Whenever there are furloughs or layoff, any payouts or profits for the C-Suite and managers that are higher the average employee, is put into an annuity for the laid off employees.
So if a CEO makes 30,000,000, and the average worker is paid 125,000. A 29,875,000 fund will be made to deposit a monthly check into the bank of the fired employees. This includes any profits made from selling stocks.
To avoid loopholes and ensure enforcement, CEO's waive personal financial privacy, giving regulators full access into international finance accounts and to withdraw from those account debt due to workers. The lookback/forward time can be tweaked to go up to 36 months to ensure it's not worked around.
This will retain employees - while simultaneously keep businesses operating profitably.
Additionally, if there are any dividends by the company, any employees who worked a certain time (even if fired) are entitled to payout, since they're part of the collective. This shows appreciation for the employees which boosts performance - they know a successful quarter will have their success kept - not given only to investors.
Even if the scale of the difference divided by the number of employees were enough to be useful (it's not), all this would do is incentivize executives to run inefficient businesses into the ground.
> all this would do is incentivize executives to run inefficient businesses into the ground.
What incentive would an executive have to run a business into the ground?
It's a business - the motive to gain profit and ambition won't leave because profit is shared.
Regardless - my point is - what's wrong with being generous to workers? Why not share a bit of that with people who work so the motivation and incentives are spread out?
Why don't we try some ideas, test some regulations and see how they work, so we know what incentivizes and what doesn't?
Have an administrative body view it on a case by case basis and come up with a novel payment plan, in a case where a CEO gets a golden parachute and employees are left unemployed, that payment would be suspended and apportioned fairly. Maybe it will even go back to investors.
> What incentive would an executive have to run a business into the ground
The one given above: laying off workers to make the business competitive results in having your salary clawed back for three years. Staying inefficient and getting out-competed does not.
> laying off workers to make the business competitive results in having your salary clawed back for three years.
If the company goes out of business due to inefficiency - then the market will supply another one that can treat workers and investors well.
And maybe it should be clawback against all assets and profits earned in the CEO's lifetime. That will give them motivation to pay off the spurned employees the fired, then start earning more for themselves.
Since this is all about free markets and scale, we need to have optimistic forecasts. There's a credit against the CEO to pay off the employees due to management failing, but the CEO can always try again in the future to pay off their newly accrued debt by making better decisions for investors and employees.
Imagine - if all management decisions were binded 50% to the welfare of the employee and 50% to profit? Bound by the law? Or face strict liability, financial penalties and possibly criminal charges for causing jeopardy to the workers? That's absolute genius.
It's all about how we define competition. What if competition is redefined to imply responsibility and obligation to caretake for workers, and every business on Earth is subject to it? What's wrong with that?
If the CEO has a bunch of shares and their value crashes, do the employees need to pay up to offset the CEO's loss? After all, they are a part of the collective.
I'm not saying CEO's and management shouldn't have their traditional responsibilities.
What's wrong with a windfall to make sure employees are protected. If a layoff is needed, clearly the CEO's leadership had issues - so something needs to done proportionally as severance.
A large change in the lives of employees needs a large annuity fund for the laid off workers. The company can file a loan and pay it out over the next few years. Which will improve the credit score of the company.
Here's another idea, for the sake of a thought experiment: the CEO may need to be fired for not assuring rising salaries and benefits for the workforce. A two-tiered performance system. Employees share voting rights along with the board, and it's by statute so all businesses must comply with it.
Why not consider factoring in laborer's collective time and personal life circumstances as human beings into the equation?
> Why not consider factoring in ... human beings into the equation?
You'd get much further in your arguments if you didn't often insinuate that others are vicious for not agreeing with you. You'd be hard pressed to find the leader who doesn't care or pretend to care about the human beings in the equation. If you choose not to believe them, OK, but it's extremely easy to dismiss someone who says "don't be evil" when you don't believe yourself to be evil.
I only gave ideas. My first word was, "Idea". And even for the ideas I gave, the replies were vague and didn't cite examples of why the hypothetical was a no go.
If I were to guess, the thought experiment was so different - it brought unease.
