I've taken pay cuts twice in my career, but both times it was at unfunded startups and it was more of a "we'll get you back for this later" (one did, one did not).
I worry that normalizing the idea that a company can make you an offer (that you can't refuse) of lower pay, with the alternative being that you get fired, would set some really bad precedents.
Companies would start to min/max this process and would use it as a way to meet targets (perhaps unrealistic ones) at the expense of take-home pay for employees, even in situations where they don't actually need to make cuts.
This. Companies will always min/max a system so they retain as much money as possible for as few hands as they can manage, always funneled upwards to executives and shareholders.
Rather than trying to “negotiate” with these entities, regulations should be wielded to stop min-maxing beyond a certain point or in bad faith, and firing people while turning a profit is 100% bad faith that should be regulated or barred.
“firing people while turning a profit is 100% bad faith that should be regulated or barred.”
That’s far too broad a claim. Just because you’re turning a profit doesn’t mean you should be locked into keeping all of your employees. Some are likely to be underperformers who don’t bring sufficient ROI compared to other investments/hires you could make.
My experience with these sorts of layoffs is that they are not tightly bound to performance. If you have underperformers you can fire them the ordinary way.
Exactly. How is it that an org suddenly discovered thousands of employees are under performers? And how is it that the number of under performers coincides with the number McKinsey and Co (or similar company) said it would be?
>Exactly. How is it that an org suddenly discovered thousands of employees are under performers?
The more correct statement is they suddenly cared about under performers. It's not any different than say, you noticing your grocery bills going up and as a result you cancel all the subscriptions you don't need. It's not like all those SaaS services' value propositions suddenly plummeted because the price of eggs went up, but now you suddenly have an eye for cutting costs.
At this point I would not be surprised if there isn't an "AI" tool that looks across employees by salary range, department earnings, seniority and age and just generates a list at a moments notice.
I was around for a desperate layoff at a small company in the early 2ks and got to watch as management basically ran around the office doing this logic in real time. Some people are get pulled in because they aren't high performing or they're unliked, but most was a simple expense/income calculation.
Literally this. Corporations are good at making up plausible excuses, but anyone who takes more than two seconds to evaluate their claims beyond face value will find they’re almost always complete bullshit.
Underperformers should be rotated out long before a mass layoff occurs. If your company isn’t axing them until a mass layoff, they’re doing bad business.
This, plus companies do different stuff. If eg. amazons streaming service fails, but normal sales of physical items surge and in total, compensate to make a profit, you can't really move streaming developers, marketers etc. to warehouse jobs.
Countries used to be overwhelmingly autocratic - often ruled by hereditary dictators called kings. People realized unchecked power will always lead to abuse and overthrew them.
Companies are overwhelmingly autocratic (cooperatives being exceedingly rare to the point most people don't know about their existence) - often rules by hereditary dictators called owners. But you can't legally overthrow them[0].
If only we had a system of rules we could vote on which would make this arrangement forbidden...
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[0]: You can't legally overthrow a government either but if you do it successfully anyway, then you are the government and you decide what is legal.
Ironically, no democratic countries I know of have clauses in their ruleset ("laws") which declare that people are allowed to overthrow the government if it's no longer democratic, even if those democratic governments were created by overthrowing a previous dictatorship.
The US kind of does in that at least in spirit if the government violates the constitution we have this 2nd Amendment and plenty of moral precedent from the founders. It’s in the Declaration of Independence too which, in my view, is just the first page of the Constitution. The 0th Amendment if you will.
Related to your second point about autocracy - I mean the good thing is you can, today, go start a company with the exact governance structure you propose and go compete in the market.
Nope, see various rebellions throughout history plus insurgencies and such.
It won’t work not because it wouldn’t work - you’re also assuming 100% military compliance and, as a veteran who served in active duty I can tell you not everyone agrees or disagrees with the current administration and people really do care about the Constitution, but it wouldn’t work because when you sit down and really think about it, the status quo for 90% of people is pretty good and they’re not going to take up arms over the vast majority of things a government does.
I always find this so funny. “Citizens have guns so they can overthrow a government that has tanks, helicopters, nuclear weapons, bunker busting bombs, etc”
Ok so the US military is going to drop a nuclear weapon on Dallas or Buffalo to stop insurgents? Why even bother writing something like that when you know it’s stupid?
Obviously governments have superior firepower and can and have quashed rebellions. But rebellions have been successful as well. Taking away arms from the people makes rebellion in the case of tyranny that much harder.
