Except your example is exactly the wrong way around. Supermarkets buy goods from farmers and then claim they have a right to resell it to the general public at a higher price, depriving the farmers the additional money that they could have made selling it directly. The farmers should get together and sue the supermarkets to recover their lost profits. That's essentially what the publishers are claiming.
Strangely enough, several societies and religions (including the christian/jewish I believe) actually had laws at some point against selling stuff for more than you paid for it. We take mark up and interest as a given in today's society but they were considered very bad at one time. Even today, there are certain muslim groups as well as possibly other groups that don't believe in interest. I'm not sure if any societies are still against markup but modern society with distribution channels and super markets would have a hard time functioning without markup.
By professional standards, everything taught in school is fluffy and watered down. Harel noticed that only now, and she's outraged?
That's the way school works. In kindergarten you learn that the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue, that there are only 3 phases of matter, that the earth is round, that all living things are either plants or animals (if you're lucky they *might* throw in fungus but don't count on it). Later you find out that green is a primary color, the earth is fatter at the equator, plasma is a phase of matter, and there are actually 6 kingdoms.
Even in high school physics, you still mostly learn using simplified versions like frictionless planes and spherical cows. I don't see a problem with this. You teach the simplified version and then a few years later create a better model. This is actually very similar to how real science works where we create a model (say newton's laws) and then slowly expand on it as we find stuff that doesn't conform to it 100% of the time in all conditions.
So they are using gui tools. Who cares? My first experience with programming was randomly modifying Oregon Trail and seeing what broke. It wasn't until I got a programming manual several years later that I discovered that chr(4) actually meant ascii character 4. I knew what it did by trial and error but had no idea what it meant. The point is they are teaching basic logic and problem solving skills. Not everyone is going to be a programmer but everyone can benefit from learning logic, problem solving skills, and collaboration.
Yes, completely agree with the winner takes all stuff. But not where you said it will be easy to find useful things for the leftover people to do. There may be years and years of man hours to design the robots. But there will be centuries and millenia of human man hours of people looking for something to do.
I agree, but if there is a 50 year backlog of things to automate right now, hopefully in the next 50 years we can think of more stuff to automate and even if we don't, it at least gives us 50 years to come up with a plan. I read a book once, I can't remember the title, but basically the robots were cheaper than the people so they were taking the people and colonizing other planets with them. Not saying that's a good solution, but it's at least a solution. I think though the bigger problem is how to fix the "winner take all" problem. If no one has to work and everyone has plenty of resources, then we all live a life of leisure, but if the factories are producing all the goods and all the resources are going to the 5 people at the top then everyone else is screwed.
I'm no chemist but isn't the waste oxygen? You start with water, split the hydrogen from the oxygen, take the hydrogen away and you have oxygen left?
Yes, when you extract hydrogen from water, you get oxygen but there are other ways of extracting hydrogen. The waste product that I'm referring to is when you burn hydrogen. When you burn hydrogen, you are combining the hydrogen with oxygen and creating water. When you burn carbon you are combining carbon with oxygen and creating CO and CO2. CO and CO2 are considered greenhouse gases and are considered less desirable than water.
Plentiful. Convenient to refuel. Probably the two most important factors for something to be viable for wide scale commercial deployment.
I think the main advantage of hydrogen is that it's waste product is water so in theory it should have less polution but as far as convenience, instead of using electricity to make pure hydrogen, it makes a lot more sense to use electricity to make hydrocarbon fuel (some sort of artificial gasoline created by splitting co2 and/or h2o). An artificial fuel could use the existing distribution channels and doesn't need special pressurized containers. Batteries, fuel cells, etc... don't even come close to the amount of energy per pound of regular hydrocarbons. I wouldn't be surprised if firewood actually has more energy per pound than current battery technology.
Code quality depends on the situation. On an embedded system with limited resources running from a battery it makes sense to make certain compromises that you wouldn't take on a desktop system. The problem with any system like this is that the PHB will run it without understanding that it needs tuning or interpreting, and act on the good/bad output.
