4 ms·

> Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the big companies in the US. No you can't.

> Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the big companies in the US. No you can't. You're not thinking this through. As soon as enough people quit in order to start pressuring companies to allow this, it becomes more difficult for the growing pool of quitters to get new jobs and it becomes a buyers market, putting you in an even weaker position than you already were in. On top of that, capital always has more of an ability to hold out far longer. You need to eat and pay rent right now while they can scale down production until you come back with terms favorable to them. This is why unions save money ahead of time so that they can strike.

ericd 4y ago
So go start a worker-friendly company?
- zackmorris 4y ago
  Ya that's what I'm wondering. The central problem seems to be wealth inequality (that capital has been separated from labor). So there's no money available for laid-off workers to start a business, maybe by design. As far as I can tell, there is simply no place where a group of workers can borrow money. We have no concept of loans co-signed by a large number of people in the US. For example, there should be a floor at which a loan is deemed risk-free because a typical person has that much money. Any of us can donate $5 to someone living on the street at any time. So 100 people should be able to borrow $500 together, no questions asked. Now, how high can that go? Certainly $20 each. Maybe $100? $300? It's going to be an amount similar to what payday loan shops offer to strangers. To me, this is like customer acquisition cost (CAC). In the 90s, CAC was under $1 before advertising got saturated. Today it's between $25 and $50, which has eliminated nearly all indie websites selling handmade goods for less than that. And driven the rise of influencers, and incentivized taking over making. I know we have Kickstarter etc. But for something like this to work, it would need to be available everywhere immediately with no nonsense, no exorbitant interest or fees and no wait time. The government could offer group loans like this with a $100 per person limit today and bootstrap the economy to where it was 25 years ago and make a huge return. Maybe this is what drove crypto and NFTs, just in a way that was obviously going to implode because workers were expected to pony up the cash. So I'd be curious to hear if investors know of any places to take out group loans like this.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    >The central problem seems to be wealth inequality (that capital has been separated from labor). The central problem will be inequality of all kinds, such as aptitude/motiviation/effort/etc. Eventually, in many businesses, you will get into a situation where some people will think they deserve more than others, and then politics will take over, and you have a similar problem to weaknesses in democracy. >As far as I can tell, there is simply no place where a group of workers can borrow money. We have no concept of loans co-signed by a large number of people in the US. There is. A family reunion, a bank, a credit union, a local business group meeting, etc. There is nothing stopping this happening other than the fact that it is not economic. Underwriting, agency risk, and pursuing unpaid debt is not a negligible problem. >For example, there should be a floor at which a loan is deemed risk-free because a typical person has that much money. Any of us can donate $5 to someone living on the street at any time. So 100 people should be able to borrow $500 together, no questions asked. Very few lenders exist who would accept that deal. As a lender, would you?
    - zackmorris 4y ago
