4 ms·

> 2) What type of wages do you expect people to be making in Hollywood? It seems like a pretty hard industry to make money in. The people making money will be e

by clipsy 4y ago

> 2) What type of wages do you expect people to be making in Hollywood? It seems like a pretty hard industry to make money in. The people making money will be executives and superstars who need no union. Funny, the superstars themselves certainly do not agree with that sentiment in general; and indeed, the industry was infamous for exploiting superstars prior to unionization.

roenxi 4y ago
Software superstars far outperform Hollywood superstars. That isn't close either. Some of the richest people in the world are people who succeeded in software. The wealthiest people in the world for the last 5 years have been ex-computer technicians. The difference is instead of wasting their time with union politics to try and make their lifestyle work they were busy trying to figure out how to make money. The answer was a resounding "not unions".
- majormajor 4y ago
  That's not the difference. You're being willfully obtuse. Less imagined "time-wasting union politics" [whatever you think that means for SAG] doesn't change the TAM for an Oprah or a Brad Pitt to let them be a Jeff Bezos. You latched onto the stupidest of all possible ways to interpret my post and compare the two fields because you don't want to engage with the actual things Hollywood unions do or how they actually work.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    The people in a wealthier industry have more money than people in a poor industry. You just picked an answer that shows that. Unions will make the software industry less wealthy. Eventually that will flow down to wages. I'm not being obtuse, I'm being effective at getting wealthy. An approach I encourage for everyone else in the software industry I might add. You're holding up an example that is worse at making money than I am and saying people should copy it. No! People should copy the industry that is effective at minting millionaires. People should be copying the freedom of software rather than software copying the industries that unionised and stayed poor.
    - majormajor 4y ago
      This is an even more obtuse point than your last attempt. Go open a non-unionized laundromat and see if you make more money than Hollywood. That's all that matters apparently, right? Or maybe a sweatshop - seems like another great "free market" place to work! You're a political tool making statements of faith instead of objective evaluations.
      - roenxi 4y ago
        But you have once again picked an industry composed of people who are not wealthy and said we should copy them to make money. There is a reason when we think "unions" the industrys that come to mind are, in the main, full of workers who don't have much job security or income. Unions are wealth-destructive. If you destroy the wealth in an industry, it cannot afford to pay high wages. If the industry has no wealth to destroy sure, unionise. You were already going to get paid nothing and you'd still get paid nothing. That'll lock down any hope of changing practices to improve things. I don't want to work in an industry that has unions; I want to be in an industry that is full of economic zest. The reason why software engineers do so well is because they are in one of the freest markets going. The wealthiest software engineers happen to be in the freest markets too. There is a bold and obvious correlation between freedom, high wages and wealthy employees. Reducing the freedom of software companies will not help me live comfortably. Won't help most of the rest of us either. If people don't have useful work to do at a company, they should go and find a different company to work at. That is the fastest and also most effective way to maximise wages for everyone. > Or maybe a sweatshop - seems like another great "free market" place to work! I mean, people mocked the Chinese for this back in the 80s, now they are wealthier than the English. So, yeah. Turned