There are countless counter examples that are obvious. Teacher's unions (hard to fire teachers, poor quality). Transit unions (mandating 2 drivers per subway car, crazy benefits, etc). Auto industry fighting EVs.
Sorry, it just doesn't make any sense to make such a broad statement regarding this at all.
A union's job is to protect the union. Nothing else.
That is an entirely different argument that's not particularly germane to this topic. One can agree that unions, in the past, have helped workers, and also understand that they are not always in the best interest of the general public. It's complex, but possible!
No, that is not a “complex” position at all. On the contrary, it’s a fairly simple position where you take no strong stance but still want to claim the positive aspects from each side.
Are unions universally good? No, because humans are in the loop, and humans can do bad things.
Does that change the fact that the concept of a union is one of the greatest innovations in all of human history? No.
Can unions today help disparate human workers collectively improve their working conditions? Yes, because this is what unions were designed for, and I think is the key outcome the Rockstar folks are betting on.
For a recent example, read up on the Samsung union bargaining for company wide bonuses in the wake of the huge profits made off the surge in demand for memory.
The Samsung deal is exactly what I'm talking about. It is not all entirely good. Everyone at Samsung not working in chips got screwed. And those lucky few union members used their power to extract an unfair amount of money from the company. This will cause the company to lean towards other avenues in the future, potentially harming everyone else.
Why are those people getting a huge check? Not because they worked harder. Because AI came along and made their product more valuable.
> But a smaller union associated with workers in the consumer electronics division — which boycotted the negotiations and whose 15,000 members were excluded from the vote — accused the lead union of neglecting their interests, and decried the deal as “discriminatory.” Under the agreement, workers in the consumer electronics division are expected to get payouts that are a fraction of those of their semiconductor division peers.
And how exactly is this situation worse than the unfair allocation of salaries and bonuses in companies today? Even within the same company, people can get paid more based on the org/division they work in (e.g. core AI teams), or even based on their (team or individual) perceived value to higher ups.
At least with the Samsung union, the decision is being made bottom up vs. top down.
"Are unions net benefit for the general public" and "whether reforming or abolishing the unions is the best course of action for the general public" are two separate questions. The unions could be beneficial (and still a reform could improve this benefit) or they could be harmful (but a reform could make them beneficial without abolishing them). The original claim was they are beneficial right now, in heir current form, but no actual proof had been provided.
> This is a great example of how unions can really work for their members.
I think this is way different claim than "unions work for the society". Surely, there are a lot of organizations that work very well for their members. Not all of them are beneficial for the society though (criminal gangs aren't, for example). In your third link, there is a power struggle between two sets of people - movie studios and writers. One of them has achieved transferring some money from the other, using the power of unions. But how is it good for the rest of the public? Unclear.
The case in Vox starts with "I liked the union" (the same claim as above) and doesn't get more convincing as it goes. The best the author can do is "When you stack up all the research and look at the broader picture, though, the net effect of unions — bad examples included — is good for the typical worker.". But that, again, is not the question we started with - I am not arguing that the union can be good for those who get more money from the deal. I want to see proof it's also good for those who don't. And the best is something like "reduces income inequality" - which frankly is a very weak evidence, since obviously absolute inequality is bad, and absolute equality is bad, but there are a lot of gray in the middle, and how do we know whether a particular union makes us closer to the good side than to the bad side?
Do you think Vox has ever written about how transit unions increase costs by mandating redundant workers and work against technology that could automate trains?
Do you think Box has ever written about how Detroit unions fought EVs and AVs and automation that could result in cheaper cars?
You say that as if those things have always required money. People had all of those things for hundreds of thousands of years before money was invented.
In the US economy and much of the rest of the world, money is decreasingly tied to the time or resources of people. It is increasingly tied to the money, market capture, and regulatory capture of corporations that specialize in finance rather than producing goods.
but what's the difference between 'productive' and 'extractive'? Clearing huge swaths of land for agriculture is highly productive, in terms of making crops. Likewise irrigating huge swaths of arid land for agriculture is also highly productive. Are those 'extractive' or not?
