Am I the only one who thinks it's my own business how much I earn as long as I don't do anything illegal?
What's next, a database with all guys dick size?
However, if you're running for office, I would be very interested in knowing how you made all that money (even if none of it was made illegally) since you'll be regulating businesses and what not.
If, however, the world learns that you made $37.2 million last year doing this, then this signal might be enough for your income to drop to $0 and for you never to make another penny again.
(For example because it invites a transparent competitor who does list prices and who you can't or don't want to deal with; or invited eBay, who actually loses money entering this market with a huge splash. Or invited Christie's, the auctiom house, who had not been tracking this part of the market. etc etc.)
In capitalist countries salaries can be clear signals for turnover, which could otherwise be private.
this really is pretty key competitive information.
Which would be a win for the consumer. Information is supposed to do this to markets.
What? Am I reading this on HN? The place where people like talking how privacy matter all day and how annoying the fallacy of "if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't worry about the government/corporations spying on you" is? I'm puzzled.
Privacy applies to private data. Whether salary should be considered private data is the point of argument here. Nobody is arguing about doing away with privacy altogether. So what is your point?
If you think salary being private data is the obvious assumption, then think again, maybe you have been conditioned by years of employment in the private sector to believe that salary is private data. In many cultures and in many type of jobs, it is not considered private data.
You can choose not to be part of that corporation.
That's the issue here. You could be working for a company and never know you're being grossly underpaid until Bob casually mentions his salary being 15-20k over yours despite joining at the same time.
I don't see how making everyone's salary public will help more than knowing the average/median etc.
Knowing what public servants and politicians earn passes the most basic of public interest tests. What I earn, however, doesn't.
Reminds me of Reddit banning salary negotiation because women were worse at negotiating.
Infantilisation of society...
As for highly individual compensation - that would (should) depend on being able to tell how much value a person brings in. And apart from sales, I don't know of many positions where there's a good way to measure that - especially if you try to consider the collective efficiency of a company. Is taking time out of your day to train new employees a net gain for the company? Should you be rewarded or punished if it is?
And there's the long time perspective to consider: should all workplaces cater to workers of all ages, and in life phases? Do you place different demands on an 18 year old, a 30 year old and a 60 year old worker?
Not all people work the same or contribute the same, and they should not be paid the same.
What we have where I live is that people don't do anything and still get paid from my taxes just cos they were able to get collective contract signed. And all this leads to less effective government services.
(I am talking a government collective contracts as I am not sure that there are any in real sector)
As far as I'm aware, research into wages as motivation indicate that high wages don't work well in motivating people who are otherwise unhappy with their work, but paying too low wages can demotivate people who are otherwise satisfied (high enough wages are a condition for job satisfaction, but not a "positive" motivator).
Another question is if you think that most hard worker will negotiate a good salary, or if you think good negotiators are more likely to do that? And if you think that being a good negotiator colleagues well with being a good nurse, teacher, cleaner etc?
It certainly could be that the hard workers you want to reward, are lifted more by collective bargaining, than the lazy ones?
No, but I think people who perform worse at their jobs should be paid less the ones that do good job.
As far as I'm aware, research into wages as motivation indicate that high wages don't work well in motivating people who are otherwise unhappy with their work, but paying too low wages can demotivate people who are otherwise satisfied (high enough wages are a condition for job satisfaction, but not a "positive" motivator).
And collective agreement makes you pay everyone the same, so there is a possibility that satisfied worker will get less money then he feels he needs to get and demotivate him.
Secondly, I can only talk personally and anecdotally but knowing that we all earn same amount I would not be motivated to perform better either, and why should I?
And usually what happens with collective agreement is just what you said, good people get paid less bad people get paid more. So we get exactly the problem you described.
Another question is if you think that most hard worker will negotiate a good salary, or if you think good negotiators are more likely to do that? And if you think that being a good negotiator colleagues well with being a good nurse, teacher, cleaner etc?
It is a skill like any other, there will be good negotiators in any kind of work. If someone can get more money for their work by negotiating I don't see anything wrong with that, that is after all how the market works.
Question is how does the individual feel about that. I don't negotiate my salary and I am probably always on the low end and I don't care about it since I make good living. But then again my type of work is specific as I can quit when ever I want and find another job instantly and make that my negotiation tactic.
As a manager you would want to keep good nurses and cleaners and teacher around though and get rid of the bad ones, and one way of doing this is paying them differently even without negotiations.
It certainly could be that the hard workers you want to reward,
Of course, and this is what collective agreement hinders as everyone should be paid the same or nearly the same.
are lifted more by collective bargaining, than the lazy ones?
How so?
This depends so much on what work you do and how you do it and where.
I would argue, if the person in charge of what ever company or service we are talking about wants to keep good people around he will understand the logic behind paying them more then the ones that are lazy. Otherwise the company/service will suffer.
And this is the reason why collective agreements work so well in government as there are no penalties for having bad service, they are after all paid from public money instead of having to perform better to earn the money.
Private company with this approach would fail as it would not be able to provide good service.
Again, having to pay everyone the same will basically make lazy people lazier and better performing people unhappy.
Collective agreements are not just about salary but also about how you can get terminated from your job position. Usually it is very hard to let go of the low performance people. Which makes this a vicious circle of sucking the money out of the (usually) government.
I think most folks are like you - aren't doing anything illegal that they know of and are pretty fair to folks. But the fact of the matter is that some folks aren't fair and are doing illegal things. And even more folks have hidden biases that affect how fairly they pay folks.
Being open about things is one way of trying to overcome that sort of thing.
The bright side is that most folks won't bother. Even fewer will do so if their name is going to be reported to the person they looked up. But by golly, if I were affected by one of those unfair folks, I'd look it up. And I'm guessing you would too, without considering that the unfair folks woudln't like that privacy invasion.
Since it helps those getting screwed over: No. I don't think it is your own business how much you earn.
So if you are saying that it is no my businesses how much I earn but of public interest to battle criminal, how is this different than saying that all cryptography should be banned cos terrorist use it to plan terror attacks?