Found this interesting, you may too.
A new research paper that may help unlock the mystery of why Americans can't seem to get a decent raise. Economists have struggled over that question for years now, as wage growth has stagnated and more of the nation's income has shifted from the pockets of workers into the bank accounts of business owners. Since 1979, inflation-adjusted hourly pay is up just 3.41 percent for the middle 20 percent of Americans while labor's overall share of national income has declined sharply since the early 2000s. There are lots of possible explanations for why this is, from long-term factors like the rise of automation and decline of organized labor, to short-term ones, such as the lingering weakness in the job market left over from the great recession. But a recent study by a group of labor economists introduces an interesting theory into the mix: Workers' pay may be lagging because the U.S. is suffering from a shortage of employers.
[...] argues that, across different cities and different fields, hiring is concentrated among a relatively small number of businesses, which may have given managers the ability to keep wages lower than if there were more companies vying for talent. This is not the same as saying there are simply too many job hunters chasing too few openings—the paper, which is still in an early draft form, is designed to rule out that possibility. Instead, its authors argue that the labor market may be plagued by what economists call a monopsony problem, where a lack of competition among employers gives businesses outsize power over workers, including the ability to tamp down on pay. If the researchers are right, it could have important implications for how we think about antitrust, unions, and the minimum wage.
Monopsony is essentially monopoly's quieter, less appreciated twin sibling. A monopolist can fix prices because it's the only seller in the market. The one hospital in a sprawling rural county can charge insurers whatever it likes for emergency room services, for instance, because patients can't go elsewhere. A monopsonist, on the other hand, can pay whatever it likes for labor or supplies, because it's the only company buying or hiring. That remote hospital I just mentioned? It can probably get away with lowballing its nurses on salary, because nobody is out there trying to poach them.
[...] Harvard University labor economist Lawrence Katz told me that he suspected the findings about market concentration and wages were directionally correct but that they may be a bit "overstated," because it's simply hard to control for the health of the labor market.
"They are getting at what is an important and underexplored topic ... using a creative approach of using really rich data," he said. "I don't know if I would take perfectly seriously the exact quantitative estimates."
Still, even if the study is only gesturing in the direction of a real problem, it's a deeply worrisome one. We're living in an era of industry consolidation. That's not going away in the foreseeable future. And workers can't ask for fair pay if there aren't enough businesses out there competing to hire.
Article summarizing study:
Why Is It So Hard for Americans to Get a Decent Raise?
Actual study (limited access): http://www.nber.org/papers/w24147
FYI: Number of companies on America's stock exchanges has decreased by 50% since 1998
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 19 2018, @12:30PM (47 children)
Clearly, what this demonstrates is the need to further enable the Job Creators to create more jobs. Less corporate taxes! More mergers and buyouts! Less environmental controls! More regulatory capture! Less worker rights! Lower wages! Higher corporate bonuses! More no-compete clauses! It's the only answer.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @12:36PM (3 children)
I... saw a vision. A vision about the future. A vision about the future of a particular thing. Yes, that's right: I can see the future of your ass. I'm the Assteller.
You can't stop chuckling. "What a bunch of idiots they were to fall for such an obvious scam!" you think to yourself. Just remembering what you did makes you laugh uncontrollably. You scammed innumerable cabbage patch kids out of their billion buck bills by trading envelopes supposedly containing more than one billion buck bill for their billion buck bills. Of course, the envelopes were completely empty. Now you're rich and those suckers are poor. All you have to do is figure out how to use the money.
All of a sudden, you sense countless entities in the room with you. You look around and notice that you're surrounded by the various cabbage patch kids you scammed, and all of them are furious. You begin laughing at them, and then you turn your bootysnap into a spaghetti noodle of colossal proportions and suck every last one of the of those foolish toys right up your butt. Once again, you're the number one winner. You begin celebrating your victory, but then notice that something is amiss.
What is this feeling? You find a mirror and use it to look at your bare ass. "What is that thing!?" you shout. "It's an abomination!" An abomination had replaced your ass! The thing that was now where your snap used to be shared absolutely zero similarities with your previous ass. Where did it come from, and who stole your real ass? Just then, it hit you.
Knowledge entered your brain. Ancient knowledge. The thing where your ass used to be is, in fact, your ass! However, the cabbage patch kids you sucked up turned it into a rumblehouse and are about to use it as a bouncehouse. Though you cannot fathom what it would be like for your ass to be used as a bouncehouse, every fiber of your being is stricken by a sense of imminent danger. But even that sense of extreme danger pales in comparison to what you feel next: Tickle! Your ass... it tickles! This is the sort of tickle that would render any being a mere shadow of its former self. You scream. Oh, yes, you scream. If you weren't trapped in an enigmatic alternate dimension, your scream is such that it could be heard in every corner of the world. The cabbage patch kids, however, continue to mercilessly bounce off of every molecule in the mazes of your ass...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 19 2018, @12:50PM (2 children)
I thought Jenkem was just an urban myth, but this latest shitposter is making me question that.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @03:24PM (1 child)
Every time I see it, I get more and more curious to know just WTF he's on about. Is it copypasta from somewhere? Original work? Is there a hidden meaning? Sexual fetish? Stenography or some other form of code? Does he know de wae?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 19 2018, @09:22PM
Probably just one guy, maybe a few, who wrote some basic template and just play with it every iteration for laughs. They're probably proxying too, so the forum's software can't just go "Nope, this IP sends nothing but shit."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @12:39PM
What? A face...? Why is a small face sticking out of my asshole...? And... why does that face wear such a malicious grin...? It looks just like an ENO! IT TICKLES! STOP! NO! DON'T TWIST YOUR NECK LIKE THAT! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday January 19 2018, @01:03PM (22 children)
Lower taxes for American businesses means higher wages for American workers! Wells Fargo, Visa, Aflac, Bank of America, U.S. Bank, Nationwide Insurance, Comcast, JetBlue, AT&T, Walmart, Target, American Airlines all announcing wage increases or bonuses!!!!
