> the vast majority of people, lacking meaningful capital, can only secure income by selling their time and labor
It's just time and it's the only things humans value. The only way to provide value for another person is to use your time to do something faster than they could do it with their time. That's it. There is no other way to secure income outside of inheritance or charity which is just receiving something of value without giving something of value. There's a reason why most of the income goes to older people, because the younger people haven't accumulated that much time to exchange for money. The nice thing about time is that everyone earns it at the same rate, 1 second per second.
Capital can be a lot of things, not just machines and property. Any experience you have is capital, any training is capital, any education is capital. Capital is anything makes accomplishing things take less time.
The difference between socialism and capitalism is the idea that one person's time can have different value. That's really it.
> I am not cynical enough to believe that Anthropic's warnings are pure marketing hype.
It doesn't really have to be dishonest, he could really believe it. I do believe, however, that it is incredibly wrong and is functioning as marketing hype.
> The fact that without that exemption, gun manufacturers would be liable for all manner of things.
I get why one would think that but I don't think it's actually true. I think the "exception" is actually there because they'll be sued into bankruptcy even though they'd likely win the lawsuits.
It's not actually an exemption, it's preventing lawfare.
You're comparing the sum of those European countries to the US.
Scientists have two easy avenues if they are currently in the US, the US or their home country. Immigration to work in a foreign nation is not always easy and takes time.
Likewise, immigration to work in the US is "is not always easy and takes time." There's no difference; if you disallow immigration to other countries at all "because it's not easy", then there's no point in discussing where scientists won't go - you believe they won't ever move, no matter what.
You’re straw-manning your own misconception of the reason for inclusivity, not the reason I gave.
Inspiring specific groups to follow a career path by showing them people on that path is “representation” not inclusivity. Representation matters because it’s easier (not impossible, as you suggest the argument is) to see yourself e.g. as a nurse or a teacher if you have seen male nurses or teachers succeeding.
Representation matters, but not nearly as much as the opposite side of things - who gets opportunities. Which is what I was talking about.
Btw one of the major groups that have benefitted from the dreaded “DEI” in universities has been white men. They are an under-represented group in many post-secondary settings.
> Representation matters, but not nearly as much as the opposite side of things - who gets opportunities.
You're acting like these things aren't intertwined.
You can't adjust the lever of representation without affecting who gets opportunities.
You can believe what you want about the merits of adjusting those levers but to pretend like you can limit your pool of people to a smaller group of people and not affect the apex of the talent pool is disengenous. Be honest and say you think it's worth it.
> You can't adjust the lever of representation without affecting who gets opportunities.
For sure they are intertwined. More inclusion = more representation, and vice versa. But you’re saying representation is pointless because people can enter fields they don’t see themselves represented in and I am saying i think representation is a (positive) side effect not the goal. You can argue that it’s pointless all you want but idgaf because to me it’s a side effect.
> limit your pool of people to a smaller group of people and not affect the apex of the talent pool is disengenous
I agree. Limiting your pool is a bad idea. That’s literally why inclusivity is a good thing. Because people self-limit the pool to people who look like them, and because other societal barriers limit the pool by excluding people. Actively acting to include people broadens the pool, it doesn’t limit it.
If you think on the scale of an individual hire or grant, i guess i can see how it would seem like limiting the pool - but zoom out like two steps and you’d see that’s not true.
> But you’re saying representation is pointless because people can enter fields they don’t see themselves represented in and I am saying i think representation is a (positive) side effect not the goal.
What I actually think that I haven't said is that "representation" is a self defeating idea that encourages people to view themselves as different.
> I agree. Limiting your pool is a bad idea. That’s literally why inclusivity is a good thing. Because people self-limit the pool to people who look like them, and because other societal barriers limit the pool by excluding people. Actively acting to include people broadens the pool, it doesn’t limit it.
That's true, however, when the high end of the pool all looks a certain way because of systemic issues then the team built will tend to look that way and not be inclusive.
Thise creating the team could have the best of intentions the outcome could very likely be the same as if they were discriminatory.
People feel social and sometimes legal pressure to make sure it looks like they aren't discriminatory so, when they are choosing that last (few) member, they'll limit the pool of possibilities.
The other half of what you said is logical though, that inclusion probably leads to a more diverse future but at the cost of the present. The cost of the present is the part you're pretending doesn't exist.