Which in itself is valuable to me. People are willing to accept extreme unfairness - even if it is harmful to people (layoffs) - if they can ease their anxiety and socially conform.
You can say that again. The result of the medallion systems was that often taxi drivers had to pay to work, by renting a medallion from wealthy owners. Even in countries where the owner of the medallion couldn't rent it, they were sold at very high prices when the owner retired, making it into a middle-class privilege.
I appreciate your concerns and I think you're doing the right thing!
May I ask which countries you're referring to?
In USA, I know immigrants who are awarded medallions via lottery and who take a loan and pay off their medallion - like an investment. It potentially helps them break into the middle class.
The medallion ended up becoming an entity that was stable that the freelance economy would peg to something. Not saying it was perfect, but it prevented the system from being flooded with drivers.
NYC medallions used to be $1m in 2013. They're less the $200k these days. There's consequences to people who were just starting out, who saved for medallions, who now have their investment paid for over decades lost.
Working and earning something isn't privilege to me, that's gumption. Whenever I see that word online very rarely does it take into account hard work. 20 or 30 years driving 70+ hours a week? And they're an immigrant just trying to live the American dream?
Let them have happiness in life. And we should be celebrating their work and effort. They are absolute heroes for sticking to something so persistently.
Let's talk about fairness for new drivers. Doesn't necessarily have to be at the expense of others!
Exactly. Which is why most of them are owned by companies (almost 1/3 by a single one: Marblegate Asset Management), not by plucky immigrants pulling themselves by their bootstraps. Those are the ones renting the medallions and not saving anything close to $1M even in 20 years. The average income of a NYC taxi driver in '93 (so long before Uber and such changed the market) was $19k/year!
Sure, in some markets the city occasionally issued some medallions for lower prices, but how is a lottery earning something through gumption? It's literally blind luck!
> 20 or 30 years driving 70+ hours a week? And they're an immigrant just trying to live the American dream?
How can we be criticizing Uber for exploiting their workers, while promoting working 70+ hours a week? How is that not exploitative?
I hope all these raises, unemployment resources, remote work and collectivization measures stick around after. Flexibility is great.
What has all this coronavirus action made me feel?
The virus effects everybody equally (generally there are age things in there)
We're all about austerity of social benefits, "I get mine". How did the wonders of the free market help when we were in trouble?
We don't share nearly enough. We criticize each other too much. We miss opportunities to improve the social system democratically because we fall for the intoxicating allure of being sidetracked by narrow groups pushing to get more, just for them. Enough to break up the vote to give us multi-pronged, layered, comprehensive, and fair social security. The nod to only help one group to spite everyone else draws ire, to keep the cycle repeating as an emotional back and forth. Every time. We don't fix the statutes.
I hope anything that doles out benefits universally sticks around and becomes normal in life, after this.
I hope after this labor and health policies get more generous. Way more generous. And value people for being human beings, without preferential treatment based on who is most this or that. Raise the bar for all natural persons.
An anonymous spinup website. For some reason, some feel the urgency to put affairs into order on when its trending. Not before that, though?
Wouldn't hospitals, WHO, UN, whoever be able to come together with their capital and just buy out a medical company?
Wouldn't this have to also get past regulations? I'm not too sure if I want a kickstarter for medical equipment. I'd love to see medicines and medical equipment made open and maintainable though!
I wouldn't be surprised if this is the reasoning behind Apple and the likes preventing any new apps with the corona theme into the app store unless they come grin reputable sources like WHO.
For a union, it's concerning when some things are more tailored to the whims, edge cases, personal niches of the most vocal, rather than shielding the common denominator of the cooperative from management's business decisions.
I'd like to explain what I like, and what I'm concerned about:
> Employees at major American tech and game companies have grown increasingly active and outspoken about workplace issues,
Very union related, that's what unions are for.
> including sexual assault and harassment,
Already unlawful. They are addressable to the NLRB and civil legal system.
> ageism,
That's vague, but there are protections against this
> unequal pay,
Not sure what this means, pay between workers of the same level of seniority performing the same responsibilities? Overtime? A lot of things factor into equal pay. A junior employee isn't going to make as much as a 20 year employee.
