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How Silicon Valley CEOs Conspired To Suppress Engineers' Wages
Oneflower writes "As we discussed last week, a lawsuit is moving forward that alleges widespread conspiracy among the CEOs of Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar to suppress the wages of their tech staff. Mark Ames at Pando explains how it happened, and showcases some of the emails involving Steve Jobs and other CEOs. Quoting: 'Shortly after sealing the pact with Google, Jobs strong-armed Adobe into joining after he complained to CEO Bruce Chizen that Adobe was recruiting Apple’s employees. Chizen sheepishly responded that he thought only a small class of employees were off-limits: "I thought we agreed not to recruit any senior level employees. I would propose we keep it that way. Open to discuss. It would be good to agree." Jobs responded by threatening war: "OK, I’ll tell our recruiters they are free to approach any Adobe employee who is not a Sr. Director or VP. Am I understanding your position correctly?" Adobe’s Chizen immediately backed down.'"
There's a knock-on effect... for those of us not employed at the named offenders, the salaries are suppressed. I hope they're convicted.
You'd think, from a free-market standpoint, that collective bargaining would somewhat equalize the sale and purchase of labor.
But nah, us engineers are too smart for that. We're all superstars and we're always looking to stab eachother in the back for a percentage.
Jeez, cmon. This is just about agreements to not directly recruit each other's employees. Nothing stopping those employees from applying to another company to gain better salary...
If anti-competitive practices were not in place (much like the 90's), you'd end of killing the market--for example, who'd pay for a $300K/yr J2EE architect? Really? The demand chain would realize these social apps have zero business value aside from advertising and next thing you know J2EE architect would be making 70K. Really, ruby "rock stars" making 200k/yr (cause folks in the valley are complaining now when the average is $125k/yr)
Why do I have a feeling this 'we're not making enough salary' attitude is not about fairness, but about creating a boom market in the valley? Which we truly haven't seen since 2003 (aka the current market is just a bunch of clique groups padding each other pockets much like DC is with all their contractors "job hopping").
The secret agreements were based on relationships, and those relationships were forged in Silicon Valley’s incestuous boards of directors, ...
So, tell me again how I can "work hard" and get into this upper echelon of business society and socio-economic class again? Old boys network even in the "meritocratic" Valley? It can't be!
Google’s human resources executives are quoted sounding the alarm that they needed to “dramatically increase the engineering hiring rate” and that would require “drain[ing] competitors to accomplish this rate of hiring.”
That's right! Because we all knoooowww that there are NO talented people outside of Silicone Valley!
....they generally considered cold-calling recruitment of “passive” talent — workers not necessarily looking for a job until enticed by a recruiter — to be the most important means of hiring the best employees.
Best? By whose standards?
You know folks, SV doesn't represent the rest of the World when it comes to tech talent. They all have their heads up their asses out there. They are where Wall Street was in 2007 - they thought they were top of the heap, could do no wrong, and everyone else was stupid. Then Wall Street got a wake up call.
It's coming Silicone Valley. Yours is coming.
Collusion, by definition, is not a free market.
When you think of a model of the "free market", think of hundreds or thousands of small merchants gathered in a town square hawking their goods, with many of them selling similar items.
CAPTCHA: "parent is an idiot"
If only the tech workers of the world had a touch more self and class-consciousness, they'd be able to see that, often, management is actively working against their interests. From wage-manipulation & collusion, to selling sitting cheek-to-jowl with coworkers as "open" and "collaborative," there's enough to give even a naïve, "everything is awesome!!!," workaday programmer pause.
He always had the reputation of being a visionary and major league a**hole. I guess he's dead long enough now that we can acknowledge the latter again?
21st Century style
OK. I am actually a free market libertarian software engineer. This does bother me, but I would suggest that the solution to these sorts of problems is exposure rather than laws. I don't feel that my ability to market my skills is significantly affected. I don't need to work for any company that would underpay me. Even though these are big companies, the percentage of software engineers they hire is a small percentage of the total.
As far as examples of negative aspects of the free market go, this is pretty mild.
I would suggest that a free market approach would be to go one step further and have shareholders conspire to limit CEO salaries. Those cut into corporate profits as well.
The fuck does the political alignment of the douchebags involved have to do with the economic policies that allow the abuse.
If you have a party that says "repeal all murder laws" and a party that says "murder laws are okay, we should maybe have them"(the political economic balance in the US). You shouldn't be going "Ha! At least one murderer was for the anti-murder party." as if it settles the issue. It's retarded.
These CEOs should all be perp walked and have all of their ill-gotten bonuses confiscated and re-distributed to their employees. Apple's $147 billion cash on hand should have a big bite of it redistributed to the employees shafted by these dirty thieves. Same with the other companies. A rising tide lifts all boats only when you don't have captain a-hole drilling holes in some boats... And yes, I am a libertarian free market guy. I want a free market where the government enforces fair play. This is definitely not fair play!
How is this not self-defeating?
I would expect higher salary offers coming from outside the colluding companies. This would push many applicants to smaller shops and spread the wealth.
"Schmidt instructed his Sr VP for Business Operation Shona Brown to keep the pact a secret and only share information “verbally, since I don’t want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?”"
Does this mean Eric Schmidt and Shona Brown could be going to jail?
but the rest of them shouldn't. Pricks.
OK. I am actually a free market libertarian software engineer. This does bother me, but I would suggest that the solution to these sorts of problems is exposure rather than laws. I don't feel that my ability to market my skills is significantly affected. I don't need to work for any company that would underpay me. Even though these are big companies, the percentage of software engineers they hire is a small percentage of the total.
As far as examples of negative aspects of the free market go, this is pretty mild.
I would suggest that a free market approach would be to go one step further and have shareholders conspire to limit CEO salaries. Those cut into corporate profits as well.
Lots of luck.
A Corporation is NOT a one-person-per-vote democracy. It is one-SHARE-per-vote.
And guess who owns the majority of the shares in most corporations?
Yep, can't wait to see Jobs spend the rest of his natural life in prison over this one.
I know nothing of the subject, nor am I a lawyer, or even associated with Silicon Valley in any way, but it sounds to me like these practices are anti-capitalistic from the worker's perspective, who are denied the opportunity of maximizing their profits in a high demand / low supply situation where this would normally apply were it not for their bosses trying to limit this in an illegal way.
It would be good for the culprits to be convicted. I don't know the laws over there, but over here if a company leader commits criminal acts, he is privately responsible for the financial losses. I would not be surprised if these guys can actually cough up the $9 bn together, but if they can, drain 'em dry, I'd say. If they can be thrown in jail for a few years too, good for the people. And not VIP jail - actual jail. For once I'm sorry Steve is no longer here to see this.
Extreme? If you take into account the sort of damages and punitive measures that can be taken against (even accidentally) inflicting monetary losses on a single individual or company, and you multiply that by the 100.000 or so (directly) affected workers, I would sooner call the above a "mild" punishment.
(also, reason #237059380 Google is more evil than it claims to be)
Doesn't matter which party, for stunts like this. It really breaks both sides philosophy on the economy.
The Conservatives/Free market folks, don't like this, because it is manipulating the Market to get cheaper workers, and falsify the Demand for the workers.
The Liberals/Controlled Market folks, don't like this as this manipulating of the market is happening in back doors without the correct oversight.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Me, I'm a pinko leftist who's having a hard time feeling sorry for these poor exploited workers who may only make seven times the US median salary instead of eight.
As usual His Steveness conspires to threaten other companies to go along with this scheme. Similar to his book deal conspiracy. Steve was the king of arsewipes.
irregardless
While I certainly agree with your point, that single word just murders your post and then rapes the corpse.
OK. I am actually a free market libertarian software engineer. This does bother me, but I would suggest that the solution to these sorts of problems is exposure rather than laws.
This time they got caught out in a few emails, next time they will just keep it to verbal agreements on the country club golf course. The "exposure" is not going to come from a few or even many Engineers complaining in isolation that there might be some collusion going on as the alternative offers are drying up.
I don't need to work for any company that would underpay me.
and if you did you would not be able to get a decent higher paying job elsewhere due to collusion like this.
As a Technical Director (read: Guy in charge of a group of programmers), I know our company had similar agreements with other programming studios and technical firms in the geographical area we were located in. I learned of it by a slip of the tongue by our HR Director during a meeting.
I responded along the lines of "Well, if we would pay our programmers what they're worth after 3 years, instead of insisting on keeping them at Junior programmer rates, then we don't have a problem, and shouldn't need special back room deals to keep our talent". I unfortunately did not have the final say in pay increases, and did lose some of my staff to better payment offers. It was all I could do to compensate with treating the team with the highest levels of respect to keep them around due to shitty pay.
This was happening in Canada for context.
Maybe if you thought of it in terms of the exploited workers only making seven times the US median salary instead of eight, so that their CEOs could make eight hundred times the US median salary instead of seven hundred.
You're funny.
Only laws will prevent this from happening. Perceptions can be swayed by gradually introducing change and exposure and by gradually "normalizing" this obviously criminal activity. Exposure is not effective, it can be managed with enough positive spin. Only laws with strong deterients are effective.
You say about Apple, Google, Intel, etc. "the percentage of software engineers they hire is a small percentage..." I don't think you know what those companies do.
Nice troll, but I'll have fun with it...
1) conspire all you want, but Silly Valley isn't the end-all/be-all - there are lots of other just-as-exciting places to work.
2) You can gain more from their reputation than they can save by keeping your wages lower. For example, I could go there, do my time for a couple of years at $HOUSEHOLD_NAME, maybe do that at two or more of them, then go back to my home region with one hell of an intimidating resume, plus experience and ideas that can be put to damned good use. This allows me to command a far more comfortable salary/cost-of-living arrangement when I get back home. (Note: raw dollar counts are a stupid metric - always count cost-of-living, but I digress...)
3) Because of the above (and more), It's Silly Valley that loses out more than I do. I'll explain: I have personally turned down point-blank job offers from a few of the aforementioned names in TFA, because I already have similar big names on my resume, and they're not willing to compensate enough for the area's insane cost-of-living. What I mean is, after cost-of-living adjustments, they'd have to pay me $180k/yr or more to match the same level of financial comfort that I enjoy where I am now. Meet or beat that comfort level, and I'll move. Otherwise, unless I have no real alternative? I'll turn it down with a smile.
4) Because of the above (and more), the smarter tech folks are similarly clued-in, and are therefore harder to find and get (let alone keep) in that area. This in turn means this: over time, those companies lose out on the best talent, but upstart companies elsewhere gain that talent instead, allowing the little guys to more effectively compete. Meanwhile, Silly Valley winds up with a majority of people who boil down to two types:kids with no experience who leave as soon as they wise-up, or burn-outs chasing their own eventual start-up on the side (which means the latter will be somewhat worthless to the corp who hires them, and are likely stealing the company's ideas along the way while those ideas are still embryonic.)
