And how's that working out for them? The median SAG/AFTRA member makes less than $1,000 per year from acting. And the pro sports players associations are tiny -- they exclude the much larger group of athletes who try to make a living playing sports but don't make the big leagues.
I dunno... I was a victim of this wage-fixing scheme, as were all of my coworkers at the time. And I don't know of a single one who would have preferred to have a union collectively negotiating wages.
The whole scheme was that the companies stopped their recruiters from cold-calling each others' employees. That kept wages down by reducing the opportunities for people to get a better salary by moving between companies (or threatening to). If wages were collectively negotiated, those opportunities would not exist in the first place.
On the other hand, I don't think it's that uncommon for startup funding to come through at the last minute.
I later found out that a company I worked for had come within 2 months of running out of cash before their next round of funding came through. I'm glad they didn't shut down at that point to pay a "proper" severance.
You mention proof of work vs proof of stake, and then two sentences later you claim that nobody is paying to the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining.
The whole point of proof of stake is to avoid the energy waste that proof of work requires to secure a blockchain. It's not just a technical challenge -- it's one potential solution to very problem you're describing.
Is proof of stake actually going to work at scale? I don't know for sure, and I don't think anybody else really does -- but the point is that not only are people talking about the environment, they're actively working on solutions.
If you're the sole owner of a corporation and also an employee, you can move money from the corporation to your own pocket by either paying yourself a salary or paying a dividend out of corporate profits.
At least prior to the recent corporate tax rate cut, the tax you'd pay on the salary would typically be less than the sum of corporate income tax and tax on the dividend, so people would pay themselves unreasonably large salaries to save on taxes, and the IRS would object to this.
Would you say the same thing about A-list actors or pro athletes? After a couple of successful movies or seasons, they could afford to retire too, but most choose to continue working as long as they possibly can.
At Google and other recent tech giants, you'll find thousands of people who could live comfortably without working a day for the rest of their lives. They're clearly not doing it for the salary.