out that was the path to prosperity. India kept trying socialism and ended up decade(s) behind. If I were in China, I would advocate sweatshops and I would also have been vindicated as they pulled themselves up from poverty to success by working hard and building stuff with poor labour practices. All the Asians started poor and just worked hard. They didn't strike, they didn't unionise their auto manufacturers and force jobs overseas. They allowed sweatshops to run. They made the biggest improvements to their lifestyle in a generation in all of human history. If they had allowed more freedom to their population they would have gone further too. Chinese wages have risen so much thanks to allowing those sweatshops that now it isn't profitable to run a Chinese sweatshop any more. EDIT typing a bit quickly. "Wealthier" was wrong - I meant higher energy per capita. See https://ourworldindata.org/energy https://ourworldindata.org/energy . The wealth will catch up to the energy though, China is on a wildly great ride. We should, ironically, be copying some of the economic practices of these nominal communists.
- clipsy 4y ago
  As respectfully as possible: what on earth are you even arguing at this point? You claimed that Hollywood superstars "don't need unions" -- I pointed out that the superstars seem to feel they do, and that prior to unionization they were oft exploited. What does their compensation relative to a handful of tech entrepreneurs have to do with that?
  - roenxi 4y ago
    I work because I want to make money. My argument broadly is that we should adopt policies that maximise compensation for people who work to make money. Specifically, we should resist unions in the software industry because they are likely to have a net-negative impact on compensation. I expect my job would end up in Vietnam eventually, for example, and in the short term expect that wages would stagnate compared to an alternative strategy that doesn't involve unions. Hollywood's practices have expressly failed to maximise the amount of money they earn - at all levels they earn less than people who went in to non-union fields. It does not follow that we need to copy their practices. Indeed, this is superficial evidence that their labour practices are failing. What law of gods or man exists to say that actors should be paid less than a Red Hat software engineer? They get paid badly because of how their industry is designed, unions and all. Now I am happy to be on the record saying that the unions aren't the biggest problem that actors face - mainly their problem is that entertainment is a low value add industry and a lot of people are willing to starve if it gets them on a big screen. But the core problem is that small companies in the entertainment world can't make a good profit and can't afford to pay their employees much. The unions ain't helping with that problem, the unions are exacerbating it. I've avoided the whole industry because it looked like a hotbed of people who were going to stay poor and I don't want the industry that I'm in to start copying their failed ideas at how to align management and labour to make money.
    - clipsy 4y ago
      > Hollywood's practices have expressly failed to maximise the amount of money they earn - at all levels they earn less than people who went in to non-union fields. It does not follow that we need to copy their practices. Indeed, this is superficial evidence that their labour practices are failing. What law of gods or man exists to say that actors should be paid less than a Red Hat software engineer? They get paid badly because of how their industry is designed, unions and all. You keep conveniently ignoring the simple fact that actors were worse off prior to unionization. No amount of rambling is going to change that; unionization improved their wages. I will not be responding further because it's increasingly obvious that you are not willing to actually entertain fact-based apples-to-apples comparisons and, frankly, you seem unable to differentiate your beliefs from facts.

