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Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

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Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#201

Post by andrepd »

busterarm wrote: post #185
toomuchtodo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy needs no apologies. You are denied choices everyday because society and government have agreed upon those choices. There will always be those upset because they feel their rights are infringed upon.

And the right to determine the terms with with you negotiate away your labor is among the most sacred. Letting others do that for you is much closer to indentured servitude or slavery. The problem with all of these collectivsts' arguments is that they all believe themselves to be in their utopia's social planning committee rather than themselves a laborer. And that's if they made it past the "shoot all the troublemak…

I did not know "collective bargaining in a capitalist wage-labour system" was actually synonymous with "proletariat uprising", but here we are.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#202

Post by adam_arthur »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #161
adam_arthur wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MTA is great for MTA employees. The remaining 10 million or so New Yorkers pay the cost. You can't assess these things in isolation. If the Foxconn factory unionized, you can bet iPhones would cost hundreds of dollars more. Who bears that cost? Consumers of iPhone/society at large (when extrapolating to other businesses)

>If the Foxconn factory unionized, you can bet iPhones would cost hundreds of dollars more. I'd be willing to bet that they don't. iPhone prices are set at the highest price that Apple determines people are willing to pay, not by the cost to produce it; even the costs that do exist are mostly materials, not labor costs. Labor costs are close to 1% of the sticker price [1]. This is the same as the argument that errone…

Apple sets prices based on what they think will maximize their profitability. If iPhone cost $1M dollars, there are still people who would buy it. Demand is a curve, not a fixed value.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#203

Post by bestcoder69 »

adam_arthur wrote: post #186
bestcoder69 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the US went the way of Europe, technological innovation would slow dramatically, which I'll argue is a bad outcome for the world in the long run. IRL datapoints > counterfactuals: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/nordic-state-i... Also I said "Google it" for a reason. You picked an abstract one, and Sweden still beat us! And who could have guessed (me!), but Netherlands, Denmark, and Finland sit the…

Where do you think those earnings go in the long run? In a competitive market margins get driven down, and profitability feeds into lower cost of goods. E.g. cloud providers must provide cheaper and cheaper service to stay competitive with other cloud providers. This in turn drives down costs for all technology in society. Sure a union could try to take that profit and feed it into wages instead, but that's worse for…

> Sure a union could try to take that profit and feed it into wages instead, but that's worse for society in the end.

Yeah, that's the whole assumption I'm challenging with real world data.

Your ideas sound great on paper or in a vacuum, though. This conversation is way asymmetric, where I'm the only person pointing to facts you can look at with your eyes, so I'm gonna leave and wish you luck with your theories.

PS: > Chinese manufacturing. Manufacturing that is not unionized, by the way.

Unintentional comedy? Natural language model trained on Econ podcasts? Arguing from opposite day? Or the most embarrassing gaffe you could have possibly made in this convo? Not that their unions are good. Just a funny thing to write, caveat-free.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#204

Post by JumpCrisscross »

totony wrote: post #105
xibo9 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"unskilled labor" What an extremely elitist phrase.

Do you have a better term for it?

> Do you have a better term for it?

Apparently the euphemism treadmill is on low-wage labor [1]. Which is dumb, since it literally though not conceptually covers graduate students.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unskilled-labor.asp

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#205

Post by slg »

native_samples wrote: post #149
gnicholas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link to details about this?

It's worth remembering that the event that, uh, kickstarted their drive for unionization was the site's management banning a project that was raising money to support violence against conservatives (the actual physical kind, not words). The details are a bit fuzzy now but iirc some of the hard-left employees didn't like the ToS being enforced in that case, because whilst they accepted the project was calling for viol…

>management banning a project that was raising money to support violence against conservatives (the actual physical kind, not words)

What? The article you linked says this is about a comic book about punching Nazis. How is this "not words" ? We are seriously getting angry at comic books about punching Nazis? Captain America comics have been doing that for 80 years. Is there more to the story that I am missing or are people just equating a comic book about punching Nazis to literal "violence against conservatives"? This sounds exactly like the "words are literal violence" idea that conservatives are always mocking.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#206

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bestcoder69 wrote: post #95
adam_arthur wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A union tends to be a monopoly on labor supply in most cases. Not a competitive labor market. Bargaining collectively = monopoly. They can raise wages up to the level of marginal profit of the employing company. Just the same as a company that's a monopoly could raise prices up to marginal value of the good to the customer. If the company can bypass the union to hire others, then it's not a monopoly. But if the union…

> Distorted wages for labor is not good for broader society Real life on planet earth disagrees pretty hard with you. Google "___est countries". Pick a metric that shows policy impacts. Say, health, happiness, etc. The kind of metrics that aren't abstract BS and can't be cherry-picked. Pick the first, say, five. Then look up their unionization rates. I'll spoil it for you. Nordic countries win (it doesn't even matter…

> have massive levels of unionization. Finland has unionized entire sectors of the economy

There's an opportunity for tech to create a less antagonistic form of unions. Simply creating a Board seat for the ESOP, voted in by the ESOP holders (excluding senior management), would be shareholder aligned and beneficial to employees.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#207

Post by andrepd »

busterarm wrote: post #190
toomuchtodo wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you advocate for, not organizing, is what got us to the indentured servitude and slavery current state (US centric of course). Those who can’t recognize that are beyond hope (as they ignore the economic data clearly demonstrating the benefits), and to cater to them or entertain their desire to maintain the status quo helps no one but themselves. Edit: This forum has some sort of empathy deficiency in aggregate.

Quoted post unavailable.

Again, kindly notice that there are other people in the planet besides yourself.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#208

Post by JumpCrisscross »

adam_arthur wrote: post #186
bestcoder69 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the US went the way of Europe, technological innovation would slow dramatically, which I'll argue is a bad outcome for the world in the long run. IRL datapoints > counterfactuals: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/nordic-state-i... Also I said "Google it" for a reason. You picked an abstract one, and Sweden still beat us! And who could have guessed (me!), but Netherlands, Denmark, and Finland sit the…

Where do you think those earnings go in the long run? In a competitive market margins get driven down, and profitability feeds into lower cost of goods. E.g. cloud providers must provide cheaper and cheaper service to stay competitive with other cloud providers. This in turn drives down costs for all technology in society. Sure a union could try to take that profit and feed it into wages instead, but that's worse for…

> drives down costs for all technology in society

I am not familiar enough with the data to argue one way or another. But a counterargument would involve productivity. There are several fields where good-paying shops run rings around their budget-minded peers. Even for relatively unskilled roles, e.g. Costco. Sometimes consumers care about that directly. More often, it shows up in productivity.

Again, can't argue one way or another. Removing competition opens up novel channels for corruption. But I wouldn't say that a conclusion can be reached from first principles.

Re: Kickstarter Union voted 97.6% to ratify one of the first tech union contracts

#210

Post by bpodgursky »

totony wrote: post #153
bpodgursky wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a terrible substitute, since there are a lot of low-paid high-skill jobs (ex, graduate students, TAs). There's a meaningful labor liquidity difference between a job that takes 2 years of training and 2 days of training, and it's important for policy decisions. Sorry?

But aren't those low-paid, high skill jobs likely to be unionized? Only issue I see with that term is that union affects pay.

I am not trying to argue about the merits of unionization. I am saying that "low-skill" is a meaningful term we should not drop.
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