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Comment by DoingIsLearning | Hacker News Reader

A small thought experiment:

- Book sales in 2021 were about _9_ billion dollars. [0]

- Wage theft in the US is estimated at _50_ billion dollars. [1]

Can you imagine if the resources of the justice and labour departments would prioritize citizen wage over publishers' revenue?

Would you rather have funds allocated towards social justice or have them spent on intimidating foreign nationals completely outside US jurisdiction?

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/197710/annual-book-store...

[1] https://www.epi.org/press/wage-theft-costs-american-workers-...

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I have family that works for DOL's Wage & Hour division. The amount of wage theft is _staggering_. They are chronically understaffed and overworked. Plus, every time a Republican administration comes into power, their enforcement power gets severely limited, except in the most egregious cases.

When people get paid more, the government gets more tax revenue. Smart government would double this division's resources, but governments are anything but smart.

This would run counter to the "starve the beast"[1] strategy that's formed the core of conservative governance in the US for the last 50 years.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

If you believe in small government then you're going to enact policies that accomplish this. Re-branding this as "starve the beast" seems nothing more than a propaganda exercise.

Further.. almost every business employing people in a State must be setup with that State's authorities. Is there some reason States can't handle wage theft? Is this naturally a federal problem, or even best solved at that level?

I strongly disagree. If you're in favor of small government and in control you would, absent political concerns, simply shutter government organizations you don't believe in. "Starve the beast" is an entirely different tactic where you don't want to be seen as destroying popular services and so, instead, undermine their ability to function efficiently until they become unpopular enough to cancel. It comes with an understanding that the majority of the political will in a country appreciates these programs when they're well funded and that their cancelation is only politically actionable when they've been starved to ineffectualness.

"Starve the beast" is also really only a realistic strategy in a corrupt duopoly like America has since the defunding of popular programs is generally political suicide - unless you can reduce everything to "Us vs. Them"ism.

> Re-branding this as "starve the beast" seems nothing more than a propaganda exercise.

I disagree, having to dance around a phrase coined by those that implemented the strategy themselves, otherwise some people will get offended, is the definition of political correctness.

That's not my branding, or a re-branding at all: the first known use of the term was by a Libertarian party member. It's the term of art for this style of financial governance, one that is used somewhat proudly by its disciples.

It's a problem for both state governments and the Federal government: wage theft might span from state tax fraud, federal tax fraud, unemployment insurance fraud, federal contract falsification, etc. Making it into a states' issue is overly simplistic.

> the first known use of the term was by a Libertarian party member.

In what context were they using it? I know that's what Wikipedia says, but their reference is behind a paywall. From what I can see of it, this is not how this phrase was initially used.

"Starve the Beast" seems to be a specific policy idealism with respect to Proposition 13 and the way tax revenues were being used in certain districts. It does not proscribe a particular administrative style, but rather particular property tax policies.

> In what context were they using it? I know that's what Wikipedia says, but their reference is behind a paywall. From what I can see of it, this is not how this phrase was initially used.

Here's another source attesting it to the Reagan administration in 1985[1]. To be clear, it doesn't even make sense for it to have come from the larger-government sphere: why would they refer to the US Government as "the beast"?

I have no idea what Proposition 13 is (although I'm guessing it's a California thing). In the context of US federal politics, "starving the beast" refers to a general "pincer" policy of both reducing funding and minimizing the effectiveness of that funding (e.g. by increasing outflows to contractors and other private services while decreasing oversight over those outflows).

[1]: https://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_12_01_01_bartlett.pd...

It's a term that was _coined by_ fiscal conservatives, it's not a "rebranding as a propaganda exercise".

Just in the past year, there was a pretty significant fight about funding the IRS. Despite additional IRS funding yielding significant returns.

The purpose of cutting that division is not optimizing the government's revenue, it's optimizing the revenue of their campaign backers.

This isn't a policy that was adopted just because, it's the reason the party gets money (As opposed to stuff like the culture war, which is just the excuse that drives the base out to vote).

Government may get more revenue but the individual politicians get influenced through financial means provided by the companies stealing the wages.

Corporates want their pound of flesh for lobbying expenses.

That depends whether the government works for the people paying taxes or the people stealing wages.

In theory yes, but if you don't pay and use the money for Lobby, you get power, which equals to more rights. That's the foundation of a democracy or let's say society from the times of Pharaos.

