Setting aside this specific case, what is a business supposed to do if a union's demands are unreasonable and make it infeasible to keep the business profitable? If they try and replace the unionized workers, that is frowned upon and in some cases illegal. If they shut down the business due to no longer being viable, that seems to also be legally murky.
If a group of employees wants to band together and collectively bargain, that feels like it should be allowed, but if the company wants to completely sever ties with that group or if an employee wants to be hired and not associated with the group that should also be fine.
I agree that the balance of power is tilted in favor of capital over labor and that imbalance has been continually growing over the past several decades, but it feels like there should be a better solution than legally protected unions. For example:
- Increased relocation assistance for people who need to move for a job
- Improved safety regulations, which is a common reason employees decide to unionize in the first place
- Increased public sector employment to provide more alternatives to those in exploitative private sector jobs
All of these seem like better ways the govt can help workers than legally protected unions.
Reminds me of my last job when an unexpected 1% drop in our team's primary goal metric would trigger VPs and directors to have us launch a full investigation into potential causes. But a similar unexpected increase, no one would bat an eye.
Similarly in the stock market, when things are going poorly, people are eager to understand what happened, so a "correction" is a comforting explanation that the underlying asset is still solid and it's just market dynamics at play. But when the stock markets go up unexpectedly, people are generally happy to accept their good fortune without thinking too much about it.
My understanding was Google's rebranding was mainly targeted at investors so that when financials were reported, it would be split out between Google vs. other divisions. It would make sense that most everyday people wouldn't know about this.
FB's rebrand seems targeted to everyday consumers, so I would bet their brand strategy would change to cater to that, in a way that Google/Alphabet never cared to.
The Saudis support US oil interest by for example selling their oil only in dollars and buying US weapons which props up our military industrial complex. This is why the US govt likes them and much of what Americans learn about the middle east is heavily influenced by what the govt puts out.
The world overall might have too high a birth rate but almost all Western countries have a birth rate below the replacement level of 2.1 (e.g. US, UK, AUS all at 1.7 [0] and falling [1]).
Unless you make up this difference with immigration, you have a declining population, which creates all sorts of short term issues.
Given that western countries have become increasingly hostile to immigration, especially from developing countries, trying to increase birth rate in western countries is a reasonable thing to explore imo.
> They also change your behavior in somewhat indirect ways with the goal that you continue to engage with their platform more and more
How is this different than any other kind of media like TV, magazines, newspapers, etc.? All of them are trying to make their product engaging so that you consume more of their media and more of their ads. Just because those services also charge a subscription fee, doesn't change the dynamics of what they're trying to do. Social media has maybe just been more successful in doing so, partially because
> The fact that we bring our phone everywhere, that there are push notifications
So the dynamics have always existed in previous platforms, it's just been ratcheted up to a higher level with social media.
That's because most storage facilities require insurance and no one is trying to buy it on their own, so they accept whatever the facility offers them.
I mostly agree with you, but I wish we could come up with a better word than "greed" to describe the almost universal and constant desire for humans to improve their own lives, which has a connotation that the only way for me to benefit is by taking from others. I think most in this community would agree life isn't a zero sum game and there are actions I can take that improve my life that are also net neutral-positive to the world around me.
I think we should encourage this type of activity while condemning the negative externalities of people's actions, as opposed to blanket condemning "human greed" as a whole.
If you followed his MS days closely, like many in this community, I doubt you'd change your mind about him. But I imagine large part of the public knows about him mostly from his philanthropy. Heck I bet some people only know of him from whatever that 5G conspiracy was.
> The employees and the manufacturer can all withdraw the money at any time
This isn't quite correct. If all parties go to withdraw their money at the same time, the bank will not be able to give it, because they only actually have $1M in reserve.
In practice, if there are more withdrawals than than the bank has in reserve, it is usually able to get short term loans from the central bank which than ACTUALLY creates the money and loans it to the bank.
However, over the long-term if too many of the bank's loans default, they won't have enough assets to cover the deposits, which is how banks usually fail.
Sure but the title of the article is saying one is worse than the other, so it's fair to refute that. No one is arguing the US situation is perfect and we shouldn't also seek to make that better.
Anecdotally, I've heard companies that tried this (something like 3 months unpaid after 5 years tenure) found that most of the employees who take this end up leaving soon after coming back.
If a group of employees wants to band together and collectively bargain, that feels like it should be allowed, but if the company wants to completely sever ties with that group or if an employee wants to be hired and not associated with the group that should also be fine.
I agree that the balance of power is tilted in favor of capital over labor and that imbalance has been continually growing over the past several decades, but it feels like there should be a better solution than legally protected unions. For example:
- Increased relocation assistance for people who need to move for a job
- Improved safety regulations, which is a common reason employees decide to unionize in the first place
- Increased public sector employment to provide more alternatives to those in exploitative private sector jobs
All of these seem like better ways the govt can help workers than legally protected unions.