Yes, code quality depends on the situation but what you are describing is not what the biometrics are measuring. A better example might be that coding for embedded system is harder and more stressful but it could still be argued that if the programmer is stressed that he is more likely to make mistakes because that is really what they are measuring. More stress and/or more brain activity implies that it is not as "second nature" to the programmer and therefore harder and more accident prone. This is basic biology. A professional musician doesn't have to think as hard as a beginner. This even shows up in blood flow scans of the brain.
Btw, you are threading a very thin and dangerous line, when you are suggesting, that some more experienced developers should be loaded with tasks... in the first instance - the question is what those "less experienced" developers are doing in the company, if they are earning the same salary and making bugs!
Why would a "less experienced" junior developer be earning the same as a "more experienced" senior developer?
Basically - what are you suggesting is that it is ok to make more experienced developers more stressful... because clearly, if there are people who can't code, why would you even bother to keep them on expense on somebody else nerves?
That's not what I am suggesting at all. Rather I'm suggesting that you could detect when you gave someone a task that they weren't ready to tackle yet and would be better off giving it to someone with a little more experience. The person with the more experience should hopefully find the task easier and therefore not as stressful.
The problem with code quality is that it is subjective. Some people (aka architecture astronauts) love complex, multi-tiered code with multiple classes and tons of inheritance. Others prefer the simplest code required to get the job done. Still others like some type of balance between the two. Code, much like art, cannot be judged because of this.
They aren't detecting code complexity, they are detecting which parts were complex/difficult for the programmer and therefore more likely to contain bugs. This might even indirectly detect readability. If something is "multi-tiered code with multiple classes" and that makes it easier to understand then the biometrics should detect that. On the other hand, if the "multi-tiered code with multiple classes" makes it overly complex and harder to understand then again, the biometrics should show that. So, yes, code is like art, where you have some freedom to how you approach the problem, but the method that makes the code easiest to understand is likely the better code and reading how hard your brain works is a fairly straightforward way of measuring this.
So the easy parts will have cleaner code than the hard parts? Uh...duh?
Yes, but the point is that they are automatically detecting which parts are the easy parts so that you can focus your time doing code review on the parts that the developer struggled on and therefore are more likely to have bugs. You could also use this information to assign "too difficult" tasks to a different more experienced developer. It's interesting but I can't imagine anyone wanting to wear biometrics all day every day.
Why does a mobile software shop even have 213 jobs to cut? What are those people doing?
They have released over a dozen mobile games on multiple platforms, as well as stuffed animals, board games, card games, a tv series, and a ton of other stuff. In some toy stores, the amount of Angry Bird stuff could fill an entire aisle (in some stores it actually does). They might have started out with a single popular game but they have expanded into pop culture. That's the main reason that the movie was widely released and widely watched.
Why would they? They were in departments unrelated to the movie ("affecting all departments except those working on the film and its related projects") , so the movie's (financial) success is no reason to rehire people to make games, that will continue to lose money for the company.
What this does mean is that 2Angry2Birds will be given the go ahead and Rovio will transform itself into a third rate animation company rather than a third rate mobile game company.
Regardless of whether the games are any good or whether the games are making them money, the only reason anyone went to see the angry bird movie (and the only reason it was financially successful) is because of the games. I seriously doubt anyone who hasn't played the game went to watch the movie (unless it was to accompany their child addicted to the games)
Anyway a million people clean toilets, do you really think it will take a million programmers to program 1 toilet cleaning robot and then copy the program?
That was exactly what my original post said. That we are quickly becoming a "winner take all" society. Even ball players, musicians, and actors, although they themself are not digital, the product they are selling basically is because people only want to watch the best of the best. Actors and artists have been this way for years, we have the artists that make tons of money and the rest are "starving artists". It seems like most other jobs are also succumbing to this where the top 1% of the field takes 99% of the money and everyone else in the field struggles to survive. Not just toilet cleaners but surgeons will be the same way. The very best surgeons will help create robots that mimic their every move and there will be no use for the other 99% of the surgeons that are inferior to the "clone" of the best surgeon.