One party wants a disenfranchised base that will keep voting for them. If they are made whole by the government they might start having wrongthink.

not quite - you have to think like a government. If people get paid less, the people who finance a given company get to keep more money, it might also be cheaper for consumers. The government has its hands in every stage of every economic interaction. What's "lost" in one area is made up in another. Even a drug dealer has to go to the gas station for example.

non naive suggestion: new nation scale govt structure should be discussed and tried.

hybrid patterns, seasonal structures, whatever

There are lots of low hanging fruits, which is good because it means space for progress but govt are extremely good at diluting any improvement efforts. Yet most people want higher efficiency / sanity governments.

Couldn't agree more. It is disgraceful how our tax dollars are used to prop up failed business models and oppress the little guy. Just another example of how supposedly democratic states only serve the interests of the elite.

>It is disgraceful how our tax dollars are used to prop up failed business models and oppress the little guy

U.S. Government Spending, FY 2022 Top 10 Spending by Category

$ 1.22 T Social Security

$ 914 B Health

$ 865 B Income Security

$ 767 B National Defense

$ 755 B Medicare

$ 677 B Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services

How do you explain this data?

Source:https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

According to a different official government site, it's $1.2 T on National Defense...

https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function

Thanks for that link. It also shows medicare as increased to $1.5 T

Yeah but we paid into a social fund for Medicare and social security. It’s not tax revenue it’s our savings.

Is that what they told you? You don't "pay into" social security, you _pay for_ other old people's current social security. And you certainly do not "pay into" Medicare. Also the "social fund" of Medicare and social security certainly benefit "the little guy" more than anyone else, which was the whole point I was making. Also, who is "we?" Some people would rather have that cash for themselves or invest it on their own. And technically all taxes can be called a "social fund" so I don't see hiw this point even begins. If you go to jail for not paying into a "social fund" it's tax revenue.

It wasnt't supposed to be tax revenue. Doesn't mean they didn't treat it that way anyway.

Genuine question: I always hear about the gigantic military spending in the U.S. I would've expected it to be on top of this list. It can't be only 7. no?

A lot of military spending is disguised (not to say maliciously) as funding to other agencies. For example, that number is probably just the Pentagon's budget, and wouldn't include things like Veterans Affairs (which is about $300 billion) or foreign aid (around $50 billion) or the Department of Homeland Security (around $50 billion) or our nuclear force ($35 billion), etc.

Even some of NASA's funding is for monitoring nukes.

The point is that it's actually kind of hard to calculate how much we spend on defense, because it's hard to know what to count, but it's certainly more than it looks like. Over $1 trillion is a safe guess.

When talking about spending, some people exclude programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, income security programs from their list of spending because it doesn't need to be approved every year - it is classified as 'Mandatory Spending' and is 63% of the budget.

The remaining spending, has to be approved every year is classified as 'Discretionary Spending'. When you just look at discretionary spending, the military budget is the biggest piece. But if someone says the US spends most of its budget on military spending, it is false and deceptive.

US military spending is HUGE compared to other countries budgets. It is not that big compared to the US budget - in WW2 we spent about 45% of GDP on military stuff - if that was done today we'd have a budget of about ten trillion dollars.

Also much of what is classified as military spending could probably be moved to other categories - the VA, for example.

Wow. Imagine the Manhattan Projects you could make with ten trillion!

The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $23 billion in 2020). We're nearing $100 billion with Ukraine. $31 billion to California EDD (unemployment) fraud.

Its large compared to other similar countries.

So why doesn't the US just spend that money so we can be more like X trendy country I heard about on Y blog/podcast that is a fraction of the size of the US and does "EVERYTHING" better?

Well, the case is that they have more money to spend because the US is subsidizing their military. So many of these countries are able to get away with tiny military budgets because of the US's large military budget. (all of those countries are also unrecoverably in decline)

the US does not subsidise other countries, not to the degree that you think anyways.

It’s also not a matter of spending more money. The US spends a lot more per capita on healthcare than everyone else, so money is not the issue.

It may not be direct subsidiaries but I'd be willing to wager a pretty penny that there are a lot of European countries that feel comfortable with spending little on defense and aren't worrying about Russia because they know the US has their back.

Not to mention keeping Taiwan from being brought under the CCP umbrella, the efforts the US Navy puts into preventing and reducing piracy. In fact most of the world that doesn't worry about imminent invasion from it's neighbors doesn't worry mostly because the US has provided almost global security by virtue of having the largest most capable military on the planet.