Jobs coming back to America, big announcement from Apple. Chrysler is coming back to the USA, from Mexico and many others will follow. Tax cut money to employees is pouring into our economy with many more companies announcing. American business is hot again! 🔥
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @01:26PM (20 children)
> Chrysler is coming back to the USA
Sorry, wrong answer. FIAT/FCA is going to take Chrysler apart at the first opportunity, and sell Jeep to the highest bidder. Hyundai is the latest rumored buyer. RAM trucks might be worth something and the rest (cars) will be scrapped. Maybe the hot rod group will survive as a niche player, making Dodge Demons and the like for rich customers.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday January 19 2018, @02:04PM (16 children)
RAM truck factory coming back from Mexico! 🏭
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @03:09PM (14 children)
> RAM truck factory coming back from Mexico
Sure, a short term win for the old Warren plant. But Chrysler is going to be taken apart and sold piecemeal in the near future. Who knows where the new owner(s) will move production. One thing for sure, any profits will not be coming to USA, FCA is Italian owned and the new owners of Jeep and/or RAM will not be Ford or GM.
Also, there are no layoffs in Mexico, those plants will keep right on humming with a different product mix. In response to possible increased tariffs for vehicles entering the USA, the trucks made in the Mexican plants will be shipped to other markets, likely S. America.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 19 2018, @03:52PM (13 children)
Dude, look who you are arguing with: This guy has been channelling Donald Trump on this forum for months either because (a) performance art (b) he really believes he's Trump (c) some kind of advanced new trolling technique too subtle for my ken (d) he's practising for a real life career as an orange turd impersonating.
Any which way, he copies Don very well. That means any reasoned, logical arguments you present are going to get farted away by irrelevant, truthless twatter. You are wasting your pixels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @04:19PM (6 children)
> This guy ...
Wouldn't you be surprised if the fake-Trump was female...?
(Score: 3, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 19 2018, @04:23PM (5 children)
No, not really. I was just using the masculine as a shorthand for "this unknown person of indeterminate gender".
(Score: 3, Informative) by realDonaldTrump on Friday January 19 2018, @08:22PM
I guarantee you there’s no problem there. I have four beautiful children: Barron, Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric. And Tiffany.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @08:51PM (3 children)
I've taken to saying "they" which is a little imprecise when talking about a single person, but is common enough that I feel comfortable using it for genderless discussions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @09:47PM (2 children)
I says dude in like the dude has a nice dress and the other dude a nice pickup dude !!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @10:12PM (1 child)
How does it feel being uncomfortable with reality 24/7? Do you get urges to hit random people? Are bar fights something you consider "normal"?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @01:27AM
Duuude, why the hate dude?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday January 19 2018, @08:50PM (4 children)
Or.... he's real. :O :O
No, I don't really believe that, but it is an alternative.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 19 2018, @09:23PM (3 children)
There is no way in Hell that is the real Trump. Much too coherent, for one thing. The real deal doesn't speak at such a high vocabulary level either. It's a very good attempt, and darkly amusing to read, but it can't possibly be him.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Saturday January 20 2018, @01:57AM (2 children)
You're almost certainly right. But you know what? Just in case... just on the one in a billion chance that we are in fact blessed by the presence of the Pussygrabber-in-chief himself, I'm going to leave this here.
DONALD TRUMP DONALD TRUMP DONALD TRUMP DONALD TRUMP DONALD TRUMP 1
Donald, if you're reading, I wrote this specially for you:
Hey Don!
Your wife won't touch you,
Your kids are just using you,
Your party barely tolerates you,
Your country is ashamed of you,
The world thinks you're a joke.
And all your wealth and power,
So cruelly won,
offers you less comfort than a two dollar cheeseburger.
Tell me Don,
Does it feel like winning yet?
DONALD TRUMP DONALD TRUMP DONALD TRUMP DONALD TRUMP DONALD TRUMP
1 Apparently he rarely reads anything unless he sees his own name written prominently all over it.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday January 20 2018, @04:46AM (1 child)
Are you tired of winning yet? Brexit is going beautifully, the pound is at RECORD LEVELS, @BorisJohnson [twitter.com] is building that beautiful bridge to France, my nuclear guys are working on baby nukes for your Trident missiles. To go into your missiles. Very soon. And if you call your stock broker, I think he'll have some very nice news for you. But it sounds like you're getting tired of winning. Like it's too much winning for you. I’m sorry, but we’re going to keep winning, winning, WINNING. Except in the last election, not a great one for UKIP. Let me tell you, Nigel is a terrific guy. He shouldn't have quit. I love him to death, but it was the wrong time. They lost very badly. But they also WON. Because they made Brexit happen. And it's going much better than anyone expected. Believe me, UKIP can come back. If the Tories break their promises, if you need to TAKE BACK YOUR COUNTRY just like we're doing in the USA, you'll bring back UKIP in a big way. I always say, never give up. I turned my biggest challenges into success.
Let me tell you, the Japs make a mean cheeseburger. They made me one with Colby Jack, it only cost $11. 🍔 When I had lunch with @AbeShinzo [twitter.com]. It was delicious. Better than sex. The best part, there's no tipping in Japan. pic.twitter.com/9RiaibqNLO [t.co] 🇯🇵
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday January 21 2018, @05:31PM
UKIP goes from strength to strength [theguardian.com].
Nigel will be back soon [bbc.co.uk] to lead the great patriotic Kipper army to victory once and for all [theguardian.com].
