No worries. The thing that I think really kills the whole concept of the free market in the world we live in is that it requires educated consumers to put enough pressure on businesses to act ethically and fairly. Consumers have proven over and over that they don't want to know the information that would be needed for that to work. People don't care if a business is using sweatshop labor or dumping toxic waste into the water supply; they want their cheap shit from Walmart.
This may be the vast majorities of employers, but they should not be expected to craft their job openings based on the type of work you like to do. It would be no different than hating an employer who requires Javascript knowledge for their senior web developer because you prefer to write code in the back end.
That is not the point which I am trying to make. My point is that I am happy as a developer. I do not want to manage people. I do not expect employers to tailor their jobs to my skill set. A job description that includes manager tasks is not one that I will apply for, and that's fair. Those skills are not in my set; it's the same as if I didn't apply for a job that requires Scala experience, of which I have none.
So what's the problem? The problem is that I am valuable to my employer as a developer. I would be much less valuable to my employer managing people. However, any opportunity to move up requires "soft skills" and "managing", neither of which I want to learn nor do I have any latent talent for; forcing me to perform these duties will detract from my value as an employee and the efficiency/success of the employer. It should be the same as me not learning Ruby, or node.js, or (insert technology here); that's a choice I've made knowing that not having those skills will make some jobs unavailable to me. But, for some reason, when the skills involved are "soft skills", this does not apply; for some reason, it's OK to not know Ruby, but it's not OK to not have "soft skills". (Please note that I don't consider "soft skills" to be "not being an asshole", which I can do; I define "soft skills" as "the skills and experience necessary to effectively manage other people," which I have no interest in learning.)
It is assumed that one wants to continue to move up in one's career path, and anyone that doesn't is regarded with suspicion. There are a couple of possibilities for someone who is being perceived as not "moving up": 1) They lack ambition and drive, or 2) They're not able to move to the next position because they're bad at the skills that everyone has arbitrarily decided are necessary for a developer to have at a certain level of experience.
What this does it make it harder to get a job that matches my skill set, despite the requirements and that skill set still being a match. People are going to look at that and say "Well, why has he been a senior dev for 12 years?" They'll assume it's one of the two possibilities above, both of which hurt my chances for continued employment. Forcing developers into roles that they are usually ill-suited for, or have no interest in, is a recipe for disaster. I just left a job where my manager was a developer pressed into service as a manager due to another employee leaving. One of the major reasons that I left there is that he is a terrible manager as a result. I think I would have been better off without a manager than having had him in the role. Forcing the square peg into the round hole almost never works out well, yet there is a widely-held opinion that, for some reason, forcing developers into management capacities (which is what this ends up being; if you don't move into one of those roles, you will stop being able to work at the level that you are at, eventually) is a good idea. Why can't I stay at the senior dev level for as long as I want? I am perfectly happy with roles requiring "soft skills" being unavailable to me. I have made that decision. It's kind of like refusing to hire an experienced heart surgeon because he can't drive a car; his commuting options are limited, but he can still perform his primary duties competently.
That makes sense; after all, playing a game with a leather ball where you run into each other like sheep is MUCH more important than having paper..
Trouble with that is that trying to get parents to go along with not giving the football program unlimited funds is an exercise in futility. Don't Mess With Football.
The problem is that even though you're just as qualified (maybe you need help with budgeting), you won't be considered for any job other than technical something or other and there are many positions that are like that.
Why is this a problem? In my most recent job search, I could have been considered for "lead" or "architect" programming positions. Indeed, after my current career step (senior dev) I would have to take a position like that to move up. So why didn't I?
Because I don't want to become the thing I hate. I don't want to have to listen to idiot walking-haircut C-student MBAs get their input treated as just as valuable (perhaps more so) as mine on issues that the MBAs don't have a prayer of understanding sufficiently. I don't want to have to work directly with people whose core competency is avoiding responsibility for all of their own fuckups. I don't want to manage people, either. I'm a programmer, that's what I do. I would be a really awful manager, because 1) I would have all my reports quit because I've got shitty "soft skills", and 2) I wouldn't just eat the shit sandwich that upper management has given me. Last job I had, our Project Owner (scrum) wouldn't have known a priority issue with the site if it bit him on the ass, and when someone who actually works for a living told him that his prioritization of the shade of red on the landing page over gaping security problems and crushing technical debt was a bad idea, he got away with it, despite having the technical expertise of a bottle cap. It was bad enough having two boxes between me and him on the org chart, having to work with him on matters of consequence where I could be guaranteed of having my input ignored on a daily basis would end with a dead body on the floor - either theirs or mine.