I won't pretend it is perfect or that we have global peace but like during Pax Romana although they were still squabbling with the Sassinids, the average person's risk of dying as a result of military conflict is very small when compared historically, especially since almost every military action in the past half century has been not between modern nation states but between guerrilla and partisan forces which results in considerably less damage in life and property than a full scale conflict between two capable actors as the Iran Iraq war proves.

The pledge - which wasn’t signed was for 2% - nobody is afraid of Russia at this point and Poland alone could very well handle any Russian army if this war is any indication.

Of what the US spends on NATO, very little goes to smaller nations. In exchange, the US has legal bases and troops deployed in other countries without fear of retaliation, do you grasp how much power the US gets to project through this? Probably not.

US keeps Taiwan because it benefits them, and because it needs the semiconductors.

Nothing is free.

When you lot decided to invade Middle East for oil yet again for the 4th or 5th time, you also triggered article 5 and foreigners died as a consequence of your own greed, your unchecked black ops, and CIA funding terrorists.

Furthermore, this “alliance” means that people are spending money on US military hardware, not anyone else’s, but this is conveniently out of the discussion every time such complaints come up.

Less than 20% of what the US spends on NATO is used to assist smaller countries, and the US only covers 16% of operational costs of NATO - which is as much Germany is covering.

Legal boots on the ground next to any front trumps any and all economic arguments.

>decided to invade Middle East for oil

You mostly had me until this point. Did you know there is more oil in the US than Iraq and Afghanistan combined? Do you have any data on the number of oil rigs set up during the invasion? Who gets this oil by the way? Do you know how many trillions were spent in Afghanistan and Iraq? More than it's GDP of the entire period the US was there. Please provide some source for this claim. If anything, the US would invade a country just to "stretch it's legs" and keep the machine running.

The oil in the continental US is hard to extract [1]. The oil in Middle East is trivial and cheap to extract [1,2].

There is a reason oil price is up there, because the US and Saudi Arabia have setup a cartel, aramco has iirc > 70% profit margins. The cartel ensures that the U.S. can be “competitive” on pricing, that’s it. It ensures private interests are protected.

As for who gets it and whatnot, it’s all about private interests funding politicians who ensure no crisis is lost.

The money spent there is not to Iraq or Afghanistan per se, but also to the troops. You should look into how much the US is paying for the food supplies.. we are talking thousands per meal.

[1] https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Why-the-US-cannot-Extr...

[2] https://www.enverus.com/blog/saudi-arabia-oil-need-know/

not really, US healthcare spending is average for US income. (the problem is the distribution of that income)

https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2020/02/13/its-still-not-...

Are you expecting a source better than the US treasury to appear?

An unfortunate reality of the US is that policy discussion is almost wholly disconnected from quantified reality: we’re not even arguing about facts, anymore.

If we started examining facts, the populace would become aware that the US pays more for less than other “developed” nations — largely due to corruption in healthcare, construction, and manufacturing (eg, military).

Why 7?

Visit any courtroom in America. It's poor people who commit small crimes who end up in prison. Wall St. fat cats who push opiates on the masses get away with murder and get a slap on the wrist.

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." - Adam Smith

We're not talking about security of property here but about who benefits from government spending.

> but about who benefits from government spending

Elon Musk? And, if you count foregoing taxes as spending, Jeff Bezos?

Wage theft is committed by millions of employers, this "theft" was committed by just a few people. While I agree with your general sentiment, the resources required to prosecute wage theft would be vastly greater than to prosecute this case.

That being said, they should definitely prosecute wage theft much more than they are now. Maybe the fear of jail time if wage theft were actually prosecuted a few times would deter most other potential wage thieves.

I don't really agree, prosecuting all wage theft would be an enormous effort, but this story is not about prosecuting all book "theft", just one case. The argument is that the resources spent on this one case would have been better spent on investigating and prosecuting wage theft, not solving the entire issue.

Also, wage theft seems to be a much simpler thing to prosecute. You don't have to investigate the owners of anonymous websites or track down any foreign nationals, just show up to a job site, see how long people are working, see how much they're paid, and prosecute if the numbers don't match. Obviously I'm exaggerating, but it's a much more tangible, sort of "old-fashioned" crime, one I would imagine the FBI is pretty good at solving.

