> And unions will only solidify that into stone to prevent any sort of optimization that would bring the complexity down.
It looks like you've bought into some anti-union talking points. Efficiency is sometimes good. But sometimes it's just a way of shifting profit from workers to capital. As an example: if I replace 100 workers managing a server farm with an AWS account - the money that would have paid 100 humans to have nice lives instead goes to a much smaller number of amazon workers, amazon shareholders, and whatever "savings" my company realizes goes to me the owner. So wealth concentrates in shareholders hands, and workers are laid off. Does that make the world better? Not really... more efficient, yes. More fragile and subject to one EMP or earthquake taking out trillions of dollars? Also yes.
I am not saying that, I am saying that if a division can be run with half the people, there is nothing wrong in firing 40% of the people in that division, just to have a little overhead in case of emergencies.
Sure, in the platonic ideal of that example. But in the real world, firing 40% of a division will almost always mean a higher workload for the 60% remaining, which in turn leads to lower quality of life for those people, which often leads to higher turnover and projects getting dropped / mistakes getting made / etc.
It appears you’ve bought into some anti-capitalism talking points. Wealth concentrating in shareholder hands may very well make the world better. A huge amount of that is in pension funds. This helps your parents remain independent in retirement.
And while I agree that eliminating those 100 workers is terribly painful for many of them, it’s incumbent upon them to plan ahead for those contingencies. Likewise the investors must be ready for the Times to go out of business if the strike hurts them enough. The stock market is a brutally zero-sum game that doesn’t guarantee success to anyone.
From long before I embarked on my tech career I was always studying for the next job. To me it was evident that high paying tech jobs that required relatively little investment in learning were likely to be volatile. Lots of competition.
I subscribe to the Times and am not anti-union. (I also dislike the Times corporation and its owners.) Because the economy is so bad I wouldn’t recommend a strike at this time. In the 70s I watched in bafflement as the auto unions lined up unsupportable contracts that brought Detroit to its knees during a period of economic malaise very similar to this one. I couldn’t see how they could continue, and they collapsed under the weight of those contracts. I think the Times strike will backfire and hollow out he business just like the auto and recent Hollywood strikes did.
> It appears you’ve bought into some anti-capitalism talking points. Wealth concentrating in shareholder hands may very well make the world better. A huge amount of that is in pension funds. This helps your parents remain independent in retirement.
So all the people in my generation who won't be able to save up the ~1mil required to retire comfortably? or the people from previous generations who worked until they literally dropped dead because of a lack of access to excess funds and planning? those people don't seem to exist in your story of capitalism working perfectly for everybody. There are alternatives to maximizing profits, that allow everybody to retire comfortably - rather than just the lucky few.
> From long before I embarked on my tech career I was always studying for the next job.
I'm happy you've been able to manage that. If you're a barista, what is the next job if you're replaced with a robot vending machine? Should baristas not have good quality of life? Does you getting a good cup of coffee necessitate suffering from someone else?
So your justification for unions being bad is “capitalism works for some people”? So does a monarchy. So does fascism. I’m not even arguing against capitalism here - just for more worker power in a capitalist system.
It looks like you've bought into some anti-union talking points. Efficiency is sometimes good. But sometimes it's just a way of shifting profit from workers to capital. As an example: if I replace 100 workers managing a server farm with an AWS account - the money that would have paid 100 humans to have nice lives instead goes to a much smaller number of amazon workers, amazon shareholders, and whatever "savings" my company realizes goes to me the owner. So wealth concentrates in shareholders hands, and workers are laid off. Does that make the world better? Not really... more efficient, yes. More fragile and subject to one EMP or earthquake taking out trillions of dollars? Also yes.