Meanwhile, the communists have designs on your golf course [theguardian.com].
You, Putin and Farage between you have got it made. If you play your cards right, you'll all be Presidents for Life of the three greatest nations on Earth. I salute you.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @09:12PM
You forgot:
(e) obsessed with writing first-person fan fiction.
(Score: 3, Funny) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday January 19 2018, @10:05PM
Better write a memo to put a REALLY BIG gate in the wall...
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @02:59PM (1 child)
SRAM or DRAM? :-)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @03:09PM
SRAM makes bicycle components...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Sulla on Friday January 19 2018, @05:46PM
Really kind of a shame. Ford wanted to buy Jeep when Chrysler collapsed but wasn't allowed to, now they will have to buy it from Fiat as the middle man.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:56AM
Lower taxes for American businesses means higher wages for American workers
That's been the Repug mantra for decades.
The fact is that Trickle Down doesn't.
Radio/TV presenter Thom Hartmann has been pounding on this exact topic lately.
MP3 [kpfk.org] available until late February.
14MB for the whole hour; The stuff I'm pointing to is in the first 6MB (16:15).
His setup explanation starts at ~1:00.
If you're impatient, the part that directly addresses tax cuts begins at ~9:20, after the break.
Text version. [alternet.org]
wage increases or bonuses
I haven't seen anybody getting raises.
There have been some 1-time bonuses.
Walmart gave 1 of those.
...but if you haven't been there for 20 years, you get squat.
Oh, and right after that, they closed dozens and dozens and dozens of Sam's Club stores.
There was zero notice to the workers.
Some showed up to work to find the place shuttered.
Federal law says they have to give 60 days notice.
Walmart is run by criminals.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crafoo on Friday January 19 2018, @02:46PM (16 children)
I know you are being sarcastic and I agree with your sentiment. However, the barriers to starting a small 1 to 5 person company and competing are huge, almost insurmountable. Regulatory capture is a real issue (bribing to write the laws to benefit large corps). But yes, we have also taken our local and federal laws too far. Unnecessary paperwork and bureaucratic oversight is a serious issue. Most of this is just welfare for non-productive people who can't cut it on their own, so they must leach off of everyone else getting paid as a government bureaucrat. Also, yes, let's talk about tax law. It's insane. It's crushing for small businesses. I wouldn't be so quick to scoff at the article. I think they are on to something.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @03:32PM (2 children)
This was pretty much my first thought. We've got huge regulatory burdens that the big companies love because it makes it so hard to start up any competitor. Most of the US regulatory structure is set up this way (and see TBTF banks for a terminal version of the issue) and there's not much being done about it. Even Trumps "two regulations out for every one added" is barely in the ballpark, since it's easy to game that system by making fewer but much longer and more detailed regulations.
Wonder if these researchers bothered to plot their data against the length of the Federal Register...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @05:34PM (1 child)
It's an arms race. If big business was not mercilessly and ruthlessly gaining from edge cases and loopholes, then govt would not have to add more rules.
I mean, in what universe is it common sense to funnel money through the Camen Islands via the Netherlands and into Ireland to avoid taxation in the USA? It's the equivalent of hacking computers to encrypt your hard disk. If you didn't want that, then surely you wouldn't have allowed it to happen right?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @08:16PM
Well, it is currently an arms race, but it doesn't have to be. The bigger and more complex the rule-set, the easier it is to game. Slimming it down to more basic rules would help, but the entrenched bureaucracy doesn't function well in those kind of situations. The prefer tons of bright-line laws they can auto-pilot to rather than need to think about and evaluate.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday January 19 2018, @03:58PM (1 child)
I wasn't scoffing at the article, I was scoffing at the idiots who genuinely think that what I posted is the correct response to the article.
Also, if you look closely that I mentioned "regulations" and "regulatory capture" separately. I did this because while I acknowledge that regulatory capture is bad, I don't see it as a reason to get rid of ALL regulations. There is a sweet-spot between "can't tie your laces without filling in an environmental impact assessment" and "zero rules corporate cagefight to the death".
Baby, bathwater.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 19 2018, @09:25PM
Most of the people who can say "regulatory burdens harm big corporations" with a straight face are too stupid or too evil to handle that kind of nuance. It's frustrating as hell, isn't it?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Friday January 19 2018, @04:06PM (5 children)
Only thing is: they're just realising this now?
They couldn't see that the disappearance of the small mom and pop joints in favour of mea-corps was bad? Let's INCREASE COMPETITION!!...between these 2-3 big corps who, by the way, have colluded to keep prices artificially high. WE'RE GREAT!!
Dismantle big corps, increase competition and take corporate donations out of politics and keep personal donations to, say, $100.
Bring politics back TO the people, FOR the people! (And no, corporations are not people).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @05:37PM (2 children)
I can't believe I agree with one of the resident wingnuts. You're a fucking dick for ruining my 100% record of disagreeing with everything you say.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday January 19 2018, @05:48PM
And YOU get ONE Internet Insightful! for realizing a dick is not always a dick. Yay! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 19 2018, @09:26PM
The truth is the truth, no matter who says it. Genetic fallacy may be the biggest problem for most Americans' ability to process information.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Friday January 19 2018, @08:45PM
Mere price collusion should be remedied by new players. If there are no new players, then what is stopping them?
Pretty sure its mostly caused by high barriers to entry. ( natural monopolies, regulatory capture, monopoly extension to other sectors)
So the answer is not to indiscriminately dismantle the corps.(Look how well that worked for the case of Ma Bell.)
The answer is to identify the barrier(s) to entry and remove those.
In the case of telecoms it's the hardware network, the frequency allocations. Pull all that into utility companies that are state/public owned. Mandate that service provision, infrastructure must be handled by separate independent entities.