> If you think on the scale of an individual hire or grant, i guess i can see how it would seem like limiting the pool - but zoom out like two steps and you’d see that’s not true.
> The other half of what you said is logical though, that inclusion probably leads to a more diverse future but at the cost of the present.
I didn’t say that. Idk what comment you read that said that, but it wasn’t mine.
> The cost of the present is the part you're pretending doesn't exist.
Even if there was a cost to the productivity of the present - a better present isn’t one where we’re the most “productive” or efficient - it’s one where the most people are able to grasp a good and fair life.
The point is that each hire is an individual decision.
If I were painting a picture I might use a lot of different colors but if you ask me to pick my favorite color 5000 times, I'll say the same color 5000 times.
exactly - if you loose sight of the big picture and only see the individual events, it’s easy to turn a personal bias into a systemic bias. The screen is a wash of blue, and the image is lost.
> but also improve the final product by not having underpaid stressed staff with high turn-over.
We'll see. It's not like police unions are making life better for citizens.
Unions are there for one reason, the union members. This will most likely be good for the employees and good on them for acting in their best interest but it seems just as likely that a unionized rockstar is negative for the consumer in either increased pricea, extended timelines or minimum effort to meet exact requirements from employees.
The benefits that workers gain from unionizing come from somewhere.
I would happily pay extra money for GTA 6 if it goes to improving working conditions. It's only negative for the consumer if the consumer views life as a zero sum game.
I agree with you, but I think most people don't. People generally hate paying for software and the $60->$70 standard AAA game pricing got a lot of people (my well paid friends included) complaining. Even if it was very clearly said that it is the cost of a well paid and respected team behind the game, I think most people won't care.
That's fine though. The value of unions is that they can force consumers to pay for better working conditions and prevent a race to the bottom.
Consumers usually are workers themselves so they also benefit from raising the bar of working conditions. Even if they don't like paying more, they are still receiving the benefit of living in a better society.
I completely agree with you, but I have found that the average person I've talked to about things like this refuses to look past the first thing they see, which is higher prices. If everything could go up and not just have people switch to the next lowest cost good with bad worker conditions, then that could work.
I'd argue GTA 6 is an inelastic good and people will play it no matter what, so I do think what you're saying applies here.
Anti-unionists are here to tell us that consumers might possibly suffer. Higher prices and delays on a video game. Which has not seen a release in this series in half this century so far.
For all this consumer cares, great. Make it 20% more expensive. Make it 50% more expensive. A hundred. If that helps the greater union cause I can take more walks in the woods to pass the time instead.
Well, given that computer games are not essential goods, most people could survive perfectly well without these so-called luxuries. Or is it only fairly produced luxury goods that are considered a luxury, while exploitatively produced luxury goods are simply treated as the standard way people live?
In other words: people are entitled to cheap entertainment, but the people who labor to produce that entertainment aren’t entitled to good working conditions. Boo
It's extremely dishonest to frame it as "if workers get good working conditions then consumers suffer". The reality is that Rockstar is extremely profitable. The crunch they impose on their devs with every single release shouldn't be tolerated, and I stand in full support of the unionized workers.
And if a product requires human suffering to be so cheap, then maybe it shouldn't be so cheap.
Most people haven’t had the luxury of playing a new GTA game in 13 years either. Jesus Christ, I need to spell out that it’s a video game and not some life necessity? The usual anti-union scaremongering is about families being delayed for their vacations because airport workers want rights, but this is even more optional.
I don’t buy the premise of workers ruining the lives of consumers; I think the real problem is them ruining the relative profits of shareholders.[1] But F me, I’m not gonna buy this privilege checking over a crime sandbox video game.
[1] This user in another subthread[2] is complaining that people are antagonistic against management. Of course, whatever is most expedient for anti-unionism, everything from woe-is-poor-person to you-need-management-you-peons.
I do a personal stock buy back which applies upward pressure to the stock price. I don't organize to suppress wages due to wanting to avoid the secondary effects of driving away good talent.
Doesn't sound like the talent is very good if they are not so mission-driven to donate their wages to shareholders.
You want to surround yourself with peers who negotiate for as high pay as the market will bear? That sounds like a sacrifice of shareholder value for selfish cause. Just because workers have leverage doesn't mean they should use it against shareholders.
Look at the big picture. Most consumers work somewhere. Better working conditions across the board can only be good for consumers.