I don’t think it’s unfair to question whether such rights are worthwhile or not, but I do think it’s unfair to suggest that since the government has helicopters you can’t have a rebellion. They sure didn’t need any tanks or helicopters when the MAGA goons tried to hang Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi.
Not to mention the army is composed of people who, despite systematic indoctrination, can decide to switch sides.
However, this is a huge danger of ML ("AI"). It allows individuals to concentrate power. All real-world power comes from violence. Sufficiently advanced ML models allow individuals to profile subordinates and remove them before they rebel and (partially now but increasingly in the future) to control swarms of drones and robots.
Really good call out on the AI/ML. Now that is dangerous.
Also, as an army veteran who served on active duty including a tour in Iraq (not direct combat role, thankfully) I can tell you that in my experience you're spot on - the systematic indoctrination isn't to a political party but it's to the military and to defending the country and the Constitution. That's up to interpretation. The military has never been faced with resolving a constitutional crises so we really don't know how things would play out - but not every soldier is a rabid Trump supporter or something. Far from it. Very far from it.
Rebellions have been successful in underfunded countries with few resources. Can you actually come up with a scenario where a few yokels in the south running around the field playing militia could overthrow the US government?
And those people were all pardoned by the same President who cheered them and on and he was voted back into office. If Trump - who was still president then had wanted to call in the full force of government he could have.
Do you think they would have let thousands of minorities invade the capital?
Strange you linked to some random journal article describing the incident as "In 1985 police bombed the Philadelphia headquarters occupied by members of the black counterculture group MOVE.". The wikipedia article adds far needed context:
>The 1985 MOVE bombing, locally known by its date, May 13, 1985,[2] was the aerial bombing of a house, and the destruction of 61 more houses by the subsequent fire, in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, by the Philadelphia Police Department during an armed battle with MOVE, a black liberation organization. MOVE members shot at Philadelphia police who had come to evict them from the house they were using as their headquarters. Philadelphia police aviators then dropped two explosive devices from a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter onto the roof of the house, which was occupied at the time. For 90 minutes, the Philadelphia Police Department allowed the resulting fire to burn out of control, destroying 61 previously evacuated neighboring houses over two city blocks and leaving 250 people homeless.[3] Six adults and five children were killed in the attack;[4] two occupants of the house, one adult and one child, survived. A lawsuit in federal court found that the city used excessive force and violated constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.[5]
Furthermore it's a stretch to claim that some incident that killed 11 people is somehow expandable to nuking a whole city.
No, it’s the idea that no one cared. If San Francisco was bombed tomorrow, MAGA would celebrate and say “he owned the libs”. If the MOVE bombing had happened today, conservative media would dig up everything everyone who got killed did ave say they “deserved it”.
There are no red or blue cities or states. This is a made up fiction and we should stop using those terms because they are divisive and only serve to make the country weak.
> Can you actually come up with a scenario where a few yokels in the south running around the field playing militia could overthrow the US government?
No because that's a strawman. Though those yokels on January 6th sure gave it a try.
> If today, the National Guard dropped a non nuclear bomb on a blue city, 40% of the US population would shrug if not outright cheer.
This would never happen unless there's a zombie apocalypse or that city was invaded by another country. No American would cheer a nuclear bomb being dropped on New York or Houston or something - why are you even entertaining such outlandish nonsense?
There are very much two views of what America should be like and pretending there isn’t is why Democrats keep losing.
40% of Americans cheer how the current administration treats immigrants, non straight people, etc and continue defend the words of a racist podcaster. They wouldn’t want a “nuclear” bomb because it affects them. But there was no real fallout politically for the police MOVE bombing.
If you don’t think this country is divided, you haven’t been looking at where this country is and it’s view on reality.
Those yokels on January 6th tried. But do you think they could have overcome even the local SWAT let alone the military? There have been yokels running around for decades trying. Heck an entire Confedrrsre army couldn’t defeat the US government backed by the states
> Those yokels on January 6th tried. But do you think they could have overcome even the local SWAT let alone the military?
Well they did - they weren't far away from grabbing Nancy Pelosi or Mike Pence. What's the US military going to do? It's not really equipped for this kind of stuff, oh and those yokels didn't really bring a ton of firearms, but they could have. Thankfully I don't think those yokels expected to have the success that they did and they didn't really intend to try and overthrow the government, though I personally believe they all should have been tried as many of them were.