The computer AI can make the scrapbook. A drone can deliver your ready made dinner, and a robot can clean your toilet, assuming you bought the one that doesn't just clean itself.
That might be so but either:
a) we create sentient robots and they eventually demand rights or
b) we have years and years of human man hours to engineer and program these robots.
and assuming (b), by the time we get done programming robots to do all the current tasks, there will be a complete new set of tasks we want done.
Does the service economy grow: how many hair cuts can the world use?
It's also possible that haircuts be done by robots at some point. That being said, It's not just about the current service economy. In a single afternoon, I could easily come up with a hundred things that it would be nice to have done. One example would be someone to organize a person's photos and automatically create a scrapbook of their vacations. Another example is cooking dinner, cleaning the toilets, etc... We are a long way from running out of things that need to be done. The world is chaos and even with computers and heavy machinery to help, mother nature is constantly destroying what we build. So running out of stuff to do is not really the problem. The problem is that whether it is the best movie, the best ball player, the best musician, or the best app to solve a particular problem, we are becoming a winner takes all lottery society where the best solution gets rewarded extremely well and everyone else barely survives.
A smallpox epidemic would therefore be a handy way of scrubbing the ring around the gene pool.
Except that practically no one under the age of 40 is vaccinated against smallpox. So no, releasing smallpox wouldn't just attack anti-vaxers. Now releasing mumps or measles might....
I'd like to see this as an FCC mandate (that cell phones are required to have a non-app working FM receiver) since it really is a public safety issue. That's just common sense, IMHO.
CAP === 'invented'
I know you're probably referring to a "fake FM app" when you say "non-app FM" but I think it's worth mentioning. It would obviously be hard to control the FM receiver without some sort of app. As the receiver is already there, I would love for the FM receiver to be opened up to third party app developers. It might even be possible to see innovation in this space. "Tivo for FM" would be an app I might actually pay for and use. Other creative uses could probably also be found.
3. In addition, "Airlines also may face new competition as people choose to travel by car at speeds well over 100 mph between cities a few hundred miles apart instead of flying," and faster commute times could mean more urban sprawl as workers may spread into cheaper neighborhoods that are further from the city center. A: same as number 2, just because you have a self-driving car won't make it magically cheaper to drive somewhere. And unless we change laws, nobody's going to be legally driving at 100 mph between cities any time soon. Not with the "quality" of our current highways.
Yes, this one is definitely strange. I can already go to a city 8 hours away very cheaply if I'm willing to ride a bus. The one advantage that I see of a self-driving car would actually not affect congestion. With a self-driving "sleeper" car, I could get in at bedtime and wake up at my destination. This is currently low traffic time. Now self-driving cars are going to drastically change things but if people are smart about it, it might actually reduce traffic. For instance, my groceries could be delivered after rush hour is over or if it was a "refrigerated" car, it could deliver them in the middle of the night while I'm asleep. Congestion tends to work itself out but self-driving cars, drones, pods, etc... will drastically change everything even making specialized robots like a "toilet cleaning robot" that deliver themself more practical.
Google OWNS that font? It's not even the same font Google now uses. It's a "sans serif" font that is a little more "stylized" than Helvetica, but the "Google Font"? Sure, OK, whatever.
It's the exact same font that I see when I go to google.com but more importantly, it is more than just the font. The 'e' is really what makes it a copy of the google logo. That is not a part of the standard font. I think it's actually a brilliant plan and having the first name Sue makes it that much funnier. It gets her name out there and chances are that step one is going to be a cease/desist so the only cost that she'll be out is any material that she has printed but not distributed yet.
I don't understand it going negative. Why can't they just vent it? Why can't they shut it down or just disconnect the line? Hydro is easy to turn off but even solar and wind has ways to turn them off for maintenance. Barring that, just throwing a tarp over the solar would block out the sun. Heck, even running it to a nearby tank and boiling water would make more sense than paying someone to consume it. What exactly is gained by paying someone to take it versus venting it somehow?
