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I wasn't asking if Dave's salary went down. I was asking if the existing doctors' did. Expecting unions to be good for the whole world is stupid. Nobody expect

I wasn't asking if Dave's salary went down. I was asking if the existing doctors' did. Expecting unions to be good for the whole world is stupid. Nobody expects a company to act in the whole world's interest rather than its own. The union is just a tool to level the playing field, to get some control back over "Dave will practice medicine for half what we're paying you, without complaining, so fuck off"

roenxi 4y ago
If they are relying on being good at what they do? Probably not. If they are relying on the fact that they are in a guild? Probably. Good thing too. They should be making money by being competent. That is why we should be resisting unions. We're paying money for nothing when we interact with unionised industries, and in software we'd be protecting weak engineers at the expense of people who are good at their job. If everyone unionises, that just means everyone is worse off. If you want to protect economic dead weight then we just end up with a basic prisoners dilemma scenario where the optimum outcome is everyone cooperates and bans unions.
- clipsy 4y ago
  So you agree, then, that the union/guild is good for its members?
  - roenxi 4y ago
    Well, there are people in unions who can't succeed without it. But if the software industry starts to unionise: - The highest paid software engineers will be worse off. - The quality of software will be lower. - I expect the average software engineer to be worse off. You're chasing a local optimum that is substantially worse than where the software industry currently is. The answer to Red Hat laying off 5% of their workforce isn't to lock in permanent barriers to entering the software industry. I'm part of the software industry. Unions will make me worse off.
    - clipsy 4y ago
      Do you have evidence for those statements, or are you just generally in the habit of stating your beliefs as fact?
      - roenxi 4y ago
        I've shot down every source you've cited. If we're just going to argue about what should be done next, I'm happy to go with opinions and thought experiments. If you want to do something different, do something different. Here is a link for you to rebut any one-study approach though, because I'm sure someone in the peanut gallery is thinking of doing that: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-... By happy coincidence, the evidence in that article is a similar field to unionisation.

roenxi 4y ago

If they are relying on being good at what they do? Probably not. If they are relying on the fact that they are in a guild? Probably. Good thing too. They should be making money by being competent. That is why we should be resisting unions. We're paying money for nothing when we interact with unionised industries, and in software we'd be protecting weak engineers at the expense of people who are good at their job. If everyone unionises, that just means everyone is worse off. If you want to protect economic dead weight then we just end up with a basic prisoners dilemma scenario where the optimum outcome is everyone cooperates and bans unions.

clipsy 4y ago
So you agree, then, that the union/guild is good for its members?
- roenxi 4y ago
  Well, there are people in unions who can't succeed without it. But if the software industry starts to unionise: - The highest paid software engineers will be worse off. - The quality of software will be lower. - I expect the average software engineer to be worse off. You're chasing a local optimum that is substantially worse than where the software industry currently is. The answer to Red Hat laying off 5% of their workforce isn't to lock in permanent barriers to entering the software industry. I'm part of the software industry. Unions will make me worse off.
  - clipsy 4y ago
    Do you have evidence for those statements, or are you just generally in the habit of stating your beliefs as fact?
    - roenxi 4y ago
      I've shot down every source you've cited. If we're just going to argue about what should be done next, I'm happy to go with opinions and thought experiments. If you want to do something different, do something different. Here is a link for you to rebut any one-study approach though, because I'm sure someone in the peanut gallery is thinking of doing that: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-... By happy coincidence, the evidence in that article is a similar field to unionisation.