Edit: and a note to say that comparing all unions to police unions isn’t a good faith/useful comparison. It’s true that the quality of unions vary, but overall they do far more good than bad.
> It's not like police unions are making life better for citizens.
which is precisely why many union advocates argue that police should not have unions. the police exist as the physical arm of the capital class in direct opposition to the labor class. they are class traitors. police unions are not the same.
Notably, American police (the country that invented police unions) are a modern invention that largely exist as a output of slave catching and bounty hunting services.
The police union in my city, in a state that borders Canada and fought against slavery, was founded in 1915. I'm guessing they would be surprised to learn that they are a "modern invention" that was from "slave catching" (I guess they do time travel?) and "bounty hunting services". I'm not even sure how you can say something is both a "modern invention" and the "output of slave catching". There's nothing modern about them and being the "output of slave catching" makes them definitionally not "modern".
Police unions act just like every other union does: in the interests of their members.
Unions are illegal in lots of the world. Federal public sector unions weren't legal in the US until the 1960s. Did the fact that they were illegal in 1965 have any bearing on whether or not they should be allowed? Does the fact that something is illegal in the US have any bearing on whether or not Japan should allow it?
This is a just so story that is trivially and obviously false and I don’t understand why it continues to persist. Paid public police forces in the US appear as early as the 1600s in Boston. The first what we might consider modern police departments were formed in the urban hubs of 1800s America where immigration tensions and the general increases in crime you expect when putting a lot of unconnected people into a concentrated area were driving factors for changes to what laws were made and how they were enforced. And those were modeled off the London police forces, themselves guided in large part by Robert Peele’s principles of policing.
Slave patrols were a form of early organized policing, but only one of many and hardly the first. And certainly this isn’t to say that racial tensions didn’t drive various forms of law enforcement. But this idea that police in general and American Police in particular are some direct descendant of salve patrols or wouldn’t exist without the institution of slavery ignores so much of human history and the long history of organized forms of law enforcement that predates the American colonies.
> formed in the urban hubs of 1800s America where immigration tensions and the general increases in crime you expect when putting a lot of unconnected people into a concentrated area were driving factors for changes to what laws were made and how they were enforced
This is a dog whistle if I’ve ever seen one. I’m not going to let that slide and your citations are not supportive of the strength of your claim
How is it a dog whistle? What words would you like to put into my mouth?
Are you suggesting that “urban hubs” and “immigration tension” are code words for “black people” and “slavery”? Because I regret to inform you that when New York City established the first US police department in 1845 (per britanica) the “immigration tension” at the time would have been the influx of Irish immigrants. And while Cincinnati had indeed had a white on black race riot in 1841, when it established its own police department in 1852 the anti-catholic / anti-German immigrant riots in 1853 and 1855 were the more contemporary “immigration tensions” I was referring to. Boston too when it founded its police department in 1854 was in the middle of a surge of Irish immigrants. Certainly these northern state city centers weren’t simply giving uniforms and badges to “slave patrols” when they founded their police forces, regardless of what other racial tensions may or may not have played a hand in the demands for a police force.
All of which is to say if you recall your American history, we have a long and storied tradition of hating on our immigrant populations and having conflicts with them. Yes white vs black was a problem at the time. And so was “white vs Irish” and “white vs German”. Our history is littered with racial tensions across just about every set of ethnic lines you could care to draw.
I'd really like to know what kind of tangled logic it requires to believe that.
Regardless, police unions aren't the only example of unions who have worked against the benefit of everyone else but themselves. I only used them as an example because I didn't think anyone here would argue disagree that it's had negative outcomes.
What I didn't expect was to find someone arguing that a union wasn't a union. It doesn't matter if it's legal in other places, it's legal in the US. Just because Japan has made police _unions_ illegal doesn't make an US police _union_ not a union.
It's just time and it's the only things humans value. The only way to provide value for another person is to use your time to do something faster than they could do it with their time. That's it. There is no other way to secure income outside of inheritance or charity which is just receiving something of value without giving something of value. There's a reason why most of the income goes to older people, because the younger people haven't accumulated that much time to exchange for money. The nice thing about time is that everyone earns it at the same rate, 1 second per second.
Capital can be a lot of things, not just machines and property. Any experience you have is capital, any training is capital, any education is capital. Capital is anything makes accomplishing things take less time.
The difference between socialism and capitalism is the idea that one person's time can have different value. That's really it.
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