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The Modern Workforce

jeremycai.com

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Re: The Modern Workforce

#71

Post by cgag »

maceo wrote: post #52

Before the industrial revolution we had serfs and artisans. As the factories absorbed both the serfs and the artisans, the serfs saw it as an upgrade, while the artisans resented the new way of life. Through workplace organization, which usually involved serious risks, working conditions improved for everybody and reached a certain equilibrium by the 1950's. The lessons learned through workplace struggles in the last…

Private companies have hired planes to drop bombs on striking working coal miners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

People should take a look at the list of "Major armed conflicts in American labor union history" at the bottom of the page and get a feel for how many people died for the more comfortable version of wage-slavery we have to day.

Re: The Modern Workforce

#72

Post by alexqgb »

pc86 wrote: post #41
alexqgb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trolling again, yummy? Or are you honestly too thoughtless to recognize that a stream of people who have no long-term stake in a building do not conduct themselves in the same community-oriented way that's normal among those who do?

I prefer to believe that most people do not treat common areas of buildings like garbage. There are exceptions, of course, but it's not like having an apartment that you rent out a few weeks a year will throw the apartment building into a constant state of disrepair.

The problems caused by transients are hardly limited to "disrepair". Noise and disregard for building security are also real issues, as is the degradation of trust.

I can be sure that my landlord will perform extensive background checks on any potential neighbors, and can be fairly confident that their friends and relatives are also on the up-and-up. But knowing that the standards for getting a room via Air B&B are considerably less stringent, an explosion of short-term rentals in a building means that long-term residents will find that they cannot be as trusting. To put it bluntly, hotel security exists for a reason.

In general, I think the service is a great idea, especially for properties that don't share a lot of common space with other tenants. But in cases where they do, I tend to think that opening the building to anyone doing a search on Air B&B can be a real dick move. Nobody decent should be surprised if it draws serious hostility from the neighbors.

Re: The Modern Workforce

#73

Post by Chinjut »

cgag wrote: post #71
maceo wrote: post #52

Before the industrial revolution we had serfs and artisans. As the factories absorbed both the serfs and the artisans, the serfs saw it as an upgrade, while the artisans resented the new way of life. Through workplace organization, which usually involved serious risks, working conditions improved for everybody and reached a certain equilibrium by the 1950's. The lessons learned through workplace struggles in the last…

Private companies have hired planes to drop bombs on striking working coal miners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain People should take a look at the list of "Major armed conflicts in American labor union history" at the bottom of the page and get a feel for how many people died for the more comfortable version of wage-slavery we have to day.

I'm likely in agreement with you on the politics of this discussion. However, I will note, pedantically, that "the only time people have been bombed in america" is not a great way of putting it, given, e.g., the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Re: The Modern Workforce

#74

Post by s73v3r »

trhway wrote: post #31
eldavido wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, except (1) it's your obligation to change the law as a voter and (2) profit-maximizing companies have every obligation to act in their shareholder's best interests, within the bounds of the law . So really, it's up to us as citizens to decide what's fair, and get the appropriate legislation passed to change it.

>(2) profit-maximizing companies have every obligation to act in their shareholder's best interests, within the bounds of the law. is profit-maximization a law? because i don't see why for example a company can't be formed for the purpose of "betterment of humanity" and if it earns some profit on the way - great - and if not - it is ok too. As long as shareholders agree to that, ie. buy shares of such a company.

This would work until you get some douche "Activist Investor" like Carl Ichan to buy up a bunch of shares and get all pissed because the company isn't working to maximize profit, despite it's stated goal that it wants to do something else. Because all that matters is that he can make money, and the thought that he could simply not buy shares in the company never occurred to him.

Re: The Modern Workforce

#75

Post by s73v3r »

pc86 wrote: post #41
alexqgb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trolling again, yummy? Or are you honestly too thoughtless to recognize that a stream of people who have no long-term stake in a building do not conduct themselves in the same community-oriented way that's normal among those who do?

I prefer to believe that most people do not treat common areas of buildings like garbage. There are exceptions, of course, but it's not like having an apartment that you rent out a few weeks a year will throw the apartment building into a constant state of disrepair.