QED: The market eventually does even things out, if you let it. Just because it doesn't happen on an instant-gratification timescale doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, eh?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Collusion, by definition, is not a free market.
...And since collusion is natural behavior in situations like this for company managers, it follows that in order for a market to be free, the behavior of its participants must be regulated.
Which, seriously speaking, is a rather interesting point.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
A gentleman's agreement not to poach form a competitors employee ranks is NOT the same as conspiring to suppress engineers wages.
To prove the latter, they would have to show that the competitors didn't simply agree to not poach, but instead agreed to refuse to hire beyond a certain wage.
No poaching agreements are perfectly legal and reasonable for all parties. This is much ado about nothing. Move along.
I don't think you understand how pay works. CEOs and Sports Stars are not paid based on effort, they are paid based on projected ROI. You don't pay Peyton Manning whatever absurd figure he gets because he works harder than anyone else in the sport; you pay him that because you can make the absurd figure times 5 or 10 or 200 in ticket, merchandise, and advertising sales by having him available to the organization. Now most people, have an ROI more closely reflected to the intensity of our work. So it looks pretty bad when they don't work particularly harder than us but they get paid a hell of a lot more. What is fair shouldn't generally matter to what people are paid, but if enough people feel unfairly treated that is a recipe for crime and then civil unrest.
Well, no. That is why we do not have a free market, pure free markets require a very idealized society where all sorts of things that states and regulation take care of simply do not exist, and thus are not very resilient when having to deal with other parts of the system. It is kinda like communism or anarchism... it would work great if humans were, well, not humans, and some magical force prevented defacto forces influencing things.
Modded Insightful? I was thinking modding it stupid-funny.
The companies did conspire; the conspiracy was illegal; it almost certainly suppressed wages. But no, Steve Jobs was not interested in some grand scheme to shave a few % off the salaries of engineers; he was interested in not having projects disrupted by staff turnover. Wage suppression was just a side effect, about which he probably did not care at all. But instead of investigating that effect and explaining its size, Pando just rants, and rants, and rants...
In other words, a good subject for /., but a real piece of shit article about it. Maybe something better will come along soon ;-)
There is also often secret knowledge and skills. Most of Apple products are developed in total secrecy by small groups. Loosing key people cause product delays and extra cost. Companies cannot afford to pay too much to everybody to stop them looking for a new job. Instead they tried to limit attrition by hiding those opportunities.
OK, these companies colluded. But shouldn't the free market bring forth a new company, willing to pay more and hire away the best employees of all these firms and thus out-compete them? There's no need to regulate - the invisible hand should be squeezing these guys all by itself now. Clearly these engineers aren't worth any more money, or they would have left to form this new company (or companies) and beat all the existing firms at their own games. No need for unions or anything anti-competitive (red tape regulations) to be brought in by the government, as the problem should self correct.
Collusion, by definition, is a free market.
And it's where markets will always go if the power players in the market are friendly/courteous rivals. It helps those at the top.
And it's exactly why truly free markets aren't good for the average person.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Exposure, yay! Now we all just stop using any products from Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, or Pixar!
The "exposure" is not going to come from a few or even many Engineers complaining in isolation that there might be some collusion going on as the alternative offers are drying up.
The exposure doesn't need to come from engineers. It can come from anyone who knows about it.
What you are suggesting is that companies can forma a cartel for software jobs. I agree this is possible, but I don't think it's easy to make this cartel industry wide. The larger the cartel, the more unsustainable it becomes.
As it is, there are tons of opportunities out there for talented software engineers. There is more software that needs to get written than there is developers to write it. It takes a lot of effort to become a good engineer, and there is going to be a strong incentive to compete for these developers.
Even in the article among these few companies, apple was struggling to keep Adobe from ruining the cartel, and ultimately the emails got leaked.
but got flamed, there is no professional association for engineers like there is for accountants or lawyers. Keep playing with your Raspberry Pis and arduinos at 45 while other professionals lobby for higher wages. Engineers are overgrown children, easily distracted by chlidish things, and employers know this.
My father once told me: If ten employers can sit around a table and decide how much to pay you, the employee should be able to have ten people sit around a table and decide how much you will be paid to work. This would be a union. (Or if you wish not to be be labeled union ... many in the tech sector think .... "I'm not a blue collar thug... I am a Professional" .. call yourself a special interest group)
The people sitting on one side of the negotiating table have specific interests to defend. The people on the other side have a different set of interests. That is why we call it negotiation. Hopefully to arrive at an equitable position for both sides.
Did it ever occur to anyone that the dysfunction of say Congress is so that there will never be an equitable solution for both sides to a given problem?
At the heart of all dysfunctional relationships (personal, political etc) lies on thing: Chaos. This way the people in power keep the power.
$0.02 worth. Or 0.00002 BTC
I suspect that this was not overtly about wages. It was about retention. You can't just say, well they could have paid them more to retain them. As the e-mails indicate regardless of any feasible wages it would always be possible to offer higher wages to a subset of employees that could cripple the organization. That's what this was about. People are not simply interchangeable. When you hire someone it's also an investment of your core strength into them. So in the short term yes perhaps a few employees could have been enticed by higher wages but then ensuing self destructive battle would have damaged all the companies fitness, lowering everyones wages. So it's not a give this lowered wages.
This is one problem that collective bargaining does address. It tries to maximize employee wages over the long run and side effect is that trade unions also normlaize wages across all the companies. But the union is always balancing a companies ability to pay with killing the golden goose.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Money and power corrupt.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
You do know majority means >50% right?
Class Action Lawsuit.
Sue the companies that participated for lost wages. Surely some lawyer group would love to take that on commission.
I don't need to work for any company that would underpay me.
And how would you judge whether a company is underpaying you? By comparing what the company offers you to the *market price*.
What the CEOs stand accused of is colluding to depress the market price for engineering labor.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
They made their bed now they can lay in it.
and this stuff was going on back then. They actually told employees they were doing it at the meetings where they announced annual pay raises. My coworkers cheered while I was dumbfounded that people missed the big picture. In essence they were saying "we've fixed engineer salaries with other big employers in the area so don't bother looking to get a better deal elsewhere".
When I left HP I went to work for Fujitsu- they didn't participate in the salary fixing- and instantly got 40% pay increase and kept my vacation time.
Unions also exist in a free market, and the serve the opposite effect of increasing wages. In a communist government, where businesses have ties to government, you can't piss off your boss, or you'll find yourself unemployed. Then other government-tied employers are too afraid to hire you because arbitrarily-enforced laws ensure that you're branded a criminal.
No TRUE free market..
Yes...?
But now, I know the reason why I can't make more than 130k ad get fired often is because of some conspiracy. I shall start binge drinking to celebrate!
So, without laws, what exactly will exposure accomplish? Immoral entities unrestrained by regulation, whether via laws or mob justice, have no fear of exposure. See: pretty much the entirety of human history.
Huh? Let's pretend they only got exposed. Now what? Are people working there going to start demanding higher wages? Are you suggesting that software developers should unionize? _That_ would be the free market solution. But, somehow, I imagine that you aren't so keen on that.
Trade associations or labor union, and an unified licensing board for software engineers and IT workers will be the way to solve these (which includes the H1-B problem). I am saying this as a CodeEval top 10-ranked user.
In a communist government ...
OT. Who was talking about communism or anything approaching it?
So said Adam Smith, but we all know "Smith" was just a pseudonym for Karl Marx.
Who cares what the CEO earns ? Your answer is just based on your own greed and resentment not having the same path in life, your are doing nothing but complaining of living your life as it is instead of theirs.
Right. As long as it doesn't effect you directly (at least not today) than I guess it's not really a problem.
This time they got caught out in a few emails, next time they will just keep it to verbal agreements on the country club golf course. The "exposure" is not going to come from a few or even many Engineers complaining in isolation that there might be some collusion going on as the alternative offers are drying up.
They obviously believe the hype the new world of tech is somehow different than the old world and are about to discover it often just make sit easier to find out stuff to use against you.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Which, seriously speaking, is a rather interesting point.
And one which many ideologues try very hard not to understand. "Free market" is more of a slogan than a clearly defined idea. I prefer the term "competitive market" to emphasize what's really important.
And how would you judge whether a company is underpaying you? By comparing what the company offers you to the *market price*.
That bit gets a little tricky. In some sense I do compare my salary to the market price. But lets say the market price for a software job was $20k/year. At that point I would consider being a freelance software engineer or starting my own company and hiring a bunch of talented engineers for $20k/year. If the market price were $20k/year, fewer people would go to school to become engineers, and this would lower the supply and increase demand for engineers.
Everyone making this calculation in their head has an effect on market price.
No single entity controls the market price on anything. Engineers have an effect. CEOs have an effect. Universities have an effect, etc.
What the CEOs stand accused of is colluding to depress the market price for engineering labor.
And I agree that that's what they did, and I agree that they probably succeeded to some extent
What I am saying is that I don't think they had a large effect. I think they had the effect that you might expect a small cartel to have. Maybe someone will publish a study showing all engineers industry wide make 20% less because of this deal, but I doubt it, and I made this doubt public.
Laws are not effective if they are not enforced. When was the last time you were caught for speeding?
What do you expect from Google chrony capitlists? 'Don't do evil', ny foot.
Perfectly spherical merchants, on a frictionless planar surface.
#1, until those other places figure out they can get in on the collusion.
Points #2-4 are based on the flawed premiss that this behavior would remain limited to silicon valley if it is not opposed. And therefore invalid.
Game theory is a much better way to think about markets than the very simplistic notion of "pure" free markets. "Pure" free market theory is analogous of doing elementary physics without taking into account friction, gravity, relativistic effects, and other important things that really matter. Sure you can gain some elementary understanding of how markets work, but you must always remember that isn't how the real world works.
Free Market rhetoric, is only espoused as a political badge so that people know you are a "true" conservative. No one really thinks that people with millions on the line won't think of a way to cheat.
For another thought experiment imagine a football game without referees, would it still resemble a football game after a few snaps, if millions of dollars were on the line?
In a well functioning government, (this would exclude the US right now), the government acts as a referee encouraging practices that help the country as a whole the most, and discouraging practices that only help a few.
And for the record Steve Jobs was doing the best thing that he could for Apple (a small group) which he was paid handsomely to do, while hurting a larger group, this is certainly something that the government should punish companies for, otherwise they will always try to do it, because share holders would require it.