> Wage theft is committed by millions of employers...

Yes, and of those there are a handful doing it to millions of employees. Wage theft is not a few night shifts rounded off at SMEs. Plenty of traded companies doing it, no reason why you cannot target low numbers of big fish.

> there are a handful doing it to millions of employees

Has someone credibly identified them?

Both Walmart and Amazon are notorious for disregarding minimum wage laws as an example of 'big fish'. With the fines usually applied this is just the price of doing business for these companies.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/275064-supreme-...

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/2/22262294/amazon-flex-wage-...

Will never happen just like how undocumented migrants are exploited by meat processing plants while being de-facto shielded from deportation... because corporations and money talk.

In my country wage theft is committed on migrant labour.

Western Europe is not much different than Quatar in that respect only nobody cares.

You are right that it happens, but people do care and enforcement is improving in at least several countries like the UK and Norway.

The world starts caring when the Olympics or World Cup come to a country. I hadn’t even heard about Qatar prior to them hosting the World Cup.

The Olympics and World Cup have come to Western Europe (e.g. England, France, Norway, Spain) over and over again

Never been to Norway or Spain, but England and France are generally okay w.r.t. migrant labor. Not saying there isn't some hostility to foreigners, because ceterus paribus you'll get many more job interviews with a CV that says "Jean-Pierre Petit" than "Mohammed Karkar" in France, but there is no "temporary worker visa" that we can use to basically exploit peoples from poor countries. If you get a visa that lets you work, you generally get the same protections/wages as locals :)

Are the immigrants' passports confiscated so that they cannot leave?

If you genuinely believe that, why don't you move to Qatar?

Instead, how much would it cost for the IRS to check everyone's returns reconciliation against employer statements?

"Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is an Israelite or is a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin." - Deuteronomy 24:1415 (TNIV)

>>Would you rather have funds allocated towards social justice or have them spent on intimidating foreign nationals

I would rather the justice department, and labor dept choose their targets for non-political reasons, neither for "social justice" nor corporate protectionism

What do you mean by 'social justice' and the implication it is a bad thing?

I postulate, labor justice is social justice.

"Social Justice" is a loaded political term generally aligned with Left Authoritarianism and often devoid of actual justice

And who was it who loaded that term? The social justice advocates, or their opponents?

Both. Just like many other political labels, they start out as one thing then more and more people start using the labels and soon their orginal meaning is lost and have become something else

This is caused by both advocates and opponents of the various causes, positions, and world views

I've got strong opinions and political thoughts on the term "political labels". Sure it once meant labels applied to politics, but now, who knows what it means? Both sides have misconstrued this term and now we shouldn't use it.

Dating back to 1824, the term social justice refers to justice on a societal level.[11] From the early 1990s to the early 2000s, social-justice warrior was used as a neutral or complimentary phrase, as when a 1991 Montreal Gazette article describes union activist Michel Chartrand as a "Quebec nationalist and social-justice warrior".[1]

Katherine Martin, the head of U.S. dictionaries at Oxford University Press, said in 2015 that "[a]ll of the examples I've seen until quite recently are lionizing the person".[1] As of 2015, the Oxford English Dictionary had not done a full search for the earliest usage.[1] Merriam-Webster dates the earliest use of the term to 1945.[6]

...

According to Martin, the term switched from primarily positive to negative around 2011, when it was first used as an insult on Twitter.[1] The term first appeared on Urban Dictionary in 2011 and on the Something Awful forums in 2013.[7] According to Know Your Meme, the pejorative term "keyboard warrior", which describes a person who is unreasonably angry and hides behind their keyboard, may be a precursor to the "social justice warrior".[7] The negative connotation has primarily been aimed at those espousing views adhering to social progressivism, cultural inclusivity, or feminism.[12][1][2] Scott Selisker writes in New Literary History that the SJW is often criticised as the "stereotype of the feminist as unreasonable, sanctimonious, biased, and self-aggrandizing".[12] Use of the term has also been described as attempting to degrade the motivations of the person accused of being an SJW, implying that their motives are "for personal validation rather than out of any deep-seated conviction".[3][9] Allegra Ringo in Vice writes that "in other words, SJWs don't hold strong principles, but they pretend to. The problem is, that's not a real category of people. It's simply a way to dismiss anyone who brings up social justice."[9]

The term's negative use became mainstream due to the 2014 Gamergate harassment campaign ...

