Yes because of the fear that a business will put itself at a disadvantage by having to answer to its employees. Which it will.
6,006 karma · joined August 19, 2014
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We fight for unions on the basis that absent better labor laws the corporation requires an adversary to keep it from exploiting workers. It's hypocritical to insist upon a union and then get mad about a lack of corporate generosity.
I think the ultimate solution is a economic system which fundamentally recognizes that workers are involved with enterprise and deserve an ownership and some power stake in it. That might create the opportunity for this relationship to become one that is more cooperative.
At least that way the struggle might get a little less existential as every corporation would be on an even footing. I think a good portion of corporate resistance to unionization is about fearing they will have to compete with an un-unionized company.
Exactly. Tradition was this mechanism by which society factory-ized itself. Changes were disruptive because it affected something as simple as another person's ability to repair the "innovated" item. I think people are instinctually sceptical of change because it's deeply ingrained in the evolution of human culture to understand that change can break the socially distributed factory.
Resistance to change is more complicated than this of course. I don't want to get too evolutionary-psychological about it. I think Darwin has a tendency to bring that out in us moderns. Never discount the incredible power that culture has to become self activated and shape human behavior even against our benefit sometimes.
We take for granted that invention is a clear isolated concept. But previous to the modern age, invention was intertwined with tradition. Creating a society which could even adopt tent life involved developing traditions around how the tent was made, who made it, how it was maintained and how it was passed on. Each new invention and small innovation to the tent had to be integrated through tradition, adopted over generations and in this way mass tested.
What it takes to develop the ability to mass produce a specialized, portable system of shelter without the concept of engineering is thousands of years of tradition. But eventually you end up with this specialized invention, highly attuned to a way of life. Yet to us it is deceptively simple.
> This depends on your definition of the term "works".
I think for a lot of governments and policy makers the goal is to significantly reduce.
By your definition, literally every human intervention in history, prohibitory or otherwise has not "worked".
But it is a myth that "it doesn't work". Prohibition works in that it reduces consumption of or participation in the prohibited thing.
It's a popular historical myth that prohibition of alcohol didn't work in the U.S. It did. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w3675/w3675...
The War On Drugs is a terrible example because it went way beyond prohibition. The War On Drugs was politically entangled in immigration, US interests in foreign regimes, human trafficking, and on. You don't have to quasi-invade other countries to prohibit drugs at home. That's a policy choice influenced by many other prejudices and distortions.
Prohibition works. It's another question entirely whether it is just, whether it can be conducted while respecting human rights and whether it is worth the unintended consequences.
This depends on your definition of the term "works". Prohibition of many things has had a profound effect on the shape of human society. Prohibitions on religion for example, such as the repression of the Huguenots in France and of Christianity in Japan prevented the development of Protestantism and Catholicism in those countries respectively.
Prohibition and censorship of revolutionary materials and correspondence societies in 19th century Europe absolutely slowed down the process of democratization and popular reform there.
Even just in personal experience, it's much easier to get weed since it is no longer prohibited. You used to need "a source" which you had to work out in each new town or city you moved to. Then there were limits on what those people could get you.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_One_Christian_Ministries
Yes. Literally every one of those was very popular when it was passed. The National Health in particular continues to be popular.
The EPA was passed under Nixon and he did not veto it because the feeling that the need for it was so widespread that he didn't dare.
2) In a democracy, you get the policies you want through organization and direct action.
Maybe I'm somehow entirely missing your point.
America started as an elitest Republic. Slowly, variable #1 grew and shrank in fits in starts but variable #2 changed very little. Until we get to the 1930s and then variable #2 explodes wide open. Then in 1960s variable #1 breaks wide open as well.
By the 70s we are probably at the high point of both. Since then #1 has significantly eroded. And now with the court punches at the voting rights act #2 is now under threat as well.
I don't mean it in the usual internet guy sense. I don't see America as having a pure past. I believe America was an elitest Republic with very slow steps towards democracy. To me America only turned the corner towards becoming a democracy in the 1930s. It was a bumpy up and down from there with a slump in the last 40 years.
Policy makers spent a huge amount of time creating a framework for them. Specifically there was a huge debate about whether they should be under the direct control of the military. The careful decision to place them in civilian control under the Department of Energy is probably part of the reason they haven't been unleashed since.
It's nice if people are nice but it is not a bulwark of the collective good. It is a temporary social convenience. The higher that niceness exists in the social order, the greater its contemporary benefit but also, the more it masks the vulnerability of that social benefit.
