We live in such morally bankrupt times. You can just say "you take responsibility" without actually taking responsibility at all. Our expectations have become so low and we've become so complacent that just the statement is enough.
In similar vain, "we care about your mental health" as is the common internal email from HR. No actual care is offered though. Giving staff a day off is a tangible example of doing at least something, but obviously no such thing happens. Once again the difference between caring and not caring is zero.
"We care about your privacy" except for the 20 years of prior tracking where we didn't. And actually still don't as we annoy and mislead you to keep doing it.
Totally agree. I once helped start a worker-owned cooperative dev agency, and discovered (naively) that getting investment was basically impossible because investors and lenders aren't interested in creative legal solutions that don't fit their mold in which they would have funded a normal company doing the exact same work. That and extensive direct democracy can lead to design by committee and factionalism, which distract from the mission or violate the bylaws and require more overt conflict (compared to the back room stuff of hierarchical companies). I also recently took a university course on corporate law and co-ops were not mentioned even once (in Canada where there is a federal Cooperatives Act that permits their creation no less), so it is very niche. See Mondragon for an example of successful worker co-op businesses.
At least unions can still exist inside the standard model of employment which everything else is built around. In a "benevolent" tech company that actually treats its people well, I have trouble seeing unions as the ideal vehicle for balancing fairness with innovation. Of course there is inherent exploitation in any employment relationship within the standard model. I would love to see an example of it working in tech though, because I can imagine a union that is equally as interested in the success of the business and prioritizes sustainable growth on top of enforcing equitable treatment as a backstop.
There has to be some combination of legal structures that can somehow represent all interests fairly without adding friction. That is unions, or unions plus other things.
For example, employee ownership trusts could in theory be very aggressive and help smooth out the continuum between periodic bargaining and striking as the main/only leverage. Similar to a share purchase plan or RSU with a pool that has a majority of voting power, or at least equal to founders and investors with all the usual tie-breakers and dilution protections.
If I remember correctly some countries (Germany?) also have legislation requiring a certain amount of employee representation on corporate boards, but I don't know if that actually makes a big difference.
Maybe it’s worth reiterating that the unions and legal frameworks didn’t just happen “because unions.” And unions weren’t always (never were) guiltless entities. It was always a fight. The past is full of incidents to be horrified and emboldened by learning.
Edit-there have been long periods where seemingly nothing can possibly change. Then enough backlash is raised against another side (even the status quo) and things change.
There's different types of unions, those in Europe tend to be different from the unions the US used to have (and perhaps still have).
Unions in my country (Netherlands) do not protect the individual. You do not get hired via a union (free job from a "friend") nor does the union protect you from getting fired. The union is only there to protect collective interests. For example, a massive degradation in contract terms for all workers.
In the Netherlands, strikes are extremely rare because of a unique system called the "Polder Model", it's a triangle of government, employers and unions coming to yearly wide sweeping agreements on things like taxes, pensions, employment and termination terms, the like.
It has provided an extreme degree of stability for decades in a row. Simply put, it's a system that suppresses extremes. Nobody really wins or loses.
I have to admit though that this once well working system is largely hollowed out by now. Under the pressures of globalization, power has shifted slowly but surely towards the government-employers pair.
It seems worldwide the working class (and to a large degree the middle class) has been abandoned by both politics and employers.
“In the case of less well-intentioned towns, matters get only worse. In some locations, companies would compensate workers with a scrip—a monetary substitute that was valid only at stores owned by that same company”
Source: https://explorethearchive.com/company-towns?amp=1
I actually respect he French attitude and willingness to stand up for their rights and way of life. We can endlessly debate whether they take it too far but in the backdrop of the rest of the world doing fuck all, I see it as a positive.
Sure, I didn’t actually expect an off-hand remark like that to be taken as a serious comment on the French labour situation. (It’s... complicated, seems to have no good solutions, and I have mixed feelings about it given that France is one of the few places in Western Europe that has actual, genuine socialists rather than social democrats, but yes, the fact that there does seem to be a serious discussion going on, with a decent range of options and real power to enact them, makes up for a lot of my gripes about the quality of the arguments used.)
The point was that while Europe, as a rule, does lean towards more labour regulation than the US, the specifics vary so much that this is about the only useful generalization you make about it. The rest heavily depends on the country, and even geographical proximity doesn’t really play into it. (But you would know all about that, I expect.)
True, it's complicated, but I can offer the counter generalization that the US view on European worker protection is dramatically overstated.
