@DebsWithCats Absolutely!

@gpowerf It's certainly what I'd be doing!

@amerika I'm not saying they shouldn't. But working long hours for more money should be a right, not an obligation. I'm sure you don't mean to say that workers' rights are a bad thing?

@karlequin

I am a realist, not a moralist.

Workers are worth what they produce. This keeps the shareholders and company happy, and allows those workers to have a job.

When you are getting $300k/yr, you hop to.

I would feel differently if it were a $30k/yr fast food job.

@amerika @karlequin

> Workers are worth what they produce. This keeps the shareholders and company happy, and allows those workers to have a job.

> When you are getting $300k/yr, you hop to.

the thing about big tech companies is they got such baffling amounts of money by forcing people to look at ads all day that you honestly don't need to do that much to end up being worth $300k. make a microservice run a little faster. make some subjob deep in the guts stop generating a warning

if a given company was less cynically devoted to profit at the expense of humanity's collective psyche, everyone would have to be work harder

@rats @karlequin

As I write about regularly, I think the dot-com 3.0 crash is occurring now because people have figured out that these ads are ineffective.

I wonder if these firms really are dedicated to profit. They seem to be doing badly on that front. More like they are dedicated to power.

@amerika @karlequin

> As I write about regularly, I think the dot-com 3.0 crash is occurring now because people have figured out that these ads are ineffective.

/something/ is ineffective. i remember when jeff bezos was starting his space thing i watched the talk and my response was like... i didn't think he was /stupid/ exactly so much as his mind has been clearly warped by only being surrounded by people that affirm him, no challenge.

i'll admit that im a lot more invested in making things than the economic dynamics of running companies, so that's where my head's at, but i don't have a lot of faith generally in the people that do that work. do you feel that confident that musk has some sort of plan and didn't just do a bunch of coke and watch glengarry glen ross?

@rats @karlequin

"his mind has been clearly warped by only being surrounded by people that affirm him"

The curse of all management: the bean-counter yes-man. But worse, it's the whole SFBA culture. They talk about the unreal as if it were real because the VCs like it that week.

I never liked economics either. But in the end, it is an essential skill for figuring out what will work and keeping it functional.

Funny thing about economics is even though it isn't always 100% correct because it's essentially a social science, it still has some fundamental forces. There are constraints, often physical constraints. There are only so many loaves of bread that the human race can possibly bake in one day. People end up getting into the fuzzy edges of the social science, and they forget that at the end of the day someone has to make a loaf of bread.

@sj_zero @karlequin @rats

Good economics models take into account all sorts of things, including fatigue.

Basic models make unrealistic predictions.

@karlequin

Also, we might note that worker's rights have been an utter disaster.

Remember why trains got replaced by trucks?

Or wonder why the NHS is always broke?

Maybe even how lots of jobs went offshore and to illegal aliens?

Thank a union.

Workers are worth what they produce. You treat the good ones well.

Sometimes, it's crunch time, and you're at the office quite a bit.

If I limited my workday every day to 8 hrs I'd never get anywhere.

#LeapIntoLife

@amerika Well, I think we have a fundamental difference of opinion there! It seems obvious to me that unions have done immeasurable good *for workers*, which is kinda the point of them. If they've also made it harder for companies to function, I have no problem with that. Without legislation to even the playing field, it's ludicrous to rely on the beneficence of bosses to "treat the good ones well", as you put it. Call me an idealist if you like, but I believe minimum wage, maternity and paternity rights, pension provision, holiday and sickness entitlements etc. are of great benefit to society. And also, you might argue that the hypothetical fast food employee you mention provides a far more useful function than a twitter employee by feeding people (one cannot live on tweets alone) and the pay discrepancy is much greater than it ought to be. But, hey, maybe I have some deep-rooted anti-meritocracy feelings going on :)

@karlequin @amerika
>Call me an idealist if you like, but I believe minimum wage, maternity and paternity rights, pension provision, holiday and sickness entitlements etc. are of great benefit to society.
Tell that to all the people it makes economically unemployable.

