Unions do not help everyone. Unions often impose artificially high labor costs, which results in a lower amount of jobs being created. The real impact soon becomes apparent when companies start to lay off those union employees because their margins are slim and they try to automate as much as possible, instead of hiring people to do the job.
With slaves or prison labor you can sustain even smaller margins, can have many more people employed and you can avoid automation for much longer.
> plans to lay off 12,000 employees to save $1 billion in costs
( 1000 000 000 / 12 000 = 83 334 )
> The mass layoffs mainly target management-level and contractor positions.
> She attributed the weak performance to increased labor costs, challenges in the broader U.S. economy, freight complications abroad and the disruption tied to labor negotiations last summer that diverted business to rivals.
> The deal will also create 7,500 new full-time union jobs at UPS (NYSE:UPS) and the fulfillment of 22,500 open positions, giving more opportunities for part-timers to transition to full-time work.
If the rich are not consuming in proportion to what they have, then what do they do with their money? Right, they invest it. And what does that investment create? Jobs, factories, lower costs, and new opportunities for all. The fact that someone was able to accumulate wealth shows that they know how to use it to generate a return. For the economy in general, it is much more beneficial to have people with skin in the game to invest their own money, instead of the government wasting it in bureaucracy.
Neflix revenue went from 4.3b in 2013 to 31b in 2022. Astounding success by any measure. That means they are doing something right, including their talent strategy. "garbage" is subjective. Neflix employees are likely paid bonuses on views / subscriptions generated, which from their revenues looks like they know how to hit.
Thanks, Darren. Would you like to get a personal demo, just drop an email to [email protected]? We've looked into Aylien and other competitors and I believe we are on par and actually better on some aspects. Would be glad to answer the questions, if you'll have any.
Businesses which rely on Facebook, as their sole distribution channel could get out of business if Facebook goes out. A lot of economical value will be lost.
Many of these businesses are small single-person operations with little tech understanding that are using, for example, FB marketplace. They wouldn't even know what you meant by "single point of failure."
Allowing copyrights to expire on pre-1950 creative works would also destroy billions of dollars of "economic value", but that doesn't mean it would be bad for humanity.
We should be careful to not take our values from a spreadsheet.
Uber serves millions of customers around the world by providing lower prices and better service, something that is not matched by taxi cabs or any similar services. Calling businesses that create so much value parasitic is a way of comparison.
Anecdotally, I have taken a trip from London to Heathrow airport 2 times, one time with a taxi cab and the other time with Uber. Uber cost two times less, and the service was on the same level or better.
Selling a dollar for 90 cents isn't revolutionary. Anyone can serve millions of customers when you operate out of the bounds of what's normally required for a business.
The main selling point of Uber/Lyft are the network effects (same app working everywhere) and the ability to judge drivers by their rating. Price IMO is not that important because people who are price-conscious drive their own vehicles. Cab companies are too fragmented to get something like such a system running.
This ironically shows how size matters a lot. Be it state investment or huge VC, more cash, more power and more centralization means better service (if the megamoney was spent well).
I agree that Uber's way of underpaying drivers is not scalable (basic mathematics) and price hikes should happen to make the numbers work out. However the service level now people expect is very much innovative.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41939318