Case in point, Germany did not have a minimum wage...AT ALL...until 2015. In the Netherlands, there's an entire class of workers on "zero hours" contracts, which give said workers none of the traditional protections.
Protections that even in the best of cases, an indefinite work contract situation, are strongly hollowed out by now.
How would a union make Robinhood a more successful company that can afford to pay all of those employees? For that matter, how would it make a government organization better?
"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth."
— George Carlin
One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.
On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt, Princeton University
Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed.
I get it -- I often say "we're doomed" -- but very few of us get into the details of what that means. Maybe you have? What does the descent into doom look like? Any predictions?
That’s actually a quote from Atlas Shrugged one of the monologues called the money speech. I should have attributed it sorry. I would say we are heading for further authoritarianism and state capitalism. Things have stagnated.
Dear recreational club swinger and small dimpled ball whacker who tempts the gods: Conversations wander and this is a good thing. It is ok that a thread several levels down does not share the precise topic with its ancestor, no?
A useful insight I’ve internalised is to ignore what people say and look at their actions in terms of money.
As in: “Ours is the most reliable product!” Is just empty puffery, but cash-money-back warranty terms exceeding all other products in the market is a statement with real meaning.
“We care about our employees” is free to state and worthless. Golden parachutes are expensive and valuable.
Etc…
A similar statement is: “Don’t tell me your priorities, show me your budget and I’ll tell you what your priorities really are.”
I don’t think humanity has ever not been morally bankrupt. Politics has always been immoral. Industrialism has always been immoral. Slavery was commonplace. We used to have feudalism and nobility.
Morals are only applicable to those who have no choice and power to choose otherwise.
Many people use "politics" as a dirty word. That's understandable.
However, I try to remember that politics is the process of getting and using power without violence. In this way, politics is both a practice and a tool. Let this soak in.
Once you realize that politics is about dealing with conflict in some context without violence, you can at least grant that it is better than punching someone in the face.
To generalize, you might say that politics is a game you have to play. Perhaps call it a necessary evil. But the framing is somewhat arbitrary. I'd rather say that using power wisely and justly is a moral and ethical requirement. To do otherwise would be to abdicate responsibility and squander your power.
It is curious that the so-called sausage-making of politics is considered to be unsavory. It is certainly a mix of sometimes inconsistent ideas.
But it seems likely that uneasy compromise tends to be better than an imposed set of consistent doctrines. Or not... stay tuned.
Each of those statements are rather simplistic, but for the sake of argument true-ish enough. I'm not at all surprised that there are sociopaths willing to leverage the twisted incentives in our system.
The sociopath comes natural, the system does not. It's malleable.
In a more balanced world, this behavior is corrected. That CEO should be chased down the streets or do prison time. Their assets seized and given back. Even more ideal would be for legislation to fix the twisted incentive.
The above stuff matters. Instead we focus on canceling somebody over an offensive tweet containing a word not at all offensive 3 days ago.
> "we care about your mental health" as is the common internal email from HR
I told my last boss I needed to take 3 months off because I was severely burnt out, without pay or benefits of course, and I am sure the team could handle it because there were 10 other devs including me and we didn't have that much work to do, and guess what happened? That's right, got fired a week later. I literally built the team, including hiring the team manager (I'm not interested in management), and built the first version of the product my team was developing and they didn't care; they wanted to eliminate my weakness. Their stock is worth 1/4th of what it was when I was "let go", so I feel pretty happy about that (because I'm a prick).
This is where you need to see the glass half full.
Obviously, serious mental health issues are not restricted to a fixed day per year. Yet the company did give some relief, which they also could not have done at all. There's a real world cost to giving you that day, and in my view, money talks.
More importantly, I find consistency between messaging and actions important.
The power of the elite is an illusion as is well documented. It is based on mass and flawless compliance.
The current state of the world demonstrates how even relatively small disruptions create a tidal wave and break down systems. The point being that even a limited act of non-compliance brings things to their knees.
Which if of course a tool to not use lightly, I'm just saying it doesn't take that much if people would organize.
In similar vain, "we care about your mental health" as is the common internal email from HR. No actual care is offered though. Giving staff a day off is a tangible example of doing at least something, but obviously no such thing happens. Once again the difference between caring and not caring is zero.
"We care about your privacy" except for the 20 years of prior tracking where we didn't. And actually still don't as we annoy and mislead you to keep doing it.
A web of lies. Optics, zero substance.