It matters if Sam Altman is Ghandi or Genghis Khan in a concrete way but you, as a citizen must act as if it doesn't matter.
If AI poses a danger to the social good, no amount of good guy CEOs will protect us. The only thing that will is organization and direct action.
> Their work was a matter of subsistence and necessity; it was not a race for status or an existential search for meaning.
As far as I can tell, this cannot be farther from the truth. Pre-industrial people explicitly found existential meaning in their labor.
Their culture, religion and traditions enveloped every aspect of life. Their spiritual frameworks provided direction on everything like how to milk a cow, how to prepare meals, whom to marry and how to raise children.
Milking a cow and raising a child were responsibilities conveyed by a celestial benefactor. The proper execution of both paid praise and showed thankfulness to that benefactor. In this way labor was suffused with meaning.
Humans lost this for sure. This is partly why labor strife was so intense during the industrial era. People were not just stripped of their standard of living but also of a huge part of their ability to structure the world around them. Without a labor environment suffused with meaning they became desperate. It took their agency and dignity. The Luddites for example were driven more by disdain for the subservience the factory system creates than by a fear of total displacement.
This kind of modernist/progressive thinking towards history is probably the worst thing people take away from high school and undergrad history courses. It's so misleading and it creates this psychic barrier that most people never break down.
I think most of the time though, someone who appears incompetent is suffering from one of three things.
1) They are being tasked with things that simply don't align with their talents. For example, there are certain tasks which are just very mathy. You can pass college calculus and still suck pretty bad at lots of math. This is a case where someone else should be doing this task.
2) They are being tasked with problems which are out of their present ability to breakdown and solve. Essentially, they haven't learned to be an engineer.
3) They have a skills gap (as mentioned in the article they need to get better with a specific tool).
I think the thing that happens by far the most with people who get managed out is that they are a #2 but people try to help them as if they are a #3.
I have been in a situation many times where I have seen other leads giving tasks to their junior engineers and then getting frustrated when their subordinates don't make progress. They try to help by pointing them to tutorials, docs, etc. but what these people often need is someone to sit with them for a significant amount of time and demonstrate how one breaks a problem down, builds small pieces that demonstrate functionality and then put those pieces together into a solution.
This is expensive because it takes time. And it takes time from some of the most skilled people on the team. As often as I have seen people fail a team, I've seen teams fail people. A Pluralsight subscription is not a substitute for mentorship. Talking about networking and career planning is not mentorship (yes I believe it is important too).
Despite that anxiety, they keep turning up. I keep finding them. I think this is because the bottom line is that most companies don't care about a degree. For some jobs yes but for most positions, they care about where you worked last, what you did and what was the impact.
I feel you. The employment anxiety has been killer. I dropped some pounds not eating for about a week myself. Medical bills and broken down cars still haunt my dreams. But try to remember that you are so far ahead of most people it's almost a laugh. Because 4 years can get you a degree but it takes a life to be where you are. Disciplined to grow your own food, humble to work any job to get by, unattached to material posessions enough to let go of your home rather than let it sink you (look how many made this mistake in 2008) that is resilience.
You really are in a good place. It's corny but the biggest thing you need is to believe in the fact that you belong in this business and that there will be a next job.
Bought to you by the Supreme Court's 1980s pivot towards "standing" weaselry. A right without a remedy is somehow still a right. That and $5.50 will get you an express bus into Seattle.
But when we read the speeches of the Luddite leaders, more than anything else they talk about "liberty". Luddites spoke and wrote about the dangers to their liberty created by wage pressure from power looms. But much more, they spoke and wrote about the danger to their liberty posed by moving away from handloom weaving in homes and small shops towards weaving with power looms in a factory system.
What they resisted more than anything was the destruction of their autonomy, their subjection to abusive floor managers and the grinding dullness of repetitive machine labor.
Programmers have been facing this down already for some time. As full-stack engineering, excellent automation tools and powerful APIs have proliferated, we don't often get to go deep into some problem. Algorithmic design and development, which is a huge pleasure of mine has faded to the background of gaining a shallow understanding of many technologies, plumbing them and futsing with their numerous configurations. AI is already accelerating this for my work and I am struggling to find it not dismal. It is no surprise that now that the tools exist to comoditize art, the work is following a similar trajectory.
AI should be a unifying event for tech labor. Not to resist it entirely but to ensure in whatever future develops that we have some say in how work can remain enriching and dignified alongside the growth of these tools.