So, don't get a job like that, and the problem is solved, right? Nope. Next time I go to apply for a job, the shithead HR drone will look at my work history and say "Wow, he's been a senior dev for twelve years. Why hasn't he gotten a lead or manager job? Must be something wrong with him." I'm at a point where it's not OK for me to do what I am good at and like to do, and totally coincidentally, where I am most valuable. It's like the Peter Principle in reverse; I've risen to my level of competency, but I'm not allowed to stay there.
If everyone had a job that they desired (or even liked) the US economy would collapse.
You know the saying "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life"? The whole saying should include "because they're not going to pay you for doing something you love". Oh yeah, I can hear people saying "rabble rabble I do what I love rabble you're stupid if you don't rabble rabble". You guys are the vast vast minority. If everyone were like that, well, the number of Excel fetishists in the population would rise to truly disturbing levels.
Work, in summary: You perform services for pay that you would not otherwise do. And if you DO like it, never tell your employer. They'll stop giving you raises because you're less likely to quit a job if you like it.
We live in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, where the high concentration of colleges and universities creates an atmosphere where education is more valued than it is in other places. You can actually get a property tax hike approved here. We still have to deal with the retirees who do nothing but vote that demand all funds be funneled into "senior services" while the schools fall down, but it is possible to get the schools money if you really try.
Compare that with other parts of the country where the very idea of public education is offensive. I once had an online argument with someone in one of those places where he insisted that government was the least qualified institution to provide education, that public schools were horrible and wrecking our childrens' future. The trouble was, when I asked him for more details, such as why he thought public schools were so bad, he couldn't do it. He played it off as "well if you don't know you're beyond help so I'm not going to tell you". You can't even start a reasoned discussion with some of these lunatics, because they refuse to give reasons for their positions beyond "MURICA!"
All that being said, why in fuck do we continue to tolerate a system in which the schools don't have enough money to buy pencils, and have to send home lists with supplies that the class needs? Seriously, looseleaf paper? Pens? Glue sticks? Do we value the schools so little that we have to ensure their failure by starving them of funding to buy the most basic supplies?
Unless you're talking football uniforms, though. Plenty of money for those, it seems.
This is what you said, which I am definitely contradicting. As I said, that's what it requires on paper, but in the real world it isn't enforced. Any rule you can't (or won't) enforce is no longer a rule.
The fact that the H1-B program requires the visa holders to be paid the prevailing wage. Oh, sure, that's what it says on paper, but since it's almost never enforced (a claim which can be substantiated by the fact that US employers are willing to participate in the program, which would not happen if they couldn't pay these people less) it's meaningless. Perhaps some companies (like yours) play by the rules and pay the H1-Bs the same as a native worker, but I would bet the farm that 99% of all H1-B visa holders in the USA are paid at least 10-20% below the true "prevailing wage".
We could start by either fixing the H1-B system (for example, actually enforcing the rule that H1-Bs must be paid the "prevailing wage" for a given market and skill set) or eliminate it altogether. Make it easier for people with skill sets valuable to US employers to get work visas that are NOT tied to one specific company, like the H1-B is. If they're not beholden to their employer for their status, then companies have to compete for them, the same as 'natural born' workers. Stop allowing employers to cheat the system.
You cannot allow offered pay to be a criteria here, at least in the USA. If you do that, there will be a race to the bottom in terms of who can pay the least. Even if you take the top X% (like I think you're describing in the UK), if the top 10% is at a 50% lower salary than was offered before, then the workers (continue to) lose.
Companies don't compete for talent in the USA. The degree of collusion is IMHO way way WAY larger than people think. If WidgetCo pays $50,000, and CogsInc also pays $50,000, there is no competition in terms of salary. So long as nobody goes off the reservation and starts paying MORE, salaries do not increase. Supply and demand is only in effect if everyone plays fair. If supply is restricted, in theory prices should go up, but if nobody will pay higher prices, supply takes what they can get, no matter how small supply might be.