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior>

Numerous sources cited, notably:

<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/10...>

<https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-does-soci...>

<https://web.archive.org/web/20160102031743/http://recode.net...>

See also "Social Justice": <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice>

> I would rather the justice department, and labor dept choose their targets for non-political reasons

You want the justice department, a branch of the goverment, to not be political?

Yes. That should not be a shock, there are lots (in fact most) of government that is not suppose to be political, specifically when it comes to the enforcement of law.

The entire premise, the entire legitimacy of the legal system is the blind scales of justice.

It seems you want it to be political, that is would be a nation of despotism, oligarchs, and tyranny

> that is not suppose to be political

their execution shouldn't but their priortiies are entirely political mandates.

When people felt unsafe in the 90s and the DoJ increased minimum sentencing was that not a political incentive?

Protecting business over people, as it currently stands in their priority list, is a political decision.

Changing the status quo is not "political" and remaining as is isn't. Their current directives are poltiical assignments, and rerouting resources in a more worthy endevour is the same.

>When people felt unsafe in the 90s and the DoJ increased minimum sentencing was that not a political incentive?

No that was a change in legalization, which legislation is political, but the 90's saw TONS of anti-crime laws passed which required the non-political arms of the government to act

that is how it is suppose to work, the people elect representative who pass laws, and then those laws are enforced by the non-political arm.

These entities have become political in the wake of over criminalization since now as a function they have to "choose" which laws to enforce and which not to because other wise nothing would get enforced as a matter of course.

The solution to this is not just acceptation that enforcement should be political, but instead removing the political choices from the non-political arms placing it back into the political space of the government (i.e the legislature) . One key way to do that for the Federal government is to return said federal government back to its constitutional bounds which today it FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR exceeds

> The solution to this is not just acceptation that enforcement should be criminal, but instead removing the political choices from the non-political arms placing it back into the political space of the government (i.e the legislature) .

The assumption that there are too many laws and "non political" arms need to pick and choose which ones to apply is true. But I would consider that just part of reality.

Economics is just the study of resource allocation, the goverment only has so many federal tax officers and they need to focus on something. If they focus on big accounts it doesn't make not paying VAT legal. It just less likely you get caught.

Laws existing as a framework to express the current priorities of the goverment (aka tax avoidance bad) is useful even without enough officers to enforce it 100%.

> One key way to do that for the Federal government is to return said federal government back to its constitutional bounds which today it FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR exceeds

The libertarian angle is cool and all, but the political voice of the people has consistently voted for bigger gov not smaller, so you want to apply your own politics to make things "non poltiical". Which is not very consistent

> You want the justice department, a branch of the goverment, to not be political?

This is like asking "you want the fire dept to not be political?"

Of course you don't want the executive branch to not be political. They are the administration. If the IRS just goes after whoever the current reigning party doesn't like, you'll soon no longer have a functioning democracy.

In 1993, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action treats social justice as a purpose of human rights education

The declaration was signed by the US as well.

So social justice is an objective of US as a whole, as a democracy, as a Country, hence is not a political view since 1993 in USA.

> declaration was signed by the US

It was never fully ratified [1]. It was ratified by Russia and, somehow, Afghanistan.

[1] https://indicators.ohchr.org/

That's hardly news.

But you're looking in the wrong place.

It was called the "Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action" it was not an agreement to be ratified, but a course of action for the UN members to follow, which includes the US.

Of course in United States social justice is seen as a political stance, it's not surprising from the country that has signed and not ratified

- Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

- International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

- Convention on the Rights of the Child (they do not actually think of the children, apparently)

- Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

I get that the rights of people with disabilities can be a divisive argument, but they also refuted to sign for

- Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

- Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

- Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

- Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

and if that wasn't bad enough, they have also not signed

- International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families

- International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CIA really loves making people disappear, they couldn't possibly disappoint them)

How is it possible that we call it "the greatest democracy in the World" while they are not even a real Democracy is the "greatest mystery in modern history"

So, yeah, social justice is political only in USA and probably in some South American dictatorship lead by former nazis and militarily installed by yours truly the USA

Not even Putin would say in public that social justice it's the patrimony of a specific Political side, because it would be a (politcal) suicide, even for a guy like Vladimir Putin who recently spoke about it citing Martin Luther King (of course it's all propaganda in his side, but still...), while in the USA, where MLK was born and was killed, his ideas are still considered "agenda" and not "Country's own values".

