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Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring

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Re: Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you distinguish force and fraud arbitrarily from collusion? Me bashing you over the head and taking your stuff is the ultimate freedom of action.

It's not arbitrary. Hiring agreements (collusion) do not involve force or fraud. Do you truly not distinguish between bashing someone over the head for my stuff from agreeing to exchange something for it? The latter is voluntary and the former is forced.

I don't distinguish between a group of people colluding to beat someone up, and colluding to subvert the market by suppressing wages. I think it's entirely arbitrary to say that the state should use violence to prevent one kind of harmful activity and not the other.

Re: Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take the argument to the extreme, is it OK for every employer in every industry to agree on wages and no-poach? What about on child labor? Minimum Wage? What about colluding on prices? Aren't these all the same infringement? The truth is sometimes society has to take away the rights of the few for the sake of the many. While I agree we tend to do it too often, you will be hard pressed to find many who agree with you…

> Take the argument to the extreme, is it OK for every employer in every industry to agree on wages and no-poach? Why isn't it? Those agreements don't restrict or infringe on the freedom of others to form different agreements, or avoid forming them. > What about colluding on prices? Same exact situation. Price agreements don't restrict the freedom of other parties to set prices contrary to that agreement. > Aren't th…

It wasn't demonstrated, it was assumed. Mostly because you will need broad understanding of economics. I'll try to do my best to demonstrate it. Imagine a smaller economy where there is only 1 firm. They have complete power to set wages, you don't like it you don't work. (We've already established this would happen eventually if agreements like this were allowed because it is far easier to control wages than it is to create new and competing firms.) What happens when they decide not to pay a living wage? More importantly, what is to stop them from influencing laws such that what becomes fair practice is changed over time? Is it fair to allow a single entity the power over not just the economy but the power to define what is just? We have to be very careful in a capitalist society about confining the limits of what actors are allowed to do because quite literally money often equates to power and with time power defines law. I hope it goes without saying that enough bad laws over a long enough time span are trouble for everyone in society. Unregulated capitalism will always lead to issues for a society because it always concentrates wealth. (Those with the most information and the best decisions always come out more ahead than the rest.) Remember, capitalism isn't the best way to run an economy its just the least bad.

Also, please remember you can't look at a statement in a vacuum. "Why isn't it? Those agreements don't restrict or infringe on the freedom of others to form different agreements, or avoid forming them." Perhaps not technically, but realistically they absolutely do. If we had a million worlds with a trillion firms and easy travel between them then such actions would automatically correct, but we don't and thus people do not realistically have the option to turn them down. The whole point of capitalism is to reward and penalize decisions. It kind of breaks down (predictably) when one side has enough power to prevent the downside of a bad decision. Remember, free speech doesn't mean you can run into a theater and yell fire.

Re: Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring

#173
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, Judge Lucy Koh estimated that fees would be $82885000, so each of the 64466 class members would have received $3750, not quite the “essentially zero” that Alex at TechCrunch claims in the article you link. Source: Judge Koh’s order http://www.scribd.com/doc/236255928/Apple-Google-Intel-Adobe...

$3750 is about a week's pay for a tech worker, so essentially zero. Salaries jumped by about $30K/year when the pact collapsed, so the commenters above who are calling for the decimal point to shift a place to the right aren't all that unreasonable.

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Re: Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring

#174
post #164

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> In this case, a group of people broke the rules and some other people think they should be punished, and I think most of the people here have no problem with that. The percentage of people who agree with what I've asserted here has no bearing on the validity of my arguments. And attacking my argument for being libertarian is argumentum ad hominem. Shooting the messenger does not address the message.

"attacking my argument for being libertarian is argumentum ad hominem" No. Saying that the framework you're basing an argument on is flawed isn't dismissing the argument because of a personal flaw of the person asserting something. It's saying that the core axioms/assumptions are flawed. Maybe you over-identify with that ideology and are taking criticisms of the ideology personally since it feels personal, but it's n…

> it's about the ideas you're espousing.