> There are very much two views of what America should be like and pretending there isn’t is why Democrats keep losing.
The Democrats are losing because their ideas are by and large bad, and most Americans don't agree with them. Communism? Open Borders? Those are the topics that dominate the Democratic Party right now and as an independent I also find those ideas completely unpalatable, even though perhaps stupidly I still keep voting for Democrats locally because the MAGA goons make me so mad.
I'm not suggesting the country isn't divided - it always has been and it's perhaps more divided now because people are spending all day on the Internet, but further dividing the country be calling things "red" or "blue" is actively harmful. Besides even in those so called "red" or "blue" areas there are plenty of people who are on the other side of the dominating spectrum. Plenty of rural Californias who vote Republican, plenty of liberals in Kansas City.
No one is advocating for “communism” any more than Obama was a “secret Muslim trying to bring Sharia law into the US”. If you want to talk “socialism” that’s what you call tariffs that US citizens are paying and redistributing the taxes to farmers hurt by the tariffs.
Again do you think if the terrorist on Jan 6th had bern minorities there wouldn’t have been overwhelming force? Even if they did manage to get to Pelosi and Pence, they weren’t going to overthrow the entire government.
What could the military do? They had guns. They could shoot people. I’m well stew that red and blue is not statewide and there are more Republican voters in California than South Dakota.
No, there are many progressives who are quite literally calling for communism or to implement economic policies we know are destructive. This is like you trying to tell me MAGA goons don't want a 3rd Trump term. Call a spade a spade.
> Again do you think if the terrorist on Jan 6th had bern minorities there wouldn’t have been overwhelming force? Even if they did manage to get to Pelosi and Pence, they weren’t going to overthrow the entire government.
Some of them were minorities by the way. In fact you can go look at polling and you'll see Trump outperformed his last win across minority groups.
But no, I don't think there would have been overwhelming force. There were/are too many J6 losers and they're not going to just gun them all down on TV. The military certainly wouldn't.
So let’s say the mostly Black Million Man March had turned violent and decided to invade the Capitol - what do you think the reaction would have been?
What Democratic candidate on the national stage is saying that the government should take over all private industry and pay everyone the same and control industry? This is real “communism”
> So let’s say the mostly Black Million Man March had turned violent and decided to invade the Capitol - what do you think the reaction would have been?
I don't really know, are they a Black Million Man March for a sitting president named Donald J. Trump? You're just throwing straw man arguments out there.
> What Democratic candidate on the national stage is saying that the government should take over all private industry and pay everyone the same and control industry? This is real “communism”
There's always talk about things like nationalizing industries and such. Government run grocery stores, you name it. Some ideas are worth trying, some aren't, but as we do try new ideas we should be vigilant against authoritarian ideologies whether those are coming from MAGA or commies. Keep in mind I'm separating out Progressives from Democrats because like the Republicans they're not all united.
As I know you are well aware with MAGA goons, you don't have to come out with a piece of paper and say "Hello, we are Communists and we want to implement these specific things to achieve our stated goal of Communism. Thank you". It's emergent from policy and platforms, terms of usage "equity" etc.
You’re still being hand wavy. Saying “we should have government run grocery stores where there are food deserts and wouldn’t be profitable for private corporations” is not “communism”. Do you know what Communism actually is? Give a specific example.
What Democratic candidate is saying we should be a “communist country”?
But your original arguments was that J6 was evidence that a few people with guns could have taken over the entire federal government and that the full force of even local SWAT couldn’t have intervened.
> But your original arguments was that J6 was evidence that a few people with guns could have taken over the entire federal government and that the full force of even local SWAT couldn’t have intervened.
I don't think that's really what my argument was, and things are getting convoluted here. Happy to clarify to the best of my ability.
What was written that I responded to was:
> Can you actually come up with a scenario where a few yokels in the south running around the field playing militia could overthrow the US government?
My point was look at what a few yokels did on January 6th, and they weren't even armed with weapons and frankly I don't think 80% of them even thought they'd get in the building and do the damage that they did do. For many of those folks they found themselves almost in an accidental insurrection.
Can local SWAT open up fire with machine guns and gun all those people down (especially without weapons)? Sure they can. But that's crossing one hell of a Rubicon and not the standard operating procedure for this kind of stuff. Instead of gunning people down they wait until things cool off and then arrest people 1 by 1.
> What Democratic candidate is saying we should be a “communist country”?