The original turning the none used resource into a productive resource (your eg clearing land, irrigation etc etc) is productive.
Big land owners / PE / ... cornering all the available agricultural land / needed supply chain / economies of scale etc etc to extract more and more value of Scarce resource that has already been optimized is extractive.
The thing is that the word extractive makes it hard to have a good debate because pure extraction is rare (aka no need to add any extra labor to have the possesed "good" maintain or exceed its value vs inflation...
Personally in general I would prefer more usage of the word rent seeking (aka legally and finite resource captured market) and others.
As the current biggest problem in most countries in the world is housing and its cost for those who are renting and without any (realistic / statistical...) hope of ever entering the owners side that seems like something worth talking / voting for.
(I can get my beef from brazil / australia / ... But i can't get my land from there while living here.)
Your argument is just one of perspective. From my view, clearing of land & irrigation is one of the greatest disasters of modernity. Extracting everything from land and rendering it barren and featureless. We traded biodiversity and ecosystems for increased food production. All to support a population of humans that is nowhere near any kind of population threat level. On the opposite exactly, human population has risen to levels unimaginable.
Your remaining arguments are endless handwaving and use of 'etc' so I won't be responding to those.
Well state that you care about animal and nature wellfare right after your own welfare and before other humans welfare ? Or just add that to the original post would help clarity - would make everything comm wise easier.
(there's a 1% chance that I'm wrong here - please accept my apologies if you're a vegetarian, sub 30m²/person living in an apartment not using cars / ubers and intentionally living near public transport - or the closest equivalent available to you / your families financial status as of this moment, you are also donating at least 6% of your money to buying up farmland to convert it to pristine wilderness --- i am definitely not but my order is me - friends family - other humans - a more beautiful planet for the most of those other humans)
But yeah, personally I'd gladly make beef that are feed lot fed a lot more expensive with every house hold getting a check in advance for what would be a fair share of beef for all... Make it so only american beef is allowed (american farmers are happy) and make it a slightly diminishing amount every couple of years as farmers age out... It would be slow but the value of beef would massively increase and i think a lot ot poorer people (and myself) would put my money where my mouth is)
You'd also have to ban the export/import of feed for cattle fattening and presto - 10% or land available for none extractive uses...
In the same way that delmonte closing canned peaches results in a vast monoculture being cut down and that right now with the right externalities / support "human focused demand" you could be setting up / buying some of it up and paying rent every year to keep it pristine ~ or a bigger a one off payment...
Anyway, again - noone states their values and most people think their values are duh and only dumbasses would disagree - hence why only conversation especially in a thread of a story tends to be rather difficult as everyone tries to defend their pov without stating it or dio mio asking the other person why (which would have been a better option from my part as well but again medium/message etc.
Looking forward to your reply and have a great day wherever you are. I'm off to zzz
Let’s try to keep productive and extractive to their economic meanings, and not talk about the exploitative practices with natural resources for a moment.
A farmer puts products that people buy into the marketplace. Many actors in the financial sector make their money by micro-timing trades in securities and commodities markets that are already liquid enough they don’t need the additional activity. Others buy up stock of housing just to control enough to raise the prices. They are literally just taking other people’s money out of the economy for their own gain, and the economy does not function any better due to their activity. In fact, when housing is overly tight the economy suffers.
You need to question whether you really need to have the conversation in those terms. A conversation about religion/theology is not like a conversation about physics or math. If you insist on applying scientific rigor to matters of faith, you are and will remain fully confused.
I bet if you observe your own mind for long enough, you'll find some part of your life which requires you to have faith too. Use that to understand your friends and family better. The next time you find yourself in a conversation with them about religion, ask them about their faith (not their religion). You will gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how they navigate the world.
If you can have that conversation, go ahead and ask them about their religious beliefs, withholding judgement unless/until they say something morally objectionable. You can think of their religion like any other mythology, and you get to play sociologist for a while. There's a fascinating variety of responses people give to even fundamental questions - e.g. "what is god?".