With that separation then there are lower barriers to entry for service providers, and thus much easier to have meaningful competition.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday January 21 2018, @10:54PM
This would require government regulation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 19 2018, @05:23PM (3 children)
It varies a great deal depending on what kind of business you're trying to start.
For example, in a relatively unregulated business like, say, software development or floral arranging, all you need to do to start a company is hang out the proverbial shingle and start selling services, and you're officially a sole proprietorship. You can get bank accounts and such as a sole proprietor if you like. If you want to formalize things a bit and limit your liability, fill out the forms from your state government and pay a fairly small fee (in my state, it's somewhere around $50) and become an LLC. And at that point, you're a business owner, congratulations. The main limits on your growth at that point are (a) acquiring customers, and (b) keeping them happy, which I'll admit are challenges but not because of anything the government did.
If, on the other hand, you're trying to get into a tightly regulated business, like restaurants and heavy industry, then yes, you need to jump through more hoops. Some of those hoops are due to regulatory capture, but some of them exist for very good reasons, like preventing thousands of people sick from food-poisoned sushi or workers getting killed due to unsafe work environments.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday January 19 2018, @06:17PM (1 child)
You forgot the business license. If you actually hire an employee, you'll need to withold taxes and issue a W-2. You'll need to collect and submit sales tax and make sure to keep a record of sales if you're audited. Even if you have a calculator and aren't afraid to use it, you may need a CPA to make sure you don't have tax trouble.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 19 2018, @07:31PM
Again, there are many businesses that don't need a license.
Yes, you either need to keep track of your income and expenses, or hire somebody else to do it. And you need to pay taxes on that income or expense as well - nothing new there. My experience is that this is far from the biggest hurdle to being in business. Ditto for my step-brother, who owns a pet supply/services store: The government is not his biggest problem, not by a long shot.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @08:24PM
Funny you mention floral arrangement...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-license-to-be-a-florist-how-occupational-rules-can-be-a-burden-on-workers/2015/08/06/212ad5b6-3abb-11e5-9c2d-ed991d848c48_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 19 2018, @06:01PM
I had a friend who drove big trucks and excavators for a living. He summed up the free market from his perspective very succinctly: "Truck drivers are idiots. They're all out there undercutting each other just to get a job and they cut their profit margins so thin that they end up losing money when anything out of the ordinary costs them extra, and even sometimes when everything goes right." I believe Uber has honed in on this failing in common persons' business sense to take advantage of people who drive their own vehicles for the service. It's all well and good to say "the market will prevail, eventually enough truck/Uber drivers will bankrupt that supply decreases and prices will rise to a sustainable level," but... is it really guaranteed that rates will rise, or will these self-managed businesses continue to create a continuous stream of idiots in default on their debts / bankruptcy? And, who foots the bill for bankruptcies? Everyone else who isn't declaring bankruptcy, that's who.
So, we've got small businesses trying to compete with big businesses on a slanted playing field, and we've also got big businesses taking advantage of independent contractors who don't know any better than to work for free (long term.) It's not surprising at all that the bigger businesses, with surplus manpower and funds, can lobby the legislatures to slant the competitive landscape in their favor.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @04:02PM (1 child)
LOL.
Anyways, a large part of the problem is that he classifications for employer size are ridiculous. I own a small business, I'm the owner/employee, and since I just started it, I had a top line of less than a thousand. But, a small business having over a thousand employees and top line of millions is also classified as a small business.
It's been my belief for some time that here in Seattle we should have learned our lesson after Boeing went through it's part of the downturn back in the '70s and stopped chasing large companies. I'd even go so far as to chase them as far away as possible. We're much better off with small and medium size employers where the city isn't beholden to just one or two firms or industries for maintaining a healthy economy.
As it stands, not only is pay only going up for folks because of minimum wage hikes, but the cost of living is soaring as a small handful of firms grossly overpay employees to come and to make up for the miserable work conditions. They overpay for housing because they can afford it and know that when the leave they'll likely find another sucker to pay at least as much for what they overpaid for in the first place.
Doing similarly at the national level would likely also be a great idea as the customers that create jobs would have more options and likely options that are closer to what they want/need than the current situation and it would be harder for the government to wind up held hostage to a single corporation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 19 2018, @05:28PM
The reason for this is very simple:
1. Politicians create programs designed to make things easier for the mom&pop small businesses out there. For instance, the federal Small Business Administration, which makes it easier for smaller businesses to get government contracts. Republicans in particular like that sort of thing, because they claim to represent small business owners, and they can do it with nice fanfare that makes everyone happy that the local pizzaria will be able to stay afloat.
2. Businesses that almost but don't quite fit the definition of "small business" bribelobby the relevant lobbyists & politicians to change the definition of who qualifies for all those small business programs to include them. The politicians on both sides of the aisle obviously do that with as little attention paid as possible.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Friday January 19 2018, @01:07PM (14 children)
At least for tech jobs unionization is the only answer to hyperspecialization.
You want a hot water heater installed? Call a plumber. You want a toilet installed? Call a plumber. You want a faucet installed? Call a plumber. Any plumber can work most any job.
The way it works in tech is nobody hires software devs. They hire a laundry list of node.js 6.8.1, react.js 15.6.2 and list of other madness all to implode the field size to keep wages down.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @01:12PM
You run. You run so fast that even you are surprised. You make it to the closet and shut the door. Little did you know, however, General Fucko Slappo was waiting for you! The malevolent stuffed animal slowly approached your bootyasscheekcrackhole, and the level of tickle that followed shook all of existence to the core...
(Score: 4, Informative) by crafoo on Friday January 19 2018, @02:48PM (1 child)
They do this because: 1) they are a flash in the pan "app developer" who do not have time to train staff and are not concerned with long-term viability. 2) Want that sweet, sweet H1B slave labor and so are writing job requirements that are quite literary impossible to fulfill, by design. "Can't find qualified US workers! Gibbs me dem H!Bees!!"