"Lower cost areas" which is double-speak for "right-to-work states", where unions are much less powerful....
Um, no, lower cost can mean Tennessee but can also mean China or India or Ireland or even a different part of the same state with the exact same rights so please don't put words into my mouth and read something that wasn't there.
This is the fallacy that is used to keep your wages down.Maybe you are a little above average, but how does that help you earn more than your co-workers? You don't know how much they are getting, so you can't say "I'm worth 10% more than John". You don't know if John joined at a time when the company had more money for staff, or needed to get someone in quickly or with a specific skill to finish a product and paid over the odds.
The best option would be to publish everyone's salaries, to make direct comparison possible.
I agree. Where I work everyone knows everyone else's salary. It's not officially published but everyone knows. I've heard of places that supposedly try to coerce people not to discuss salary and I'm not sure how that is even legal. Unions and many industries have pay grades that are open to scrutiny. Netflix is one of those few companies that does a "mark to market" where pay can go up or down in a given year based on performance. Most companies have a hard time lowering someone once a raise is given. What generally seems to happen is that someone who is "overpaid" just doesn't get raises for a few years until their pay is back in line. The other thing that people should be doing if they want a competitive salary is to apply for a few jobs every couple of years. This lets you know better what you're really worth.
And what is stopping those people from simply not joining the union? Is a gun held to their head?
Where I work about one third of the employees are in the union. The rest are on their own.
Then you are obviously in a "right to work" state. There are a lot of states where everyone has to join a union (or they are sometime given the option of not joining the union but still paying dues). So they might not be holding a gun to your head but they are requiring you to join the union to get the job. The argument is that everyone receives the "benefits" of the union whether they are a member or not so should be required to pay dues whether they want to or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Except your example is exactly the wrong way around. Supermarkets buy goods from farmers and then claim they have a right to resell it to the general public at a higher price, depriving the farmers the additional money that they could have made selling it directly. The farmers should get together and sue the supermarkets to recover their lost profits. That's essentially what the publishers are claiming.
Strangely enough, several societies and religions (including the christian/jewish I believe) actually had laws at some point against selling stuff for more than you paid for it. We take mark up and interest as a given in today's society but they were considered very bad at one time. Even today, there are certain muslim groups as well as possibly other groups that don't believe in interest. I'm not sure if any societies are still against markup but modern society with distribution channels and super markets would have a hard time functioning without markup.
By professional standards, everything taught in school is fluffy and watered down. Harel noticed that only now, and she's outraged?
That's the way school works. In kindergarten you learn that the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue, that there are only 3 phases of matter, that the earth is round, that all living things are either plants or animals (if you're lucky they *might* throw in fungus but don't count on it). Later you find out that green is a primary color, the earth is fatter at the equator, plasma is a phase of matter, and there are actually 6 kingdoms.
Even in high school physics, you still mostly learn using simplified versions like frictionless planes and spherical cows. I don't see a problem with this. You teach the simplified version and then a few years later create a better model. This is actually very similar to how real science works where we create a model (say newton's laws) and then slowly expand on it as we find stuff that doesn't conform to it 100% of the time in all conditions.
So they are using gui tools. Who cares? My first experience with programming was randomly modifying Oregon Trail and seeing what broke. It wasn't until I got a programming manual several years later that I discovered that chr(4) actually meant ascii character 4. I knew what it did by trial and error but had no idea what it meant. The point is they are teaching basic logic and problem solving skills. Not everyone is going to be a programmer but everyone can benefit from learning logic, problem solving skills, and collaboration.
Yes, completely agree with the winner takes all stuff. But not where you said it will be easy to find useful things for the leftover people to do. There may be years and years of man hours to design the robots. But there will be centuries and millenia of human man hours of people looking for something to do.