I really hope all libertarians aren't as short sighted as you are. If these big companies are willing to play ball with each other and NOT be punished for it, then its only a matter of time before all companies do. And, aside from that, what about the employees that were victimized by this behavior? Its that ok since it wasn't you? Grow the fuck up.
No!
collusion and general douchebaggery is just as much of a leftist Dem characteristic as any other party
Even as somebody who is probably on the other side of the political spectrum as you, I basically agree. Where you go wrong is the term "leftist Dem". Just say "Dems". There are no "leftist" Dems, at least not in an economic sense, and in any prominent positions. In fact there have never been many "leftist" Dems, which is fine by me, but I do miss actual Democrats. They're a rarely sighted species ever since Billy Clinton's "third way". Corporate collusion is theoretically not a principle of either party, but in practice is a characteristic of both these days.
...anyone care to mod up my OP now? Judging by the number of supportive and insightful replies it's garnered, I'd say my point stands as being more "insightful" than "flamebait".
I did accidentally leave out "Apple fan-boi's" though... ;)
It doesn't just happen in communist societies, but also in over-regulated societies as well.
Then why not say "over-regulated", instead of smearing an approach you oppose with an association with communism?
I only mentioned communism because I see the US moving in that direction rapidly.
In the direction of communism, or the direction of over-regulation?
Noooooooo no no no no. In a free market i.e. one without regulation, collusion certainly CAN and DOES happen. However, by the nature of collusion - where each participant has incentives to screw over the other participants, or non-participants can take advantage of the collusion - it is an unstable, temporary arrangement, and will fall apart sooner rather than later. In this example, say that the employees of the colluding companies are making $100k/year whereas they are really worth $120k/year. Non-colluding companies can now easily poach these employees by offering them, say, $110k/year. The more companies do this the more the wages are brought to their proper level.
Not that interesting in practice. No one sane would argue that the CME commodities markets are not free markets. They're a shining example of free markets working well, doing the sorts of things that economic theorists expect (unlike much of the rest of the economy).
These markets have a bunch of regulations - the key is that most of the regulations are market rules, not laws, and the power of the government is mostly focused on fraud prevention, contract enforcement, and preventing counterparty payment risk (a critical subset of the previous items). What's not regulated is price, nor legal preference given to certain sellers - no government-granted monopolies. That's what makes a free market.
There will always be anarchists calling themselves libertarians, but mainstream libertarian though expects the government to provide contract enforcement, fraud prevention, and in general enough criminal law enforcement where it's safe to trade.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Collusion, by definition, is not a free market.
Free market is whatever is good for a company is deemed "good". There is no Righteous principle that must be followed. If cooperation/collusion works best than cutting each other throat, then cooperation is good. If the SV engineer agree to be treated as a flock, then why shouldn't they ? They accept their condition willingly, unless of course they do not deserve the title of "engineer" and are merely good at pissing code without thinking. Just the same way they think they should be paid 300k for really creating no wealth.
What you're saying is something unsavory that businesses might do in a free market, isn't the free market. The free market means precisely that. Companies are free to collude, price fix, bribe, etc. It's only regulation that prevents it from happening. Just because you don't like one consequence of the free market doesn't mean you get to disavow it as part of the cost of doing business.
This is one of the primary fallacies of free market thinking; that businesses will be somehow compelled to do the right thing without the boot of the government on their necks.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Not spherical, cylindrical, like an air hockey puck. With a decent size press we could create merchants in that shape, and, while frictionless is obviously unattainable, an air hockey table comes pretty close. Give me that and I'll believe in the ideal of a free market.
No, we do not have a free market because the underling do not have a master mentality an continue to follow Kant's philosophy, which is more and more plaguing western societies...
You confuse "unregulated market" with "free market", much like confusing an anarchist with a libertarian. "Truly free markets" obviously don't work, but that's trivial and uninteresting. The interesting point is that it really only requires quite minimal government involvement to avoid the big problems (contract enforcement, fraud prevention, and the like), but once you start giving the government enough power to select winners in a market it's all downhill from there (hey mister cable company, how'd you like to be the only one allowed to sell here?).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Congratulations, you just lost. But lighten up, there, lil' buddy, it's good for corporations.
The "exposure" is not going to come from a few or even many Engineers complaining in isolation that there might be some collusion going on as the alternative offers are drying up.
The exposure doesn't need to come from engineers. It can come from anyone who knows about it.
The only reason we know about it at all is because there was a lawsuit filed accusing them of this illegal action. If it becomes totally legal, nobody's going to be filing that lawsuit in the first place, and the parties involved will continue to do it secretly.
It kills me to see that each of these businesses were literally founded by techies or people very close to techies. They know the value of the tech, the techies and what the techies bring to a company. They know it first-hand because these techies made them rich. But they think they are rich enough and not getting richer fast enough. (In today's dollar-printing economy, that may well be true! They should be buying bunkers and private energy sources.) But they are, alas, too expensive because other big tech companies might want too buy them and we can't have that. So it's class warfare then is it? C-levels and serfs are we?
Well, I guess so. How the tech industry got by without unions and crap this far, I have to wonder. And I don't mean just labor unions but technology standards unions. Right now, we pretend that ISO standardization means something but Microsoft proved they can buy anything didn't they? We need something these companies can't buy -- something sworn not to let the things which have been happening to happen. And seriously? The "certification" game has gone on long enough. Most hiring people have wised up to it already. Certs are nothing more than brand endorsement that people pay a lot of money for. Disgusting.
Non-compete agreements? Hrm...
You know, I think I'm going to start using 'competitive market' instead of 'free market'? In areas where competition is impractical, such as water/electricity to the house, I prefer that the provider be a cooperative. Otherwise most of the regulation methodologies I support are designed to increase competition.
I don't read AC A human right
You are missing part of the equation. Buy a house in Slicon Valley and when you come to retire, move to a region with low cost of living, taking with you a much larger cash pile from selling that much more expensive house. Leverage can produce wonderful effects (it can also bankrupt you as many people found out during the recession).
I would also argue that start-ups tend to be in California because employment agreements that prevent you from moving to a competitor are not enforcable in CA.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Well no, the solution to the problem if you want to be all libertarian about it is for the workers to collude as much as the owners collude.
A union is a really good idea for workers and are perfectly in line with libertarian ideals (aside from the special protection they get from government and the public sector).
What I am saying is that I don't think they had a large effect.
What I'm saying is that Bob is a crook, but he never stole nearly as much as he wanted, so what's the big deal?
I see you crossing the line from "libertarian" to "anarchist" if you don't see a legitimate role in the government preventing this sort of collusion. Much like there are rules on all the commodities exchanges, backed by laws, that prevent collusion to corner the market in any given commodity. It's a very minimal low-touch sort of role for the government to prevent this sort of thing.
Had this been 2 small companies no one cares about colluding, I wouldn't see much problem either, but this is a non-trivial portion of all software jobs in the valley, enough to distort the market. This is exactly why you're not allowed to control more than 10% (or whatever it is, but I think that's right) of a specific commodity contract.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
In this example, say that the employees of the colluding companies are making $100k/year whereas they are really worth $120k/year. Non-colluding companies can now easily poach these employees by offering them, say, $110k/year.
So let me get this straight:
- Without the collusion between employers, the employees would make $120K/year.
- With the collusion between employers, the employees would move to a different company and make $110K/year.
- Conclusion: The collusion between employers is costing the employees at least $10K/year.
That's not a self-correcting system, that's damages. The companies who colluded can easily attract talented people making less than $100K/year by recruiting in different areas of the country (where techies frequently make less than $100K/year), or different areas of the world (where techies make far less than $100K/year) via H1B, so they'd suffer some turnover but no major disruptions.
I am officially gone from
It is a matter of will for the average person to make its condition better if he thinks his current one sucks. However, by doing so, he would quit being an "average person" to become one of the few who took risks to thrive. However, the average person does not want to thrive, it just want to live its life within the narrow streets it understands.
Jobs' life has not been particularly quiet, Zuckerberg took risks, as did Larry Page, etc. For one successful tech CEO, how many fell ? I'm not saying that they did what they all had to do to succeed, I believe that they came at the right time with the right idea when the right technology appeared. Nobody knew that pagespeed was to become what it became. Nobody knew that facebook would be used worldwide today, etc. No matter what, these CEO deserves what they have. If other are not happy with their condition, they can decide to make it better, or they can decide that they have too much to lose for any risk to be worthwhile. All in all, there is no good or bad, no right or wrong.
I believe "the fuck" is that the GGGP called it out as specifically libertarian. So clearly your name suits you as you clearly cannot.
I would also argue that start-ups tend to be in California because employment agreements that prevent you from moving to a competitor are not enforcable in CA.
This is often cited as a major reason why Silicon Valley (and probably the Bay Area and San Diego biotech clusters) even exists in the first place.
It doesn't just happen in communist societies, but also in over-regulated societies as well.
Then why not say "over-regulated", instead of smearing an approach you oppose with an association with communism?
Fair enough.
I only mentioned communism because I see the US moving in that direction rapidly.
In the direction of communism, or the direction of over-regulation?
Both. By over-regulating, the US government is gaining more and more control over the means of production. For example, coal/nuclear regulations allow the government to have power over electrical generation companies. The US gained more control during the US bank bailouts (and subsequent regulation of all banks) and automotive company bailouts.
If employees were so easy to replace then they wouldn't have bothered colluding in the first place.
anarchy does not equal "Free". Liberty is about rules by which civil society respects the liberties of individuals and protects them. Anarchy is about whichever individuals or groups have the bigger bombs, biceps, knives or guns. A bunch of billionaires conspiring to control costs by reducing the competition for talent is not about freedom rather it is about control.
One place where techies earn a lot less than $100k / year is the UK. Not a country you'd associate with little money...
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Van Mises would be so proud!
I believe "the fuck" is that the GGGP called it out as specifically libertarian. So clearly your name suits you as you clearly cannot.
Where specifically is a word that has come to mean "among other things".
I'll say it again. Anarchy is not freedom. A free market is one free of the threat of force, intimidation or fraud and that always requires just regulations and policing.
Or put another way, a free market doesn't mean who has the fastest draw of their gun.
...is a bit farther south.
Wasn't there a Dilbert episode about that.
The same is true of the poor in America, who generally live better than the middle class in 3rd world countries. Given how well off the American poor are, maybe they should avoid "resentment not having the same path in life" as the middle class. Obviously they are "doing nothing but complaining of living [their] life as it is instead of [middle class]".
That's Justin Bieber, you insensitive clod!
I used to make 100,000 in the Valley. Now I make 2,000. Thanks Steve Jobs...for nothing!
It's greedy to file a class action lawsuit and have them prosecuted for their illegal greed-based collusion? What?
Isn't that saying the same thing as the parent? "If people weren't people this system would work great!"