> “crunch time” (i.e. long-term overtime and overworking),
Looks right. These are covered in union contracts
> poor treatment of contract workers,
If they have union membership? Wouldn't it be about defining a standard of what a salaried employee is?
> inadequate racial and gender diversity,
What does that mean? Inadequate to whom? What makes those characteristics worthy but other characteristics not?
I find it very hurtful and insensitive to people who struggle, suffer, overcome odds, from difficult upbringings, but not member of some class or facet. Why reduce the struggle, character, and worth of someone down to those things? Where does this come from?
What does this say to your colleagues who don't have these traits? Do they have life easy? Have you walked a mile in their shoes?
> and lack of transparency and inclusion in decision-making around controversial contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
That is not the kind of decision I think employees should be deciding. Though if a larger organization wanted to allow someone to move somewhere else in the org, that seems fair
> Already unlawful. They are addressable to the NLRB and civil legal system.
> That's vague, but there are protections against this
> Wouldn't it be about defining a standard of what a salaried employee is?
Unions can be an additional safety net/layer of protection/tool against these discriminations and abuses. In a time when HR departments are often derided as existing to protect the company instead of workers, and it often takes either media exposure or self-publishing (as with Susan Fowler) for discrimination against protected classes to be acknowledged, a union could be a place for the discriminated to turn to where HR reps fail. At least then you don't have to hire your own lawyer.
> unequal pay,
This might be a gender gap criticism meaning unequal pay between workers with the same title but of different genders.
> That is not the kind of decision I think employees should be deciding.
Why? The stigma of culture war and political battles aside, why shouldn't employees take part in making business decisions in general?
> Why? The stigma of culture war and political battles aside, why shouldn't employees take part in making business decisions in general?
Basically, no.
That's what's management is for.
They can become manager's if they want to impact that, though.
Are they qualified to understand what they're talking about? If they have a disagreement, is there a reason why they wouldn't raise it via proper channels rather than effect other things that are vital to the organization?
Are they big picture thinkers that have taken the time to digest the system, uninfluenced by social pressures? Some people don't care about their organization's goals, their coworkers, and decide to act out for their own vanity, at everyone else's expense.
And that is one reason why management exists. To answer your question, while they may be wrong, there's a purpose in shielding decision making away from those who lose sight of the org's goals.
The point of the union is when management makes decisions, which can be unfair and uncaring to the worker, that their rights, safety, and livelihood also are represented with fairness. The alternative I offered to you was, in an organization large enough, they could request to move to a different project.
Saying that they can become managers is like saying they can become the president of the U.S. The point is that you cannot become a manager at all if you disagree with management in the first place (and that doesn't mean you don't have the chops). Also the number of management seats are limited. The number of union seats has no upper limit.
> Saying that they can become managers is like saying they can become the president of the U.S.
I don't think that analogy is proportional, since that'd make a manager at a furniture store on par with a head of state. But I get it, there isn't unlimited management roles. Because if there were, everyone would be on their own.
If you want to influence and shape business decisions - you want to be a manager.
How do you become one? By showing competence as an employee and joining a lower management position. Successes are how they climb the ladder. Yes, they definitely can innovate, and they can also play it safe.
People in upper management also hop between companies and have similar positions.
I think you don't understand what I said. You can't climb the ladder if you disagree with management. And that's not because you have no talent and management has the talent. There is no such correlation.
Is this clear now or do you need more help to understand?
I've written about this previously [0]. There is no shortage of companies with sound products, good teams, and bad management that prioritizes short-sighted thinking in their business strategy. I've definitely seen organizations with senior and staff engineers much more respected than me call out leadership for ignoring critical technical limitations, or failing to prioritize important things, only to lead to bad business decisions that ultimately doomed their companies. Sometimes those at the top don't see big enough of pictures.
I do believe that there's multiple problems that unions can address, and one of which is giving workers more say in how their companies are run and in what they're building.
