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Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

And why wouldn't they? It's time to bring back mechanisms, legal or otherwise, to prevent this from happening again. Usually the collective workforce of a company has significant leverage over a company, but with the advent of globalization, the "gig economy", and technological unemployment in some ways this leverage is harder to capitalize on, or even worse, nonexistent.

I don't know if there's any empirical proof for this, but like competition between companies, I think "competition" or tension between employees and employers for a given organization is also good for capitalism.

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Mechanisms legal or otherwise already exist. The problem is they "have no teeth" meaning the punishment is worth taking to get the benefit of the illegal action.

ie. Its illegal but worst case is we get fined 10% of what we will make anyway. Best case is we get away with it.

The other part is that they are not enforced due to the lack of resources to enforce them. Which again leads to the "have no teeth" since the laws are so broadly "interpreted" it can take years to pursue one case. This part is the hard part since it really is the crux of the problem and no one is working on it nor has any monetary incentive to do so.

There is not logically, morally, or non-exploitative business reason to have a non-compete for a minimum wage employee. Yet this case will probably drag out for at least 6 months if it is handled "expediently"

yeah that's what unions are really about - to think about the employees for the employees good, where HR thinks about them for the good of the company. implementations of that idea are of varying quality which unfortunately gives them a bad rep.

> implementations of that idea are of varying quality which unfortunately gives them a bad rep.

Also giving them a bad rep: propaganda efforts by big employers. Back when I worked for them, Walmart showed new hires a training video that could be summed up as "just say no to card checks; union organizers are trying to trick you into giving up your rights, and you don't need a union anyway because we value our associates so much".

Arguably, unions were so successful that people started asking "what do we need them for anymore?" It's shortsightedness that companies were/are all to happy to exploit.

Some of the reputation is deserved though. When I worked at UPS you were forced to join the Teamsters union and pay union dues. I don't have a problem with the unions in general, but I'm against forced membership.

I think this is emergent behavior rather than something with a malicious source. Profit seeking is one reason but it could also be to remain competitive.

There are so many people in China and India (and allover the world but these 2 have the largest populations) that are smarter, more creative, and much more driven than us in the US that it's inevitable that we regress towards the median.

Our lifestyles are maintained primarily through moats dug a long time ago. However technology continues it flattening rampage making each human equally valuable by unlocking more and more of their potential. What was gated physically and socially is not so anymore due to the ubiquity of computers and the internet.

Ironically it's the executives making these decisions by seeing the equality in all humans. It's not that they can't reduce their own salaries and bonuses but if there are willing and driven people, by denying them they are basically giving charity to the "middle class" that expects them to do so without a thanks. In this situation it's the middle class demanding more without seeing that they are actually asking for charity that results in a schism between the ideal and reality and all the dehumanization that comes with it.

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