However, by the nature of collusion - where each participant has incentives to screw over the other participants, or non-participants can take advantage of the collusion - it is an unstable, temporary arrangement, and will fall apart sooner rather than later.
One of the alleged provisions of the arrangement was to punish companies that reneged on the deal by targeting its key engineers for recruitment. At that point what you have is regulation by cartel. This, by the way, was what government *was* before the advent of the modern democratic republic state. An aristocracy may spend nearly all of its time fighting itself tooth-and-nail, but it closes ranks against outsiders.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It's the only reasonable explanation I've ever heard, other than my favorite: William Shockley's mother happened to live there.
That brings up 2 points:
1. Nobody wants to admit that Shockley is such a key figure in creating Silicon Valley.
2. Which other states have similar labor laws? I find it hard to believe that CA is unique.
You do know that he essentially meant 'a large portion of' and you're being a pedantic moron, right?
Noooooooo no no no no. In a free market i.e. one without regulation, collusion certainly CAN and DOES happen. However, by the nature of collusion - where each participant has incentives to screw over the other participants, or non-participants can take advantage of the collusion - it is an unstable, temporary arrangement, and will fall apart sooner rather than later. In this example, say that the employees of the colluding companies are making $100k/year whereas they are really worth $120k/year. Non-colluding companies can now easily poach these employees by offering them, say, $110k/year. The more companies do this the more the wages are brought to their proper level.
I feel like the first two chapters of http://www.scribd.com/doc/1139... do a really good job of showing you to be wrong.
Anarchy is about whichever individuals or groups have the bigger bombs, biceps, knives or guns.
Then we must currently live in anarchy because it's still about having bigger bombs, biceps, knives and guns.
Should be sent to prison for this
Sadly, the Software Industry never seems to learn what the Hardware Industry (or at least Intel) knows, Never put in writing what would be damning to you if the wrong person people were to get a hold of it. How many times has Intel been in the hot seat? How many times have they been hit with fines, etc. like Microsoft has?
Really, these people are living up to the worst reputations of capitalism.
Collusion between competitors ruins the game.
If they're going to do that, then we as consumers might as well start colluding.
Or do we need to start unionizing the programmers? I mean... it sounds drastic but this is a serious issue.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
There will always be anarchists calling themselves libertarians, but mainstream libertarian though expects the government to provide contract enforcement, fraud prevention, and in general enough criminal law enforcement where it's safe to trade.
In other words, libertarianism is that ideology which values individual liberty... except the ones that don't jive with the "mainstream", the collective populist one, then you are not a True Libertarian.
A free market is a necessary, but not sufficient, component of a competitive market. And what we really want is an efficient market.
A “Free Market” is when 2 people freely exchange goods. The problem is that there is a asymmetry between the people. One buyer has superior knowledge, for example when selling a used car or house. The seller knows if the car is a lemon or not. Or because there is a difference in power. Thousands of employees on one side, a few companies on the other. By collusion the companies are increasing their power relative to the employees.
You can’t eliminate this asymmetry – it is the nature of the beast – but you can minimize it.
YES...?
Adam Smith's "Freely Competitive Market" is probably the best term overall.
Not a sentence!
n/t
One place where techies earn a lot less than $100k / year is the UK. Not a country you'd associate with little money...
Well, there are numerous problems with this comparison. You want to measure real wage, not the money wage. The real wage/money wage ratio for Britain is probably obviously higher than that for the US worker. Consider, a British pound trades for 1.65 US Dollars right now. After that, you factor in taxes (everyone loves to do that, right?) .
And, then you factor in things like standard of living. Everyone loves to point out the increased gas costs and rent, but not underline the fact that more people don't own a car, or even feel like they need to, because of public transportation. Like, I live in NYC because I hate driving, so it's a "feature" to me. YMMV. Google employees, for instance, save money because of amenities like the Google busses we're hearing so much about. Then you have to factor in the social services that are provided for each country. It is a lot cheaper to be pregnant in Britain. Yes, because the taxes are higher, but if you factor in taxes, you have to factor in what you're getting for them.
I haven't done the work, but I'd be interested in the results.
NO!
So you are saying that because in this particular example was discovered via lawsuit that that's the noly way these sorts of things can be discovered?
Also, it's not like this was discovered because of a lawsuit. Someone discovered it and then filed a lawsuit, and then made it public. Presumably this could have just as easily been made public without the lawsuit.
It all depends who is the initiator of action. The tech companies are acting toward their best interest, the tech flock are merely reacting. The a few in tech companies have created wealth from nothing, the tech flock are merely feeding on those few ideas and concept. They despise responsibility but still want to get their share of the cake. Though, there is nothing inherent bad at trying to maximize their own resource by the least amount of work possible.
See, this is another difference between you and me. You see the world in black and white, the Righteous and the Wrongeous. From my point of view, there is no such things, just ends. Whatever means to get to it is justifiable.
I agree with this. And as a person with a lot of friends who are on the far left, they would prefer to call it cooperation rather than collusion.
I would say that it is a better idea to remove the special protections that big corporations currently have than it is to give out special protections to everyone else to compensate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q.E.D.
So they're not only price fixing their products, now they're price fixing their employees
Of course they would have: If they collude, they pay their people $100K/year. If they don't collude, everyone poaches from each other and they all end up paying their people $120K/year.
I am officially gone from
- Conclusion: The collusion between employers is costing the employees at least $10K/year.
You cut out my next sentence: "The more companies do this the more the wages are brought to their proper level." Yes, in the short term there are "damages", but it will get corrected sooner rather than later without extra regulation. On the other hand, the extra regulation will stick around long after the initial problem is patched up, and has a good chance of negatively impacting things down the line. There's always unintended consequences to regulation.
Could you say that again, except coherently this time?
Libertarianism is an attempt to solve the problem of providing safety and basic social order with the minimum possible government that gets the job done. It's an optimization exercise. There's very little agreement on what that looks like, exactly, but widespread agreement that fraud prevention and contact enforcement (and some sort of criminal justice system) are part of it.
Anarchism is the claim that we can have safety and basic social order with no central leadership at all (anarchy means "no leader", not "no laws"). I view this like Marxist communism: cool idea, wrong species.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No it's more like this.
Bob commits election fraud. Republicans say election fraud is a big problem so we need voter ID laws to prevent it. Democrats say yes Bob needs to go to jail, but that doesn't mean voter fraud is a big deal, and the extreme solution of Voter ID laws to prevent voter fraud would cause more harm in disenfranchising people, than the benefit of stopping voter fraud.
I am saying that yes people need to go to jail if they broke the law. What I am also saying is that more regulation is not necessarily a good thing.
Steve Jobs was not interested in some grand scheme to shave a few % off the salaries of engineers; he was interested in not having projects disrupted by staff turnover.
An alternative to illegal collusion would be paying them more money to stay around. Give them a contract that says stick around for X years and you'll get big fat bonus Y. It worked for Henry Ford. It's called a free market, which CEO's seem to be all in favor of when it's lining their pockets, but not so much when it's lining somebody else's pockets.
I generally agree with the point you are trying to make (freedom is unstable in the absence of some kind of regulation to preserve it), but I have a major bone to pick: Anarchy is freedom. "Anarchy" does not mean the absence of regulation. It means a free market of regulation -- free in the sense you're speaking of, well-regulated, not "fastest draw of their gun". It means nobody has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force (which is the textbook definition of a state, and thus the precise antonym of anarchy), but not that nobody provides that legitimate use of force (which is necessary to curtail illegitimate uses of force, and without which we would have "fastest draw of their gun" rule everywhere). It just means that the provision of that legitimate use of force (which is to say, the provision of regulation, or in simpler terms, protection of each market participant from the others) comes from voluntary agreements in an open market of providers.
Unfortunately that means that the "market for governance", as it were, is inherently unstable, and it is extremely difficult to preserve the freedom of it -- to preserve anarchy -- because preserving that freedom requires regulation, governance, and "A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned" (or to quote someone more classical, "Who watches the watchers?"). That means that a free market of governance -- anarchy -- tends to quickly collapse into collusion and "fastest draw of their gun" rule... which is to say, states as we know them. That doesn't make anarchy bad. That makes anarchy really hard to achieve, and states as we know them the unfortunate status quo that it's really, really hard to get rid of. Getting rid of one state is not so hard. Keeping another from popping right up to replace it, and doing that indefinitely, is the challenge.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I know who doesn't: CEO's and other management
Did they specifically threaten, or not allow, engineers to apply and get jobs at the other places?
Not actively recruiting from each other, and not being allowed to hire someone that is/was working for the other are 2 different things.
In my mind, this is pretty clear, but if the lines were blurred at all, certainly these people need to be stopped.
You mean like how the H1B visa program has been used to push wages down by about 30%
42!
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
A free market by Libertarian definition cannot exist. When men get power, they abuse it. regulation is the only way to get a free market that starts, runs, and remains fair to all players.
By fair I do not mean "Microsoft is a miltinational company, so Bob's OS startup gets a multinational baseline to work from"
it means, no matter how well Bob does for himself, Microsoft cannot step in and squash him just because they do not want a competitor. Or collude with all the big boys to deny him resources, all the things that happen every single time regulation is slacked on an industry. And, as in this case, is done anyway in spite of the law. At least with the law in place you have recourse.
The economic definition of "free market" would take significant regulation to achieve. The loonitarian definition of "free market" is no a free market, but an unregulated one, and those are often the least free.
Learn to love Alaska
Actually these agreements are NOT a free market. A free market has to be free for the buyer and seller. This subverts the seller. You are WRONG sir, and spreading nonsense to try to prove an indefensible goal.
If it is not illegal you cannot sue to get the proof to expose it, can you?
>By collusion the companies are increasing their power relative to the employees.
Indeed. But even without collusion the companies are far more powerful:
If the company threatens to fire me I'm faced with losing 100% of my income
If I threaten to quit a company with a thousand employees, they're faced with losing 0.1% of productivity
Fair negotiation is simply not possible in that scenario.
And "free market" advocates tend to be opposed to the idea of employees colluding to raise their collective bargaining power to a more equitable level (aka unions, not that I'm claiming they don't tend to have their own issues)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
...uniformly radiating their goods and services in all directions.
Man owns 50.00000001% of the shares.
Man decided to commit a crime in the name of the company. No vote taken, no point. his vote is sufficient to enact it. The rest of the shareholders know nothing of it.
Alternately, Board members own 50.00001% cumulatively. If they agree, the vote never goes beyond the board.
An ideal "free market" is one where there are no barriers to entry, all information is free, and all actors are rational. A standard "free market" is one with low barriers to entry, no fraud, and everyone knows all publicly available information, and acts mostly rationally.
