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Comment by dsugarman | Hacker News Reader

People have free will; market rate is driven by supply, demand and economics of production and revenue. It's similar to people in the US willing to forfeit their financial future to see taylor swift live and the reseller market understanding and exploiting the market dynamics. Are the resellers the problem? or is it inevitable when people value the financial security of the rest of their lives less than seeing taylor for one night?

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They do have free will, but large groups of people are at an extreme negotiating disadvantage versus individuals or small groups that can more easily plan and coordinate -- and who happen to control the resources. This is why we need things like unions and government regulations: Not to unbalance things in favor of workers but to help achieve some amount of balance between owners and employees.

Agree that these animators should work to unionize if they want to improve their situation.

But I think for professions like these, the "they have free will" argument is pretty compelling. If they were being exploited in a low-skill, low-status job, where there are few to no alternatives, sure, definitely an industry that needs worker protections. But no one needs to be an animator at a big anime studio to survive. They're there because they want to be, and many/most/(all?) could find gainful employment in an adjacent industry or field where they'd have better pay.

To me it's similar to game development. Game devs famously get paid poorly (compared to other devs) and work under stressful conditions. They don't have to do that. They can get a job as a web developer, or an embedded developer, or... some other kind of developer, and get paid more, and experience less stress. But they want to build games, so that's what they do.

I'd definitely support all these folks if they wanted to unionize. But I'm not sure I'm convinced legislation is warranted. (Well, except for strengthening and actually enforcing sanctions against union-busting efforts.)

> They're there because they want to be, and many/most/(all?) could find gainful employment in an adjacent industry or field where they'd have better pay.

This isn't actually true. Occasionally animators can pivot to UI or graphic design, for example, but often times not. Animation is fairly specialized.

> But no one needs to be an animator at a big anime studio to survive.

The problem is mostly in the small studio space, where a lot of them are freelancers. There are a few studios like KyoAni/PA Works/ufotable that use mostly their own employees and pay better.

NBA players work at extremely desirable jobs and make a minimum of, like, $1m per year. And yet they're unionized and have the right to advocate for themselves collectively.

There's no "but their job is cool and they could do something else" caveat that makes someone less worthy of professional advocacy.

This is a false equivalence because there are a limited set of NBA players. Sure lots of people play basketball, but NBA players have gotten to that upper echelon for a variety of reasons such as training, genetics, perseverance, etc. It's simply not the same.

There is a surplus of game developers and animators and a league like the NBA for game dev doesn't exist (unless you count working for Valve or other prestigious organizations "the NBA of game development").

Free will as an individual means that you should be able to make better choices for yourself without having to rely on a hypothetical mafia-style union

Unfortunately, the other side of the negotiating table either already has a mafia-style cartel pushing your wages down[0], or is a monopsony already. Consolidation in one industry means everyone who does business with them either consolidates or has their margins go negative. Unions are just the working-class equivalent.

As for "mafia-style"... I mean, are we calling Hayao Miyazaki a mob boss now?

[0] Remember back in 2010 when Steve Jobs and Larry Page formed a wage fixing cartel?

wage fixing to limit the number of figures in existing 6 figures salaries in Silicon Valley? Please, don't make me cry.

This is a problem in all industries.

There's media companies literally trying to starve out striking workers: https://www.lendingtree.com/personal/medical-debt-statistics...

There's the biggest kind of theft, wage theft: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-u...

On and on, this applies to everyone in every industry.

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