I say this as a 46-year-old... I'm able to find plenty of opportunities with most companies up here in Portland, and regularly get recruiters calling from Utah, Texas, Nevada, numerous East Coast locales... they actually want the experience.
The only reason they want anyone with experience is so they can pass on what they've learned to the younger guys making 50% less than you. Once they've squeezed you dry, out you go. Sorry that you moved 3000 miles to take this job, here's a flyer on how to apply for unemployment.
You seem to think that the more something is repeated, the truer it gets. Nope. This was bullshit the first time someone argued it, it's bullshit now.
I am stealing nothing. This content is freely available to anyone with a browser. I am under no obligation to view anything that I do not want to; therefore I block as many ads as possible. My eyeballs, my rules. I can instruct my browser to not download anything I don't want to see, therefore I do. That is not stealing. That is choosing what content I want to see. You may as well say that by not clicking through an ad and buying something from the advertiser, I'm stealing from the site the ad is on. I am under no obligation to buy anything from the advertiser. Why am I therefore obligated to view the ad? I'm not going to buy anything from an obnoxious ad, so showing me an ad wastes my bandwidth and time, as well as the ad network's resources. Wouldn't it be better to not view the ad in the first place, if it's going to be completely ineffective? Essentially, I'm costing the advertising network money. Wouldn't it be better if that money weren't wasted?
If Slashdot wants to be ethical but raise money. Then they will get money from me on adblock.
If you keep feeding the stray dog, it will never leave you alone. Similarly, if you keep supporting the current advertising model (which is a complete sewer) there will be no incentive to change.
What is fair? Hosting Slashdot is certainly not free. Want to pay a subscription instead? I think adblock is perfect and ads a financial motivation for ad networks to be ethical and stop insane tracking and not infecting people with malware for ask toolbars and compromising the security of their systems.
Adblock would be great if they didn't sell you out all the time with their "acceptable ads" bullshit. No advertising is acceptable to me. I don't care how innocuous. At one time I put up with it for the reasons you suggest; no longer. The advertising industry, instead of recognizing the problem (their ads suck and are obnoxious), has decided to double down on the 'suck' instead of, I don't know, improving their product. But, what do you expect from people who drank their way through college and got a 2.01 GPA?
Come on. You can't have it both ways as all you are doing is encouraging HTML 5 ads that can't be blocked or worse HTML 6 mandated DRM ads that can't be turned off where websites on non win32 platforms won't load or something else website owners and ISP's will enforce next to maximize on money. Here is a hint. They do not care about you. Sorry.
And that's the problem. They consider it their birthright to shove marketing into my eyeballs like I'm Alex in A Clockwork Orange. If my choices are to have their shit shoved into my eyeballs or not visiting a page, I won't visit a page. Simple. By turning people off they're strangling themselves; if there are no sites for them to put ads on, they have no business. I'm just helping the process. It's the free market in action.
Think of it this way. The way we "pay" for sites right now is by viewing ads; you could consider the time and effort you waste seeing advertising as a "cost". What a lot of people don't realize is that companies do not price their products based on their costs to produce them; they charge as much as they can until they reach people's "balk" price. For example, if I will pay $5 for a widget, then they price that widget at $4.99. If they price that widget at, say, $6.99, I won't buy it. I balk at the price. The price of viewing content with obnoxious ads has become too high; it has passed people's "balk" price. The nice thing here is that the user can affect the price that they pay by not viewing advertising by using an ad blocker. It's a flaw in the system that people are taking advantage of. Fix the system (by making ads less fucking obnoxious) and people will stop balking.
Back in the infancy of unions, what you're describing is exactly what happened. Not only would individuals be fired for attempting to organize their co-workers, companies would share a blacklist of such troublemakers preventing them from getting work anywhere.
Have you been following the efforts of Walmart workers to organize? Walmart closed a bunch of stores with identical "plumbing issues" explanations a while back.. and totally coincidentally those were the stores where organization efforts were strongest... They will literally cut their noses off to spite their faces rather than see their workers organize.
What's to prevent the company from ignoring the union and firing everyone? Reprisals by the workers.
Who will be immediately terminated and replaced inside of 2 days.. unless, of course, they immediately cease the behavior and agree to not repeat it in the future.
Sit-in strikes, blocking replacement workers and customers from accessing the business, organizing boycotts of the products and basically anything else that can be done to make the company's life miserable.