None of these bear any resemblance to an unregulated market. Where companies can lie, collude, and the actors are not necessarily rational.
Learn to love Alaska
By over-regulating, the US government is gaining more and more control over the means of production.
Which is socialism, not communism. A defining characteristic of communism is an authoritarian government. Marx didn't believe in democracy. He thought change could only be brought about by an elite group running things. We all know how well that works out. By contrast, in the post-WWII era the UK became very socialist, with nationalization of the coal and steel industries, for example. I think it was an economic mistake, but the important thing is that they had free elections and no gulags.
Anarchy is about whichever individuals or groups have the bigger bombs, biceps, knives or guns.
there are many definitions of anarchism, but unless you are talking about the one popularized by the sex pistols, you are not correct. the basic tenant are law + freedom without force, and non-hierarchical leadership.
law + freedom without force: think of a small village where people's behavior is governed not by rules, but by social pressure. refrain from stealing my cow because if you do you'll be outcast from society, not because there are rules + punishment. think of why you don't steal from you mom. she probably wouldn't call the police, but you probably value your position in your family enough that it's not worth it.
non-hierarchical leadership: you can have a leader, but it's bob who lives down the street, not some guy 1500 miles away with 18 layers between you and him.
The colluding companies hold about 90% of the jobs in this type for their region, and a majorly significant portion of them nation wide. Salaries are calculated on averages. Working together, they keep the "spikes" from other companies' hires from throwing off the industry average. So nothing looks to hinky on the surface.
Indeed. IIRC the value of public services provided per tax dollar collected is estimated at being something like 5-10x higher in the UK than in the US. Our medical system certainly has a similar return when looking at dollars spent per patient - we pay much more per patient for substantially lower-quality outcomes. Still the best medicine in the world if you're rich enough that money is no object though. Woohoo! USA! USA!
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
These companies collectively off-shored $400B in profits last year. they can afford another $10k a year for their engineers.
Not necessarily. Freedom always requires enough rules to establish itself. You cannot tell a people "You are totally free, forever!" because one asshole will say "Then I am free to become a tyrant and rule over the others with stupid laws and enforce them with an angry fist!" then where's your freedom?
You see, that's why we have this thing called "The Constitution" in the United States -- it was written as a basis/restriction for/to laws that could promote freedom more than cull it. If a free society requires sentinels to remain "as free as possible" -- then how would a market be any different?
Except that as things shift theirs always incentives for new collusive alliances to form, so employees will always be losing out.
And exactly what negative impacts would you suggest might follow from aggressively banning collusion between employers? Hell, mandate that companies found guilty must pay out 200% of the total estimated lost wages over the entire period of collusion and many companies will be scrupulously avoid even the semblance of collusion. Especially if corporate liquidation and clawback of executive wages is considered acceptable means of collecting the money. Everybody wins (real people, corporations don't count).
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
What was it initially intended for?
I don't see foreign workers leading to lower wages being a bad thing. It means cost of labor goes down. The companies, consumers, and foreign workers benefit, while the people working in that field who had higher wages before are the only ones who get hurt. The workers being foreign doesn't even factor into it. It's almost exactly the same as if we created a computer to do the work for 30% cheaper. It just means the market is getting more efficient at accomplishing that type of labor, which is exactly what leads to more wealth for everybody - imagine what it'd be like if we were as efficient at growing food now as we were 200 years ago.
You are missing part of the equation. Buy a house in Slicon Valley and when you come to retire, move to a region with low cost of living, taking with you a much larger cash pile from selling that much more expensive house. Leverage can produce wonderful effects (it can also bankrupt you as many people found out during the recession).
You could do that, but the housing market is just as subject to ups and downs as any other market, and on average stays reasonably close to inflation. Don't get me wrong - I've seen it firsthand as a younger man in Arkansas, where CA residents would sell their ungodly expensive house and retire in the Ozarks off of the proceeds. If you do it with a long enough time frame, it's totally doable. Folks would sell their paid-off house they bought 30 years ago (at $12-20k), and show up with $400k in their pockets from doing that.
I would also argue that start-ups tend to be in California because employment agreements that prevent you from moving to a competitor are not enforcable in CA.
I don't think this is unique, really. There are quite a few states that will laugh at a non-compete nowadays. For instance, Oregon will tell the previous company to piss off unless the non-compete agreement was made under some *very* narrow circumstances.
Even in states with somewhat-enforceable generic non-competes, that non-compete agreement usually becomes null and void the moment your U-Haul crosses the state line - if not in the legal sense, then in the practical sense. Unless you're a C-level executive (or held patents the old company relied on), what company is going to chase you to your new state of residence, spend a ton of money on an out-of-state lawyer, pray that your new job has the exact same job description as your old one, and then hope that some years-off result falls to their favor? Even if your new job is a at a direct competitor to the old company, it's more time and trouble than it's worth; even with a favorable (to the old company) outcome, by the time it's all said and done? The 'damage' is done as well.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I am an experienced bullshitter! Where do I send my resume?
But we're talking here about exceedingly wealthy employees, both absolutely and relatively, fighting with their even wealthier employers over not making them a few percent wealthier. I'd prefer to focus the resources of our justice system on redressing injustices that matter, not on making the mega-rich micro-richer.
in 01, we had a small drive at HP to unionize after the Wicked Witch of the West started playing fuck fuck games with our pay.
Ho.
Ly.
Shit.
Upper management lost their ever loving minds. you'd have thought we had taken their children hostage. They released the pay freeze, reinstated bonuses... then shut down the entire division and outsourced it to Costa Rica.
Why does everyone believe this? First of all, running power cables and water lines isn't particularly expensive. Secondly, people could own the lines going to their house, and simply pay for the power or water separately to allow for multiple providers. The idea that this couldn't be a competitive market is simply a myth peddled by proponents of big government and government sponsored monopolies.
So you're a sociopath, then. Got it.
When the vast majority of the jobs are in collusion to keep the salary down, what will happen to the average salary that the rest of the companies calculate their pay scale off of?
I will give you a hint: go back to the 4th grade.
Not exactly. If a company fires you, you don’t lose 100% of your income. You walk across the street and get hired by another firm – maybe your salary goes up, maybe it goes down. And the company is going to need to hire another employee to make up that 0.1% of productivity – probably at around your old salary. A company may be able to jack you in the short run but they can’t do anything in the long run – if they slash your wage by 50% you might stick with the job but you would probably hit the want ads to find a better one.
Of course for this to happen we are making a number of assumptions – that there are other firms that offer comparable jobs. You need at least one. At around 8 firms collusion tends to fall apart – the benefits of cheating outweigh the benefits of compliance. At 16 it take firm discipline to keep it together.
And you have a few tricks up your sleeve as well, so that is going to balance things out.
Unions are something that we need when there is a strong imbalance in power. Most of the issues that with unions is that they are run poorly or corruptly. I can point to a few that work.
Unions also exist in a free market, and the serve the opposite effect of increasing wages.
In a communist government, where businesses have ties to government, you can't piss off your boss, or you'll find yourself unemployed. Then other government-tied employers are too afraid to hire you because arbitrarily-enforced laws ensure that you're branded a criminal.
One of the core tenets of communism is the communal ownership of the means of production.
If the populace doesn't own the government (e.g. a strong democracy), government ownership of the means of production cannot be communism.
What you are describing is simply fascism - a common component in economies claiming to be communist, but also common in capitalist societies where businesses have leveraged their much more organized economic power to gain control of the government, and one of the core tenets of feudalism.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The article and correspondence states "even if they came to us" they were off limits.
So applying does you no good. bear in mind, the employees do not know of the collusion or who is playing. So those applications are rejected more often than not simply based on the no hire rules.
they will be paid billions by the government to reward their unethical behaviors?
man, I need to figure out how to get in on this before it goes down!
These companies choose to live in an area where it costs $250k/yr to live at the same level of comfort that $70k a year nets you elsewhere.
they are trying to avoid the consequences of that choice at the cost of the employees.
I think the common and accepted definition of anarchy is something along the line of "absence of enforced rules" which invariably will lead to despotism or barbarism because the use of force to achieve aims is all too much a part of our nature. Someone will eventually use force, the most virtuous use of force is to preserve liberty.
. . . and where did this money come from in the first place, since at that time, most of these companies had PE ratios many times multiplied beyond any sane level?
This money was coming from Venture Capitalists. While Apple, Adobe, (etc) didn't really depend on VC money - all of their competitors did.
At some point, we have to recognize that some of the regulatory changes around investment, and the internet, were driving this money into the industry. It was called a "stock bubble", but actually, there was also a labor bubble. (followed by the housing bubble, as workers tried to diversify into real-estate, because by 2001, they knew that otherwise, they would not be able to hold onto that value).
The whole industry was filled with perverse incentives at that time, and it was only made possible by the way the government enabled the pump-n-dump mentality of the IPO culture.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
All that money they hid offshore- they are loaning it back to themselves to pay it to shareholders as bonds. guess what's deductible, as opposed to profit payouts....
A big enough circle has no outside....
look at the names involved. Where are you going to go as a software engineer? Bob and Frank's BBQ and operating systems?
>So, when buyers agree — such as on various "review" sites — that a particular product or service is overpriced, it must be prosecuted?
No, when the dominant producers of the product are found to be colluding to set the price it should be prosecutted, regardless of whther most peopl think the price is reasonable.
If I think $500 is a reasonably price for an HDTV that's fine. But if the market price would be $400 if not for industry collusion, then the industry has stolen $100 from me, even if I didn't realize it. Theft is still theft even if you cook the books perfectly and nobody ever finds out about it - you've extracted wealth from the economy without providing anything in return, and that hurts everyone, not just the people you directly extracted the wealth from. (Yeah, I'm looking at you, high-frequency traders. Walk away.)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
there is a big difference between "should" and "will" go to jail.
The guy with a $50k bill for a single night in hospital is another example,
How much are they paying you folks these days?
Massachusetts which also has a tech cluster around route 128 IBM and DEC being two examples
Let me take your example and run with it: the buyers at an auction get together and decide to not compete with each other for certain items and later have a separate, private auction to trade those items amongst themselves.
Do you think that this legal? If so, try searching for "auction ring".
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It's actually interesting to look at the examples you listed because I think both end up getting paid higher than they deserve even based on ROI. Peyton Manning might be a rare exception... He really does make a team that much better. But I would argue that most quarterbacks are only as good as their (far less extravagantly paid) offensive linemen. CEOs make both smart and dumb decisions that affect everyone no doubt, but ultimately their results (to which their pay doesn't even seem tied, given the ridiculous golden parachutes for failure, etc) are largely determined by the minions toiling away below them that determine the quality of the products or services they sell.