      The central problem will be inequality of all kinds, such as aptitude/motiviation/effort/etc. Eventually, in many businesses, you will get into a situation where some people will think they deserve more than others, and then politics will take over, and you have a similar problem to weaknesses in democracy. That's othering. You're separating the "us" that are hard workers and successful from the "them" that are slackers. But wealth inequality is an injustice specifically because it doesn't discriminate. For example: in software development the hardest workers are penalized because the 10:1 or 100:1 leverage in their solutions often isn't recognized or rewarded. They might get paid twice as much as another dev even though decades of experience and orders of magnitude differences in problem-solving capacity separate them. That could be where your perception comes from, if you feel undervalued for your work and see others around you as entitled. The hardest workers I've met in my life were generally the lowest paid. When I was moving furniture from 2001-2003, women automatically were paid $9/hr to pack boxes while the men were paid $10/hr to load them. Never mind that packing is a much more difficult job psychologically. I could pack about 30 boxes/day if I went as fast as I could, while a woman I worked with averaged 80. Almost 3 times my productivity for less pay and opportunity. And she had kids. And she didn't have the money to go to the dentist. And she never complained. Not like me. Today 20 years later, costs have at least doubled while pay has stayed the same. I worry for her and the literally 100 million Americans who work harder than we do and live hand to mouth. It's a travesty of such proportion that it's become unthinkable. We literally can't overcome our own biases to think about it rationally. Our inability to empathize is the root cause of suffering. So yes, I would make that loan all day. And nothing against you, I don't know you, I don't mean to be critical. I just feel that your argument is rooted in bias which somewhat ironically causes you to not entertain the insights I've gained acquiring my bias. Edit: I may have misread your point. Do you mean that some people will think they deserve more than others and hoard the profits of the business? Sorry if I got that backwards or projected my context onto what you said.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  Some people do that. The majority though can't afford to do that, obviously. It's amazing that people can be so disconnected from reality to not see that as obvious.
  - ericd 4y ago
    It was meant to provoke some thought as to why there aren’t more worker friendly companies out there given that everyone seems to want them. Obviously not everyone is in a good situation to start their own.
Retric 4y ago
I think you have that backwards, the more people quit the easier it is to get a job.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  No, not if they are all quitting companies without these conditions to go to companies that do. You cannot create the pressure necessary to make the desired changes just by quitting.
  - Retric 4y ago
    If 1/2 of Microsoft’s workforce decided to quit tonight the company would go ballistic looking for workers. The lag between people quitting and people finding their next job reduces the labor supply. That’s compounded by onboarding time required to conduct interviews and get people up to speed etc. It’s why companies so frequently fold in the face of strikes rather than just fire everyone, they have a great deal of individual leverage on any one employee but are completely dependent on having a workforce.
    - guerrilla 4y ago
      Yes, I did mention unions in my first post but that isn't what the person I was responding to was suggesting. They were suggesting individual action, not collective action.
      - Retric 4y ago
        I assumed he was talking about collective action or it’s functional equivalent here: > As soon as enough people quit You don’t actually need a formal union to get large numbers of people to quit.
eduction 4y ago
You are of course entirely correct. Unilaterally quitting or refusing an offer isn’t going to achieve much. I do think a strike could be effective here though. A company is in more of a bind when all / many of its workers refuse to work.
true_religion 4y ago
The most charitable reading of the OP is to believe that they want a union, since group labour negotiations are simplified when you have an official group representing you. So long as the company acts as a group and labour acts as a individuals, all the bargaining power will be on the side of the company. I think the union formed at Microsoft may be a good example to follow.