Again: not surprising, just sad.

> It was ratified by Russia and, somehow, Afghanistan.

to put it mildly, in that list, as you can see, USA is the country that ratified fewer treaties.

Even Iran ratified one treaty more than US.

Actually there is one that did worse: Bhutan, with zero of them.

> yeah, social justice is political only in USA

You’re shifting your goal posts. You said “social justice is an objective of US as a whole” and hence “not a political view.” That’s false.

> Even Iran ratified one treaty more than US

Which shows the difference. Ratification, in America, is not performative. Those treaties can become the basis for lawsuits against the U.S. in U.S. courts. If you’re arguing women have a better time in Iran, or civic and political rights are better protected in Russia, because they ratified those chapters, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

> You’re shifting your goal posts. You said “social justice is an objective of US as a whole” and hence “not a political view.” That’s false.

If you're saying that US usually says one thing, and does another thing entirely, you're right.

When someone signs an official document in representation of their Country, they are actually saying that the Country's objective align with the things written in the document.

They signed a document that stated that social justice is not political, it's a human right.

You're now saying that's false in the US.

So either you or the US are lying.

> Which shows the difference. Ratification, in America, is not performative

like the ratification of

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

in 1994?

Are we there yet?

> Those treaties can become the basis for lawsuits against the U.S. in U.S. courts

Lawsuits, like the first of a long list a guy named Donald Trump had to face for his act of racism, in 1973, for refusing to rent houses to black people?

That totally blocked him from becoming President of United States and from running again at the next elections.

Because in USA nothing is performative.

Trump BTW was at least honest in treating things the rest of the World consider global as internal political arguments; when he felt that climate change wasn't important to his administration, he withdrawn from the Paris climate accord.

Seriously, you're talking like the US is the only country with the rule of law, where the ratification of an International treaty has actual legal consequences.

How come that Countries like Italy, France, Germany, even MONGOLIA, ratified all of them or more than 90% of them and US did not?

Are you saying that in Finland they have no justice system or engage in "performative treaty signing" as a cultural tribal tradition?

> If you’re arguing women have a better time in Iran, or civic and political rights are better protected in Russia, because they ratified those chapters, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

I've simply argued that they committed to the cause and failed.

US hasn't even tried.

If, as you say, they didn't out of fear of "lawsuits against the U.S. in U.S. courts" does that mean that you think US know that they do not meet the requirements?

> you're saying that US usually says one thing, and does another thing entirely, you're right

No. I am saying you said "social justice is an objective of US as a whole" and hence "not a political view." Then you said "social justice is political only in USA." Those are opposing views you've flip flopped on.

> signed a document that stated that social justice is not political, it's a human right

No, it did not.

> like the ratification of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1994?

You're launching off solely titles. Read the text [1]. Article 5 enumerates rights. The rest is condemnations and the establishment of a commission. China, Saudi Arabia and Israel are also a signatories [2]. None of them give Article 14 jurisdiction, the U.S. included, which made it a toothless ratification.

[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...

[2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...

>>USA is the country that ratified fewer treaties.

yes, by design. We have a strong belief in our Sovereignty, We the people have no desire to be ruled by the UN or treaty, and International Treaties are generally viewed unfavorably by the public (correctly so). In fact most Citizens of the US (including myself) hold the UN in utter contempt and would support a withdraw (including our money) from the UN

Also no Treaty supersedes our Constitution.

a broken democracy but a highly functional oligarchhy

It must be one of the triumphs of capitalism that forcing employers to pay their workers what they're owed is considered a partisan action.

> neither for "social justice"

Listen to yourself.

> Wage theft in the US is estimated at _50_ billion dollars. [1]

That report is from 2014. What does it stand at today (whether in absolute or relative terms)?

I agree with you, but it's always easier to go after a centralized target who is doing a thing at scale. Is there a wage-thief who's doing it at scale?

> Is there a wage-thief who's doing it at scale?

FAANG got caught having a wage cartel where poaching affected possible salaries between workers.

They got a measly 50 million dollar fine.

Wage theft pays off in america, and Amazon and Apple being trillion dollar companies proves it.

> FAANG got caught having a wage cartel

I remember Apple and Google did. Was there a broader conspiracy?