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday January 19 2018, @05:33PM
That's no longer a reason, because there is no longer a requirement to pretend that there are no qualified US workers available before hiring someone via H1B. I discovered this when I saw a position being specifically advertised as H1B-only, thought "Wait, isn't that illegal?", and after doing some digging learned that it is in fact legal to do that now.
Basically, the reason they do this is your first reason: By demanding the exact skills for the exact app they're building, they've ensured that the employee rather than the company has to pay the cost of learning whatever tools they're using.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Friday January 19 2018, @03:16PM (8 children)
That's not necessarily an attempt to keep wages down. It starts with a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes a good programmer. And they're not basing their hires on that misunderstanding; they know they don't know shit. They know that they can't really control the probability of a good hire vs an empty paycheck.
The best way they know to control their risk is to make sure that if they hire an empty paycheck, that programmer at least has enough of a passing familiarity with the technology to make an occasional bug fix. That this strategy keeps wages down is just a bonus that helps them control their risk even better.
The real solution is to get people to really understand what makes a good programmer. Good luck.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @03:44PM (5 children)
The only way we can do it is by organizing. I've been saying it forever. We need an AMA. We need a Bar Association.
We in IT think we're all slick shit and just better than everybody else. Everybody else in IT is incompetent, except for me, who is Wile E. Coyote Super Genius. That's what I hear in IT left and right. We all have this arrogant, unrealistic attitude, and we do not see how we create the very environment that allows incompetence, low wages, perennial misunderstandings and abuses such as open offices, and a complete lack of respect for our hard-earned skills and education to flourish in our field.
We take in anti-union propaganda and obediently regurgitate it against the idea of a professional association or accreditation body. We all know how to weed-out jokers: we regularly complain about how some people who get hired cannot even write a fizz-buzz program. Add insult to injury if that person is an H1B.
Ok, fizz-buzz is something. If one cannot write a fizz-buzz program, then one has no business being in IT. When are we going to organize and collectively say that as long as companies are hiring people who cannot implement fizz-buzz, we are all going to let our keyboards go idle until we start being taken a bit more seriously.
Of course we will need to work towards more rigorous standards for our profession than fizz-buzz. Fizz-buzz is the first step of a thousand mile journey to make IT a respectable profession in which a man or woman can become established, settle down to start a family, enjoy an honest and fulfilling career, and eventually aim for retirement.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday January 19 2018, @03:55PM (2 children)
The problem is that the hot shots like doing speculative work, but speculative work is almost never the right work to be doing. If we introduce professional standards into IT, we'll be reduced to housing developments and office parks like building engineers have been. Far fewer of us will get to work on anything interesting, because we would no longer have the opportunity to build this office park with an experimental hand-rolled dependency injection framework.
Therefore, the people that would benefit most from professional standards don't want them. Obviously those that can't fizz-buzz don't want them either. Who is left to make programming a truly professional discipline?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @04:16PM (1 child)
Yet don't many of us maintain code on a daily basis, code that's sometimes 10 or 20 years old? How many of us are actually working on cutting-edge projects? How many of us are even working on interesting projects? I feel that the vast majority of us are working on TPS reports day-in, day-out. Much of what we do are solved problems. There are commonalities, however, that we can all agree on. There are fundamental design principles that we can identify that any worthwhile information system in any given industry may have.
Truly cutting edge work would likely not fall within the scope of a professional association. Free software can also be a source of innovation that would not fall strictly within the scope of a professional association. However, a professional association could, for example, endorse various free software projects on an annual basis that the rest of us would want to consider for our TPS reports and CRUD/CRM/ERP systems.
If we are creating production software, should we really be using the latest gee-wiz dependency injection auto-wiring meta-programming paradigm? What will that gee-wiz paradigm look like in 10 years when somebody else is maintaining our code? We should value software that is written with well-understood principles while retaining flexibility that our field is still a fast-moving field. I've been a programmer for a couple decades now. For every gee-wiz paradigm that was going to solve all of my problems I've encountered, I've only found a couple new techniques that have withstood the test of time. Otherwise, everything I do has been a best practice since the 80s or early 90s.
Who wants to get stuck with an ERP nightmare that's held together with duct tape and chicken wire? That ERP nightmare was made by other IT people, perhaps even some very talented people, though certainly mediocrity and lack of care for quality against unrealistic deadlines set by salespeople show themselves.
I hope I am not suggesting following the path of "We must to do something. $xyz is something. Therefore $xyz needs to be done." I hope I am suggesting that those of us with decades of experience in IT are the experts and the exact people who must hash out the kinds of quality standards we want in our profession.
In addition to that, the other side of the coin is that currently, we allow suits and PHBs to dictate quality and even which technologies we use. Even if I wanted to use some gee-wiz autowired batteries-included paradigm on my new project, a PHB may very well veto it and dictate technical decision to me.
Our primary goal must be to make a stand and tell PHBs what our decades of experience demonstrate. You're correct that if all organizing does is create more PHBs dictating technical decisions and abusive work environments, then we have not met our goal. However, if we do not organize, we will continue being at the mercy of PHBs.
I can think of no other way to create the change that so many of us feel we need.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Friday January 19 2018, @05:57PM
Your argument is sound. I fully agree with you! But people like you tend to get laid off because you're getting paid more than everybody else. It's insane, but with the limited information available to non-technical upper management it makes perverse business sense to cull the most experienced engineers. Doubly so if you're a contractor.