ericd 4y ago

So go start a worker-friendly company?

zackmorris 4y ago
Ya that's what I'm wondering. The central problem seems to be wealth inequality (that capital has been separated from labor). So there's no money available for laid-off workers to start a business, maybe by design. As far as I can tell, there is simply no place where a group of workers can borrow money. We have no concept of loans co-signed by a large number of people in the US. For example, there should be a floor at which a loan is deemed risk-free because a typical person has that much money. Any of us can donate $5 to someone living on the street at any time. So 100 people should be able to borrow $500 together, no questions asked. Now, how high can that go? Certainly $20 each. Maybe $100? $300? It's going to be an amount similar to what payday loan shops offer to strangers. To me, this is like customer acquisition cost (CAC). In the 90s, CAC was under $1 before advertising got saturated. Today it's between $25 and $50, which has eliminated nearly all indie websites selling handmade goods for less than that. And driven the rise of influencers, and incentivized taking over making. I know we have Kickstarter etc. But for something like this to work, it would need to be available everywhere immediately with no nonsense, no exorbitant interest or fees and no wait time. The government could offer group loans like this with a $100 per person limit today and bootstrap the economy to where it was 25 years ago and make a huge return. Maybe this is what drove crypto and NFTs, just in a way that was obviously going to implode because workers were expected to pony up the cash. So I'd be curious to hear if investors know of any places to take out group loans like this.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  >The central problem seems to be wealth inequality (that capital has been separated from labor). The central problem will be inequality of all kinds, such as aptitude/motiviation/effort/etc. Eventually, in many businesses, you will get into a situation where some people will think they deserve more than others, and then politics will take over, and you have a similar problem to weaknesses in democracy. >As far as I can tell, there is simply no place where a group of workers can borrow money. We have no concept of loans co-signed by a large number of people in the US. There is. A family reunion, a bank, a credit union, a local business group meeting, etc. There is nothing stopping this happening other than the fact that it is not economic. Underwriting, agency risk, and pursuing unpaid debt is not a negligible problem. >For example, there should be a floor at which a loan is deemed risk-free because a typical person has that much money. Any of us can donate $5 to someone living on the street at any time. So 100 people should be able to borrow $500 together, no questions asked. Very few lenders exist who would accept that deal. As a lender, would you?
  - zackmorris 4y ago
    The central problem will be inequality of all kinds, such as aptitude/motiviation/effort/etc. Eventually, in many businesses, you will get into a situation where some people will think they deserve more than others, and then politics will take over, and you have a similar problem to weaknesses in democracy. That's othering. You're separating the "us" that are hard workers and successful from the "them" that are slackers. But wealth inequality is an injustice specifically because it doesn't discriminate. For example: in software development the hardest workers are penalized because the 10:1 or 100:1 leverage in their solutions often isn't recognized or rewarded. They might get paid twice as much as another dev even though decades of experience and orders of magnitude differences in problem-solving capacity separate them. That could be where your perception comes from, if you feel undervalued for your work and see others around you as entitled. The hardest workers I've met in my life were generally the lowest paid. When I was moving furniture from 2001-2003, women automatically were paid $9/hr to pack boxes while the men were paid $10/hr to load them. Never mind that packing is a much more difficult job psychologically. I could pack about 30 boxes/day if I went as fast as I could, while a woman I worked with averaged 80. Almost 3 times my productivity for less pay and opportunity. And she had kids. And she didn't have the money to go to the dentist. And she never complained. Not like me. Today 20 years later, costs have at least doubled while pay has stayed the same. I worry for her and the literally 100 million Americans who work harder than we do and live hand to mouth. It's a travesty of such proportion that it's become unthinkable. We literally can't overcome our own biases to think about it rationally. Our inability to empathize is the root cause of suffering. So yes, I would make that loan all day. And nothing against you, I don't know you, I don't mean to be critical. I just feel that your argument is rooted in bias which somewhat ironically causes you to not entertain the insights I've gained acquiring my bias. Edit: I may have misread your point. Do you mean that some people will think they deserve more than others and hoard the profits of the business? Sorry if I got that backwards or projected my context onto what you said.
guerrilla 4y ago
Some people do that. The majority though can't afford to do that, obviously. It's amazing that people can be so disconnected from reality to not see that as obvious.
- ericd 4y ago
  It was meant to provoke some thought as to why there aren’t more worker friendly companies out there given that everyone seems to want them. Obviously not everyone is in a good situation to start their own.

Retric 4y ago

I think you have that backwards, the more people quit the easier it is to get a job.

guerrilla 4y ago
No, not if they are all quitting companies without these conditions to go to companies that do. You cannot create the pressure necessary to make the desired changes just by quitting.
- Retric 4y ago
  If 1/2 of Microsoft’s workforce decided to quit tonight the company would go ballistic looking for workers. The lag between people quitting and people finding their next job reduces the labor supply. That’s compounded by onboarding time required to conduct interviews and get people up to speed etc. It’s why companies so frequently fold in the face of strikes rather than just fire everyone, they have a great deal of individual leverage on any one employee but are completely dependent on having a workforce.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    Yes, I did mention unions in my first post but that isn't what the person I was responding to was suggesting. They were suggesting individual action, not collective action.
    - Retric 4y ago
      I assumed he was talking about collective action or it’s functional equivalent here: > As soon as enough people quit You don’t actually need a formal union to get large numbers of people to quit.

eduction 4y ago

You are of course entirely correct. Unilaterally quitting or refusing an offer isn’t going to achieve much. I do think a strike could be effective here though. A company is in more of a bind when all / many of its workers refuse to work.

true_religion 4y ago

The most charitable reading of the OP is to believe that they want a union, since group labour negotiations are simplified when you have an official group representing you. So long as the company acts as a group and labour acts as a individuals, all the bargaining power will be on the side of the company. I think the union formed at Microsoft may be a good example to follow.