Understandable, but open disclosure would help. You of all people must know how hard it is to hide things from being discovered, and this is something that will be discovered without any doubt. Just explain it and most reasonable people will understand. Some won't but at least they will be honestly warned.
> that's why everyone abandons that lifestyle as soon as possible.
Not everyone, there are still societies doing that. The thing is, it doesn't scale. And the other ways of having a society do. Which, naturally, leads to a situation where the most of the population is not doing that, and keeps those who do that around just out of benevolent tolerance. It may even be a more pleasurable way of life, for all we know, than many others (such as one of a medieval peasant) but it can't ever be anything but a tiny minority.
No, it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. The flaw in the Graham's argument is that he argues we should prefer "natural" without first proving "natural" means "good". Bubonic plague is very natural, but not so good, right? That doesn't have to be all or nothing, but each time somebody says "do X not Y because X is more natural", we ought to ask "but does natural here mean good?". Sometimes it does - eating an apple is probably better than ingesting a bunch of high-inducing refined sugar - but sometimes it doesn't. Antibiotics are not natural, but preferable to being eaten alive by bacteria. So this needs to be established on case by case basis - is "natural" good in this case? And Graham doesn't seem to bother to do that.
David Hume pointed this out in 1740, and his advise still applies:
A reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers.
It's just a natural progression. When the company is a startup working on a new exciting tech it's chasing the dream and changing the world. When it's a behemoth employing 200k people, it's impossible for all of them to be chasing the dream. Probably like 90% of them would be doing extremely boring "keeping the lights on" tasks and ensuring this gargantuan machine does not go to pieces under it's own weight. It still can pay incredibly well, but it won't be exciting frontier work anymore. It just can't be, 200k people company can't move with the agility of 200 people company.
"Are unions net benefit for the general public" and "whether reforming or abolishing the unions is the best course of action for the general public" are two separate questions. The unions could be beneficial (and still a reform could improve this benefit) or they could be harmful (but a reform could make them beneficial without abolishing them). The original claim was they are beneficial right now, in heir current form, but no actual proof had been provided.
> This is a great example of how unions can really work for their members.
I think this is way different claim than "unions work for the society". Surely, there are a lot of organizations that work very well for their members. Not all of them are beneficial for the society though (criminal gangs aren't, for example). In your third link, there is a power struggle between two sets of people - movie studios and writers. One of them has achieved transferring some money from the other, using the power of unions. But how is it good for the rest of the public? Unclear.
The case in Vox starts with "I liked the union" (the same claim as above) and doesn't get more convincing as it goes. The best the author can do is "When you stack up all the research and look at the broader picture, though, the net effect of unions — bad examples included — is good for the typical worker.". But that, again, is not the question we started with - I am not arguing that the union can be good for those who get more money from the deal. I want to see proof it's also good for those who don't. And the best is something like "reduces income inequality" - which frankly is a very weak evidence, since obviously absolute inequality is bad, and absolute equality is bad, but there are a lot of gray in the middle, and how do we know whether a particular union makes us closer to the good side than to the bad side?
Do you think Vox has ever written about how transit unions increase costs by mandating redundant workers and work against technology that could automate trains?
Do you think Box has ever written about how Detroit unions fought EVs and AVs and automation that could result in cheaper cars?
I was under impression there were quite a number of independent game studios, is that no longer a case? What is the cause of a monopsony here - the barrier to entry, at least for making a game, doesn't seem too high. Marketing one successfully is probably harder, but that is a common problem not unique to gaming.
There are more indie games than ever before. The issue is AAA games have become billion dollar projects. They are funded and structured far more like AAA movies than other software. Making games is easy. Getting the money together to spend $500 million on development and $500 million on marketing isn't easy.
Yes, but I am not sure I understand how all this gives us monopsony. If there are so many indie projects, how doesn't it contradict the claim of monopsony?
Maybe the skill set in game dev is less portable to other domains? I'm on backend side, and I interviewed a lot of people over my career, with all variety of backgrounds, and I can hardly recall anybody coming from the gaming industry for some reason. It seems to be somehow separate from other tech fields, not sure why. If that's true, then the cause is that the market is smaller, so the gaming studios have more power.
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