Meanwhile, the hot shots take less paycheck and work more hours, and they want to re-invent everything because Not Invented Here.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @04:06PM
That probably won't happen unless there's an Enron or MCI Worldcom sized crater that results directly from incompetent coding or technical design. After those two firms went belly up due in large part to 3rd party accounting firms covering it up with fraudulent book keeping there were a slew of rules about how firms like that operate as well as an increased awareness that cooking the books could lead to huge companies going under.
It's always going to be a problem as companies try to maintain the image of growth even when it's lackluster or flat, but there are degrees of that.
But, as long as the government allows software companies to completely disclaim their own incompetence and be on the hook for little or nothing, there's just not the incentive to do much better. It's not like anybody making those decisions ever goes to prison.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @06:40PM
I would like to point out that this "we" you are talking about is definitely a generalization. Where I work there is very little of that. Anecdotally I can add that conservative techies / engineers seem to be the ones that most often have the know-it-all attitude where you can see them dismissing an idea immediately because it goes against some of their basic presumptions about the world. This ties in nicely with the anti-union propaganda, so apparently political divisions are truly having a real impact on my career! Thank god I've got a decent employer and not one of the corporate park TPS report pushing motherfuckers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 19 2018, @05:37PM (1 child)
You're right that they can't completely control that risk.
What they can do, and what your thinking leaves out, is fire the empty paycheck as soon as it becomes clear they're an empty paycheck. Yes, I realize that's a pain in the butt, but failing to fire bad employees is part of how a good department turns into a bad department. And if asked to justify it, answers like "This person has written 10 lines of code in the last month, and completed zero change requests" is a pretty compelling answer.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Friday January 19 2018, @05:51PM
That requires managers to have even a basic idea of what is going on in their engineering department. Unless the manager is technically oriented (in which case the hiring problem is greatly reduced), getting involved even at the level of trying to fire non-performers tends to hit the wrong people or otherwise damage the quality of the team.
Besides which, managers are doing well when they have more people working for them, not less. When their managers don't understand engineering, which is even more likely than the lower manager not understanding it, paying for a bunch of non-performers really just looks like the work is difficult. The manager will find ways to justify why he needs a larger budget.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 19 2018, @06:10PM
The 2nd to last job interview I went to, I checked enough boxes in their "needs" column that I was probably the most qualified person on the planet, by a wide margin, to meet their needs - and it was indeed a great fit. They got acquired, and geographic/management conditions left me looking to transfer to another division of the acquiring company. Being an internal transfer, the hiring manager was very open to the idea: "Knows some Linux & C++, we need someone who knows some Linux & C++ for this next project... good enough."
My point being, it can go both ways... sometimes you can be picky with your hiring (the previous job was even willing to let me work remote, which increased their candidate options tremendously), and sometimes you can hire for a general skill like "plumbing" and understand that the plumber you hire might have to read up a little bit about how to fit pipe to carry refrigerant, but his skills are still applicable and you'll be better off getting started today with the talent that's available, instead of waiting weeks or months and interviewing multiple candidates to find someone with that particular checkbox on their resume.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @11:04PM
In this situation, you are the mouse. You're getting abused while the elephants bruise each other up, possibly to death.
If you have a problem (company is a monopsonist buyer of labor) and you add another (union is a monopoly seller of labor), the result is two problems.
The only fix is to break these companies and unions up. With unions, that equals elimination (a union of 1 person is just a person) and nothing of value is lost. That doesn't quite work with companies, but we could be a lot closer.
The trouble is that the companies most in need of being broken up are the ones with the most political power. Breaking them up is considered far too late, when the turmoil would be trouble. It would be far better to tax based on market share, so that no company desires to grow past about 10% of any market.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Friday January 19 2018, @04:51PM (5 children)
maybe America pioneered it, but I recall it differently
late 80s, articles start appearing in the media "in the future you will change jobs often". Which sounded pretty retarded, because, at least in europe, things were going pretty well (on surface, in fact we have been fscked since the industrial revolution started and amish are right).
year 1990, exactly, job security begins to be systematically eroded. Which caused a contraption in consumption which caused the system based on debt to start collecting actual wealth.
American pay may be low because the system took two world wars and the third undergoing one (weapons: demographics, welfare, taxation, terror, surveillance. Give me back the pre-Napoleon ways of waging war any day) to get into a society where the family is not the unit and does not control anything of value. Not being able to fight back, you surrender to the system some new things each year. With family, the persons are constrained, without family, the persons are fucked.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 19 2018, @06:14PM (3 children)
The Amish did, indeed, get many things right... but, even the most strict Amish will make exceptions and allow some of the best things from modern life creep into their daily lives (pneumatic tires, occasionally, for instance.) However, I've shopped in a non-electrified Amish store in the summer, with gas lanterns and no powered ventilation... and that's a situation where they really would be better off caving in and allowing some LED strip lighting, and maybe even an electric fan or two for fresh air.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @06:44PM
I think they figured out the "slippery slope". I'm too enamored with modern technology, but I can appreciate the Amish wisdom from afar. Now if we could infuse the general population with a good dose of Amish practicality perhaps our world wouldn't be the polluted trash heap we're building right now.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:06AM (1 child)
the most strict Amish will make exceptions
That's a feature not a bug.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 20 2018, @04:23PM
Absolutely... good pies, who needs buttons?, and when the crops are on fire threatening to burn down the barn, they certainly can use the phone to call the fire department.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:49AM
Got a link to an image of that?
Give me back the pre-Napoleon ways of waging war
...or give up the notion of war entirely and put all that money into The People.