Regardless of other opportunities, I'm unlikely to be able to just walk across the street and immediately get another job, and the company is unlikely to be able to immediately hire a replacement for me.
We're both faced with an indeterminate period of reduced productivity if we end our association. But mine is a 100% reduction, while the company only faces 0.1%. As such the company is in a far stronger negotiating position.
I agree that unions are worth considering anytime there's a strong imbalance in power. I simply believe that that applies to any negotiation with any company with more than a handful of employees. In fact it would be nice if everyone could get together to form some sort of meta-union tasked with making sure companies don't abuse their power to begin with. They could establish general guidelines, make non-negotiable rules that all employers must adhere to, investigate any claims of abuse, and inflict punishments upon individual bad actors. Of course the companies would have strong incentives to corrupt such a system for their own benefit. Hmm, that all sounds oddly familiar...
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That sounds a lot like a free market - one without government intervention/regulation.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
That's assuming there is no worker specialization. In reality losing some employees will have a much larger impact. For example, if you lose a key engineer it can cause an entire project to fail. On the other hand, some employees actually bring down productivity and losing them will increase the companies income.
You are wrong about the core cause of this imbalance. The real problem is that most people need to work for a large corporation or they will literally starve to death. If people could work for themselves and get by, the individual and the corporation would be on roughly equal footing, since either of them could afford to walk away.
I don't accept that the definition of a free market doesn't allow for policing to prevent theft, fraud and the threat or use of force for intimidation.
Somebody should mod that post up just for the arguments it mentions. I always had my doubts about Jobs's angelicness, but it's all clarified up now.
Follow the link in the linked article and at the end, there's an actual example..
Facebook was NOT part of the anti-recruit agreement club. They were hiring people away from google. The google management was all in a dither because of internal equity problems (if you give all the "Software Developer 2" folks in the XYZ group a raise to keep them from bolting, then all the SD2 in ABC and DEF groups will expect that same raise). And google couldn't do an across the board, because their handshake deal with Apple and Intel and Intuit, etc. said "keep the pay scales comparable for a given position description".
Google finally broke with the "Big Bang" where they gave everyone 10% and $1000 cash. And Apple complained mightily, but folllowed suit, and everyone's pay went up.
And you can bet that "lean-in" Sheryl is going to be an unhappy camper when she has to start bumping pay to retain facebookers who are bolting back to Google and Apple and Intel. Or, more likely the zuck will have a handshake agreement with the others and all will return to the stable wages of history.
The definition I found contains a subsequent reselling of thus-purchased items to in a "knock out" action" — at the higher price. That may be illegal, but it is not, what TFA is alleging.
BTW, "try searching" is not an argument — you want to present evidence, you search for it and present whatever link(s), that best support your case...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Exactly. But, in the case in TFA, it is the buyers, rather than the producers/sellers, who are being targeted, and that just seems backwards...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You either missed or did not comprehend the concept of leverage. That amplifies the effect of inflation at the time you come to cash out. People with higher incomes in CA will benefit more from the leverage than people with lower incomes (but similar lifestyles) in lower cost-of-living areas.
The problem can be that family can tie you to an area so that you can't actually cash out.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I fully agree. Our goal should be competitive markets. Whether that means more regulation, or less regulation, our goal is increased competition.
Think about it in a different way.
When you join a union there is going to be a cost. You have to pay a negotiator to negotiate your salary. You will be unemployed for a few weeks (or months) when the union goes on strike.
Or you could go freelance. Personally, I have been downsized, walked across the street and got a better job the next day. (Well, 3 days – it was a long weekend.) That’s a special case. What is the cost to you in forgone wages until you find a new job? 2 weeks salary? 6 months?
That will tell you if you need a union or not.
And I don’t see the company as being in a stronger position. It fires you, then wades out into the labor poor, hopefully pick out a good candidate (all resumes lie), and then train them – all hopefully at a lower price than your salary. There are special cases out there but it is not the general rule.
As for meta-unions, they have been tried and there are conflict of interest issues. Unskilled assemblers verse skilled machinist. You might want to check out how German runs their unions however.
You just said they could easily replace those $100k earners with cheaper employees, so why collude? Just go straight for that $90k worker from Idaho or that $60k worker from Bangalore, right? Unless your assumption were wrong, of course. Which it is.
One problem I can think of is selective enforcement. If so many companies collude, then you can't possibly indict them all. Consider traffic violations as an analogy. Cops acknowledge that they can follow any driver for a few minutes and eventually they will perform a traffic infraction that they can legally pull the driver over for. Since everyone is guilty, this means that the cops can choose whom to pursue based on their own whims. Analogously, whatever agency is responsible for investigating collusion can choose which companies to pursue - perhaps at the request of a company's competitors? Further there's the issue of estimated lost wages. How could this be accurately determined? This makes me think of the RIAA attempting to figure out how much money they lost due to piracy.
Also, to whom would the 200% total estimated lost wages be paid out to? Employees that they didn't hire? Their own employees which they wouldn't have given raises to anyway? Employees they hired recently? Then employees would have incentives to pursue action against the company that has hired them even if there isn't collusion - compare to discrimination lawsuits. Would it be paid to the agency itself? Then this would just become another elaborate tax that companies would have to avoid by donating money to the government in some form or another. In any case the cost of business just went up since once you're large enough, you'll need extra lawyers on retainer to handle this possibility. Higher cost of business means less money for wages and higher prices for consumers.
Consumers pick their 'winners.' The only difference is in whom gets to make the decision; sometimes it's an executive who is helping out a friend's business. Sometimes it's a mother picking what she thinks the best product is. Sometimes Joe Sixpack picks the product with the sexiest commercial. Sometimes somebody given a collective voice (such as a governmental leader) makes their choice.
No matter what, winners are chosen. That is the very essence of a market. Anybody who complains about 'picking winners' is arguing against a free, competitive market: They are complaining that a consumer isn't limited to their business.
The simple fact is that all organizations, including governments, are consumers. As consumers, all organizations are compelled to select products and services - in other words, they pick 'winners.'
The problem is that in any organization delegates the power to make decisions into these little neurotic bags of meat called humans. Humans don't handle responsibility well, though they'll shout to the skies that they are supremely responsible.
The only difference between the head of a business and a head of government is that there are laws against bribing government officials.
Maybe?
You know there are different classes of stock right? With different voting powers? Yeah guess who gets lots of shares with no voting power? People not the CEO or the board of directors.
Which other states have similar labor laws? I find it hard to believe that CA is unique.
Based on a few minutes of half-assed Googling, California appears to be nearly unique. Most governments are unwilling to interfere with contract law to such an extent; I'm a little surprised that it hasn't fallen to legal challenges. (Not that I'm complaining - as a CA resident working in a highly technical field, I think it's a terrific innovation.)
The issue has to do with mobility of labour. The H1Bs don't have as much mobility (the walk across the street to get a different job mentioned above) and so the employer has more power in demanding a lower wage from the H1Bs. It's an artificial price ceiling. If the H1Bs became free agents once they were granted their status, then the wage differential wouldn't be as large.
Steve Jobs screwing over someone...film at 11!
The first dozen comments focus on terminology and semantics, rather than the true issue, which is that there is direct evidence that people in the software/IT field are being undervalued. The fact that we do not, as a profession, coordinate to ensure fair compensation is one of the reasons we are taken advantage of, relative to the value we produce. Do doctors allow themselves to be outsourced/underpaid/treated with contempt by the business world, in exchange for a foozball table and the right to wear flip flops and a ratty t-shirt to work? No, they stood up for themselves, organized barriers for entry, established a code of ethics to abide by, and demanded they be paid what they are worth - which is why a surgeon can look forward to wage increases throughout middle age, while a developer caps off at 150k and then sees their wages decline as they get older. Get it together, people.
I should point out that when employees collude, it is called a Union.
no,no,no, you're thinking of orwellianism, where you get to doublespeak, and redefine the terms you simply don't undestand.
They're meeting down the hall.
conspiracy among the CEOs of Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar
But .. where is Microsoft? Out of the picture - or geographical issue?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Oh gotcha. Yes that makes sense - so that was indeed a good example.
... is a myth. What One calls the "free market" Another calls "over-regulated" and Another calls "under-regulated". The is no objective definition of the "free market".
... And break them anyway to attract top talent. So, these agreements don't last long.
I would say the 200% goes to every affected employee working for them during the period in question, proportional to their earnings. (or perhaps 100% to the victims, 100% to the lawyers that got them justice, whatever) If it's estimated that an industry cabal collusive lowered salaries for pizza delivery guys by an average of 20% over the period in question, then each delivery guy that worked for them during that time gets a 40% bonus on his total earnings during the period in question, even if they've since quit. Those were the people directly harmed, they're the ones who should receive restitution, and in proportion to the actual damages done.
We could get more detailed, argue about whether people who left early on while the distortion was still small should receive less, and about whether salaries were suppressed linearly or flattened at the high end, etc. But as a rule of thumb "treat everyone equally" is a good first attempt at fairness, and "keep it simple" is a good way to minimize underhanded trickery. And 200% restitution means that even the new guy is probably getting roughly his due, if not the windfall of the early quitters. True fairness is an unattainable ideal, the important thing is that the perpetrators be chastised, and that those wronged receive restitution.
As for how to estimate the amount that salaries were depressed, that's a bit stickier. We could perhaps look at the suppressed salaries relative to other occupations in the area, and compare to the ratio in other, unaffected but otherwise similar areas and assume the "proper" ratio would be somewhere in the spread. That admittedly has its issues, but could be the start of a heuristic. It's not an easy question to answer, and would likely have to be answered on a case-by-case basis. But then that's why we elect the wisest and most incorruptible of our number to be judges, right? To guide the quest for justice on a case-by-case basis?
As for the incentives toward false accusations - well I've always felt that false legal accusations should be punished proportional to the damage that they cause. Just one of he ways in which a loser-pays legal system has an advantage. I'm sure there's plenty of other solutions as well.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
FTFY
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
it happens anywhere that people volunteer to become serfs. - and agree not to carry torches.
and for you fuckin limey's i don't mean flashlights.
ALgor is on the BOD of APPLE what did you assholes think was going on? al the ridgerunner.
That bit gets a little tricky. In some sense I do compare my salary to the market price. But lets say the market price for a software job was $20k/year. At that point I would consider being a freelance software engineer or starting my own company and hiring a bunch of talented engineers for $20k/year.
lol right. So you've just been shafted at your annual pay review at and you know it. Let's start my own business! What will we sell? Oh I know, I've just spent the last 10 years of my life designing the best XYZ in the world for FU Tech, so let's sell some more XYZ shall we? (besides, by now it's the only thing I know how to design to a competitive level). Oh wait, I previously signed a contract (mandatory condition of employment) which means I'm prohibited from selling XYZ or utilising the skills and knowledge I spent the last 10 years accumulating. Guess it's back to FU Tech then if I want to eat.