This open approach is not only much easier for everyone, it's also more useful in the long term. My neighbor has an interesting mashup of beliefs that includes a decent chunk of Christianity. She sometimes has bad anxiety, and unfortunately she can't afford treatment for it. I've helped her out of panic attacks using two methods: 1 - I've given her a clonazepam tablet and 2 - I've quoted scripture to her (e.g. "behold the lilies of the field"). Both methods work, and the latter tends to work faster.
It's different if the person is using their religion as a cover for engaging in or supporting something morally evil. That's a trickier conversation and often one not really worth having, depending on your relationship and how comfortable/willing you are to attempt to correct them.
I doubt they're serious but some wackos thought Oumuamua was an alien probe due to its unusual shape, and since this new interstellar object is arriving shortly after Oumuamua has left it must be the mothership.
I feel like it's more of a meme than a serious thing for most people.
I am getting bombarded with yt videos about this object being half the size of the sun passing our system with the planets aligned in a 0.01% chance perfect geometry etc etc. millions of views. It's incredible what people believe these days. Not a grain of skepticism.
I think the number of wacky believers hasn't changed that much. It's just that now the countless outlets and algorithms venting this nonsense have ballooned to galactic proportions! My dad used to buy these 70/80s UFO magazines back in the day and they were just as nutty.
Do all of the views necessarily translate 1:1 to the number of people that believe it? Some people watch just to see what kooky nonsense people are falling for.
There are many more rocks in our own solar system than there are interstellar spacecraft. Assuming similar proportions elsewhere makes us conclude it’s never aliens.
I didn't hate the rest. it gave me an interest in robots and nanotech. I even did a summer project on baking nanotubes and taking their pictures with an electron microscope as a result.
Under $100... by what measure? I'm going to Japan soon and was planning on shipping a bunch of clothes, books, etc to myself. I'm not going to sell any of it, I just want to send a bunch of stuff back without having to deal with checking another bag. So as far as I'm concerned, there's no dollar value. I'm buying stuff in Yen for my own personal use...
But I suppose I'll just check a bag or use a different carrier...
Declared value. When you ship, they ask you to list the items you're shipping, and what they are worth. These go on the customs forms. Boxes can be opened and inspected, so lying is a gamble, but there's obviously a lot of wiggle room here.
The changes are to the commercial de minimis rule, so AFAIK, the personal $800 exemption when you bring something with you still applies, and you might not have anything to worry about at all. Also, when you declare something as "American goods returned", they are not subject to either de minimis rule, even if you send them by mail.
Things you purchased outside the US could qualify as well, if you can prove that you owned them for more than a year while living abroad. But realistically, nobody is going to make a federal case about a box full of old books and underwear...a box full of Louis Vuitton bags and Moncler jackets with tags, on the other hand...
> Wouldn't it be cool if there was an app that would interrupt what the user was doing
It seems like this sort of idea is extremely common, considering how many websites love preventing me from viewing their content by slapping multiple modals asking me to sign up for a newsletter and/or to get my permission to be tracked using cookies.
It also shows up in native apps, in the form of some prompt asking the user if they are enjoying the app. NO! I do not enjoy being funneled into an App Store review or any similar bullshit. If I like using the app, I'll use it. If I don't, I won't. Stop asking me!
I build websites for a living and I'm constantly battling requests to infect our sites with these god-awful modals. It's like sitting down at a restaurant, being handed a menu, only to have the menu taken away seconds later and being asked if you'll return in the future. Not only is it rude, it's the wrong time to ask the question. Let me read the damn article or whatever, and when I'm done, if there's a newsletter form, MAYBE I'll sign up. Let me eat my meal, and if I enjoy it I'll think about returning.
The only truly worrying part of the EO for me is the "The heads of all agencies shall identify and terminate, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, any direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS."
Some of the most interesting work we've done has been almost completely funded by the Department of Education.
The station I work for has many sources of revenue but I suspect this will harm some smaller stations.
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