301–310 of 312 posts
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I wholeheartedly disagree. Let me tell you something you might be unfamiliar with: companies that cannot manage their affairs properly will end up in bankruptcy. They will owe more to those who provide it with goods and services than they can collect. This happens when companies cannot (or will not) adjust their operations to accommodate changes in market conditions or regulatory environments. The cost structure of H…
So when it's labor's fault it's labor's fault. Also when it's bad management then it's labor's fault. And when it goes bankrupt it's because labor is greedy and wants too much money. And later when management siphons hundreds of millions of dollars out of the company that's not because they are greedy and want too much money. Makes sense to me.
And believe me, I think the unions share some of the blame here. They negotiated terms for their members that included overly generous pension terms because one of the things that unions like to do now is control member pensions. And when they control member pensions, they have a nice pot of money to invest for their members behalf (har har har) until they do such a bad job of it that they need someone to blame (that greedy company).
That particular story has played out over and over again because union management swings investment funds to "favored" firms which court pension funds aggressively (read: kickbacks).
Think I'm making this stuff up?
Do your own research and tell me if you can find any examples of union-run pension funds exceeding the market performance of something like an index fund. Do pension funds even have to meet the disclosure and transparency requirements of your garden-variety mutual fund?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/success/terrysavage/t...
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Next time carry it up one flight of stairs and put it in the lift out of sight of the doorman.
I tried this on my first trip to 60 Hudson (a "famous" carrier hotel in Manhattan). We needed to remove a Cisco 2600 router. It's smaller than a pizza box. It fits in a backpack. I carried it under my arm. As I step out of the elevator and into the lobby, the front desk person goes "you can't remove that equipment". No worries, I anticipated this and have all the relevant removal paperwork. He is uninterested. "you c…
What does the guy at the front care anyways? Do the union guys pass him a $50 every time they cajole somebody in to using the freight elevator for something stupid?
I probably would have just waited till the cop left, went to the nearest shipping store, bought a box, put 5 bucks in postage on it, and addressed it to myself. Now they can't open it without exigent circumstances or a warrant.
I'm not a lawyer, so don't take this as legal advice or anything, but it's probably the next best thing to giving them the finger.
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Waymo is still developing the technology, they can only go 5000 miles on average without the need for human intervention. They're getting close, but they don't exist yet.
Maybe some day they'll even be able to drive 5000 different miles instead of driving the same 5 miles 1000 times.
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Kiiiinnnnda. People make bad decisions, and the only architecture that matters is the one that lets you change. It's like the dig-once fiber policy for roadways, and is all part of the "don't build to peak value" idea; it's also like a usual problem with user interface design: if you only ever built user tools to do what you imagined, users (or later owners / tenants) are limited to your imagination. I go to a gym in…
I can actually see this effect in my flat. I live in a fairly old building; it's been renovated and I really like it, but the location of the power plugs is the same as when it was constructed (except for one room in my flat). This means each socket is located at the entry of the respective room - the result being that I have extension cords all over the place. I especially find this interesting since this means the…
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I can actually see this effect in my flat. I live in a fairly old building; it's been renovated and I really like it, but the location of the power plugs is the same as when it was constructed (except for one room in my flat). This means each socket is located at the entry of the respective room - the result being that I have extension cords all over the place. I especially find this interesting since this means the…
That electrical system sounds like a fire hazard. I'd hate to see what some of the other apartments look like!
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The basic idea of collective bargaining isn't really illegal when applied to a employers in general, because it's already the norm on that side of the table. A group of businesspeople with mutual economic interest can legally "collude" when they decide what wages to offer employees, how to structure working conditions, how to carry out negotiations, etc., if they agree to form a legal partnership (you don't even need…
The problem isn't "collusion" over wages for the union members. The problem is that the union is a gatekeeper for training for or holding that type of job, period. In this particular case, the law requires (for licensing) that prospective crane operators be apprenticed to a licensed operator before they're eligible for their own license. When all the licensed operators are union members, only union members can get li…
I personally think that laws banning closed shops are completely absurd and undermine peoples' freedom to negotiate contracts that suit them (which labour should have free access to, because of the massive unfairness of employment as a concept, and its inherent inequity between employer and employee).
But they have, and pretending that it's not their own fault for then turning around and effectively mandating a closed shop is absurd.
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Yes, the same Europe. I don't know about the French, but the unions in Germany and Scandinavia are quite a bit more pro-business than their American counterparts. Hong Kong and Singapore build infrastructure for quite cheap. And there they don't need to shout about `free markets': the government mostly allows them already. I'm totally with you on the crony-capitalism bashing.
> Yes, the same Europe. I don't know about the French, but the unions in Germany and Scandinavia are quite a bit more pro-business than their American counterparts. Why wouldn't German unions be pro-business when labor is represented at board level with full voting rights? German corporations do not consider themselves "job creators" or see workers as resources to be exploited, unlike their American counterparts.
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Union acts in it's member's interests: "Terrible, we shouldn't allow this". Corporation acts in it's own interests: "Well you can't blame them for that".
One of these organizations produces goods and services. The other is, more often than not, just another parasitic middleman.