Comment by solatic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solatic | Hacker News Reader

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> Tenants are already against landlords, that's how it works.

I'm sorry you feel that's an inevitability. There's the economic agreement, where it's mutually beneficial for the tenant to receive housing and the landlord to receive a rent check, and then there's civil relations. Better civil relations improve the economic agreements.

"Allowing workers to report their employers for labor violations is only deepening the social divide between labor and management."

Again, the social divide is not inevitable. There isn't even a clear line where someone switches from labor into management, and your sarcasm left out the divide between management and ownership/capital. The CEO of a Fortune 500 is not in the same position as the CEO of a struggling one-office startup who basically answers to her investors. Should early employees overlook small offenses committed by founders? With the emphasis on the caveat "small", absolutely yes. What matters more, true in general but especially in early stages, is trust.

If you cannot trust your leaders, start planning an exit. You are not doomed to spend your life working for only one employer in whom you have lost faith, and thus require the assistance of the law to protect you. Life is too short to force yourself to work for people like that.

> Again, the social divide is not inevitable.

Not inevitable, just the default and probably(?) the majority, in both the landlord case and the employer case.

> There isn't even a clear line where someone switches from labor into management, and your sarcasm left out the divide between management and ownership/capital.

I mean labor vs management in the union/labor-relations sense of the words, where the management is representing the interests of the owners.

> Should early employees overlook small offenses committed by founders? With the emphasis on the caveat "small", absolutely yes. What matters more, true in general but especially in early stages, is trust.

In the early stages of a company, I might be inclined to overlook things if I had equity, as is common in the industry. And there's a reason for that: my labor is creating profit partly for my own gain — so I'm not being exploited.

If a small-time landlords want their tenants to overlook issues that they can't reasonably fix, maybe they should be offering their tenants equity ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

> just the default and probably(?) the majority

One can decide whether to respond optimistically or pessimistically to that reality.

> union/labor-relations sense of the words

I disagree that unionization fundamentally sets interests of labor against their employer. Sure, sometimes they diverge, but happier labor is more productive. Having a channel to communicate common grievances, so they can be addressed, is a key ingredient for also making labor happier and improving profits.

> my labor is creating profit partly for my own gain — so I'm not being exploited

You're rationalizing. Without equity, you're still gaining - it's called your salary. You don't actually get equity in early stage companies; you get options on equity, and even if you decide to pay money to exercise those options, you have no vote in board elections, dividends are highly unlikely to ever be issued, and you cannot sell your shares unless a highly unlikely exit (which you have no control over) occurs.

> If a small-time landlords want their tenants to overlook issues that they can't reasonably fix, maybe they should be offering their tenants equity ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

A, not all landlords suck; it is possible to find a small-time landlord who cares about the property and finding a good tenant (my mother, who owns a studio apartment she inherited, happens to be one of them). If you don't like your landlord, you should consider moving. B, splitting equity in real estate amongst several / dozens of people is a really bad idea; since everyone gets a veto, the more people who get a say, the more unlikely it is to achieve consensus on anything from repairs to renovations to selling to a developer so that land which has a few housing units on it can have dozens or hundreds of housing units on it.

> I disagree that unionization fundamentally sets interests of labor against their employer.

lol I didn't say anything close to that.

> You don't actually get equity in early stage companies; you get options on equity

Depends on the company, but it's the same alignment of incentives either way.

> not all landlords suck

Only the sucky landlords should have an issue with this legislation.

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