I agree, but if there is a 50 year backlog of things to automate right now, hopefully in the next 50 years we can think of more stuff to automate and even if we don't, it at least gives us 50 years to come up with a plan. I read a book once, I can't remember the title, but basically the robots were cheaper than the people so they were taking the people and colonizing other planets with them. Not saying that's a good solution, but it's at least a solution. I think though the bigger problem is how to fix the "winner take all" problem. If no one has to work and everyone has plenty of resources, then we all live a life of leisure, but if the factories are producing all the goods and all the resources are going to the 5 people at the top then everyone else is screwed.
I'm no chemist but isn't the waste oxygen? You start with water, split the hydrogen from the oxygen, take the hydrogen away and you have oxygen left?
Yes, when you extract hydrogen from water, you get oxygen but there are other ways of extracting hydrogen. The waste product that I'm referring to is when you burn hydrogen. When you burn hydrogen, you are combining the hydrogen with oxygen and creating water. When you burn carbon you are combining carbon with oxygen and creating CO and CO2. CO and CO2 are considered greenhouse gases and are considered less desirable than water.
Plentiful. Convenient to refuel. Probably the two most important factors for something to be viable for wide scale commercial deployment.
I think the main advantage of hydrogen is that it's waste product is water so in theory it should have less polution but as far as convenience, instead of using electricity to make pure hydrogen, it makes a lot more sense to use electricity to make hydrocarbon fuel (some sort of artificial gasoline created by splitting co2 and/or h2o). An artificial fuel could use the existing distribution channels and doesn't need special pressurized containers. Batteries, fuel cells, etc... don't even come close to the amount of energy per pound of regular hydrocarbons. I wouldn't be surprised if firewood actually has more energy per pound than current battery technology.
Code quality depends on the situation. On an embedded system with limited resources running from a battery it makes sense to make certain compromises that you wouldn't take on a desktop system. The problem with any system like this is that the PHB will run it without understanding that it needs tuning or interpreting, and act on the good/bad output.
Yes, code quality depends on the situation but what you are describing is not what the biometrics are measuring. A better example might be that coding for embedded system is harder and more stressful but it could still be argued that if the programmer is stressed that he is more likely to make mistakes because that is really what they are measuring. More stress and/or more brain activity implies that it is not as "second nature" to the programmer and therefore harder and more accident prone. This is basic biology. A professional musician doesn't have to think as hard as a beginner. This even shows up in blood flow scans of the brain.
Btw, you are threading a very thin and dangerous line, when you are suggesting, that some more experienced developers should be loaded with tasks... in the first instance - the question is what those "less experienced" developers are doing in the company, if they are earning the same salary and making bugs!
Why would a "less experienced" junior developer be earning the same as a "more experienced" senior developer?
Basically - what are you suggesting is that it is ok to make more experienced developers more stressful... because clearly, if there are people who can't code, why would you even bother to keep them on expense on somebody else nerves?
That's not what I am suggesting at all. Rather I'm suggesting that you could detect when you gave someone a task that they weren't ready to tackle yet and would be better off giving it to someone with a little more experience. The person with the more experience should hopefully find the task easier and therefore not as stressful.
The problem with code quality is that it is subjective. Some people (aka architecture astronauts) love complex, multi-tiered code with multiple classes and tons of inheritance. Others prefer the simplest code required to get the job done. Still others like some type of balance between the two. Code, much like art, cannot be judged because of this.
They aren't detecting code complexity, they are detecting which parts were complex/difficult for the programmer and therefore more likely to contain bugs. This might even indirectly detect readability. If something is "multi-tiered code with multiple classes" and that makes it easier to understand then the biometrics should detect that. On the other hand, if the "multi-tiered code with multiple classes" makes it overly complex and harder to understand then again, the biometrics should show that.
So, yes, code is like art, where you have some freedom to how you approach the problem, but the method that makes the code easiest to understand is likely the better code and reading how hard your brain works is a fairly straightforward way of measuring this.
So the easy parts will have cleaner code than the hard parts? Uh...duh?