> got a measly 50 million dollar fine

This $415mm settlement [1]? Its suit covered ”almost 65,000 employees who worked for the seven companies between 2005 and 2010.” The fine was thus about $6,400 per covered employee (about $8k in 2022 dollars). The alleged cut to “potential employee compensation [was] 10 percent to 15 percent” [2]. That didn’t pertain to every single employee, so the actual cost per violation is higher. That doesn’t seem egregiously low.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-...

[2] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/lawsuit-accuses-appl...

> I remember Apple and Google did. Was there a broader conspiracy?

I wrote FAANG cause I didn't remember all involved, which was my bad. It was Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay that got caught in the anti trust suit.

Enough big players to seriously affect job opportunities and labour costs from rising.

> This $415mm settlement [1]?

That was the latest judge sentence, which I hadn't heard of, I can ammend my previous comment. The original sentences, affecting mostly the smaller players like Pixar where much smaller while the Apple and Google one kept being pushed back. 400 million is still quite low in exchange for a 5 year long wage freeze essentially as moving jobs is the best way to increase your salary.

The toal pay seems to be lower, 3,400 for Pixar, intuit and lucasfilm employees and only 5,770 for apple and google employees. Over a 5 year period thats a pretty low salary raise.

Considering a job change every 2 years can end up with almost 100% salary difference over a decade. That means in the 5 years, the salary raises saved the company up to 50% in salary costs.

With the headcount of both of those companies and their average salary. Even if the percentage of workers who did not move between companies, I would argue 400 million is still low.

I am also gonna ignore lawyer fees which are usually the only winners on such big lawsuits

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

> I would argue 400 million is still low

Low, but not so low that it makes wage conspiracies worth it.

If there average payout is 5,770 per employee and the average salary jump while changing jobs is 10-20%.

The math is pretty in favour of having a wage conspiracy, thats without even considering the cost of not being caught.

Chance of being caught * average salary * cost of poaching * average salary rise due to poaching * number of employees / fine

Maybe my napkin math is wrong but the chance of being caught has to be very high and the average salary or number of employees very low for it to make any sense.

And being google and apple in california, the employee and salary is not gonna be low...

It definitely makes it worth it if you merely risk but are not guaranteed to lose about as much as you underpaid and avoid compounding increases.

My industry got it pretty bad too. California passed Prop 11, which wiped out a wage theft lawsuit, and also ensured that we do not get to clock out for meal breaks.

https://missionlocal.org/2018/10/prop-11-ambulance-company-h...

I'm sure e.g. Walmart would have few billions in their name.

> completely outside US jurisdiction

> The pair was arrested on November 3, 2022 in Cordoba, Argentina at the request of the United States.

The government of Argentina disagrees.

Extradition agreements is not the same as US law being applied in Argentinian soil.

So copyright is incentivizing only $9 billion of spending on books… This seems suboptimal. You’d think it’d be possible to design a different government scheme that yielded say, twice as much book publishing, but with no restriction on copying. Same thing for music.

Sleep deprivation of just 10 min per night across the entire USA adult population of 330M is 3.3Bn minutes, is over 6 thousand YEARS of sleep related fatigue, etc. PER NIGHT

Can you imagine if we attacked that problem in earnest?

My point, obviously, is that 50 billion is nothing on a per capita basis. This arrest is very high leverage, and very effective use of resources.

Your argument that this problem is too distributed is valid but a little out of touch. Wage theft disproprionately affects lower income people.

There is about 39 million americans below poverty line. That's about 1200 dollars a year. I am sure it would actually make a hell of a big difference to many people below the poverty line.

But piracy affects the capitalists that run the US establishment, whereas wage theft benefits them.

Can you imagine if the resources allocated to "social justice" were allocated towards the poor and others in dire need?

What these criminals were doing is wage theft. As someone who earns money from books, I would like to personally thank the US Justice Department for their excellent work in shutting down this operation, that was stealing my wages.

hey Lee, I just checked out your website.

> 17/11/2022 9:49 Minimizing the Elastic Energy of Growing Leaves by Conformal Mapping: I learned to love conformal mapping while studying fluid dynamics. This is a fascinating application.

The paper you linked is a closed-access paper.

https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.218...

Did you use sci-hub to access it or did you actually pay the AIP $35 to read it?

If you used sci-hub, I consider you to be a hypocrite.

Maybe I should personally invite all of the people who read your books to reconsider your opinion on the freedom of information when considering buying any of your books.

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