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Comment by phpisthebest | Hacker News Reader

While I 100% agree with wage transparency, just like I agree with price transparency for any other good...

This idea that there is some evil conspiracy to screw people is crazy to me.

Everyone wants to get the best price they can for anything, I am sure when you hire a HVAC person, or a plumber you are not looking to hire the most expensive person, you are looking to hire the best value...

Why do people believe employment is something different than any other goods exchange, employers buy labor from the market no different you buy a computer monitor, or a plumber.

I think everyone should have transparent pricing for everything, if Space X can post pricing to launch something into orbit, then dave the plumber can publish his rates, and Amce Corp can publish what they are paying employees...

"Call for pricing" should be a thing of the past for products just like "We pay competitive wages" should be a thing of the past for job ads.

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> This idea that there is some evil conspiracy to screw people is crazy to me.

Bruh.

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

https://goodjobsfirst.org/conspiring-against-competition/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/business/economy/wages-an...

https://archive.ph/2022.03.07-193856/https://www.nytimes.com...

https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/903511/download

Bruh....

exceptions do not make a rule

It absolutely is a rule if 2 of most valuable companies on the planet are colluding. (Apple and Google). Most SW devs aren't FAANG or whatever you call it these days, but downward pressure trickles down to everyone.

This seems to HN bias at work here....

Believing that what happens to Dev at 2 companies means everyone is impacted...

This is like .0000000000001% of the work force.... FAANG devs really do have an inflated sense of self worth dont they

If $96 billions in fines over two decades and thousands of companies doesn’t demonstrate a pattern, I don’t know what to tell you. Perhaps we’re haggling over the conspiracy ruler.

Refer to your quote I quoted, and the data provided. There is clearly a broad effort to suppress wages, even if everyone involved isn’t getting together at a Skull and Bones convention to do it.

you provided 5 links, about one 1 incident involving 5 companies and a possible 64,000 employees in a nation of almost 200 million working people..

> Why do people believe employment is something different than any other goods exchange, employers buy labor from the market no different you buy a computer monitor, or a plumber.

They're at least a little different, as evidenced by how employment is treated legally. There's usually a significantly larger asymmetry of power in the employee-employer relationship than there is when you buy a good as a consumer.

Speaking for US Employment Largely created by government treating labor differently than any other good. It is ironic how government regulations creates a problem for which then we need ever increasing amounts of regulations to fix...

Asymmetry comes from the wide ranges of things we have linked to employment via regulation such as health care....

I think people tend to forget how much of the regulations we have in the US related to labour arose because labour fought (and often bled and died) for.

Sure we have problems like healthcare being tied to employment that are a result of some heavy-handed regulations in the WW2 era, but we also have things like a minimum wage, and overtime, workers comp..etc.

This is somewhat revisionist in alot of cases.

A lot of employment law is bottom up, it is top down. For example Walmart is on record advocating for an increase in the Min Wage Federally, they have zero positions they are currently paying at federal minimum wages so to them it costs them nothing, and it may have the advantage to taking out small businesses.

Lots of regulation is the same way, written by and for large companies so ensure their competition can never have a competitive advantage.

This is why over the last few decades the market has been massively consolidated, where the top 5 companies in a market used to control around 20% of a market, 80% of the market share for most markets are controlled by less than 5 companies.

I think both things are true. There is a lot of regulation surrounding labour and employment that was hard won by labour, but you're right that there is also a lot that was similarly fought for by the employers.

This is part of the asymmetry of power -- as employers pockets get deeper, they are more easily able to have regulations implemented that further deepen their pockets. The same would be possible with labour, but there's little concentration of power there. It's a lot easier to spend $1m as a company to get the regulations you want than it is to organize however many workers to spend $1m to get the regulations they want, especially since no one will have the exact same regulations in mind.

Exactly which is why I oppose giving the government the power in the first place.

I don't know how "regulations are the real problem" libertarian types are so numerous. You want to insist things were better when the children working the coal mines could purchase private health insurance (from the company store, with company scrip, naturally)?

> This idea that there is some evil conspiracy to screw people is crazy to me.

$203 million in wages stolen in the past 5 years, and that's just in New York.[1] The US Department of Labor recovered $3 billion in stolen wages 2017-2020.[2]

A large portion of wage theft also slips through the cracks because of cash transactions that make it hard to catch or when it's difficult for victims to seek legal redress, such as when they are undocumented.

But sure, there obviously is nothing to worry about. /s

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/thousands-of-new-york-wor...

[2] https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021/

There's no evil conspiracy. There are convergent interests. Wealth wants to retain wealth. Labor wants to get wealth for the labor. Employers want to spend as little as possible on labor to retain wealth. Our (US) tax policy encourages this behavior.

Everyone should have transparent pricing - yes. It seems like you're just one layer of ignorance away from understanding what is actually going on. No conspiracy needed BUT that doesn't mean that there hasn't been conspiracies (note: not conspiracy theories) for wage/cost fixing.

>>It seems like you're just one layer of ignorance away from understanding what is actually going on.

No, you seem to be one layer of ignorance away from understanding the economic reality, you are adding a layer of complexity to labor markets attempting to treat them differently from any other market.

Has nothing to do with wealth at all....

It has everything to do with wealth. Wealth is the basis of our economic systems.

BTW, "no u" isn't a valid response. You can use it but nobody has any interest in continuing that discussion. Just like I no longer have any desire to converse with you regarding this. Have a good life.

>Wealth is the basis of our economic systems.

Only if you are an anti-capitalist that has swallowed the anti-capitalist propaganda hook line and sinker with the view that capitalism is evil and should be replaced with the utopia of socialism....

This doesn't make any sense? Which capital do we talk about with the word 'capitalist'? Exactly. It's wealth.

Capitalism is a system where the production is decided and owned by the capital owners. So, wealthy people. If bezos want a mega-yacht, a mega-yacht will be built.

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