Yes, but the point is that they are automatically detecting which parts are the easy parts so that you can focus your time doing code review on the parts that the developer struggled on and therefore are more likely to have bugs. You could also use this information to assign "too difficult" tasks to a different more experienced developer. It's interesting but I can't imagine anyone wanting to wear biometrics all day every day.
Why does a mobile software shop even have 213 jobs to cut? What are those people doing?
They have released over a dozen mobile games on multiple platforms, as well as stuffed animals, board games, card games, a tv series, and a ton of other stuff. In some toy stores, the amount of Angry Bird stuff could fill an entire aisle (in some stores it actually does). They might have started out with a single popular game but they have expanded into pop culture. That's the main reason that the movie was widely released and widely watched.
Why would they? They were in departments unrelated to the movie ("affecting all departments except those working on the film and its related projects") , so the movie's (financial) success is no reason to rehire people to make games, that will continue to lose money for the company.
What this does mean is that 2Angry2Birds will be given the go ahead and Rovio will transform itself into a third rate animation company rather than a third rate mobile game company.
Regardless of whether the games are any good or whether the games are making them money, the only reason anyone went to see the angry bird movie (and the only reason it was financially successful) is because of the games. I seriously doubt anyone who hasn't played the game went to watch the movie (unless it was to accompany their child addicted to the games)
Anyway a million people clean toilets, do you really think it will take a million programmers to program 1 toilet cleaning robot and then copy the program?
That was exactly what my original post said. That we are quickly becoming a "winner take all" society. Even ball players, musicians, and actors, although they themself are not digital, the product they are selling basically is because people only want to watch the best of the best. Actors and artists have been this way for years, we have the artists that make tons of money and the rest are "starving artists". It seems like most other jobs are also succumbing to this where the top 1% of the field takes 99% of the money and everyone else in the field struggles to survive. Not just toilet cleaners but surgeons will be the same way. The very best surgeons will help create robots that mimic their every move and there will be no use for the other 99% of the surgeons that are inferior to the "clone" of the best surgeon.
The computer AI can make the scrapbook. A drone can deliver your ready made dinner, and a robot can clean your toilet, assuming you bought the one that doesn't just clean itself.
That might be so but either:
a) we create sentient robots and they eventually demand rights
or
b) we have years and years of human man hours to engineer and program these robots.
and assuming (b), by the time we get done programming robots to do all the current tasks, there will be a complete new set of tasks we want done.
Does the service economy grow: how many hair cuts can the world use?
It's also possible that haircuts be done by robots at some point. That being said, It's not just about the current service economy. In a single afternoon, I could easily come up with a hundred things that it would be nice to have done. One example would be someone to organize a person's photos and automatically create a scrapbook of their vacations. Another example is cooking dinner, cleaning the toilets, etc... We are a long way from running out of things that need to be done. The world is chaos and even with computers and heavy machinery to help, mother nature is constantly destroying what we build. So running out of stuff to do is not really the problem. The problem is that whether it is the best movie, the best ball player, the best musician, or the best app to solve a particular problem, we are becoming a winner takes all lottery society where the best solution gets rewarded extremely well and everyone else barely survives.
A smallpox epidemic would therefore be a handy way of scrubbing the ring around the gene pool.
Except that practically no one under the age of 40 is vaccinated against smallpox. So no, releasing smallpox wouldn't just attack anti-vaxers. Now releasing mumps or measles might....
Google did an April Fool's joke a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I'd like to see this as an FCC mandate (that cell phones are required to
have a non-app working FM receiver) since it really is a public safety issue.
That's just common sense, IMHO.
CAP === 'invented'
I know you're probably referring to a "fake FM app" when you say "non-app FM" but I think it's worth mentioning. It would obviously be hard to control the FM receiver without some sort of app. As the receiver is already there, I would love for the FM receiver to be opened up to third party app developers. It might even be possible to see innovation in this space. "Tivo for FM" would be an app I might actually pay for and use. Other creative uses could probably also be found.