Obviously, not all management is made up of pointy-headed bosses, and Dilbert shouldn't necessarily lead the company. There are definitely places where engineering-first cultures fail. But the status quo is made up of organizations where employee disagreement is reduced to a few pointed questions and awkward moments at all-hands, and if management fails then those employees are cut and execs get to leave with plushier severance packages. And while unions' primary purpose should be to protect the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy, they can potentially be a tool to empower employee decision making. Or at least, to provide a check against management unilaterally making decisions even when the rank-and-file disagree.
Sure, you can just say people can leave, or companies with bad management cultures should deserve to fail. But that just seems like defeatism. It seems like a form of capitalism that promotes throwaway, wasteful behavior. If the employees had valid concerns, but management ignored them, doesn't it seem like a shame for an organization to decline and the product to die because of their mistakes. What about the customers?
Even if unions aren't the best tool for this, an industry that's so obsessed with innovation and disruption and experimentation- coming up with schemes like holacracy for instance- should at least try to address this problem. Bring back board-level ombudsmen, at least. [1]
These electronics are marketed to perform better than the one before. They shows big numbers flaunting how the thing zips, has more cores, whatever.
Therefore, it makes sense that patches curving or throttle performance are made transparent to the consumer. If anything, these patches should ask for permission from the user and toggle-able via settings. Performance was promised.
If the "wear and tear" argument of batteries aging is true, they should be made replaceable. If an item is subject to wear and tear - it should be serviceable, not soldered.
It would be pretty ridiculous to have a firmware update for a car that makes it use more gas, in hopes they'll buy a new one. Especially if it was snuck in.
Maybe we need a regulatory bureaucracy to audit software patches and wire refunds when performance advertised degrades.
Perhaps the cost of the electronic should be held in escrow by the regulatory authority, made into a security for the model of the unit, and only vest to Apple/Lenovo/etc based on a timespan. That escrow can subsidize the cost of a $1000 soldered logic board replacement on their own balance/tab.
Or they could just make the units serviceable from the outset. The path of least resistance.
That way, it incentivizes honesty and success for businesses like Apple by tying their products to sustainability. Them being all about the environment: https://www.apple.com/environment/.
They have to remove the glued-in screen to get at the battery. Much more difficult than it should be and with the risk of compromising the waterproofing. I don't buy the argument that this is somehow required for engineering reasons. Wristwatches have easily replaceable batteries while being a lot smaller than an iPhone and having much better ingress protection.
That money is going to spent. For startups, 100 bucks, 300 bucks, 800 bucks. Some of that is going to go to subscriptions. That's for the digital service economy.
And it's good for early startups - because if someone has spare change, they're going to be willing to take a chance on an up and coming app.
In a way very true but also subsidized by the wealthy's spending habits. To mention UBI without the accompanying VAT would not properly show how progressive this system can be with higher taxes applied to non essential goods.
People concerned with it wiping out safety nets needs to understand how under equipped and under utilized they are for numerous reasons. The average benefits also average to only about $500/month. UBI is a new economic floor in which we can mobilize large swaths of the population and revitalize small towns that are falling apart. The shift in economic power will be massive and it's incredible to think about.
If history is any indication, the recipients are likely to become just more complacent and detached. I fail to see how people would become “mobilized” and towns revitalized when they have even less incentive to leave the house.
If anything, I see UBI shifting power even more into the hands of the elites, as massive numbers of the lower classes drop out of the workforce and no longer care about anything the politicians or big businesses do, so long as the cash keeps flowing.
This could very well be the intent.
Take a look at any Native American reservation, or any caged animal for that matter. Hardly vibrant.
The management is giving each other high fives now. As they no doubt strategize their plan from the comfort of their boardroom, they know this activist's personality will become the face of effort to collectively bargain.
Despite news articles mentioning walkouts themed on identity politics and out of court sexual assault allegations - those are narrow and not representative of the collective: a small, but vocal clique demanding VIP treatment at the expense of everything else. As for the feelings of those not fitting those characteristics? Do they not have their own personal and professional struggles, ambitions to cooperate and rise in the organization and live a happy life with a family?
It's a perfect distraction from the worker's struggle for union representation.
In order to form a union, you need votes. Google's management knows enduring the most radical and loud is a small price compared to having a union to ensure everyone is treated fair.
