California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws • Hacker News Board

Re: California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws

#31

Post by i_am_proteus » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:28 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #23

maehwasu wrote: post #2

So "feudalism" = "things I think are bad?" The gig economy has many, many downsides, but those downsides don't share much at all in common with feudalism, even by analogy. If we let all words deteriorate to mean simply "good" or "bad" (with gradations of good or badness), we're barely communicating.

My understanding is that the definition of feudalism is: - Royalty allows vassals to "own" land in exchange for a portion of the income from the land. - Royalty has an obligation to protect the vassals while vassals have an obligation to fight for the land owners. - Similarly, vassals allowed peasants to "own" part of their land and were obligated to protect them in exchange for part of the income from the land. - Pe…

One of the reasons that feudalism ended was the evolution of military technology.

When dominant technology was scarce, it-- armor, warhorses, swords, nutrition, training-- was the dominion of feudal lords, which gave them real power over the peasantry.

The crossbow, and then the pike, gunpowder, and advances in organization & discipline such as those coming out of the old Swiss Confederacy and Gustavus Adolphus's Sweden changed everything. The fact that sovereign power relied on sizeable armies of citizenry to wage war was politically enabling for the peasants.

Combined with increased individual agency from economic output due to pre-industrial and industrial advances in tech, and the stage is set for democracy.

Some Swiss still carry their swords, now heirlooms, to the polls. If they did not have swords, they would not have polls.

If technology now removes the economic and military agency of the individual, it will also remove his political agency.

Re: California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws

#32

Post by snarf21 » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:33 PM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #13

neilwilson wrote: post #8

The way to reshape labour laws is to offer an alternative job defining the socially minimum acceptable job in a local area. Business then has to compete with that to attract labour. No other labour law required. Simple competition sorts it out. That is also has the advantage of being a geographically targeted federal automatic stabiliser that operates far more effectively than interest rate targeting via bank lending…

No what you really need is federal binding minimum standards for Annual leave (4 weeks ) and Sick pay and minimum wage. Repeal all the right to work laws and massively reduce the ability of employers to use non compeats (us CA as a model here I think)

This is all true, but you also need to remove the ability for healthcare to be based on one employer. You should be able to get your own coverage and contribute to an HSA no matter what job you do. That mobility will make a huge difference

Re: California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws

#33

Post by urbanjunkie » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:33 PM UTC

mkane848 wrote: post #28

gerbilly wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you're bing down voted is beyond me. My wife describes engineers as 'smartdumb'. We're super smart at figuring out technical solutions that enable things like social media, ridesharing and short term rentals. But we're either willfully ignorant or just plain dumb about the second order effects on society. And you know what you call it when people discuss the social good? Politics. That very thing that c…

Seeing people say things like "Simple competition sorts it out" as if any complex problem can be answered like that. We should really know better, given our field. Also interesting that basically anyone saying anything mildly critical of capitalism is getting downvoted without much response

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Re: California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws

#34

Post by kobbe » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:34 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #29

kornakiewicz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you decide who qualifies for four weeks pay? You don't. Every full-time employee have right to paid holidays, like we have in every other country in the world.

That leads to less full-time employees. People will get their hours cut. Maybe we need to consider someone who works more than 15 hours a week full time. Or perhaps the benefits scale for employees based on number of hours worked.

It works in every other country...

Re: California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws

#35

Post by mseidl » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:35 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #24

C1sc0cat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No what you really need is federal binding minimum standards for Annual leave (4 weeks ) and Sick pay and minimum wage. Repeal all the right to work laws and massively reduce the ability of employers to use non compeats (us CA as a model here I think)

How do you decide who qualifies for four weeks pay? that is a significant cost to many small businesses. Do you limit it based on how many employees they have? How many hours the employee averages per week? The last time Congress set limits they threw low wage earners under the bus; the now infamous ACA twenty nine hour rule. minimum wage should not be at the federal level, it is a state by state and city by city iss…

Well, it turns out, people aren't robots. They need rest. They need time off.

Re: California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws

#36

Post by kornakiewicz » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:36 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #29

kornakiewicz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you decide who qualifies for four weeks pay? You don't. Every full-time employee have right to paid holidays, like we have in every other country in the world.

That leads to less full-time employees. People will get their hours cut. Maybe we need to consider someone who works more than 15 hours a week full time. Or perhaps the benefits scale for employees based on number of hours worked.

I wasn't clear. In Europe, part-time employees get their time off pro-rated based on working hours, while full-time ones get minimum required by law (20+ days per year, depending on country). Plus additional ~10 paid public holidays for everyone.

Re: California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws

#37

Post by Ididntdothis » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:37 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #29

kornakiewicz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you decide who qualifies for four weeks pay? You don't. Every full-time employee have right to paid holidays, like we have in every other country in the world.

That leads to less full-time employees. People will get their hours cut. Maybe we need to consider someone who works more than 15 hours a week full time. Or perhaps the benefits scale for employees based on number of hours worked.

The US is pretty much the only developed country without mandatory vacation time. This is a solved problem. Just look around how other countries do it.

Re: California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws

#38

Post by js8 » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:37 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #25

js8 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see analogy between capitalism and feudalism in how some people defend rich founders and owners of private companies. In feudalism, it was common to ascribe the collective success of a nation (or a smaller, land-owning group of people in a given region) to a single individual, the feudal lord. He had the ultimate (and hereditary) authority over the operations of the group, by virtue of successfully coordinating the…

There is a system where it works more like the way you are suggesting -- it's called communism. The key reason why capitalism isn't "Feudalism 2.0" is because companies compete in a marketplace against each other, and there is freedom of mobility between employees across those companies. So maybe you could say that anti-trust law is a key component to ensure that your analogy is false.

I think you misunderstood my argument. I am not defending a particular system (and almost certainly not communism). I am pointing out that same arguments used to defend the privileges of capitalists were used to defend feudal privileges.

The feudal lords also competed with each other. The freedom of mobility is not relevant if your only choice is just another feudal lord.

Re: California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws

#39

Post by irishcoffee » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:38 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #22

maehwasu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're inadvertently making precisely my original point: "exploitation" and "bad thing" are incredibly general properties that exist in many systems, and it's not useful or insightful to compare them to feudalism.

If someone called a haircut feudalistic because it was bad then that’s dumbing down words to just good or bad. Calling a type of employment relationship feudalistic because of the amount of power the employer has is at least somewhat descriptive.

feu·dal·ism

/ˈfyo͞odlˌizəm/

noun

the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.

Sure isn't even "somewhat descriptive"

edit for formatting

Re: California bill will drive a national debate over how to reshape labor laws

#40

Post by simias » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 12:39 PM UTC

BaronSamedi wrote: post #17

maehwasu wrote: post #2

So "feudalism" = "things I think are bad?" The gig economy has many, many downsides, but those downsides don't share much at all in common with feudalism, even by analogy. If we let all words deteriorate to mean simply "good" or "bad" (with gradations of good or badness), we're barely communicating.

We could even take an additional step on the path of honest communication and instead of "good" and "bad", say "things I like" and "things I dislike".

That's not the same thing. I like ice cream but it's bad for me. I don't like having to pay for it but it's probably good for society that ice cream makers are rewarded for their work, at least if I want to be able to eat more in the future. The world would be a literal paradise if doing thing we like and doing good things were always one and the same thing. I don't see how you can discuss morality and ethics without "good", "bad", "right" or "wrong".

IMO the problem with modern political discussion (especially online) isn't vocabulary, it's lack of nuance and empathy. "Good" and "bad" are not really the problem, but rather when you only classify things are either completely good or completely bad with no middle ground.