In the UK you can already get your groceries delivered, including outside rush hour, for around 12 USD per month.
Per month? That can't be daily delivery. One grocery store in my town delivers but it's something like $5-$10 per order.
3. In addition, "Airlines also may face new competition as people choose to travel by car at speeds well over 100 mph between cities a few hundred miles apart instead of flying," and faster commute times could mean more urban sprawl as workers may spread into cheaper neighborhoods that are further from the city center.
A: same as number 2, just because you have a self-driving car won't make it magically cheaper to drive somewhere. And unless we change laws, nobody's going to be legally driving at 100 mph between cities any time soon. Not with the "quality" of our current highways.
Yes, this one is definitely strange. I can already go to a city 8 hours away very cheaply if I'm willing to ride a bus. The one advantage that I see of a self-driving car would actually not affect congestion. With a self-driving "sleeper" car, I could get in at bedtime and wake up at my destination. This is currently low traffic time. Now self-driving cars are going to drastically change things but if people are smart about it, it might actually reduce traffic. For instance, my groceries could be delivered after rush hour is over or if it was a "refrigerated" car, it could deliver them in the middle of the night while I'm asleep. Congestion tends to work itself out but self-driving cars, drones, pods, etc... will drastically change everything even making specialized robots like a "toilet cleaning robot" that deliver themself more practical.
Google OWNS that font? It's not even the same font Google now uses. It's a "sans serif" font that is a little more "stylized" than Helvetica, but the "Google Font"? Sure, OK, whatever.
It's the exact same font that I see when I go to google.com but more importantly, it is more than just the font. The 'e' is really what makes it a copy of the google logo. That is not a part of the standard font. I think it's actually a brilliant plan and having the first name Sue makes it that much funnier. It gets her name out there and chances are that step one is going to be a cease/desist so the only cost that she'll be out is any material that she has printed but not distributed yet.
I don't understand it going negative. Why can't they just vent it? Why can't they shut it down or just disconnect the line? Hydro is easy to turn off but even solar and wind has ways to turn them off for maintenance. Barring that, just throwing a tarp over the solar would block out the sun. Heck, even running it to a nearby tank and boiling water would make more sense than paying someone to consume it. What exactly is gained by paying someone to take it versus venting it somehow?
"Lower cost areas" which is double-speak for "right-to-work states", where unions are much less powerful....
Um, no, lower cost can mean Tennessee but can also mean China or India or Ireland or even a different part of the same state with the exact same rights so please don't put words into my mouth and read something that wasn't there.
This is the fallacy that is used to keep your wages down.Maybe you are a little above average, but how does that help you earn more than your co-workers? You don't know how much they are getting, so you can't say "I'm worth 10% more than John". You don't know if John joined at a time when the company had more money for staff, or needed to get someone in quickly or with a specific skill to finish a product and paid over the odds.
The best option would be to publish everyone's salaries, to make direct comparison possible.
I agree. Where I work everyone knows everyone else's salary. It's not officially published but everyone knows. I've heard of places that supposedly try to coerce people not to discuss salary and I'm not sure how that is even legal. Unions and many industries have pay grades that are open to scrutiny. Netflix is one of those few companies that does a "mark to market" where pay can go up or down in a given year based on performance. Most companies have a hard time lowering someone once a raise is given. What generally seems to happen is that someone who is "overpaid" just doesn't get raises for a few years until their pay is back in line. The other thing that people should be doing if they want a competitive salary is to apply for a few jobs every couple of years. This lets you know better what you're really worth.
And what is stopping those people from simply not joining the union? Is a gun held to their head?
Where I work about one third of the employees are in the union. The rest are on their own.
Then you are obviously in a "right to work" state. There are a lot of states where everyone has to join a union (or they are sometime given the option of not joining the union but still paying dues). So they might not be holding a gun to your head but they are requiring you to join the union to get the job. The argument is that everyone receives the "benefits" of the union whether they are a member or not so should be required to pay dues whether they want to or not.