"Officer, these folks were terminated from this business and are now trespassing. Remove them from the property, please". End of protest. Boycotts work when there are alternatives; Walmart's business model includes running any competition out of business.. there are large swaths of the country that cannot buy things anywhere else than Walmart.
It's necessary to make the pain of paying union wages and benefits much less than the pain of firing everyone.
Walmart feels no pain firing anyone. They can replace them within hours. (Hell, I've seen them camp out outside unemployment offices and loudly, publicly offer people coming out of there jobs. If you turn down a job, any job, while you're collecting unemployment, you lose your benefits. Those folks have no choice but to take the job.) They would rather fire everyone and incur those costs than allow unions a foothold in their stores. They would rather close stores than allow that to happen, no matter how much it costs, because they know that if their stores were unionized (and thus protected by the NLRA) they'd be forced to negotiate with their workers over wages and benefits. Right now that negotiation looks like this:
"Hey, I don't think you're paying us enough" "Easily fixed, you're fired."
Even sabotage and property destruction might be on the table for pissed-off unemployed people.
That sounds like a good way to get yourself killed.
Also, do you notice how unions are typically for the skilled trades and are organized at an industry level vs. a company level? By doing this, you make it hard for a company to find a large pool of willing replacement labor with the same skills.
Yeah, ask the air traffic controllers about that, from their experience back in the 80s when they all got fired. Granted, those were government workers, but I don't think it's that different for private employers (probably even easier). I'd argue that it's the low-skill employees that need union protection the most, they're the most easily replaced.
The trouble with that is that you would never be able to organize a national strike in this environment. Trying to get a whole country full of, say, bus drivers to cooperate is easier when you're England or France or Italy. With the USA, you can't get 3 of 4 people to agree that water is wet, so trying to get that many people to act collectively in the face of so much big-business-owned media-outlet FUD is a fools' errand.
The idea of a teachers' strike is laughable. Teachers already get blamed for a host of society's ills, and a national organization would get the same criticisms that local ones, only ten times as bad. A national strike would probably meet armed resistance, for crying out loud.
You don't have to have most of the employees leave. You publicly fire the organizers and 20% of all those you can identify as being involved in the union. The rest will fall in line.
After all, shoot one hostage and the others start cooperating...
Without government support in the form of guaranteeing collective bargaining and the right to organize, unions would cease to exist. Think about it: How does a union form at a new workplace? Someone broaches the topic with their fellow employees.. and they would immediately be fired were there not laws in place to protect that attempt to organize. Sometimes they're immediately fired anyway, since the employer figures that any lawyer the ex-employee hires wouldn't stand a chance against the legal counsel the employer could hire.
Then, once the union forms, what's to keep the employer from ignoring the union or firing everyone in it? Nothing, unless there's a law preventing them from doing that.
Slashdot Mirror
No worries. The thing that I think really kills the whole concept of the free market in the world we live in is that it requires educated consumers to put enough pressure on businesses to act ethically and fairly. Consumers have proven over and over that they don't want to know the information that would be needed for that to work. People don't care if a business is using sweatshop labor or dumping toxic waste into the water supply; they want their cheap shit from Walmart.
That is not the point which I am trying to make. My point is that I am happy as a developer. I do not want to manage people. I do not expect employers to tailor their jobs to my skill set. A job description that includes manager tasks is not one that I will apply for, and that's fair. Those skills are not in my set; it's the same as if I didn't apply for a job that requires Scala experience, of which I have none.
So what's the problem? The problem is that I am valuable to my employer as a developer. I would be much less valuable to my employer managing people. However, any opportunity to move up requires "soft skills" and "managing", neither of which I want to learn nor do I have any latent talent for; forcing me to perform these duties will detract from my value as an employee and the efficiency/success of the employer. It should be the same as me not learning Ruby, or node.js, or (insert technology here); that's a choice I've made knowing that not having those skills will make some jobs unavailable to me. But, for some reason, when the skills involved are "soft skills", this does not apply; for some reason, it's OK to not know Ruby, but it's not OK to not have "soft skills". (Please note that I don't consider "soft skills" to be "not being an asshole", which I can do; I define "soft skills" as "the skills and experience necessary to effectively manage other people," which I have no interest in learning.)
