yestrusocialist
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User ID: 2545
yestrusocialist
1yr ago
If you read your own link, you'll discover the reason Ford got lower priced workers is because they hired lower priced negros and minimized racial discrimination. As many right wing economists have noted, taste-based discrimination costs money and free markets penalize it.
One reason the (majority white) workers voted for unions was to reduce labor market competition by colored workers. This was a major motivator for many other pro-Union laws such as Davis Bacon and minimum wage.
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/american-labor-movement.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Bacon_Act_of_1931
Of course, having on the market a rather large source of cheap labor depresses wages outside of that group, too–the wages of the white worker who has to compete. And when an employer can substitute a colored worker at a lower wage–and there are, as you pointed out, these hundreds of thousands looking for decent work–it affects the whole wage structure of an area, doesn’t it?
- Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, 1957, after many colored workers moved to MA and started competing economically with his constituents
yestrusocialist
1yr ago
There's a 25% import tax on light trucks, which are 69% of the market and consist of basically anything bigger than a Toyota Camry. So as long as the unions steal 24% or less, it's not actually cheaper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
https://www.autoweek.com/news/a1714156/light-trucks-take-record-69-us-market/
This is primarily caused by Obama era fuel efficiency rules, which hold big cars to unrealistic fuel efficiency standards but allow trucks to escape fuel efficiency standards by becoming larger. For obvious reasons unions have opposed attempts to fix these rules.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/small-cars-are-getting-huge-are-fuel-economy-regulations-to-blame
https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/kdkdx3/normal_truck_vs_american_truck/
yestrusocialist
1yr ago
How does it do that? Hanson quite explicitly narrowed his questions about rape in general to "gentle silent rape":
I presented evidence that most men would rather be raped than cuckolded...[referencing a prior post which is linked] It occurred to me recently that we can more clearly compare cuckoldry to gentle silent rape. Imagine a woman was drugged into unconsciousness and then gently raped, so that she suffered no noticeable physical harm nor any memory of the event, and the rapist tried to keep the event secret. Now drugging someone against their will is a crime, but the added rape would add greatly to the crime in the eyes of today’s law, and the added punishment for this addition would be far more than for cuckoldry.
A few hours later he called out again that gentle silent rape differs quite a lot from standard rape:
Added 11p 1Dec: 95 comments so far, almost all of which ignore my “gentle silent” modifier, and just argue about standard rape.
So no, Hanson is not implying anything of the sort.
yestrusocialist
1yr ago
Did the white conservative protesters actually do anything?
Near as I can tell, the public's vague conception that they did is mostly based the lie - spread by the NYT - that protesters killed Brian Sicknick. That's why the left was so mad when Mitch McConnel released the tapes of Qanon Shaman wandering around peacefully and listening to cops telling him "don't go in there".
yestrusocialist
1yr ago
There are plenty of serious tech investments in India. But sometimes western VC's - such as "Indian ChatGPT competitor on a $10 million" - are simply idiots.
But it's also worth recognizing - as every engineer in India does - the distinction between product and service companies. The vast majority of Indian software employment is at service companies like Infosys. These engineers are paid a lot less and are not very good. If you live in the west they are probably your only interaction with Indian software engineers. The idea of the service companies building a ChatGPT competitor is laughable, but they can certainly help migrate from one HR software provider to another. The price difference between them and a western engineer is where this dumb VC got the idea of ChatGPT for $10M from.
But in reality, OpenAI spent $8M on cloud compute alone in 2017. Indian engineers capable of building Indian ChatGPT might cost 30-40% less in BLR than in SF. So if you want to start Indian OpenAI on a budget, the budget is upwards of $600M compared to OpenAI's initial budget of $1B. That's a discount but not much of one.
There is serious tech investment in India, but it's mostly by western companies or inside big Indian companies (e.g. Ola). Salaries for comparable engineers are higher than in Europe, a bit less than in the US. But there's plenty of important and technically difficult internal projects being executed.
When a union refuses to work unless excess pay is provided, men with guns will harm the employer if they seek alternate arrangements with willing third parties.
When an employer refuses to pay enough to employees, nothing happens if the employee seeks alternative arrangements with willing third parties.
This is not an emergent process. It's explicit coercive action by the government to favor one side over the other.
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