by clipsy 4y ago

roenxi 4y ago

Software superstars far outperform Hollywood superstars. That isn't close either. Some of the richest people in the world are people who succeeded in software. The wealthiest people in the world for the last 5 years have been ex-computer technicians. The difference is instead of wasting their time with union politics to try and make their lifestyle work they were busy trying to figure out how to make money. The answer was a resounding "not unions".

majormajor 4y ago
That's not the difference. You're being willfully obtuse. Less imagined "time-wasting union politics" [whatever you think that means for SAG] doesn't change the TAM for an Oprah or a Brad Pitt to let them be a Jeff Bezos. You latched onto the stupidest of all possible ways to interpret my post and compare the two fields because you don't want to engage with the actual things Hollywood unions do or how they actually work.
- roenxi 4y ago
  The people in a wealthier industry have more money than people in a poor industry. You just picked an answer that shows that. Unions will make the software industry less wealthy. Eventually that will flow down to wages. I'm not being obtuse, I'm being effective at getting wealthy. An approach I encourage for everyone else in the software industry I might add. You're holding up an example that is worse at making money than I am and saying people should copy it. No! People should copy the industry that is effective at minting millionaires. People should be copying the freedom of software rather than software copying the industries that unionised and stayed poor.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    This is an even more obtuse point than your last attempt. Go open a non-unionized laundromat and see if you make more money than Hollywood. That's all that matters apparently, right? Or maybe a sweatshop - seems like another great "free market" place to work! You're a political tool making statements of faith instead of objective evaluations.
    - roenxi 4y ago
      But you have once again picked an industry composed of people who are not wealthy and said we should copy them to make money. There is a reason when we think "unions" the industrys that come to mind are, in the main, full of workers who don't have much job security or income. Unions are wealth-destructive. If you destroy the wealth in an industry, it cannot afford to pay high wages. If the industry has no wealth to destroy sure, unionise. You were already going to get paid nothing and you'd still get paid nothing. That'll lock down any hope of changing practices to improve things. I don't want to work in an industry that has unions; I want to be in an industry that is full of economic zest. The reason why software engineers do so well is because they are in one of the freest markets going. The wealthiest software engineers happen to be in the freest markets too. There is a bold and obvious correlation between freedom, high wages and wealthy employees. Reducing the freedom of software companies will not help me live comfortably. Won't help most of the rest of us either. If people don't have useful work to do at a company, they should go and find a different company to work at. That is the fastest and also most effective way to maximise wages for everyone. > Or maybe a sweatshop - seems like another great "free market" place to work! I mean, people mocked the Chinese for this back in the 80s, now they are wealthier than the English. So, yeah. Turned out that was the path to prosperity. India kept trying socialism and ended up decade(s) behind. If I were in China, I would advocate sweatshops and I would also have been vindicated as they pulled themselves up from poverty to success by working hard and building stuff with poor labour practices. All the Asians started poor and just worked hard. They didn't strike, they didn't unionise their auto manufacturers and force jobs overseas. They allowed sweatshops to run. They made the biggest improvements to their lifestyle in a generation in all of human history. If they had allowed more freedom to their population they would have gone further too. Chinese wages have risen so much thanks to allowing those sweatshops that now it isn't profitable to run a Chinese sweatshop any more. EDIT typing a bit quickly. "Wealthier" was wrong - I meant higher energy per capita. See https://ourworldindata.org/energy https://ourworldindata.org/energy . The wealth will catch up to the energy though, China is on a wildly great ride. We should, ironically, be copying some of the economic practices of these nominal communists.
clipsy 4y ago
As respectfully as possible: what on earth are you even arguing at this point? You claimed that Hollywood superstars "don't need unions" -- I pointed out that the superstars seem to feel they do, and that prior to unionization they were oft exploited. What does their compensation relative to a handful of tech entrepreneurs have to do with that?
- roenxi 4y ago
  I work because I want to make money. My argument broadly is that we should adopt policies that maximise compensation for people who work to make money. Specifically, we should resist unions in the software industry because they are likely to have a net-negative impact on compensation. I expect my job would end up in Vietnam eventually, for example, and in the short term expect that wages would stagnate compared to an alternative strategy that doesn't involve unions. Hollywood's practices have expressly failed to maximise the amount of money they earn - at all levels they earn less than people who went in to non-union fields. It does not follow that we need to copy their practices. Indeed, this is superficial evidence that their labour practices are failing. What law of gods or man exists to say that actors should be paid less than a Red Hat software engineer? They get paid badly because of how their industry is designed, unions and all. Now I am happy to be on the record saying that the unions aren't the biggest problem that actors face - mainly their problem is that entertainment is a low value add industry and a lot of people are willing to starve if it gets them on a big screen. But the core problem is that small companies in the entertainment world can't make a good profit and can't afford to pay their employees much. The unions ain't helping with that problem, the unions are exacerbating it. I've avoided the whole industry because it looked like a hotbed of people who were going to stay poor and I don't want the industry that I'm in to start copying their failed ideas at how to align management and labour to make money.
  - clipsy 4y ago
    > Hollywood's practices have expressly failed to maximise the amount of money they earn - at all levels they earn less than people who went in to non-union fields. It does not follow that we need to copy their practices. Indeed, this is superficial evidence that their labour practices are failing. What law of gods or man exists to say that actors should be paid less than a Red Hat software engineer? They get paid badly because of how their industry is designed, unions and all. You keep conveniently ignoring the simple fact that actors were worse off prior to unionization. No amount of rambling is going to change that; unionization improved their wages. I will not be responding further because it's increasingly obvious that you are not willing to actually entertain fact-based apples-to-apples comparisons and, frankly, you seem unable to differentiate your beliefs from facts.