Even if they're not trashing the place, they still might not be conducting themselves like a normal resident of the building would. It's reasonable to expect that most people would be quiet and get in around reasonable hours on weeknights, because everyone has to go to work the next morning. However, someone on vacation is more likely than a regular tenant to get wasted and come back as a rowdy group, disturbing everyone else in the building.

Re: The Modern Workforce

#76

Post by log_n »

Chinjut wrote: post #73
cgag wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private companies have hired planes to drop bombs on striking working coal miners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain People should take a look at the list of "Major armed conflicts in American labor union history" at the bottom of the page and get a feel for how many people died for the more comfortable version of wage-slavery we have to day.

I'm likely in agreement with you on the politics of this discussion. However, I will note, pedantically, that "the only time people have been bombed in america" is not a great way of putting it, given, e.g., the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

I'll play too! Hawaii was a self-governing territory at the time and thus not a part of America (and they stayed that way until 1959, along with Alaska and the Aleutian islands).

But, during WW2 America was bombed (by sea plane) by this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuo_Fujita

Re: The Modern Workforce

#77

Post by cgag »

Chinjut wrote: post #73
cgag wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private companies have hired planes to drop bombs on striking working coal miners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain People should take a look at the list of "Major armed conflicts in American labor union history" at the bottom of the page and get a feel for how many people died for the more comfortable version of wage-slavery we have to day.

I'm likely in agreement with you on the politics of this discussion. However, I will note, pedantically, that "the only time people have been bombed in america" is not a great way of putting it, given, e.g., the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Oh, duh. I meant mainland, but I think that I might just be wrong, I'll change it.

edit: It looks like at one point wikipedia more specifically claimed it was the only time bombs were dropped from american skys, on americans, by americans, but even that was wrong: http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/lmnng/til_abo...

Re: The Modern Workforce

#78

Post by derefr »

crpatino wrote: post #67
fennecfoxen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that businesses want to both not pay direct benefits for their workers and not pay taxes to fund government controlled benefits. That's not necessarily a problem. One could cut the corporate tax rate and fund benefits through income/dividend/capital-gains/sales/VAT taxes.

Yes agreed, someone has to pay at the end of day. The original model we have for what we currently call "benefits" are workers associations pooling resources to hedge against catastrophic worst cases. And to be fair no one wants to pay any more taxes than strictly needed, not just businesses. One big problem I see with this is that of corporate personhood. If you cut corporate taxes and raise taxes on dividends and c…

Presumably, they're generating utility for whoever gave them all the money they declare as revenue. Insofar as those people are citizens of your country, a company helps citizens.

(Oddly, though, this means that it's in every government's best interests to encourage globalization, and then get their citizens to consume all their products from foreign companies, while not having to deal with having any local companies consuming local resources. Presumably, local employees would also be employed remotely by foreign companies, or by local foreign-owned corporate subsidiaries.)

Re: The Modern Workforce

#79

Post by log_n »

cgag wrote: post #77
Chinjut wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm likely in agreement with you on the politics of this discussion. However, I will note, pedantically, that "the only time people have been bombed in america" is not a great way of putting it, given, e.g., the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Oh, duh. I meant mainland, but I think that I might just be wrong, I'll change it. edit: It looks like at one point wikipedia more specifically claimed it was the only time bombs were dropped from american skys, on americans, by americans, but even that was wrong: http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/lmnng/til_abo...

The coal miner strikes are fascinating (and the teamsters). During WW2 the continental US was bombed (pretty uneventfully) by the Japanese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuo_Fujita

Re: The Modern Workforce

#80

Post by hn_ »

mhurron wrote: post #32
colechristensen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the relationship, being an actual independent contractor is truly liberating. Choosing your own hours, working only on things you want to, setting your own salary based on how much you want to t work. There is real freedom in that as long as you get paid appropriately and actually get that freedom. Companies wanting to save money on benefits while having 9-5 workers with no freedom of choice of when or…

> That's abuse of the system and illegal. Everything is legal as long as you don't get caught, and it doesn't seem like anyone is interested in doing any catching.

I think part of the problem might be that workers don't know their rights.
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