Starting your own business requires acceptance of huge risk, capital and a completely different skill set than the average programmer will have. To claim that you could use that possibility as a bargaining chip when you are an employee, is laughable.
If the market price were $20k/year, fewer people would go to school to become engineers, and this would lower the supply and increase demand for engineers.
Utterly pointless observation. The point is that those who already are engineers are screwed. And you also seem to think most kids are adequately informed about the realities of what careers they choose, rather than falling for whatever teacher's/Governments/Zuckerberg sells them.
It's often said that for most people the biggest investment decision or purchase they will ever make is their house. This is wrong. It's actually their career. And whereas you can always move house, switching professional careers (to another of comparable or higher pay) ranges from a massive effort, time and expense with lots of risk, to nigh on impossible.
You'd think we would support kids a bit better with that decision, given that they usually have to make it at an age when as much money as you can imagine is about 5 grand and the limit of forward planning about 6 months.
It should go without saying, but it's easy to overlook - all actors must be in a position to make those rational decisions. For example, in the case of emergency medical care, a patient is in no position to shop around before receiving treatment, no matter how rational he/she is.
I was thinking meta-unions ~= democratic government myself: the force-concentrated arm of of the many-but-weak against the few-but-powerful.
Sounds like you're in a high-demand occupation. Congratulations. Now try that stunt as and office- or factory- drone. i.e. as a normal person.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
yep.. "here's what the market rates are" presented as if it was a statistical analysis, but in actuality a bargaining chip.
And then post justified by saying "well, the DCAA (Defense Department auditors) only let us charge prevailing market rates for labor", which is technically true, but what the auditors are really looking for is things like the Owner's nephew making 250k/yr as an executive trainee (in 1980), and bumping up the base for the G&A and profit.
A Corporation is NOT a one-person-per-vote democracy. It is one-SHARE-per-vote.
Sometimes it is not even one-share-per-vote. Thanks to inventive structures involving different share classes, the owners of a tiny minority of shares can sometimes end up controlling the majority of the vote.
"An ideal "free market" is one where"
- "there are no barriers to entry"
[TRUE]
- "all information is free"
[FALSE]
- "and all actors are rational."
[FALSE - it is not necessary]
"A standard "free market" is one with"
- "low barriers to entry"
[TRUE]
- "no fraud"
[QUALIFIED TRUE - fraud ought to be actionable with a dispute mechanism that is peaceful]
- "and everyone knows all publicly available information"
[FALSE and IMPOSSIBLE]
- "and acts mostly rationally. "
[FALSE - they only need to be free, besides we cannot agree on what is rational. Is buying lobster for a lower price rational? Or is it rational to buy for a higher price from a friend I trust? Either is acceptable and rational. There is no mechanism for you to judge. All actions can be rationalized, but that is not necessary.]
Low to no barriers to entry and low or no fraud or actionable fraud are what would describe a free market.
Perhaps you were thinking of a Perfect Market.
It is important not to confuse the terms because you are setting up goals a politically free market cannot and isn't designed to meet (nor should it... necessarily).
Sounds like you're in a high-demand occupation. Congratulations. Now try that stunt as and office- or factory- drone. i.e. as a normal person.
Don't underestimate the negotiating power of a good employee even in a "drone" job.
I had a friend working at a fast food joint that tried to quit multiple times and each time
his manager offered him a raise to come back.
I also know dozens of people who have left a job as a waiter,waitress,cashier,stocker,etc...
and come back on the summer/weekends and pick up extra shifts like they never left.
I also know people in IT that have left for a year and then come right back without even an interview.
And as an employer, I would gladly hire or rehire any good employee that walks in my door and
the number one complaint I hear from other employers is that it's hard to find good employees.
Why do you think these CEOs made this agreement? My guess it wasn't so much to supress
wages but rather to stop playing musical chairs with all their good employees.
If you're a good worker you can usually always find a job and are generally always
welcomed back by former employers with no questions asked.
Nope, not a high demand job - just moderate. I was lucky that job market was tight and I already had my resume out there. Which goes back to being a freelance - I suspect that I would have to wait much longer to pick up my next job in the current market so I would have to factor that in my equations. On the other hand I have seen factory workers go on long strikes. mixed bag.
Let's kill ourselves! Yeah, that'll solve it!
-- end sarcasm --
There's a basic flaw somewhere in human nature that rears its ugly head whenever an opportunity seems to arise; it's the "let's form an ugly mob and use thug tactics....for GOOD!". It simply does not work that way.
To get tech workers to unionize, you'd have to do what unions try to do everywhere... get laws passed to REQUIRE people to join and pay dues. Then, anybody who won't join gets used and abused by the unions (for the GOOD of all, of course). The the unions defend even the worst members when they do bad things (like abuse the public, show up for work drunk, do incompetent work, etc) and demand that the best member cannot be compensated more than the worst member etc. As a result, productivity plummets and employers seek other options. Before long, the jobs are driven-out to places where unions are not required and not in power, and the companies in the unionized areas can no longer pay promised salaries and benefits so they go belly-up and need bailouts. This is how Detroit 1950 became Detroit 2014.
It always seems wise, to people who do not understand history and economics, to deal with any corporate abuse by calling for a mob (a union), but that's a solution that (like "bloodletting" is to medical practice) is a step backwards into the primitive and self-desturctive. IF this has actually happened (as I believe it has), the proper response is [a] in the courts (where it currently is) and [b] in your shopping/web habits. If you cannot get people to stop buying Apple products and stop using Google (both actions easily done, and not immoral) then how do you imagine you'll get people to go on strike and slash tires and beat "scabs" with baseball bats? hhhmmmmmmm???
The truly hilarious bit of all this is, of course, that these are all left-leaning companies run by left-wing execs (who all PROVE how GOOD they are by backing things like open borders, abortion, gay marriage, and left-wing politicians) and loved by left-wing consumers.... and the've been fattening themselves with the money they didn't have to pay their workers because they were engaged in illegal, immoral, unethical behaviour. Ah, "social justice" at its FINEST....
Just as I will oppose any lefty who tries to control MY guns (using the violence perpetrated by some drug-addled lefty with a gun as a pretense), I will also oppose any lefty who tries to force me into a union (using the employee abuse by a bunch of lefty employers as a pretense)
Regardless of the goal, the result is to suppress wages. Besides, if we're all equals here and the goal is just to stop playing musical chairs then why doesn't my employer encourage me to come to them with any head-hunting offer and sit down with representatives from both companies to let them bid for my services? I end up with whoever values me higher, and all it cost was a bit of negotiation, no musical chairs required. *That's* the free market solution. Not agreeing not to offer each others employees wages closer to what we believe they're really worth.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Ah yes, the invisible hand is more efficient than regulation. The difference is that the invisible hand benefits the bad actors before the correction, and regulation punishes the bad actors. So the difference between the invisible hand and regulations is, do you want a system that encourages people to act in everyone's worst interest?
Learn to love Alaska
Stop using Google, and GET OFF OF FACEBOOK
If you keep SUPPORTING the companies who are pushing to demolish your wages, then you are the dummy. The founder of Facebook is one of the biggest pushers of the effort to eliminate all limits on H1B visas. These high-tech firms have been telling congress that there are no Americans willing and able to work in high tech fields. They'll keep pushing that message and they think they are going to succeed in getting congress and Obama to do this for them by the end of the year. What are YOU (all of you Slashdot readers) DOING? ANYTHING real? Lemme guess.... tweeting (sigh)
You may want to revisit your definition of communism.
Libertarianism is inherently anti-democratic. The problem is, if the people aren't governed popularly, how do you get the support of the disenfranchised? Exploit until revolt? Have a "libertarian" government with a standing army large enough to defeat any insurrection?
Learn to love Alaska
Unions assume they have the right to use force, and they occasionally even resort to murder. There is no place for them in a free market.
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Libertarianism is the belief that any power vacuum in government will be filled by a benevolent dictator who will give up power the first time it's asked of him.
Learn to love Alaska
I have a major bone to pick: Anarchy is freedom.
You go on about a market. I'm not sure what that has to do with anarchy.
It means nobody has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force (which is the textbook definition of a state, and thus the precise antonym of anarchy), but not that nobody provides that legitimate use of force (which is necessary to curtail illegitimate uses of force, and without which we would have "fastest draw of their gun" rule everywhere). It just means that the provision of that legitimate use of force (which is to say, the provision of regulation, or in simpler terms, protection of each market participant from the others) comes from voluntary agreements in an open market of providers.
That's just one of the many forms of libertarianism. The government exists to stop the person who first used violence, and arbitrate when both use violence. Anarchy is absence of government. In practice a government that weak is rapidly deposed by a warlord. Anarchy *is* feudal warlordism. Anarchy may be an ideal, but the real world abhors a vacuum, even a power vacuum, and a government with no power leaves an attractive target.
Getting rid of one state is not so hard. Keeping another from popping right up to replace it, and doing that indefinitely, is the challenge.
Doing that for one day is hard. If you achieve anarchy at 8 a.m., you'll have a "government" by noon, even if it's only local, and warring with the other "local" warlords. Since anarchy is impossible, why bother to debate it? A benevolent dictatorship is better.
Learn to love Alaska
Not just large companies. Employee defections are potentially much more damaging to smaller businesses, where the knowledge and skillset at risk of being poached is distributed among many fewer people. Companies like Apple and Google and Facebook are worried about labor costs, but losing a key engineer is far more damaging to a 20-person startup, where getting to market quickly is essential.
(Again, I'm not arguing against the CA law - it's just such a weird anomaly. I'd be curious to know if there's any hard evidence for direct effects on salaries in different industries.)
Nope, it's the institutional investors who vote along the lines of the chairman's recommendations, efectively putting the board/CEO as a majority shareholder, so long as they don't piss off the institutions.
Learn to love Alaska
One of the functions of proper government is to codify a single standard of the legitimate use of force. In the absence of government, anarchy, there is no such single standard. It is not possible to know what legitimate force is. There is no mechanism to deal with psychopathic behavior. Those two problems do make anarchy bad.
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Then we must currently live in anarchy because it's still about having bigger bombs, biceps, knives and guns.
Indeed...viewed internationally, we live in an anarchy of nation-states.
The U.N. has no real enforcement powers...the General Assembly is little more than a forum for expressing hatred.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
When men get power, they abuse it.