They always look like this lmao

@LexiconDevil Would this man be worth what he was paid if he couldn't compel his employer to pay it?

@LexiconDevil @book who is "they"?

@karlequin @LexiconDevil Corpo-unionists.

@LexiconDevil @book or this

@book @amerika If you believe the system is failing people in that way, and if you also believe that removing workers' rights is the right solution to that, then honestly there's nothing I can say that's going to convince you otherwise.

@karlequin @amerika
> the system is failing people
You can't fail at something that isn't your job in the first place. "The system" isn't your dad, it's not there to put a roof over your head and tuck you in at night.

@book @karlequin

The job of the system, as I see it, is to make sure that the good get rewarded and the bad get yeeted.

Sort of like what Musk is doing at Twitter: keep the good engineers who recognize that in times of transition 80-hour weeks are part of the job description, throw out the people who were showing up twice a year and getting upper middle class salaries for that.

@amerika @book @karlequin

Re twitter employees

Funny how they all claim to love and care about the company that 'they built', yet bulk at the idea of actually showing up at the office, or putting forth extra effort to make the ownership transition, and new features, go smoothly.

They're all noodle boys

@MtnStateNomad @book @karlequin

I tend to think so.

Part of being on a team is giving the extra effort when required.

This is not business as usual for Twitter; they are in massive transition.

@amerika @book @karlequin

I'm sure they think they should be able to call the shots, since 'they built it'

Nevermind the capital and networking someone else put forth to make a place for them to build at

Short sighted worker mentality with no grasp of what it takes to make things happen. Just their own miniscule roll Ina much larger system.

The tiny gear thinks it is the engine

@MtnStateNomad @book @karlequin

That's a good synopsis.

Human narcissism is everywhere until transcended.

@karlequin @amerika

If you increase the associated costs of employing people, you will remove people from the workforce from the bottom up. The least capable, least intelligent, least diligent, least worthy, will be priced out. You are, paradoxically, the oppressor, for fighting for these "rights."

@book @amerika I couldn't disagree more. You would remove companies from the least ethical up, and if there's a need for the services those companies provide then the space would quickly be filled by those able to pay a decent living wage, which everyone ought to be able to enjoy in a civilised society, regardless of skillset, disability or other demographic. It's obvious to me that my more socialist viewpoint is not something that is ever going to sit well with you, so I'm not going to discuss this any further. It is refreshing to step out of my twitter echo-chamber, but I have more important things to do than carry on with this conversation! Thank you for your input, though.

@karlequin @book

The "ought" here is questionable to me. I think we need the most competent doing the work, and if others are less competent, they should be rewarded less. This way we all benefit from incompetence.

Of course I oppose socialism; I saw the Wall. Did you?

@book @karlequin

This has always been the crisis of minimum wage, as well as other things.

Migrants take all of the lower jobs now because everyone else got priced out.

Taxes go up, prices go up. Wages go up, prices go up. There is no free lunch.

@karlequin @book

The workers have more rights under my model. They get rewarded for doing good work.

Trying to make the rest of us subsidize those who are not performing just means death by parasite.

@book @karlequin

Exactly. These things destroy economic health.

Prices go up and people cannot afford to live.

But they got the higher salaries, how can this be?

Answer: the cost does not go away, it just gets passed on to all of us.

@karlequin

This misses the point: companies need to function for workers to get paid.

When you destroy that function, the jobs go away. Look at all the towns that died when the railroads vanished.

"Rights" are great if you can fund them, but limited resources versus infinite need ends like the Soviet Union.

I am not a meritocracy fan. I am however a fan of demonstrated competence, since we all benefit from this.

@karlequin

Consider Twitter. Musk fires three-quarters of the employees, makes the company more profitable, and also makes Twitter more useful as a public space.

Who wins? Everyone.
Who loses? Temporarily, the employees who have to find another job.

Now look at unions. They get temporary increases for the workers, but then the jobs go away.

This is why union membership in the private sector has been declining.