
Kind of like this:
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> Isn't putting this onto the consumer a little bit of a cop out? It is the other way around, consumers wanting to keep consuming and feeling good about it while blaming someone else.
Bullshit, and you know it. I want a computer with completely open schematics, completely open firmware and uCode, GPUs with no ties to the entertainment industry, and processors that don't have baked in "ring -3"s. I want cars I can wrench on, and software I can trust. I want things that are mine first, not the manufacturers. It. Will. Not. Happen. Short of doing it ourselves, because businesses can't spawn around th…
What do you think "doing it ourselves" is? If you want open hardware and nobody makes it, you make it, or do a Go Fund Me etc. Then somebody makes it.
Notwithstanding what other people say, customers do actually prefer these things, if nothing else because they cost less. Once somebody makes a free and open chip design, companies will prefer to put that chip design in their devices because then they don't have to pay for one and don't have to deal with BS where their own customers want updates but upstream provides neither updates nor documentation. Because now upstream is a community anybody can participate in that keeps providing updates for 20+ years.
Customers don't prefer these things only when they're forced into an unnecessary trade off against something else. You want a Ford or Toyota running open source software but your choices are a closed source product in mass production or a kit car you have to assemble from parts. You don't want to assemble it from parts so you pick the first one. But that only sustains as long as nobody is making a competitive mass-produced car which is open source.
As soon as you have one, the permissionlessness is an advantage. Repairs are cheaper so TCO is lower so Consumer's Reports tells normies to buy it. Then the competition has to do the same thing because it's better.
Consolidated markets are a problem. If you wanted to do "iPhone, but open" you can't just glue a screen to a RISC-V CPU, the chip has to be competitive and have third party apps etc. etc.
But not everything is like that. If you wanted to do "desktop PC, but open hardware," that's the sort of thing people are actively working on and could plausibly succeed. So support them, contribute, and buy it when it's available, because it's not impossible.
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However, ~30% of all hourly, non-self-employed workers 18 and older in the U.S. are "near-minimum-wage" workers, who make more than the minimum wage in their state but less than $10.10 an hour. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/01/04/5-facts-a...
This article is from 2017.
Relatively few workers actually earn minimum wage, but a substantial share of workers are classified as “near minimum wage” earners. These two groups (minimum wage workers and near-minimum wage workers) make up nearly 1 in 3 workers.
The main point is that just looking at "minimum wage" workers doesn't tell the story. I don't believe you're being intentionally disingenuous, but there are many U.S. states where the minimum wage is an unlivable $7.25/hr and hasn't changed for 10 years or more.
People like to talk about inequality but absolute poverty seems like a more important target. Satya Nadella having more money than me doesn't make my life worse; I'm more concerned about the availability of jobs, food, housing, etc. That said, CEO salary does strike me as strange. Who needs 8 million per year + stock? I'd think more CEOs would voluntarily take a pay cut.
> Satya Nadella having more money than me doesn't make my life worse; That is simply not true. Money is not an absolut good, but relative. When a few people own a large portion of money, that affords them the power to decide what people do and usually makes their life worse.
Fortunately the people living in the United States of America have a society of laws and have been to bat against the monopolistic tendencies of unfettered capitalism at least once before.