Costa Rica did that in 1948. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [dissidentvoice.org]
They're doing even better than northern Europe [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [commondreams.org] (where they stupidly still have military spending).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Sulla on Friday January 19 2018, @06:13PM (6 children)
Globalization and easy immigration means that modern employees have to compete on more equal terms with folks oversees who are okay making less. The only ways you combat this are to have high sanctions on foreign goods or limit immigration or both. High sanctions will mean that low paid manufacturing and farm workers in the US will be able to compete with foreign workers easier, and a sequester on immigration means that high educated workers will have an easier time competing with foreign workers. Until 1965 the bulk of US immigrants came from Europe where the standard of living and expectations out of life were pretty similar to our own, the Hart-Cellar Act ended the quota system and took immigrants from all over.
As far as competition goes, I can compete with someone with a similar education cost and life expectations to my own. In general I can probably compete pretty okay with someone from South Korea, Japan, or most of Europe. I would have a hard time competing with someone from India or China who has two or three degrees for less than the price of my one, is willing to work for less, and is willing to work longer hours. As far as manufacturing and farm workers now a farm worker needs to compete with less than minimum wage unless they want to travel a county over to do farm hand work (I keep seeing articles where Napa Valley wants to pay 21/hr for farm labor, but nobody can afford to live nearby and would lose a ton of money on transportation). Manufacturing workers need to compete directly with foreign workers, pretty hard for a union worker capped at 8 hours a day making 24/hr with defined breaks and safety regs can compete with a foreign worker making .24/hr working 12 hour shifts with no breaks or safety. Everyone would prefer be a worker in the US, but nobody can afford to buy the US goods unless a tariff is put on the foreign goods making them competitive. We chose the path of globalization, which means less manufacturing, cheaper farm labor, and cheaper high tech labor.
In the short run immigration greatly helps the industrialist and hurts the common man. Globalization is allowing an equalization of all workers, to make up for the artificially high standard of living in the US and Europe the standard of living must fall to make room for the rest of the world to come up. Yes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and increasing the worlds standard of living will bring everyone up, that is how it was sold afterall, but in the short run (40-50 years?) we are seeing the west stagnate and stumble to make room for everyone else.
The generation of the boomers chose to martyr the west to save the rest of the world and help them get a foot up by sacrificing the next several generations of Americans, I only wish the boomers would live long enough to see the consequences of their actions. Sadly they wont, they will live out their days in nice retirement homes collecting their pensions and social security that won't exist for their kids and grandkids.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 19 2018, @06:16PM (5 children)
Another way to survive globalization is to be highly skilled in a field where the workers contribute tremendous value to the company.
Even if overseas workers with similar skills might do the job for 1/2 pay, do you really want to mess around trying to save $120K/yr using global sourced workers when a delay of a few months costs millions?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday January 19 2018, @07:18PM (4 children)
Valid point. I have concern about all those who have trouble doing anything but using a drill press or pushing something on down the assembly line. For those that are capable to learn and grow the world holds endless possibilities, but what do we do about that group that has a hard time learning or lack in ability? Seems to me our options are to either become less open as a country to protect them, or initiate a basic income to cover the gap. Yeah sure its selfish to go with tariff/less immigration but it not only helps the very lowest in our country but it helps the middle workers as well, we can continue to bring in high end talent as necessary. The basic income solution seems bad because it would allow people to drop out completely and not work rather than a well built safety net that catches them then sends them back out to work. Some people will be unwilling to do anything but sit there on basic and I don't like the idea of those who are able/willing needing to work harder to support those that aren't.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 19 2018, @07:43PM (3 children)
I question whether the world is really better off trying to get everybody "working" productively. I see plenty of people in big organizations who are clearly just counterproductive by nature. If those kind of people had UBI, they might be able to put their counterproductivity to positive use by auditing our politicians or public works projects, exposing graft, corruption and inefficiencies in public projects which should, by all rights, be transparently accountable to the taxpayers who fund them...
And, as for lower skilled workers - I'd much rather deal with an automated checkout line than wait for a surly human being who doesn't want to be there to run the same register for me, and I definitely prefer my mass produced products like cars to be welded by a robot than attempting to train a human to be sufficiently robotic to get a good weld every time, hundreds of times a day, year after year. If some of these people end up "dropping out" and taking up smoking weed and painting while on UBI, is that really a net-loss to society? When all the jobs that need doing are getting done, it shouldn't matter if they're being done by man or machine. And, when the people are out of work, if you supply them with food, shelter and a little discretionary income, then they have no primal instinct reasons to rob, steal, etc. Not saying there won't be troublemakers on UBI, but I think most people who are receiving a decent UBI would far rather continue to receive it, instead of being sent to West Texas to break rocks (or build a wall) because they decided to make trouble with their spare time.
I can't seem to get away from the overpopulation issue... that's the one flaw I see in all systems currently in place, and most systems proposed. Sure, the wealthy people in wealthy countries have rolled back to negative population growth - but the world at large is still growing too fast (probably already grown too large), my chosen home in Florida has been increasing in population right along with the world average rates, and to see what that has done here in the last 50+ years is just frightening, thinking about that happening to the whole planet. Sure, sure, there's lots of "empty" space, but is it good, productive, biologically desirable empty space? So, the main problem I see with UBI is an implicit incentive to take time off and have a bunch of children... that's nothing particularly special about UBI, it has to be addressed better no matter what the "next thing" is, but it's pretty easy to see how UBI would make having more than 2 kids per couple seem not as bad as it does today.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday January 19 2018, @08:21PM (2 children)
As we see with the developed vs undeveloped world now with the population boom lag/boom, would we see the same thing with working/basic? The less educated tend to have more kids, if the less educated are also on basic how long is the system sustainable? There will be a subsection of those born to households on basic that will want something more, but will it outweigh those who don't? Wondering your opinion on this.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 19 2018, @09:09PM (1 child)
I don't think there is a popular solution to population control. If the right to reproduce, early and often, can somehow be converted to a privilege... that would work. As you say, it is often those least capable of providing for children who have the largest number of them, so we have a sort of explosive control system problem: as long as everyone is wealthy/educated, then population seems like it will be naturally controlled, but... when you have a bunch of people who are poor and/or uneducated, then you have rapid population growth - which, given limited natural resources, seems like the road to greater poverty.