It is assumed that one wants to continue to move up in one's career path, and anyone that doesn't is regarded with suspicion. There are a couple of possibilities for someone who is being perceived as not "moving up": 1) They lack ambition and drive, or 2) They're not able to move to the next position because they're bad at the skills that everyone has arbitrarily decided are necessary for a developer to have at a certain level of experience.
What this does it make it harder to get a job that matches my skill set, despite the requirements and that skill set still being a match. People are going to look at that and say "Well, why has he been a senior dev for 12 years?" They'll assume it's one of the two possibilities above, both of which hurt my chances for continued employment. Forcing developers into roles that they are usually ill-suited for, or have no interest in, is a recipe for disaster. I just left a job where my manager was a developer pressed into service as a manager due to another employee leaving. One of the major reasons that I left there is that he is a terrible manager as a result. I think I would have been better off without a manager than having had him in the role. Forcing the square peg into the round hole almost never works out well, yet there is a widely-held opinion that, for some reason, forcing developers into management capacities (which is what this ends up being; if you don't move into one of those roles, you will stop being able to work at the level that you are at, eventually) is a good idea. Why can't I stay at the senior dev level for as long as I want? I am perfectly happy with roles requiring "soft skills" being unavailable to me. I have made that decision. It's kind of like refusing to hire an experienced heart surgeon because he can't drive a car; his commuting options are limited, but he can still perform his primary duties competently.
When you find me a free market that can possibly exist somewhere other than a libertarian's wet dream, you let me know.
Please live in the real world.
That makes sense; after all, playing a game with a leather ball where you run into each other like sheep is MUCH more important than having paper..
Trouble with that is that trying to get parents to go along with not giving the football program unlimited funds is an exercise in futility. Don't Mess With Football.
Why is this a problem? In my most recent job search, I could have been considered for "lead" or "architect" programming positions. Indeed, after my current career step (senior dev) I would have to take a position like that to move up. So why didn't I?
Because I don't want to become the thing I hate. I don't want to have to listen to idiot walking-haircut C-student MBAs get their input treated as just as valuable (perhaps more so) as mine on issues that the MBAs don't have a prayer of understanding sufficiently. I don't want to have to work directly with people whose core competency is avoiding responsibility for all of their own fuckups. I don't want to manage people, either. I'm a programmer, that's what I do. I would be a really awful manager, because 1) I would have all my reports quit because I've got shitty "soft skills", and 2) I wouldn't just eat the shit sandwich that upper management has given me. Last job I had, our Project Owner (scrum) wouldn't have known a priority issue with the site if it bit him on the ass, and when someone who actually works for a living told him that his prioritization of the shade of red on the landing page over gaping security problems and crushing technical debt was a bad idea, he got away with it, despite having the technical expertise of a bottle cap. It was bad enough having two boxes between me and him on the org chart, having to work with him on matters of consequence where I could be guaranteed of having my input ignored on a daily basis would end with a dead body on the floor - either theirs or mine.
So, don't get a job like that, and the problem is solved, right? Nope. Next time I go to apply for a job, the shithead HR drone will look at my work history and say "Wow, he's been a senior dev for twelve years. Why hasn't he gotten a lead or manager job? Must be something wrong with him." I'm at a point where it's not OK for me to do what I am good at and like to do, and totally coincidentally, where I am most valuable. It's like the Peter Principle in reverse; I've risen to my level of competency, but I'm not allowed to stay there.
If everyone had a job that they desired (or even liked) the US economy would collapse.
You know the saying "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life"? The whole saying should include "because they're not going to pay you for doing something you love". Oh yeah, I can hear people saying "rabble rabble I do what I love rabble you're stupid if you don't rabble rabble". You guys are the vast vast minority. If everyone were like that, well, the number of Excel fetishists in the population would rise to truly disturbing levels.
Work, in summary: You perform services for pay that you would not otherwise do. And if you DO like it, never tell your employer. They'll stop giving you raises because you're less likely to quit a job if you like it.
We live in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, where the high concentration of colleges and universities creates an atmosphere where education is more valued than it is in other places. You can actually get a property tax hike approved here. We still have to deal with the retirees who do nothing but vote that demand all funds be funneled into "senior services" while the schools fall down, but it is possible to get the schools money if you really try.