And you've espoused none. You may disagree with said axioms but you haven't pointed out what those are or why you disagree with them.

"You're wrong" isn't an argument. "You're wrong because what you're saying sounds like libertarianism" isn't an argument either.

Re: Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not arbitrary. Hiring agreements (collusion) do not involve force or fraud. Do you truly not distinguish between bashing someone over the head for my stuff from agreeing to exchange something for it? The latter is voluntary and the former is forced.

>Hiring agreements (collusion) do not involve force or fraud. Hiring agreements are where an employer uses the power of their position (and those they are colluding with) to control their employees. I would argue this is just another form of 'force'. You don't need to physically harm someone to control them.

A shop that opens across the street from another shop doesn't "force" the other shop to lose money. Your definition of force is contradictory, as it leaves no room for anything that is not pre facto considered force.

Re: Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not arbitrary. Hiring agreements (collusion) do not involve force or fraud. Do you truly not distinguish between bashing someone over the head for my stuff from agreeing to exchange something for it? The latter is voluntary and the former is forced.

I don't distinguish between a group of people colluding to beat someone up, and colluding to subvert the market by suppressing wages. I think it's entirely arbitrary to say that the state should use violence to prevent one kind of harmful activity and not the other.

What aspect of the market is subverted by hiring agreements? A price is what two parties agree to trade. Hiring agreements in no way prevent parties from agreeing to trade. McDonald's isn't subverting anything if they won't sell you a burger for 50 cents.

Re: Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring

#177
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing preventing you from engaging other employers if you wish to improve your compensation level. We saw this with Facebook ultimately being responsible for the breaking up of the downward pressure on salaries.

That's because Facebook had no part in the agreement. Their policy was to hire from anywhere they could, and they've poached plenty of Google employees. If every company was colluding to fix wages, where would you go?

Google does not owe you a job. If every company had an agreement to not to hire with any other company and there was nobody who didn't work for any of these other companies, then they would have to terminate their agreement or go out of business. But of course, that wouldn't happen because that situation would incentive companies to break their agreements or not form them at all (such as Facebook). Sure, Google and Apple drive wages down in the same way that Facebook drives wages up.

But to answer your question directly: Yes, if nobody wants to hire you... nobody wants to hire you. I don't see why Google should be forced to hire you anymore than you should be forced to work at Google.

Re: Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition of a "free labor market" is a contradiction in terms. A free labor market is one where people are free to exchange their labor (collusion), not one where a third party decides who gets to exchange what labor and for how much. Laws against hiring and pricing agreements are interventions in the market. Laws against hiring agreements are not consistent with a free market. There's nothing wrong with peopl…

@dreamdu5t in your view, it is acceptable to person to freely agree to be enslaved?

In my view, the only problem with slavery is that it's involuntary. It's important to make a distinction between voluntary servitude and involuntary servitude (real slavery). To prevent someone from voluntary servitude would require their involuntary servitude to whomever is preventing them.

To put it another way: If person A is forcefully preventing me from voluntarily serving person B, that makes me person A's involuntary slave.

Re: Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring

#179
post #95
post #83

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As of April, Apple had cash reserves of about $160 billion. Just saying.

Just saying what? If you fine Apple $160B, then you have to fine Google a similar amount, since they are co-conspirators.

What I'm saying is that the amounts of cash held by - and available to - these companies is so eye-poppingly astronomic that even an twelve digit settlement - which the law may allow - is nowhere near enough to bankrupt them.

Re: Judge rejects $324.5M settlement over Apple, Google hiring

#180
post #115

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Let's say all he does is leverage your offer to get a raise at his current job. That raise comes out of investor dividends.

Lets say the price of electricity goes up. That comes out of investor dividends also.

I wasn't saying that he wouldn't be right to or they shouldn't pay market rates. I was just refuting the idea that an employee working at a company in a portfolio that interviews at another company in the same portfolio could only do so at a benefit to portfolio shareholders. That's really naive.
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