I find it, ironic?, that China continued to grow under their "one child" policy, clearly there were more exceptions than followers there, although they did at least manage to slow growth, so that's some measure of success. The disproportionate number of male children is, on the one hand fortunate for future population control, and on the other a kind of sad outcome for those extra men.
My sense of fair says something along the lines of: everybody is born with the right to father/mother one biological child of their own. If you remain on UBI your whole life, that's it. If you work for income, pay taxes, and provide enough tax to the system to cover a lifetime's UBI for another person, that should earn the right to have another child. This is kind of upside-down on the age thing... it would take a long time to "earn" that second child, and allowing people to "borrow" would lead to a lot of defaulters. I also think that it shouldn't be extendable to as many children as you can "earn" - probably should be some kind of growing scale, like 1 UBI for the 2nd child, 2 more UBIs for the 3rd, 4 more UBIs for the 4th, and that's it... I don't see the point in letting the trust fund babies of the world have 20+ children each.
This also only works on a global scale if we can somehow get past nationalism, international competition, etc. There's no way that one competitive country is going to voluntarily institute negative population growth while their competitors are still increasing in numbers.
It's not an easy problem, but if it gets any further out of hand than it already is, it's going to be very painful for those living through the natural correction.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @10:36PM
ironic?, that China continued to grow under their "one child" policy
Killing a parent once a baby was born wasn't part of the policy (drastic as it was).
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by arcz on Friday January 19 2018, @06:13PM (7 children)
Didin't I already say our current economic issues were a result of stakeholder capitalism? I did. Harvard, you needed a study to notice that? Open your damn eyes.
Stakeholder capitalism is a corrupt form of capitalism as opposed to entrepenurial capitalism (the older form.)
In stakeholder capitalism:
* Coporations can own other corporations, buy them, etc.
* People own stock in coporations, and trade them like gold.
These are both BAD things. We should get rid of them. All the problems with consolidation will disappear when corporations can't buy eachother. When corporations act on behalf of the public/small number of owners and not large numbers of stakeholders we will return to a more sane market.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @06:49PM
The stock market is simply the most legit scam yet invented, but it is still a scam.
Money is an artificial construct to facilitate human interactions. We have lost sight of that basic premise and now pursue money for it's own sake, with massive amounts of human activity serving no practical purpose. Massive inefficiency driven by greed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 19 2018, @07:58PM (2 children)
Something I observed about "stakeholder capitalism" from the perspective of the semi-retired day trader. These people who, by skill or luck (usually a bit of both), have managed to provide all the money they need for themselves and whoever they care about, for life, do tend to stay engaged with the world while they gamble in the stock market to attempt to increase their already sufficient wealth. News, quarterly reports, etc. all are of interest to them because it helps them to make better bets when buying and selling stocks. Most won't rise to the level of attending shareholder meetings or trying to actively direct the companies they invest in (though a rare few do), but without that motivation for engagement, these people could very easily just drop out of society altogether, have groceries delivered to the house and devolve into non-social organisms, probably dramatically increasing their propensity for sociopathic actions. And, when you have bored sociopaths with above average access to resources / self sufficiency / isolation - they can do things like mail exploding letters to their perceived enemies, or plan and execute hijacking of passenger planes for kamakazi bombing of symbolic buildings.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by arcz on Sunday January 21 2018, @08:09PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 21 2018, @09:22PM
Unfortunately, the structures of modern society (cheap global transportation, communication, etc.) favor large companies... just saying "small businesses are better" isn't going to change that landscape. There needs to be a workable model to keep large corporations accountable, ethical, and beneficial to society at large, not just their shareholders.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2018, @11:12AM (2 children)
There's no need for Capitalism (employees) at all.
It sounds like you are saying "Have a system where all of the owners are The Workers".
You can do that without Capitalism (non-worker stockholders; non-owner employees).
The mechanism is the worker-owned cooperative AKA Socialism.
Mondragon has been doing it since 1956.
They've grown from 6 worker-owners to over 100,000 worker-owners in 40 countries on 5 continents.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by arcz on Sunday January 21 2018, @08:12PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @01:24AM
Here's Socialism:
The collective ownership of the means of production by The Workers.
If you want to take it a step farther, where everybody owns everything, that's Communism.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 19 2018, @07:56PM
I'm guessing another cause, the ease of copying, is a major contributer to this employment situation. Such as, WalMart saved a lot on architecture expenses by making many of their bricks and mortar buildings the same.
Most corporate programming really is re-engineering the wheel. New algorithms are relatively rare. Instead, much work is hastily patching the major flaws in the horrendously rushed hack job the previous group was forced to bang out, removing hardcoded assumptions to increase flexibility and robustness or adapting the hardcoded data to changing circumstances, or porting the whole mess to the next version of whatever system it runs on, or to a whole new system. Even when designing a new program, such as a new video game, a lot of the work is very tedious. When it's not tedious, there are umpteen tedious ways to do something, and often we have to resort to those because the programming language and libraries are simply too limited. Despite decades of effort, code is way less portable than it could be.
But code is still portable enough that a lot remains useful for decades. Employers want to have it both ways. Pay programmers, artists, and scientists under a "work for hire" one shot arrangement, but collect revenue on a per copy basis under copyright. We'll never have a resolution of this issue until we come to grips with real and artificial scarcity. Rather than bitch and complain about the lack of jobs, I prefer the music of the greedsters howling about piracy and digital "theft" that they can do nothing about. In an ideal world, they should have no grounds to complain about copying.