As I already explained you don't have to say "we should be a communist country" - instead you can just espouse communism views or other harmful views with various twists of language. You know that's true because MAGA does it.
You don't have to be a candidate for office either, you just need to have influence. That's an arbitrary requirement you made up.
Again, separating out Democrats from Progressives, you can find various instances of folks advocating for things like nationalization of industries, "equity", and so forth. I don't need to provide a specific example because there's no point - what does that accomplish? If I provide an example of a Progressive arguing for communism or communist ideology (whether explicit or implicit) what does that change?
If I find a single example of a Progressive politician arguing for communism or specific features of communist ideology what does that change? Are you going to reply "I was wrong"? It's just arguing for arguing sake.
Bigger picture, I'm not sure why you're so hung up on this. Communism and its ill effects are just one of many things that you can find Progressives arguing in favor of, similar to things like Open Borders. Those policies are unpopular for a good reason, hence Trump and Republicans won the election and Trump got more votes than he did last time. The reason Democrats are losing is because Progressive ideology and frankly I don't care what we really call it (socialism, communism, whatever it's just one big basket of deplorable ideas) is unpopular with Americans and the votes continue to prove that out. I'm pointing this out as someone who is independent and quite frankly votes Democrat most of the time. You don't have to agree with my assessment, but you can look at the election results and see for yourself that I'm right. If the Democrats don't drop this nonsense they'll continue to lose elections because for most people (not me necessarily) MAGA is a preferable alternative to Progressive and I don't see that changing anytime soon unless Trump is out of the picture.
The entire argument was that it is dumb to think that a few yokels playing militia or even an “armed civilian nation” with guns can take on the modern US military.
You haven’t seen videos of local police taking on protestors during the civil rights movement with impunity? Do you think the current administration would have any problem doing the same in all of the cities he’s invaded with the National Guard and that his supporters - 40% of the country - wouldn’t just shrug like they did when he pardoned 1500+ domestic terrorist who look and think like them?
I’m limiting it to national politicians who won the nomination to represent their party in Congress because no one cares what someone’s crazy uncle who calls themselves a Democrat thinks.
You brought up “Communism”? What ideas are you now calling “socialist”?
And everyone loves “socialism” as long as it benefits them - see almost every red state that gets more in federal tax dollars than they pay, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA (as long as they don’t call it “ObamaCare”), give a few “socialist” ideas that national Democrats want to implement that you are afraid of?
And “open borders” is another boogeyman talking point. Check how many illegal immigrants were deported by Obama vs Trump for instance or even Biden.
> Companies are overwhelmingly autocratic (cooperatives being exceedingly rare to the point most people don't know about their existence) - often rules by hereditary dictators called owners. But you can't legally overthrow them[0].
Nearly every publicly trade company has a very well defined method by which executives can be replaced.
Companies are a dictatorship appointed by an oligarchy that is appointed by the democratic votes of shareholders.
You can't fire people and rehire them at lower pay; they'd be so upset at you you wouldn't be able to trust them to do anything properly. What you can do is fire people you think you're paying too much and hire someone else to do the same job at lower pay.
>Companies would start to min/max this process and would use it as a way to meet targets (perhaps unrealistic ones) at the expense of take-home pay for employees, even in situations where they don't actually need to make cuts.
And the reverse? We literally just went through a phase where tech companies over hired like crazy, at ridiculous salaries. We had people remote working 3 or more jobs at a time. And yet, people still act like companies have all the power?
This stuff ebbs and flows. The reality is the value of your labour fluctuates, despite the inconvenience of that to you.
as if they don't already; the job market is a market with a mechanism for price discovery (duh. wouldn't be a market otherwise.)
the unfortunate fact is that the people forced to be sellers of their time on the market have livelihoods and families to support, so the market is in most places very heavily regulated, some would say overregulated. OTOH capitalism really did pull out many countries out of extreme poverty, so it isn't globally bad, but outcomes for individual participants aren't always... that great.
The Colorado rules about publishing salary ranges really help make it a true market. Better insight on compensation, in more places, would be even better. And evolving laws as the workarounds evolve; this is why we have legislators.
I worry that normalizing the idea that a company can make you an offer (that you can't refuse) of lower pay, with the alternative being that you get fired, would set some really bad precedents.
Companies would start to min/max this process and would use it as a way to meet targets (perhaps unrealistic ones) at the expense of take-home pay for employees, even in situations where they don't actually need to make cuts.