That's strange...whenever I get power, I just end up with current and voltage. I must be doing something wrong.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
You haven't the faintest idea what stealing is and what voluntary action is.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Companies assume they have the right to use force, and they occasionally even resort to murder. There is no place for them in a free market.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
In most large companies the majority of the shares are owned by funds. Very few funds actively participate in corporate governance, and those that do do more harm than good.
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in dilbert the animated series, the assistant.
You can claim most are false, and identify what you think I was thinking of, but until you identify a definition of what I said I was talking about, your words are no more useful than a 3-year old with his fingers in his ears chanting "I can't hear you" repeatedly.
Learn to love Alaska
Most stealing is voluntary.
Play Command HQ online
You subvert them: that's the whole "disruptive innovation" idea: NYT goes to ideological shit, now it can't survive without billion-dollar "charitable" donations to keep the propaganda mouthpiece working. What eats its cake? A bunch of volunteer bloggers that do even better.
Sometimes more desirable is an actual replacement, and those do show up: I know a former employer wanted to buy-up Netflix but couldn't at the time, Hulu but the offer was withdrawn. Why? Because it really was run by a bunch of nepotistic "these stupid assholes work for us, HA HA HA" morons: they couldn't innovate if it killed them--not in any real, quick, or disruptive manner--despite being replete with the tech all sitting in front of them (in their hands, their patents, their manufacturing processes) to dominate, I would say, at least 3-4 other industries. But no, they had no idea how--the shit-on the people who would actually tell them how (then resurrected those ideas as their own years later, usually late), and they really really desired to get their teeth into the online video thing before, knowing it could kill them. You can probably determine which company it was from just this info.
MBA+ level careless leads to myopia and rent-seeking, and chide them and these people scoff, "[snort], why wouldn't I do what's in MY immediate best interest?" The answer has to do with far more value and productivity but the closest they get when reminded of that is faux cheer "company pride" + [some kind of statement about loyalty, honor, respect, openness...]" and all bullshit. I'm finding that, in one form or another, no matter how companies present themselves, if they suck at the same teets, imbibe the same fads, etc., they are likely the same-ol' cancers on society.
And note I'm not a progressive (well, I may have hacked-off all the progressive organizations, mouthpieces, newspapers, journalist friends, and more that I had growing-up and going to college). The idea about regulation to ensure a competitive and free market is John Smith's btw. Read it.
(Posted anonymously--well, best I can--because despite that I do everything I can to fill every duty, go above and beyond to add value to any company I work for AND any customers they have, I know saying something like the above, if found by HR or someone else, is probably the death of employability. I'll continue doing all I can for any employer in gratitude for the opportunity--yet keep in mind that the ordinary employer would as soon sell you to Hitler for a million bucks if s/he had the opportunity, and plan accordingly.)
To answer your question it is corporation, then unions and employees.
The unions and employees in various retirement and investment funds. Personally ownership of stock is rather low.
"One place where techies earn a lot less than $100k / year is the UK"
Nah, £70,000 ( $100,000 ish ) is considered a low to average wage for a techie with a few years of experience. Source : I work for a IT recruitment agency in London
This does bother me, but I would suggest that the solution to these sorts of problems is exposure rather than laws.
And exactly how are these problems going to be exposed without laws being broken allowing authorities to gather enough evidence like requesting e-mail archives, tapping and interrogate witnesses?
Oh yes, someone will do it... it will eventually be discovered...
Must be nice to be a market libertarian twat always reasoning under false and unrealistic premises (like complete market efficiency, full information symmetry and eternal growth), it must feel like having the wife drunk and the barrel full...
A Corporation is NOT a one-person-per-vote democracy. It is one-SHARE-per-vote.
Sometimes it is not even one-share-per-vote. Thanks to inventive structures involving different share classes, the owners of a tiny minority of shares can sometimes end up controlling the majority of the vote.
Yup. The most common version of this is Preferred Stock. Although I once got suckered into buying shares of a start-up that had a class with the worst of common and the worst of preferred shares combined.
extremely left wing, pro big government. (Really I say that because I knew a fellow student in college who said they were an anarchist. Oddly enough there was no big government policy that they weren't totally for. For those that don't know anarchy literally means no rulers so this was a case of them not quite understanding what anarchy is supposed to be about.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Except Silicon Valley doesn't have a free market. California prohibits non-compete agreements so employers have no means to guarantee any sort of return on their investment.
Only by those who nothing about computer history and Massachusetts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Casteism
"However, by the nature of collusion - where each participant has incentives to screw over the other participants, or non-participants can take advantage of the collusion - it is an unstable, temporary arrangement, and will fall apart sooner rather than later. "
Except that, as was pointed out above, this sort of thing has been going on for a very long time. And I keep hearing that claim about such things being 'unstable, temporary arrangement'(s), but I don't see much proof.
" It can come from anyone who knows about it."
I would point out further that this is simply wrong; if I were a Silicon Valley engineer, and overheard such a conversation, or was tipped off by a friend in HR/a friend who overheard it, I can do precisely jack squat. I'd have to have sufficient evidence to prevail in court, and the resources to fight a case for many years against a group with lots of money and incentive to fight to the bitter end. In the meantime, I'd be unemployed (and that's if I weren't countersued into bankruptcy).
Anarchism firstly believes that everyone has a right to exist. That means/implies a right to homestead; own and manage land for sustanence.
You are correct that anarchists do not believe in leaders, per se. Because it leads to heirarchies and patronages.
That is not to say there are no leaders, only that they are driven from below AOT above and everyone participating has a seat/voice at the table.
Led or Leaderless, even the dumbest anarchist understands the need for strategic planning. Its more then about how the planning gets done and executed.
I know of few, if any, real anarchist communities; but the coops and guilds come close; the stories of the Basque Mondragon is a good model perhaps, as is the work currently being done in S.America
resist propaganda
Nope. Agreement to not actively poach does not stop anyone from applying on their own. That would be a non-compete clause and a whole different subject. I've read a claim that most employees who use an offer as leverage with their current employer end up leaving within a year anyway. Bidding wars no doubt happen for a small fraction of people, but for most I would expect the companies to have a take-it-or-leave it policy. They want to hire people who want to work for them.
It's only hard to find good employees if the company has its head up its collective ass. Not long ago I interviewed (through the slimiest recruiter I've ever encountered) with a company sited across a lake and toll bridge. They cling to an obsolete OS version and wanted me to spend 1.5 hrs every day commuting so I could sit at a cluster of desks shoved together 8' from their suite door. For this they offered substandard benefits and less money than I was already making. The newish IT director was decent enough, but the others I interviewed with included a twitchy paranoid type and a cocky slob. Other places took over a month to get back to me, or had interview processes including skills outside of the scope of the job. I'm not a swdev, don't ask me to code college algorithms class problems on a whiteboard while an H1-B records my every move. In the silly valley there's perhaps always a job across the street, but for the rest of us, often not. And I really don't want to move my family to that nightmare of a region and pay $4k / mo rent for a tiny home.
I was specifically commenting on the fact that the original poster stated that office and factory drones have a hard time finding jobs.
If you have a specialty then finding a job in your field can be difficult depending on the field but the "drone" jobs that pay close to
minimum wage are easy to come by if you're a good employee. Of course if you're a good employee then you will quickly be able
to demand more than most of the "drone" jobs pay but that's a different topic.
Globalization is Zero-Sum.
Amend your Constitution accordingly. https://www.constituteproject....
Otherwise your future generations will regret. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Casteism
but until you identify a definition of what I said I was talking about
That would be your job, logically. As one word can mean many things...
I gave my definition, and he disagreed. So what is your next step then?
Learn to love Alaska
By whose definition? A free market is a market in which people have free choice about how they buy and sell goods and services. Nowhere does that require that the participants in that market can't talk to each other or even make agreements between them. Most of these arrangements are, in fact, self-defeating, and most of them are rooted in government-created barriers to entry.
And if a group of those merchants decides to try some price fixing, they are going to discover quickly that others are going to find it profitable to defect the arrangement and take their business.
Collusion among market participants can be a problem in some situations, but most of the time, it is simply irrelevant.
This is result of the FED's Phoney Money printing since 1972 accelerating exponentially since. Get rid of the FED!
No, he has a point.
Most people use “Free Market” in a sloppy, non-precise term. A Free Market does not require most of those things – it only requires 2 willing participants.
Your definition is closer to a “perfect market”. Do they exist? No. Do inelastic spherical cows exist? No. yet physics use them as a starting point. You loosen the assumptions, introduce friction and other inefficient , and see what happens. A good example is that both individuals need perfect free information. Can’t happen in the real world but it does lead to interesting questions. How do we lower the cost? (headhunters? Internet want ads?). How much are we willing to pay? (How many applications do we submit? How much effort should be put into the resume?) etc.
Let me explain why it is a bad thing.
The Companies shareholders benefit.
The Consumers do not benefit, because the cost savings are never passed on. For example, milk, when adjusted for inflation is only part of the equation. Rather, the cost to produce a gallon of milk was reduced 85% thanks to automation, better breeding, cows that now produce 2.5 gallons of milk for every 1 gallon that used to be produced. That "modernization/industrialization/automation" benefit is NOT being passed to you or me, the consumer.
Second, foreign workers benefit, yes...and the cultural exchange is POSITIVE. Which is why I do support it.
But the economy is hurt. Because you see, when a programmer (or middle class worker) makes $75,000, he spends a chunk of that money on frivolous local expenditures. We hit the cup cake shop, the coffee shop, amusement parks, and buy a flat screen TV. All of the above except the latter put money into the local economic system encouraging further spending. The TV only inputs minimal value, as it's manufacture is made abroad. Most of it's profits are harvested by the big corps and spun off to shareholders. A small amount of profit is applied locally to a barely above minimum wage worker. This barely meets living needs and as such does not really encourage economy growth.
Shareholers - uber elites, hold money and use it mainly for accumulation of further holdings. In a sense, they exchange money for more money, but not for growth. Minimal amount of money is moved. If I take $1 billion and buy $1 billion. It is a single transaction. Where as $1 billion respent by thousands of middle class is high velocity. And grows economy.
Furthermore, billionaires expend a very minimal amount of money. A $1 billion yacht only creates a few hundred jobs. Where as the middle class expending $1 billion creates thousands of jobs.
Trickle down economics work, but only when the trickle down comes from the middle class. Trickle down economics fails when the wealth is held by the elites, as they operate as hoarders. Hurting the entire economy.
Agreed....an H1B should be granted to the worker, and not tied to ANY business. At least not after the 1st year committment.
It also creates a fire at will mentality. Companies no longer employee people. Rather, they contract thanks to the H1B flow. So if I want to change languages, I simply fire all and hire new. The H1B creates an artificial pool of employees that let's a complany have zero obligation to its workers.