Compare that with other parts of the country where the very idea of public education is offensive. I once had an online argument with someone in one of those places where he insisted that government was the least qualified institution to provide education, that public schools were horrible and wrecking our childrens' future. The trouble was, when I asked him for more details, such as why he thought public schools were so bad, he couldn't do it. He played it off as "well if you don't know you're beyond help so I'm not going to tell you". You can't even start a reasoned discussion with some of these lunatics, because they refuse to give reasons for their positions beyond "MURICA!"
All that being said, why in fuck do we continue to tolerate a system in which the schools don't have enough money to buy pencils, and have to send home lists with supplies that the class needs? Seriously, looseleaf paper? Pens? Glue sticks? Do we value the schools so little that we have to ensure their failure by starving them of funding to buy the most basic supplies?
Unless you're talking football uniforms, though. Plenty of money for those, it seems.
How long ago did you move out?
But don't you remember? Government bad, money-grubbing multinational monolithic sociopathic monopolistic corporations good!
This is what you said, which I am definitely contradicting. As I said, that's what it requires on paper, but in the real world it isn't enforced. Any rule you can't (or won't) enforce is no longer a rule.
Why do you hate America? That costs money.
You know, you can use the word "nigger" if you want. Especially if you're an AC.
The fact that the H1-B program requires the visa holders to be paid the prevailing wage. Oh, sure, that's what it says on paper, but since it's almost never enforced (a claim which can be substantiated by the fact that US employers are willing to participate in the program, which would not happen if they couldn't pay these people less) it's meaningless. Perhaps some companies (like yours) play by the rules and pay the H1-Bs the same as a native worker, but I would bet the farm that 99% of all H1-B visa holders in the USA are paid at least 10-20% below the true "prevailing wage".
We could start by either fixing the H1-B system (for example, actually enforcing the rule that H1-Bs must be paid the "prevailing wage" for a given market and skill set) or eliminate it altogether. Make it easier for people with skill sets valuable to US employers to get work visas that are NOT tied to one specific company, like the H1-B is. If they're not beholden to their employer for their status, then companies have to compete for them, the same as 'natural born' workers. Stop allowing employers to cheat the system.
You cannot allow offered pay to be a criteria here, at least in the USA. If you do that, there will be a race to the bottom in terms of who can pay the least. Even if you take the top X% (like I think you're describing in the UK), if the top 10% is at a 50% lower salary than was offered before, then the workers (continue to) lose.
Companies don't compete for talent in the USA. The degree of collusion is IMHO way way WAY larger than people think. If WidgetCo pays $50,000, and CogsInc also pays $50,000, there is no competition in terms of salary. So long as nobody goes off the reservation and starts paying MORE, salaries do not increase. Supply and demand is only in effect if everyone plays fair. If supply is restricted, in theory prices should go up, but if nobody will pay higher prices, supply takes what they can get, no matter how small supply might be.
Got some bad news for you, man. Prepare to hold your nose and vote for Hillary.
Prom date wouldn't put out, I see.
The scary thing is, this person can probably legally buy a gun.
The only reason they want anyone with experience is so they can pass on what they've learned to the younger guys making 50% less than you. Once they've squeezed you dry, out you go. Sorry that you moved 3000 miles to take this job, here's a flyer on how to apply for unemployment.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
You seem to think that the more something is repeated, the truer it gets. Nope. This was bullshit the first time someone argued it, it's bullshit now.
I am stealing nothing. This content is freely available to anyone with a browser. I am under no obligation to view anything that I do not want to; therefore I block as many ads as possible. My eyeballs, my rules. I can instruct my browser to not download anything I don't want to see, therefore I do. That is not stealing. That is choosing what content I want to see. You may as well say that by not clicking through an ad and buying something from the advertiser, I'm stealing from the site the ad is on. I am under no obligation to buy anything from the advertiser. Why am I therefore obligated to view the ad? I'm not going to buy anything from an obnoxious ad, so showing me an ad wastes my bandwidth and time, as well as the ad network's resources. Wouldn't it be better to not view the ad in the first place, if it's going to be completely ineffective? Essentially, I'm costing the advertising network money. Wouldn't it be better if that money weren't wasted?
If you keep feeding the stray dog, it will never leave you alone. Similarly, if you keep supporting the current advertising model (which is a complete sewer) there will be no incentive to change.