If you're focused on mere syntax of how someone says a word, or has an opinion, maybe it's time to reflect and show gratitude that's your schtick. Not that you're starving, looking for a safe place to live, stability, but merely some stranger with zero connection to you broadcasts an idea.
I love 2019 and thank God for it. I'm grateful we're discussing mere information etiquette on social media rather than being in a world war, a famine, a global disease pandemic, an asteroid hitting us.
This article discusses annoyances mostly about internet speech, then it goes:
> In 2018, 99 journalists were killed—21 more than in 2017. At the end of 2018, more than 250 journalists were in prison (also up from the year before) and more than 10 percent of those were being held on “false news” charges.
That's a huge leap. I don't think it's helpful to lump them together! Wow! Very dramatic though. Caught my attention!
Has anyone here ever tried meditation? I've been pondering mindfulness. Thinking deeply of what I'm grateful for.
We should close our eyes and breath. Think of how far we've come as a society. We're better than we've ever been. We should be celebrating and having parades and deeply introspecting ourselves for can we can cooperate better with each other.
Maybe we just need to give each other a big hug!
Maybe we're just one step away from peace on Earth, forever? The proof is in the pudding - we're focused on squabbles over social media. We're comfortable, organized, educated, and highly developed - just bored. I look forward to us building a space elevator.
If you like this area of study I recommend studying object relations and reification.
Object relations is all about how we strive for consistency in how we observe the world. It helps explain how people react and understand things.
Reificaction is also a really cool tool to bring in since when people go around repeating some thing.
Hm, like "gig economy". Like you're supposed to sit there and just accept this loaded concept, which some may believe implies accepting falsehoods, let me explain:
Gig Economy: As if, you're powerless to shape environment. No statute could be created to make employement / labor more fair and stable (let alone generous). You can't influence it, analyze it, criticize it, lobby, vote. Somehow there isn't enough wealth to give everyone a living wage. Don't even bother. Let's imply the systems to fix it don't already exist - even when they do - and it could be done by the end of the year, a few months?
Reification is amazing because it's all about injecting life into abstract concepts. It's where we create and give meaning to new words - it's what comes before illusory truth repetition.
And it's amazing how things shift. For instance, USA - one big thing that makes us famous is big, fat paychecks. But today if you read the news and hear people speak, it's as if there's an implicit acceptance it's okay to give corporations welfare and consistency by the way of our laws, but not reciprocate by giving it to the workers?
Then sometimes you read that having better employment conditions and wages are "socialist"? Lol? You could say: Nope, capitalism is all about huge pay checks. We're sharing this success we created as a private collective of workers. And you're very welcome!
(And by the way, you all pay taxes that shore up the system, you're welcome for that too, as you're strengthening the system and helping downtrodden people you don't even know, you amazing humanist you)
When someone says "Gig economy", go "Wait a second, who said it was okay to accept that, and why are you referring to gigs as employement?", then you can say, "I define employment as pensioned, salaried, position paid enough to comfortably support a family 4"
Perhaps one could repeat "living wage" about 3 times every time they here "gig economy". Why tolerate anything less than comfort, stability and dignity for us? As if we lack the moral collective conscience and intelligence to do it? Lol?
Whenever there are furloughs or layoff, any payouts or profits for the C-Suite and managers that are higher the average employee, is put into an annuity for the laid off employees.
So if a CEO makes 30,000,000, and the average worker is paid 125,000. A 29,875,000 fund will be made to deposit a monthly check into the bank of the fired employees. This includes any profits made from selling stocks.
To avoid loopholes and ensure enforcement, CEO's waive personal financial privacy, giving regulators full access into international finance accounts and to withdraw from those account debt due to workers. The lookback/forward time can be tweaked to go up to 36 months to ensure it's not worked around.
This will retain employees - while simultaneously keep businesses operating profitably.
Additionally, if there are any dividends by the company, any employees who worked a certain time (even if fired) are entitled to payout, since they're part of the collective. This shows appreciation for the employees which boosts performance - they know a successful quarter will have their success kept - not given only to investors.