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'Hey Number 17 '

404media.co

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Re: 'Hey Number 17 '

#121

Post by ashoeafoot »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #60

>For the workers? They get the tantalizing benefit of being “held accountable for good or bad performance.” No. They will not be 'held accountable' nor rewarded for good performance. The reward will be the ever-rising bar on performance until management is satisfied that they will never be required to pay out on those motivational performance bonuses and that workers fear for their jobs.

To feed your kids, to then feed them into the orphan crusher ,is that not reward enough? Are we not merciful?

Re: 'Hey Number 17 '

#122

Post by knowitnone »

water-data-dude wrote: post #109
philistine wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To top it off, there is an upcoming movie with a lot of buzz called Mickey 17 about the dehumanization of a clone in a dystopic future where humans are replaceable. It's an insidious coincidence. I immediately thought 404 Media were talking about that movie before reading the article.

17 is “the least random number”, i.e. the number people choose most often when asked to pick a random number (between 1 and 20) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/17_(number)

according to vertasium 37 is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6iQrh2TK98 and he monetized a whole video on it.

Edit: his number range is 1-100 instead of 1-20 so different

Re: 'Hey Number 17 '

#123

Post by johnnyanmac »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #94
scarfaceneo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those poor bosses, they’re employing people that are barely making them any profit, purely out of the goodness in their hearts. Spare me your BS.

Here's the rub though, you employ these exact same calculations in your day to day life. It's something that when broken down into small steps and questions everyone agrees with it, but then when you drop the big picture result everyone hates it. If your job is to create one $20 bill every hour, why would anyone ever pay you more than $20/hr to do it? Maybe you get paid $17/hr to do it, $2 goes to overhead and $1 goe…

>you employ these exact same calculations in your day to day life.

Sure, and you know what I do when it's unprofitable? I just don't do it. I don't think "can I find someone and pay pennies for it?"

Your metaphor doesn't work because It's missing the human element to begin with. There's low paying jobs, and then there's dehumanizing jobs. That isn't a financial incentive, that's a power move.

Re: 'Hey Number 17 '

#124

Post by johnnyanmac »

fragmede wrote: post #79
scarfaceneo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those poor bosses, they’re employing people that are barely making them any profit, purely out of the goodness in their hearts. Spare me your BS.

The stark reality of capitalism is that it's a business transaction. If they can't make enough profit from the sweatshop to make a profit, why would they keep the factory running? They're not running a charity, so they will just close that factory and open it somewhere else with cheaper labor due to lax labor laws. If X > Y, where X is the cost to operate the factory and Y is the money made from selling the goods fro…

> If they can't make enough profit from the sweatshop to make a profit, why would they keep the factory running?

Various reasons. It's not like life is as simple as "make profit -> operate".

>They're not running a charity, so they will just close that factory and open it somewhere else with cheaper labor due to lax labor laws.

Okay, and we as a first world country should refuse to work with inhumane companies. If that passes costs to the first world, so be it.

> but pretending they're going to operate a charity out of the goodnesses of their hearts

I don't understand why you're taking the other extreme. You can not treat people like crap even if you are paying bad wages. It's basic respect, and that costs nothing.

Re: 'Hey Number 17 '

#125

Post by JohnFen »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #65

Here is a painful truth that I would venture that 95%+ of people don't know. In fact when I learned it, removing this small block of knowledge from my head toppled an entire ideological castle I had lived in until that point. Low wage labor is not very valuable at all, and has very low margins on it. The gap between "profitable worker" and "unprofitable worker" is the absolute smallest at the bottom. These workers ke…

> Low wage labor is not very valuable at all

If all the low wage laborers stopped working, society would stop functioning. Sounds pretty valuable to me.

Re: 'Hey Number 17 '

#126

Post by Workaccount2 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #123
Workaccount2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the rub though, you employ these exact same calculations in your day to day life. It's something that when broken down into small steps and questions everyone agrees with it, but then when you drop the big picture result everyone hates it. If your job is to create one $20 bill every hour, why would anyone ever pay you more than $20/hr to do it? Maybe you get paid $17/hr to do it, $2 goes to overhead and $1 goe…

>you employ these exact same calculations in your day to day life. Sure, and you know what I do when it's unprofitable? I just don't do it. I don't think "can I find someone and pay pennies for it?" Your metaphor doesn't work because It's missing the human element to begin with. There's low paying jobs, and then there's dehumanizing jobs. That isn't a financial incentive, that's a power move.

Your words are nice but they don't provide a solution to paying the people making the $20 bills more.

We could have an amazing society if everyone was all in on "the human element", but the fact of the matter is that the "human element", verifiably, is "As much as I can purchase for as little money as possible".

Your boss wants cheap labor as much as you want cheap housing. Everyone everywhere wants everything as cheap as possible. Organic local carrots @ $6/lb are great, but not as great as the ones @ $4/lb, all else being equal (which doesn't even matter, the human element hardly extends beyond price already).

My point is that hand waving away reality under the guise of hollywood-esque black and white, good guys/bad guys is naive and childish. The world is not a movie or book. Real solutions with tangible benefits come from true understanding of how things work, not virtue signaling takes that con people into thinking capitalism is bad guys twisting mustaches and oppressed saints being exploited.

I can only imagine what a flop a movie based on everyday reality would be, where it's difficult to discern who is actually the bad guy.

Re: 'Hey Number 17 '

#127

Post by johnnyanmac »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #126
johnnyanmac wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you employ these exact same calculations in your day to day life. Sure, and you know what I do when it's unprofitable? I just don't do it. I don't think "can I find someone and pay pennies for it?" Your metaphor doesn't work because It's missing the human element to begin with. There's low paying jobs, and then there's dehumanizing jobs. That isn't a financial incentive, that's a power move.

Your words are nice but they don't provide a solution to paying the people making the $20 bills more. We could have an amazing society if everyone was all in on "the human element", but the fact of the matter is that the "human element", verifiably, is "As much as I can purchase for as little money as possible". Your boss wants cheap labor as much as you want cheap housing. Everyone everywhere wants everything as che…

>they don't provide a solution to paying the people making the $20 bills more.

I'm not providing a solution, I'm negating an unethical one. I don't have an answer to world hunger, but I can negate wiping out half the humans on earth as a solution, despite being a valid approach in a vacuum.

>Your boss wants cheap labor as much as you want cheap housing.

Okay, we don't live in Want-Land. Business have to follow laws and hire under regulations, and I have the follow the rules and find a way to house myself. What's your point? We don't get to break rules because they are inconvenient.

>I can only imagine what a flop a movie based on everyday reality would be, where it's difficult to discern who is actually the bad guy.

There's no purely good or buy guys. That doesn't mean that's an excuse to not strive for good. Fatalism does no one good and it's not really a good counterargument to injustices.

You can choose to do nothing. I'd rather not discourage good just because you personally have up.

Re: 'Hey Number 17 '

#129

Post by gunian »

some_random wrote: post #38

I'm shocked that anyone here is confused as to why this is controversial, to use a popular twitter phrase they were completely "mask off" on what they intended their tech to be used for. The demo was for a garment manufacturing sweatshop in which they identified a slow employee, called him by a number, and humiliated him, stopping just short of recommending a "corrective action". This easily could have been spun in a…

lmao mask off
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