Adblock would be great if they didn't sell you out all the time with their "acceptable ads" bullshit. No advertising is acceptable to me. I don't care how innocuous. At one time I put up with it for the reasons you suggest; no longer. The advertising industry, instead of recognizing the problem (their ads suck and are obnoxious), has decided to double down on the 'suck' instead of, I don't know, improving their product. But, what do you expect from people who drank their way through college and got a 2.01 GPA?
And that's the problem. They consider it their birthright to shove marketing into my eyeballs like I'm Alex in A Clockwork Orange. If my choices are to have their shit shoved into my eyeballs or not visiting a page, I won't visit a page. Simple. By turning people off they're strangling themselves; if there are no sites for them to put ads on, they have no business. I'm just helping the process. It's the free market in action.
Think of it this way. The way we "pay" for sites right now is by viewing ads; you could consider the time and effort you waste seeing advertising as a "cost". What a lot of people don't realize is that companies do not price their products based on their costs to produce them; they charge as much as they can until they reach people's "balk" price. For example, if I will pay $5 for a widget, then they price that widget at $4.99. If they price that widget at, say, $6.99, I won't buy it. I balk at the price. The price of viewing content with obnoxious ads has become too high; it has passed people's "balk" price. The nice thing here is that the user can affect the price that they pay by not viewing advertising by using an ad blocker. It's a flaw in the system that people are taking advantage of. Fix the system (by making ads less fucking obnoxious) and people will stop balking.
Have you been following the efforts of Walmart workers to organize? Walmart closed a bunch of stores with identical "plumbing issues" explanations a while back.. and totally coincidentally those were the stores where organization efforts were strongest... They will literally cut their noses off to spite their faces rather than see their workers organize.
Who will be immediately terminated and replaced inside of 2 days.. unless, of course, they immediately cease the behavior and agree to not repeat it in the future.
"Officer, these folks were terminated from this business and are now trespassing. Remove them from the property, please". End of protest. Boycotts work when there are alternatives; Walmart's business model includes running any competition out of business.. there are large swaths of the country that cannot buy things anywhere else than Walmart.
Walmart feels no pain firing anyone. They can replace them within hours. (Hell, I've seen them camp out outside unemployment offices and loudly, publicly offer people coming out of there jobs. If you turn down a job, any job, while you're collecting unemployment, you lose your benefits. Those folks have no choice but to take the job.) They would rather fire everyone and incur those costs than allow unions a foothold in their stores. They would rather close stores than allow that to happen, no matter how much it costs, because they know that if their stores were unionized (and thus protected by the NLRA) they'd be forced to negotiate with their workers over wages and benefits. Right now that negotiation looks like this:
"Hey, I don't think you're paying us enough"
"Easily fixed, you're fired."
That sounds like a good way to get yourself killed.
Yeah, ask the air traffic controllers about that, from their experience back in the 80s when they all got fired. Granted, those were government workers, but I don't think it's that different for private employers (probably even easier). I'd argue that it's the low-skill employees that need union protection the most, they're the most easily replaced.
The trouble with that is that you would never be able to organize a national strike in this environment. Trying to get a whole country full of, say, bus drivers to cooperate is easier when you're England or France or Italy. With the USA, you can't get 3 of 4 people to agree that water is wet, so trying to get that many people to act collectively in the face of so much big-business-owned media-outlet FUD is a fools' errand.
The idea of a teachers' strike is laughable. Teachers already get blamed for a host of society's ills, and a national organization would get the same criticisms that local ones, only ten times as bad. A national strike would probably meet armed resistance, for crying out loud.
You don't have to have most of the employees leave. You publicly fire the organizers and 20% of all those you can identify as being involved in the union. The rest will fall in line.
After all, shoot one hostage and the others start cooperating...
Without government support in the form of guaranteeing collective bargaining and the right to organize, unions would cease to exist. Think about it: How does a union form at a new workplace? Someone broaches the topic with their fellow employees.. and they would immediately be fired were there not laws in place to protect that attempt to organize. Sometimes they're immediately fired anyway, since the employer figures that any lawyer the ex-employee hires wouldn't stand a chance against the legal counsel the employer could hire.
Then, once the union forms, what's to keep the employer from ignoring the union or firing everyone in it? Nothing, unless there's a law preventing them from doing that.